CHAPTER 53: HARDWARE UPGRADE

The syringe Varg produced wasn’t medical, it was a torture device made of runic glass and brass valves.

"Hold still," Varg muttered, tapping Rin’s forearm with a metal claw. "The Grey doesn’t like being bottled, it fights back."

Rin sat in the captain’s chair, watching the fog swirl against the bridge windows. "Just do it."

Varg jammed the needle in.

It didn’t feel like a prick, it felt like someone had inserted a live wire directly into Rin’s marrow. Rin arched his back, his teeth grinding together audibly, as Varg pulled the plunger.

The tube didn’t fill with blood. It filled with liquid static, a swirling mix of white and purple that hissed inside the glass.

[System Alert: Critical Mana Drain]

[Status: Energy Siphon]

[HP: -15%]

"Beautiful," Varg cackled, his goggles zooming in on the volatile substance. "Pure chaos in a bottle."

He pulled the needle out. Rin slumped in the chair, clutching his arm. The gray scars were throbbing, angry red lines pulsing against his skin.

"Rin?" Joy stepped forward, hand on her pistol.

"I’m good," Rin lied, forcing himself to sit up. "Just... lightheaded."

Varg ignored them, scuttling over to the table where Leo lay next to the Aegis suit. The suit looked like a mannequin carved from obsidian and bone, faceless and terrifyingly still.

"Initialization," Varg whispered.

He slotted the vial of Rin’s energy into a port on the suit’s chest. The gray liquid drained into the armor.

The runes etched into the black metal flared to life, not blue or gold, but a sickly, crackling gray.

"Now the pilot," Varg said.

He placed a series of mana crystals around Leo, creating a containment circle. He chanted something low and guttural, a language that sounded like grinding stones.

Leo gasped. His shadow body began to unravel, turning into black smoke that poured off the table and swirled into the open chest cavity of the Aegis suit.

"It’s eating him," Tayo whispered, horrified.

"It’s housing him," Varg corrected, working controls on a console. "Binding the soul to the chassis."

Outside, something massive slammed into the hull of the ship.

BOOM.

The entire shipwreck groaned, tilting another five degrees. Tools slid off workbenches. Rin grabbed the console to stay upright.

"They’re knocking," Nyx said, drawing her knife.

Rin looked at the monitor Varg had rigged up. It showed the deck below.

Climbing over the rails were shapes that defied logic. They looked like men, but fused with the ship itself—rusty chains wrapped around limbs that ended in hooks, barnacles growing over faces, skin the color of drowned bruises.

[Entity Identified: Rust-Walker]

[Rank: D (Swarm)]

[Origin: Environmental Mutation]

"Defend the bridge!" Varg shouted, not looking up from his work. "If they interrupt the binding, your friend becomes a smudge on the astral plane!"

"We hold the door," Rin ordered, pushing off the console. He felt weak, his mana pool drained by the extraction, but he had enough for a fight.

They moved to the heavy steel door of the bridge.

"Tayo, Joy, backline," Rin said. "Nyx, you’re with me."

"With pleasure," Nyx grinned.

The door buckled. A dent appeared in the center, shaped like a massive fist.

"Open it," Rin said.

Nyx hit the release.

The door swung open. Standing there was a hulk of a creature, seven feet tall, its arm replaced by a ship’s anchor chain.

It roared, a wet, gurgling sound.

Rin didn’t wait. He pulsed.

He drove his fist into the creature’s chest. The gray energy flared, deleting the barnacles and rusted metal plating, but the creature was dense, heavy with sea-soaked rot. It stumbled back but didn’t fall.

It swung the chain arm.

Rin ducked, the heavy iron links smashing into the doorframe, sparking.

Nyx stepped in. She didn’t hit the creature, she hit the chain.

"Gravity Spike."

She increased the weight of the chain by fifty times.

The creature’s arm snapped audibly under the sudden load, dragging it to the floor.

"Fire!" Rin yelled.

Joy opened up with the plasma rifle, blasting glowing holes in the creature’s back. Tayo added a sonic lance that shattered the creature’s head like a dropped melon.

It went down.

But behind it, the deck was crawling with them. Dozens.

"Chokepoint!" Rin shouted, kicking the corpse back to create a barricade.

They fought in the doorway. It was brutal, close-quarters violence. The Rust-Walkers were slow but relentless, absorbing damage that would kill a normal monster.

Rin fought with conservation in mind, short bursts of deletion, severing limbs, breaking weapons. He cut a hook-hand off one, kicked another off the catwalk, ducked under a swing that would have taken his head off.

"There’s too many!" Tayo yelled, his voice hoarse. "The fog is spawning them!"

A massive shape loomed in the mist behind the horde.

It wasn’t a walker. It was a crab. A gargantuan scavenger, its shell made of hull plating, its claws hydraulic pincers from a construction mech.

[Entity: Scavenger King]

[Rank: C+]

The giant crab scuttled forward, crushing the smaller walkers. It raised a claw and snipped the metal railing of the ship like a twig.

"That’s going to be a problem," Nyx said, breathing hard.

The claw shot forward, grabbing the doorframe and ripping it out of the wall. The bridge was exposed.

Rin raised his hand, trying to summon a barrier, but his reserves were empty. The extraction had taken too much.

"Varg!" Rin yelled over his shoulder. "How long?!"

"Done!" Varg cackled.

A sound cut through the noise of battle.

It wasn’t a roar. It was a hum. A deep, mechanical thrumming that vibrated the floorplates.

The Aegis suit stood up.

It moved differently than a human. It moved with perfect, fluid precision. The gray runes on its black armor flared bright.

Leo—Indra—stepped past Varg.

He looked at Rin. The faceless ceramic mask betrayed no emotion, but the voice that came out was Leo’s, synthesized and amplified.

"Tag out," Leo said.

He walked toward the door.

The Scavenger King screeched, snapping its hydraulic claw at the new threat.

Leo didn’t dodge. He caught the claw.

One hand.

The servos in the suit whined, the runes flashing blindingly bright. The massive crab struggled, its hydraulic pistons pushing, but Leo stood like a statue.

"My turn," Leo said.

Shadow erupted from the suit. It didn’t leak like before; it was channeled, focused through the runic vents in the armor. The shadow formed a massive, spectral arm over Leo’s own.

He squeezed.

The hydraulic claw crumpled. Metal screamed and sheared.

Leo ripped the claw off the crab’s body and threw it into the fog.

He stepped out onto the deck.

"Shadow Step."

He vanished.

He reappeared above the crab, gravity apparently optional for the new hardware. He drove his fist down.

A pile driver of shadow mana and kinetic force slammed into the crab’s shell.

CRUNCH.

The creature flattened, its metal shell caving in, green ichor spraying across the deck.

The shockwave cleared the fog for fifty meters.

The remaining Rust-Walkers paused, their simple brains registering a predator.

Leo stood on the corpse of the king, black smoke venting from his shoulders. He raised his hand, and the shadows on the deck—the shadows of the railing, the crates, the monsters themselves—rose up.

Spikes.

Hundreds of shadow spikes shot upward from the floor.

The horde was skewered instantly.

Silence returned to the shipwreck, save for the hum of the Aegis suit cooling down.

Leo turned back to the bridge. The faceplate slid open with a hiss, revealing Leo’s face underneath. He looked pale, tired, but solid. Real.

"Nice upgrades," Leo said, flexing his metal fingers.

Rin slid down the wall, laughing breathlessly.

"You look like an anime villain," Rin said.

"I look like the solution," Leo corrected. He looked at his hand, clenching a fist. "I don’t feel the hunger anymore. The suit... it filters it. Cycles the mana."

"It’s a closed loop," Varg said, hopping into the doorway on his spider legs. "Efficiency rating 98%. You can run for a week on a single D-rank core now."

"We have a tank," Joy said, staring at the carnage on the deck. "We actually have a tank."

"We have an army," Rin said, standing up painfully.

He looked out at the clearing fog. The sun was trying to break through, a glitchy square of light on the horizon.

"We have the location," Rin said. "We have the team. We have the power."

He looked at his friends. Battered, upgraded, dangerous.

"We’re going back to the desert," Rin said. "And we’re going to break Thorne’s toys."

[Quest Updated: The Glass Fortress]

[Objective: Raid the Main Server]

[Status: Ready]

Varg tossed Rin a small metal canister.

"Take it," Varg said. "Refined gray energy. Stabilized. Use it to recharge the suit, or..." He grinned, showing gold teeth. "...use it to blow something up."

"Thanks," Rin said.

They climbed down the ladder, leaving the ship of ghosts behind. The truck was waiting.

The final grind was about to start.