The Dead Zone.
To the citizens of the Upper Districts, it was a horror story told to keep children away from the city walls. To the scavengers of the Rust, it was a graveyard where the air itself was poison. But to Chronos, it was a buffet.
"The air filters are already clogging," Elara hissed, adjusting her mask as they stepped past the rusted perimeter fence. "The mana density here is so high it's literally crystallizing in the air. If we stay too long, our lungs will turn to glass."
Chronos didn't use a mask. Every time the jagged, purple mana-dust touched his skin, it didn't burn. It was pulled into his pores and redirected straight into the First Void.
[Ambient Mana Absorption: Active.] [Regeneration Rate: +200%]
"Stay close to me," Chronos said. "The Drake is uncomfortable. It smells something... ancient."
The Void-Drake Wyrmling was no longer prowling; it was low to the ground, its obsidian scales bristling like a cat's fur. It let out a low, vibrating hum that acted as a sonar, bouncing off the twisted, metallic trees of the Gray Forest.
[Warning! Detection Pulse: High-Frequency.] [Multiple signatures detected. Species: Scrap-Shade (Rank D).]
Suddenly, the shadows beneath the metallic trees detached themselves. They looked like silhouettes of humans, but their bodies were made of liquid mercury and jagged wire. They didn't breathe; they vibrated, producing a sound that made Chronos's teeth ache.
"Scrap-Shades," Elara whispered, drawing her daggers. "They don't have hearts. You have to destroy the entire form at once or they just fuse back together."
"Is that so?" Chronos raised his hand. "System, test the Void-Watchers."
He opened a pocket-sized rift. Instead of the Drake jumping out, twelve lidless, glowing eyes emerged, floating in a thick cloud of toxic purple gas.
[Unit: Void-Watcher (Rank E)] [Skill: 'Gaze of the Abyss'.]
The twelve eyes turned toward the Scrap-Shades. A beam of dark-matter light shot from each pupil. Where the beams hit the mercury monsters, the metal didn't just melt—it collapsed. The gravity within the beams was so intense it forced the liquid metal into tiny, pea-sized spheres of extreme density.
The Shades didn't "fuse back together." They were physically incapable of overcoming the gravitational pull holding them in those tiny balls.
[12x Scrap-Shades neutralized.] [+600 Metal Essence gained.]
"Your 'Watchers' are terrifying," Elara muttered, watching the tiny mercury beads roll across the ground.
"They're efficient," Chronos replied. "But they're just the scouts. The real problem is 500 meters ahead."
He stopped at the edge of a massive crater. In the center sat the Great Shard—a piece of the original asteroid the size of a cathedral. It pulsed with a rhythmic, heartbeat-like thud that shook the very ground.
But it wasn't unguarded.
Coiled around the shard was a creature that made the Drake look like a lizard. It was a Centipede-Titan, its body made of discarded tank plating and reinforced steel, nearly sixty feet long. Its many legs were hydraulic pistons that hissed with steam.
[Target Identified: The Rust-Eater King (Rank C-Boss).] [Note: This creature has been 'Seeding' on the Great Shard for a decade.]
"Chronos... we can't," Elara said, her voice trembling. "That thing eats Awakened teams for breakfast. Even an A-Rank would hesitate."
"I don't need to kill it in a fair fight, Elara," Chronos said, his physicist's mind already mapping the crater. "It's sitting on a pile of unstable mana-dust. If I can trigger a chain reaction, I can use the Great Shard's own energy to vaporize the King."
"And how do you plan to trigger a 'Chain Reaction' without getting turned into a pancake?"
Chronos looked at the [Ancient Gear] still vibrating in his inventory and then at his Drake.
"We're going to perform a 'Manual Overload'. System, prepare the Drake Evolution. We're going to feed it the Great Shard while it's still attached to the Boss."
[Warning! This will link the Host's consciousness to the Great Shard.] [Risk: 85% chance of Mental Collapse.]
"I've lived through one death already," Chronos growled, his eyes glowing gold. "Drake! Gravity Leap! Target: The King's throat!"
The battle for the heart of the Dead Zone had begun.