The betrayal was a physical blow, colder and sharper than any blade. Jin-Woo stared at the corrupted form of Igris, his first and most loyal knight, now a puppet of the enemy. The calm, disciplined fortress of his mind fractured. For a fleeting, terrible moment, all he felt was pure, unadulterated rage.
[How?] His mental voice was a thunderclap that shook the cavern, directed at the lead Architect.
The Architect tilted its head, a gesture of mock sympathy. [A simple exploit. While your consciousness was extended across the globe, focused on your fiery queen, we inserted a backdoor into your network. A single line of corrupting code, delivered through a shadow you left behind as a sentry. We could not control them all, but we only needed one. Your most trusted. The Grand-Marshal of your legion.]
It was a masterful, devastatingly personal attack. They had used his own strategy, his own power, against him.
"Igris…" Jin-Woo whispered, the name an unfamiliar, painful sound in his mouth.
The corrupted knight showed no sign of recognition. Its crimson gaze was cold, empty, fixed on its target. It took a step forward, its movements still graceful, but now lacking the soul, the honor, that had defined him. It was a perfect, hollow imitation.
"Kafka, get back!" Kikoru yelled, shoving him behind her and raising her axe. Her face was pale, but her eyes blazed with a fierce, protective fire. "Jin-Woo, what are your orders?!"
Jin-Woo's mind was racing, re-evaluating, adapting. He was cut off from his main army, his gate-making mages left on the surface. He had only the soldiers in his immediate shadow. And one of them was now his enemy.
"Protect Kafka at all costs," Jin-Woo commanded, his voice regaining its icy calm. He drew two daggers from his inventory—the Kamish's Wraths, blades forged from the fang of a Dragon Monarch. They hummed with a thirsty, violet light. "The rest of you… buy me time."
"The rest of us?" Kikoru started to ask, but then the shadows around Jin-Woo erupted.
Beru, Tank, Tusk, and a dozen of his elite knight-grade shadows materialized, their violet eyes burning with fury at the sight of their corrupted brother.
[Traitor! Abomination! I will tear the strings from your soul!] Beru shrieked, launching himself at Igris.
The corrupted Igris met his charge effortlessly. Their blades clashed, crimson light against violet, a shower of volatile sparks. But Igris's movements were different. He was augmented by the Architects' power, his strength unnaturally enhanced. He parried Beru's frenzied assault and kicked him back with enough force to send the ant-king skidding across the cavern floor.
While the shadow knights engaged their fallen commander, the squad of Architects glided forward.
[The Progenitor Heart is weakened,] the lead Architect announced. [Now is the time. Sever the connection. Seize the Key.]
The Architects raised their spindly, obsidian hands and began to chant in their dry, whispering chorus. The energy in the cavern shifted. The column of light holding the crystalline heart flickered violently, and a network of crimson chains, made of pure energy, began to snake around it, constricting it, choking it.
The Progenitor's psychic scream of agony tore through Kafka's mind. He collapsed, clutching his head, his own body convulsing as his connection to the heart was forcibly severed.
"They're trying to steal it!" Kikoru yelled. She charged toward the Architects, her axe held high.
"Don't!" Jin-Woo shouted, but it was too late.
One of the Architects simply turned and waved a hand. A wall of invisible, kinetic force slammed into Kikoru, sending her flying backward. She crashed into the cavern wall, her armor groaning, a trickle of blood running from her lips. She was outmatched.
Jin-Woo knew he had to choose. Protect Kafka and Kikoru, or stop the Architects' ritual. He couldn't do both while Igris occupied his main forces.
He made the coldest choice. He had to trust his soldiers.
He vanished, reappearing directly in front of the chanting Architects. "Your quarrel is with me," he snarled, his daggers a blur of violet light.
He was a whirlwind of death. He cut through the first two Architects before they could even react, their iridescent robes falling to the ground in tatters, their featureless forms dissolving into dust. But the others were ready. They abandoned their ritual and focused on him, their hands weaving complex patterns, launching bolts of raw, anti-mana energy that sizzled through the air.
The cavern became a three-front war. Jin-Woo against the Architects. His elite shadows against their corrupted commander. And Kikoru, struggling to her feet, desperately trying to shield the writhing, agonized Kafka from the stray blasts of energy that lit up the darkness.
The battle between the shadows was heartbreaking. Beru, Tank, and the others fought with a frenzied desperation, trying to subdue Igris, not kill him. But Igris, augmented and unfeeling, fought with lethal precision. He moved like a machine, parrying, dodging, and countering with inhuman efficiency. He disarmed one knight, shattered Tank's shield with a super-charged blow, and ran his crimson blade through another. He was dismantling them.
Jin-Woo, meanwhile, was a god of war. He weaved through the Architects' energy blasts, his daggers finding their marks, his new Kaiju-like resilience shrugging off the hits that got through. But they were numerous, and their attacks were designed specifically to counter his mana-based powers. It was a battle of attrition.
He needed to end this. Now.
He focused his will, tapping into the power of the core in his chest. The blue markings on his body flared to life. His form began to shift, to grow. He was about to unleash his new, hybrid power.
But the lead Architect was waiting for it. [Predictable.]
It clapped its hands together. From the shadows behind it, another figure emerged. A perfect, shadowy duplicate of Jin-Woo himself, its eyes glowing with the same crimson light as Igris's. It was a golem, forged from his own stolen shadow data.
The Shadow Clone charged, wielding duplicates of the Kamish's Wraths.
Jin-Woo was forced to meet its charge, his transformation aborted. He was now fighting a mirror image of himself, a puppet that knew all of his moves, all of his techniques.
It was a perfect stalemate. And it was exactly what the Architects needed.
With Jin-Woo occupied, the corrupted Igris finally saw his opening. He disengaged from the battered shadow knights and moved with blinding speed, a phantom of black and red.
His target was not Jin-Woo. His target was the Key.
Kikoru saw him coming. She screamed a warning, throwing herself in front of Kafka. She raised her axe, pouring the last of her energy into a desperate, final block.
Igris's crimson blade came down. It shattered her axe like glass. It sheared through her golden armor like paper. It cut a deep, devastating line across her chest, from her shoulder to her hip.
The light in her eyes went wide with shock and pain. She collapsed at Kafka's feet, her lifeblood staining the cavern floor.
Igris raised his blade again, this time to finish the job and take Kafka.
But as he looked down, he saw Kafka's eyes. They were no longer filled with fear or pain. They were blazing with a pure, cobalt blue light. The light of the Progenitor. The severing of the connection to the heart had not depowered him; it had forced the entirety of Kaiju No. 1's consciousness that resided within him to awaken.
[YOU WILL NOT HARM MY CHILDREN,] a new voice, ancient and powerful, roared from Kafka's mouth.
Kafka's body exploded in a wave of blue energy. He didn't just transform into Kaiju No. 8. He became something more. Something older. The Prime Kaiju.
Jin-Woo, locked in combat with his own clone, saw it happen. He saw Kikoru fall. He saw Kafka awaken. And the cold, disciplined fortress of his mind finally, utterly, broke.
A scream of pure, unrestrained rage ripped from his throat, a sound that was not human, not monarch, but something utterly primal. The core in his chest exploded with power, and the violet abyss within him answered.
He ignored his clone, letting its blade sink into his shoulder. It didn't matter.
"ARISE," he roared, the command shaking the foundations of the world.
And from the shadow of every dead Kaiju on the entire island, a new legion was born. Tens of thousands of them. The Isle of Giants itself became his army. The ground of the cavern began to crack and split as a sea of violet eyes opened in the darkness, all turning their gaze to the battle within.
The experiment was over. The hunt had begun.