The God-Tier Beast Architect

Chapter 5 Infiltration of the Ivory Tower

Neo-Berlin never slept. The city merely shifted colors, from the glaring neon yellow of the day to the crimson glow of advertisement holograms atop the nobles' spires at night. Kenzo Julian pulled the collar of his tattered cloak up to cover half his face, adjusting the worn respirator mask. The stench of the sewers he wore as a masking cologne was enough to keep anyone within a three-meter radius at bay.

In front of the access gate to the elite sector, a shimmering barrier of light, three Sentinel-class patrol drones hovered low. Their thermal sensors scanned the crowd of laborers and scavengers queuing for entry into the Rejection Vault facility.

"Identity," a cold, robotic voice echoed from the gate.

"Kenzo, uh, serial number J-009, waste management division," Kenzo replied, his voice raspy, mimicking the stolen audio recording stored in his mind.

The Aura-Lock detector at the gate scanned Kenzo’s chest. It should have triggered an alarm. He should have been caught, as a Zero, he was considered an anomaly. But, before the detector reached his core, Kenzo sent a faint impulse from the Nihilus tucked behind his waist belt. The Nihilus absorbed the sensor's energy as if it were water being soaked up by a dry sponge.

The scanner beeped once, hummed, and then flashed green.

"ID verified. Enter, worker J-009. Avoid S-level corridors," the system commanded.

Kenzo didn't look back. He stepped inside, his oil-slicked boots marking the pristine white marble that hurt the eyes. This was the Ivory Tower, where the von Goldenthorn clan hoarded both their wealth and their sins. Surrounding him were rows of corridors lined with massive aquariums, housing defective beasts that were either rotting or in agony.

"God, what is this?" Kenzo whispered to himself, his eyes staring blankly at the glass tank to his right.

A silver wolf, genetically supposed to be a high-class Lunar Stalker, was whimpering, its body riddled with forced surgical incisions. Its aura core appeared to have been violently extracted to power the luxury artifacts in the Duke's office. Fenris, the wolf, stared at Kenzo. Its gaze wasn't empty, there was a suffering consciousness in it that was agonizing to witness.

"Warning : Genetic analysis detects critical instability. If left for another 15 minutes, the specimen will undergo molecular disintegration." The mechanical voice of the Eye of Origin echoed sharply in Kenzo's mind.

Kenzo gritted his teeth. "Stay patient," he murmured, though he knew the wolf couldn't understand human speech. "I’ll get you out."

"Hey, you! What are you doing staring at the High Clan's assets?"

Kenzo flinched. A guard clad in silver armor aimed a shock baton at him. His face was filled with the arrogance only held by those who felt they possessed the keys to the world.

"Apologies, sir." Kenzo bowed low. "A waste pipe in sector 4 is leaking. The smell, it’s making my brain a bit scrambled."

The guard sneered, spitting on the floor near Kenzo’s boots. "Zero-caste has always been foul from birth. Finish your job quickly before I let my Earth-Hound tear you apart for blocking the view."

The guard walked away, turning his back on Kenzo. That was when the Nihilus behind his belt moved. Not in its full dragon form, but as a cluster of thin black threads emerging through the folds of his fabric. The threads snatched the transmission cables in the wall connected to the storage room’s control panel.

Kenzo crouched behind a large pillar, aiming his eyes, which now glowed a dim red, at the electrical panel.

"Nihilus, consume the door control’s main current," Kenzo whispered.

Darkness flowed through the cables. The lights in the main corridor suddenly flickered, causing a stir. Digital security sensors throughout the tower distorted in frequency. The researchers panicked; the alarms that should have signaled an intruder instead began playing a winter festival tune.

In that chaos, Kenzo acted. He unlocked the panel of Fenris’s aquarium with one precise touch.

"Get out," Kenzo whispered.

The silver wolf trembled, leaping out with a limp. Kenzo quickly rerouted the cable flow to the control room, killing the CCTV visual feed for a few seconds. He knew he only had a few breaths of time.

"Target found over there," Kenzo pointed at the holographic projection from his eyes. "Not just this wolf. Look at that data; there are hundreds of defective eggs on the storage shelves in sector B."

Kenzo’s suspicions about the Goldenthorn clan were true. They were intentionally creating defective beasts to extract "suffering aura" liquid, pure energy harvested from the despair of living entities, to be supplied as a vitality-boosting drug for the elderly nobles.

"Bastards. They aren't just oppressors; they're monsters selling hell," Kenzo growled.

Suddenly, the sirens blared twice as loud. Researchers nearby began to grow suspicious, noticing the moving black shadows.

"System! What is happening?"

"Void evolution is unstable. Nihilus has begun detecting a small Genesis Core stored inside the archive room. The resonance between the two is triggering magnetic interference that cannot be masked."

Kenzo knew he couldn't run now without bringing something extra. With a speed achievable only by someone who didn't care about the laws of physics, he reached for the bottom egg shelf, where cannonball-sized failed products were stored.

The Nihilus merged with the eggs. In an instant, the eggs that had been cold now warmed in Kenzo’s hands. The Nihilus wasn't eating them, it was infecting them with its Void properties, altering their frequency so they wouldn't be detected by any security equipment.

"Let's go, get out of here!" Kenzo signaled the silver wolf to follow his shadow.

"Hey! You there! Stop him!" A guard fired a plasma bow at Kenzo.

Kenzo didn't dodge. He ordered the Nihilus to deploy a Void Shield. The plasma shot hit the air in front of Kenzo and vanished. It didn't explode, didn't bounce off, it simply ceased to exist, turning into tiny, meaningless particles.

The guards stared in horror. They were used to facing strong opponents, those who used fire or lightning mana. But Kenzo? Kenzo fought with nothingness.

Kenzo vaulted over the balcony, free-falling toward the city sewer ventilation below. Just as his body plummeted, the alarms throughout the Ivory Tower shrieked, this time truly warning of an absolute-level breach.

"Target spotted! Elite Unit! Pursue him!"

From a distance, the sounds of Falcon-type Beast wings overlapped, chasing at supersonic speed above the sewer canal. Kenzo landed on a waste transport boat, covered in oil and toxic gas residue. He looked at the silver wolf beside him, still terrified but loyal.

"Easy," Kenzo said, patting the wolf’s head, which now had a faint black line in its eyes, a trace of the Nihilus energy he had just given it.

He looked up, staring at the peak of the tower he had just thrown into disarray. "Wait until you realize those eggs are no longer yours," Kenzo whispered with a cold smirk.

That night, amidst the encirclement of elite forces, Kenzo Julian, the trash from the Zero caste, vanished into the depths of the sewers, carrying one silver-furred ally and some of the Empire’s deadliest secrets.

But in the middle of his escape, one thing preyed on his mind. The Eye of Origin had just pulled up the latest data. The eggs he had stolen were no longer just beasts. Inside them, there was the genetic code of a legendary dragon that should have gone extinct a thousand years ago.

The real battle had just begun. And the Ivory Tower had just lost its most precious foundation.