The God-Tier Beast Architect

Chapter 2 Legacy of the Wasted Dark

Kenzo Julian could barely feel his feet. Every step he took on the cracked concrete of Neo-Berlin felt like treading on hot thorns that pierced straight to the bone. Beneath his tattered coat, he clutched something heavy and pulsing, a spherical object whose surface was cold as ice, yet radiated a frequency that made his teeth ache.

He had to reach The Burrow. It was the only rat hole that hadn’t been sniffed out by the Goldenthorn clan patrols.

Neon lights from the distant skyscrapers cast holographic glares onto the polluted night sky, but here in the outskirts, darkness was the only ruler. Kenzo coughed up phlegm, feeling the remnants of methane gas from the Aethelgard Valley still tearing at his lungs.

"Almost there. Don't you dare die yet, you bastard," he cursed at himself.

The sound of the Interceptor Drones’ sirens whined in the distance. They were still hunting him. To those elites, any theft from the Scrapyard Valley was an insult, especially when committed by a Zero-caste.

Kenzo slid into a gap behind the wall of a partially collapsed Gothic cathedral. Beneath a mossy, shattered altar sat a steel bulkhead door hidden under a pile of rubble. With his remaining strength, he pulled the jammed mechanical lever and tumbled into the darkness of the emergency stairwell.

The bunker was small, damp, and smelled of old machine oil. It was the final legacy of Old Marcus, the old man who had found him in the sewers ten years ago.

"Lights, activate," Kenzo hissed hoarsely.

The cheap circuit lights on the ceiling flickered before glowing dimly. Kenzo immediately placed the black egg onto a rusted metal surgical table. He was gasping for air. Blood from his shoulder dripped onto the table, sizzling slightly as it touched the cold surface.

"Eye of Origin, full analysis. Don’t miss a thing," he commanded, wiping sweat mixed with soot from his face.

Kenzo’s left eye glowed electric blue. The world around him vanished, replaced by a weave of digital code and schematic lines. His systematic vision pierced through the black shell like a super-sharp X-ray.

"Initiating Genetic Scan : Prototype Genesis – Void Type," the mechanical voice in his brain echoed, sounding clearer now. "Warning : Protein structure unidentified in current Imperial database. Downloading compressed data from the Creation Era."

Kenzo froze. "The Creation Era? That’s just a bedtime story old man Marcus used to tell. That data should have been scrubbed from modern history completely."

He remembered Marcus’s stories from back when they were eating leftover bread from trash bins. Marcus often said the world was built on a genetic lie. That the Goldenthorn clan's golden dragons were nothing but cheap copies of something much older and far more terrifying.

"Analysis Complete. Aura Frequency Compatibility : 0.00% (Absolute Void). Status : Critical Malnutrition. The embryo rejects all forms of Standard Mana Crystals."

"What?" Kenzo stared at the pile of low-grade mana crystals he had painstakingly collected in the corner. "All these are useless? Then what does it eat? Gold? Human lives?"

Kenzo gave a bitter smirk. He saw his reflection in a cracked mirror on the bunker wall. His hair was a mess, his face filthy, and his eyes burned with the rage he had kept tightly suppressed. He and this egg shared one striking similarity.

They were both mistakes. They were both deemed rot by a system that worshipped pretty, glittering auras.

"Same fate, huh?" Kenzo muttered, stroking the black shell that was beginning to cool. "You aren't accepted in this world because you're a void. And I have no future because I'm a Zero-caste. Two pieces of trash in one room. How ironic."

Suddenly, the egg’s surface vibrated violently. A small crack appeared, but instead of amniotic fluid, the crack began to suck the light from the room until the bunker plunged into total darkness.

"System Warning : Embryo vitality levels dropping drastically. Initiation Catalyst required for hatching process."

"Tell me what the catalyst is! Don't just give me warnings!" Kenzo snapped, his emotions ignited by frustration.

"Searching for Void-Contract references. Found. Requirement: Essence fluid from a creature without a destiny line recorded in the Aura System."

Kenzo went quiet, his brain rapidly processing the instruction. "Without a destiny line? You mean ... my blood?"

As a Zero, Kenzo had no aura signature in the Empire’s resident database. In the eyes of the law, he didn't exist, biologically or civilly. He was an anomaly, a breathing empty space.

"You want this trash blood to live, huh?" Kenzo laughed low, a bitter, hollow sound.

He grabbed a dull scalpel from the table. His shoulder wound was still open, but the system’s instruction specifically called for fresh blood fueled by strong desire.

Suddenly, the cathedral door above slammed violently. Someone was forcing their way in.

CRASH!

"Kenzo Julian! Come out, you trash! We know you're in that wormhole!" a Goldenthorn clan soldier’s voice echoed through the ventilation pipes.

Kenzo didn't panic. Instead of fear, his rage hit a boiling point. They had followed him. They hadn’t just stripped him of his dignity at the academy, they hadn’t just killed Old Marcus for treason, now they wanted to take his last remaining hope, too.

"Sorry, friends up there," Kenzo whispered, his face darkening. "You're a minute too late."

Kenzo sliced his palm without hesitation. A deep wound. Dark crimson blood, the blood of a common human, supposedly "dirty" because it contained no mana, began to pour out. He pressed his palm directly onto the crack in the black egg.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, in the next second, the room exploded in a painful silence.

Kenzo’s blood didn't just coat the shell, it was sucked in as if the egg were a dry sponge that had been waiting for water for thousands of years. The air pressure in the bunker dropped sharply. Kenzo’s whole body felt pulled forward. His Eye of Origin began to blink a bright, intense red.

"Soul Synchronization initiated. Unsealing the Void – Stage 1. Warning : Unimaginable pain imminent."

Kenzo gritted his teeth until his gums bled. "I’ve been living in hell for 18 years. This pain is nothing!"

Suddenly, the room's temperature dropped below zero. Kenzo’s breath froze into black ice crystals in the air. From within the egg came a sound, not an animal growl, but a resonant frequency that felt like it could shatter a human skull.

Above, the noise of the Goldenthorn soldiers abruptly stopped. All that followed were screams of terror and the sound of their sensor machines exploding one by one due to an unreadable energy overload.

To the elites, it was destructive radiation. To Kenzo, it was the music of victory.

He could feel something cold and slick starting to wrap around his arm from within the egg, which was now slowly disintegrating. Not breaking like a chicken egg, but dissolving like ash caught in a dimensional wind.

A pair of eyes appeared from the darkness. No pupils, no color. Only two tiny black holes staring directly into Kenzo’s soul.

"Welcome to hell, little dragon," Kenzo whispered with his remaining strength before his eyes dimmed from blood loss.

Kenzo’s hand still clutched the newborn creature protectively. Even as his body weakened, he felt a new connection being forged, a black thread binding his fate to the most dangerous monster on the face of the earth.

The Burrow might have been a cramped, foul-smelling cage, but in this discarded place, the Empire had just given permission for their own destruction to hatch.

Kenzo smiled weakly before the darkness claimed his consciousness entirely. In his ear, the mechanical voice of the Eye of Origin closed the chapter with one cold sentence.

"Assimilation Success. Subject : Nihilus has awakened."