The lines of text, formed from coagulated blood, flickered stubbornly on the static-filled screen. Every word felt like an epitaph carved with the last of a dying man's strength.

  The writing that followed was completely swallowed by a chaotic stream of data, rendering it indecipherable.

  "One"?

  Not a "nest" representing a collective, but "One" representing a singular entity?

  The hair on Kane’s neck stood on end instantly. A wave of cold dread surged from the soles of his feet straight to his skull.

  In a heartbeat, he saw through every trap hidden in Felix’s words.

  A "nest" implied a large number of enemies whose individual strength might not be peak. With the right tactics, there was always a slim chance of survival.

  But "One"...

  That meant there was only a single thing here.

  A single monster powerful enough to wipe out three elite hunter teams!

  The moment the thought flashed through his mind, the entire circular hall came to life.

  Gurgle... Gurgle...

  The slick, soft purple membranes beneath his feet were no longer inanimate.

  They began to pulse violently, as if the heart of a slumbering behemoth had awakened beneath him.

  On the walls, the ceiling—every bit of dark purple organic matter seemed to receive a silent command. They converged, contracted, and bulged toward the center of the hall with frantic speed!

  Countless severed metal pipes, shattered alloy plates, and even the skeletal remains on the floor—along with their ruined armor—were swept up, swallowed, and forcibly fused together by those writhing membranes!

  Crack... Screech... Sizzle—

  The mournful wail of twisting metal intertwined with the dull thuds of snapping bone.

  A massive aggregate composed of flesh, fascia, cables, and metal rapidly took shape right before Kane’s eyes!

  It had no fixed form. It was a mountain of meat that continued to expand, its surface bristling with violently integrated metal claws, alloy spikes, and even a twisted, deformed power arm belonging to some unlucky hunter.

  Across the upper-middle section of the meat-mountain, several tactical flashlights stripped from corpses were embedded haphazardly. They glowed faintly, looking like a cluster of displaced, grotesque eyes staring fixedly at the only living thing in the hall.

  Felix!

  That old bastard—he absolutely knew the truth!

  What "unidentifiable biological energy signature"? The intel sent back by those previous three teams was more than enough for him to piece together the terrifying silhouette of this monster!

  He wasn't issuing a mission; he was using human lives to gamble on a microscopic possibility!

  The towering rage in Kane’s heart burned for only a second before being replaced by a glacier-like calm.

  Now was not the time for blame.

  Staying alive was.

  "ROAR—!"

  The aggregate meat-mountain let out a roar that belonged to no known creature—a cacophony of high-pressure steam, grinding metal, and tearing flesh.

  The next second, a black shadow tore through the air, whistling as it shot out from the meat-mountain!

  It was a piece of rebar, wrapped in flesh-membrane and sharpened into a point!

  Kane stayed low, his body becoming a ghost-like shadow sliding across the floor. He slipped past the edge of death a fraction of a second before the rebar slammed into the ground.

  Thud!

  The rebar slammed deep into the alloy wall behind him, burying itself half a foot deep, its tail end still vibrating at a high frequency.

  Before he could even steady his breath, more "tentacles" and "projectiles" erupted from the monster.

  Mechanical arms entwined with cables, whistling metal shards, and lash-like tentacles of fascia!

  The onslaught was overwhelming, completely sealing off all his routes for evasion.

  Kane put power into his legs, activating [ Kinetic Boost ] to its absolute limit. He became a flickering dark-green phantom, weaving frantically through the gaps in the lethal barrage.

  As he dodged, he raised The Cyclone.

  Midway through a side-roll, his wrist flicked, and he pulled the trigger!

  Whiz—Thuck!

  An "Armor-Piercing Air-Bolt" accurately struck a fascia tentacle whipping toward him. The bullet tore through the surface flesh and bored inside.

  And then... nothing.

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  The tentacle merely stuttered for a fraction of a second. Countless buds of flesh writhed frantically at the wound; in less than half a second, it had fully regenerated, even forcibly "squeezing" out the bullet head stuck inside.

  Its physical resistance was absurdly high, and its recovery speed was nothing short of perverted.

  Kane’s heart sank.

  The difficulty of this thing far exceeded any of his estimations.

  He stopped wasting bullets and poured all his energy into evasion, his mind becoming preternaturally sharp under the extreme pressure.

  That last message...

  "Devouring metal... growing..."

  This horror, composed of biological tissue and machinery, could repair itself—and even grow stronger—by consuming the surrounding metal. In a laboratory made entirely of metal, it was practically immortal.

  Unless...

  He found its core and delivered a single, fatal blow.

  Kane’s gaze scanned the shifting meat-mountain with lightning speed, catching every hint of an inconsistency.

  Suddenly, he saw it.

  In the central region of the aggregate, there was an area where the pulse frequency was significantly faster than the rest. The fleshy membrane there possessed a bizarre, translucent quality; he could vaguely see a shimmering object encased within.

  A shattered incubation vat.

  It had hatched from there!

  That was the core.

  Target locked.

  But a new problem immediately followed. The core was shielded by layers upon layers of flesh and metal. Conventional attacks were nothing more than a tickle. To pierce that kind of defense, only one possibility existed.

  A full-power strike using [ Aero Blade ] layered with The Cyclone!

  However, initiating that move required a brief moment of charging. This monster’s relentless, torrential attacks didn't give him a single chance to stand still for more than a second.

  He had to create an opening himself.

  A window of time long enough to complete the charge.

  Kane’s gaze turned razor-sharp.

  He stopped his purely defensive dodging and abruptly changed direction, charging toward the outer wall of the hall.

  The monster seemed to sense his intent. A massive iron fist, twisted together from three or four mechanical arms, slammed down toward his landing point with the momentum to crush everything in its path!

  Kane leaped!

  The moment the iron fist struck, spiderwebbing the floor, he slammed his right foot against the empty air!

  [ Aerial Step ]!

  Bang!

  The violent thrust sent him high into the air, perfectly evading the certain-death strike.

  He transformed into a streak of lightning, skimming across the walls of the circular hall at high speed!

  He needed speed—absolute, peak speed!

  From his vantage point, he locked onto the mass of meat below, which had grown somewhat bloated and sluggish from its continuous attacking.

  Now!

  He forcibly twisted his body mid-air, fully converting his falling potential energy into the momentum of a dive. Like a meteorite, he lunged toward the monster's flank!

  "BOOM!!"

  The "Airburst" shot was unleashed!

  This time, he didn't aim for the core. Instead, he blasted a large fragment of armor plating located on the core's side.

  A savage wave of air exploded. The terrifying concussive force tore the plating and the surrounding flesh away, momentarily ripping a jagged opening in the core’s defensive layer!

  An opening!

  The monster's massive frame shuddered violently.

  It felt no pain, but the rupture of its core’s defenses triggered a primal sense of threat.

  A deafening roar erupted from within its body. All the metal tentacles and fascia whips, like an infuriated swarm of bees, abandoned their pursuit of Kane. They swirled back frantically and instinctively toward the breach, attempting to shield, wrap, and repair the wound!

  The onslaught across the entire battlefield came to a momentary standstill.

  Kane landed, rolling to dissipate the impact.

  The lethal attacks all around him had shifted direction, leaving him a fleeting, absolutely safe vacuum of space.

  There was no joy in his expression—only a cold, hollow calm.

  He had seized the fatal, two-second gap exposed by the monster's self-preservation instinct!

  He stood his ground, steadied his breath, and turned his right palm upward.

  A pale green vortex, composed of high-density airflow, began to condense rapidly.

  [ Aero Blade ]!

  Almost the instant the blade took shape, he raised The Cyclone, its muzzle locked dead-on to the breach he had just blasted—a gap that was already rapidly knitting shut!

  The trigger was pulled!

  Screee—RUMBLE!!!

  A destructive white pillar of air, interlaced with countless emerald-green blade-lights, erupted from the muzzle like a spear of judgment!

  Time seemed to stretch in that moment.

  The bullet, fused with the [ Aero Blade ], drilled precisely through the gap. It tore through layers of flesh and metal obstructions, slamming violently into the core encased within the translucent membrane!

  There was no earth-shattering explosion.

  The movements of the aggregate meat-mountain suddenly froze.

  The next second, starting from the point where the core was struck, countless spiderweb-like green cracks began to spread frantically in every direction.

  The destructive energy of the [ Aero Blade ] driven into its body had fully detonated from within!

  Puff! Puff! Puff!

  A series of muffled pops echoed from deep inside the monster.

  Its massive frame, like a balloon punctured in a thousand places, began to spray out stinking purple slurry and metal shards.

  The tentacles that had been thrashing wildly just moments ago went limp and hung uselessly.

  The entire mountain of meat began to disintegrate, collapse, and dissolve.

  The resilient fascia tissues turned into pools of foul-smelling sludge, and the forcibly fused metal components clattered to the floor in a heap.

  In less than ten seconds, the terrifying bio-mechanical beast had completely broken down into a pile of lifeless industrial trash and organic waste.

  The battle was over.

  Kane dropped to one knee, his breath coming in ragged, violent gasps.

  A jagged shard of flying metal had sliced a deep wound into his left shoulder, exposing the bone. Blood pulsed steadily from the gash, and his Basilisk Stone Armor was punctured in several places.

  If not for The Cyclone, and if not for the perfect synergy between [ Aero Blade ] and [ Kinetic Boost ], he would have been a dead man today.

  He pushed off the ground to stand, dragging his wounded body toward the pile of dissolving waste.

  The incubation vat that served as the core—the one his final strike had pierced—was shattered. Lying in a pool of purple slime was a single metal cylinder.

  He picked it up and prepared to turn away, but something else caught his eye.

  Among the countless wrecks swallowed by the monster, a mechanical arm belonging to an elite hunter remained relatively intact. Clutched tightly in its frozen grip was another identical metal cylinder!

  It seemed that before him, a predecessor had successfully retrieved one of the cores, only to be devoured by the monster during the retreat.

  There weren't just one, but two data cores!

  He leaned down and picked them up, their surfaces icy to the touch.

  The mission was complete.

  He could contact Felix now, claim the 20,000 Kunlun Credits, and collect on the promise of those top-tier power legs.

  But...

  Kane wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. Felix’s face, with that playful, mocking smile, refused to leave his mind.

  To be deceived. To be used as a disposable pawn.

  This debt could not be settled so easily.

  He looked down at the two data cores in his hand, then at the data port on his personal terminal.

  Kane lined up the first core with the port on his wrist and slid it in. The terminal screen immediately displayed a string of mundane laboratory data and research logs. Nothing of significant value.

  He pulled out the first core, then took the second—which looked newer and more polished—and jammed it in!

  The frantic chirping of his terminal’s alarm forced Kane to yank the core out.

  S-Rank encryption... unknown protocols...

  This was what Felix truly wanted.

  Kane looked at the core in his hand and laughed—a cold, hollow sound.

  "Treating me like a pawn, are you..."

  "Felix, let’s see if you can actually handle the weight of this 'fortune' when I drop it on your head!"

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