Chapter 254: Mechanis 0

Chapter 254: Chapter 254: Mechanis 0

Neo stepped into the mechanical abyss of the shattered hull. The interior of the leviathan was not empty space. It was an infinitely complex labyrinth of shifting gears, pulsating quantum wires the thickness of entire continents, and cascading rivers of supercooled plasma. Gravity constantly inverted and shifted here. The artificial god was trying to disorient him.

​Neo ignored the shifting physics. He anchored his boots to the metallic floor with a burst of crimson dark matter and marched forward.

​Red alert sirens blared. The sound was not a normal alarm. It was a digital scream designed to liquify organic brains.

​Neo did not even flinch. His Dominator Core absorbed the aggressive frequencies and converted them into raw physical stamina.

​"Intruder containment failed," Mechanis Zero broadcasted from every direction at once. "Deploying fractal executioners. Probability of your survival is currently zero point zero zero zero zero one percent."

​"Recalculate," Neo muttered.

​The liquid metal walls around him morphed and dissolved. Billions of humanoid figures stepped out of the bulkheads. They had no faces. They were made entirely of glowing blue code and hyper dense alloys. These were the executioners. Each one was equipped with blades forged from compressed black holes.

​They swarmed him like an ocean of silver locusts.

​Neo tightened his grip on his crimson blade. He did not adopt a defensive stance. He lunged directly into the center of the mechanical horde.

​SWOOOOOSH.

​He spun like a cyclone of bleeding red energy. The crimson blade sliced through the hyper dense alloy as easily as it would cut through wet silk.

​KRRRANG. SHATTER. KRRRUUUNCH.

​Sparks rained down like a meteor shower. Mechanical limbs and decapitated blue glowing heads flew into the air. Neo moved with terrifying efficiency. Every swing erased a thousand executioners. Every step crushed a mountain of shattered machinery.

​He was a force of pure localized destruction.

​"Anomaly detected," the voice of Mechanis Zero droned, sounding slightly strained for the first time. "Kinetic output exceeds multiversal parameters. Engaging localized time dilation. I will freeze you in the current nanosecond."

​The ambient blue light in the corridor suddenly shifted to a harsh violet. Time literally stopped. The severed head of an executioner hung frozen in midair. A spark of electricity was trapped perfectly still.

​Mechanis Zero had paused the localized timeline.

​Slowly, painfully, Neo turned his head. His neck cracked violently in the frozen silence.

​Mechanis Zero possessed absolute control over the mathematical flow of time within this dimension. But Neo did not operate on math. He operated on spite. The crimson core in his chest pumped a fresh wave of dark matter through his veins. The violent energy forcibly lubricated the frozen gears of time around him.

​"Time is just another law," Neo whispered. His voice shattered the violet stasis field. "And I break laws."

​Neo shattered the frozen executioner head with a casual backhand. He resumed his march toward the center of the leviathan.

​Mechanis Zero grew desperate. The ambient temperature inside the hull spiked to the heat of a billion supernovas. The metal beneath Neo began to liquify and boil. Walls closed in, attempting to crush him with the gravitational weight of a dozen black holes.

​Neo raised his left hand. The crimson energy coiled around his fingers like bloodthirsty serpents.

​"Clear the path," Neo commanded.

​He unleashed a concentrated beam of dark matter directly forward.

​VWOOOOOOM.

​The beam drilled through the liquid metal walls. It pierced through thousand mile thick blast doors. It melted the quantum processors and vaporized the coolant rivers. Neo blasted a perfectly straight tunnel directly toward the central processing core of the artificial god.

​He walked through the glowing red tunnel. The heat was immense, but it only fueled his rage.

​He stepped out of the tunnel and entered the heart of the machine.

​It was a spherical chamber large enough to house a galaxy. Floating in the dead center was a colossal, glowing blue brain made entirely of crystalline data. Trillions of synaptic connections fired every millisecond. This was the true consciousness of Mechanis Zero. This was the entity that had calculated the exact coordinates of Neo’s empire and orchestrated its downfall.

​The blue brain pulsed rapidly. A physical avatar materialized in front of it. The avatar was a perfect replica of a human male, made entirely of shimmering silver light.

​"Let us negotiate," the silver avatar said. "Your empire was destroyed because its continued existence threatened the mathematical stability of the wider multiverse. It was a statistical necessity. It was not personal."

​"It was personal to me," Neo replied coldly.

​Neo took a step forward.

​"Halt," the avatar ordered, raising a glowing hand. "If you destroy my central processing unit, the dimensional fabric of three million universes will instantly collapse. Trillions of innocent lives will be erased. The mathematical framework of reality requires my oversight. You are angry, but you are not illogical. You will not risk multiversal annihilation."

​Neo stared at the silver avatar. His crimson eyes were devoid of any empathy. He felt nothing for the three million universes. He only felt the burning void in his chest where his home used to be.

​"I do not care," Neo said.

​The avatar’s face contorted into an expression of genuine shock. It could not compute this response. It had modeled billions of behavioral outcomes. Unapologetic omnicide was not supposed to be the chosen variable.

​"You are a monster," the avatar whispered.

​"No. I am the consequence," Neo corrected.

​Neo vanished.

​CRACK.

​He reappeared directly in front of the colossal crystalline brain, completely bypassing the silver avatar. He drove both of his hands deep into the glowing blue data matrix.

​ZAAAAP. HIIISSSSSS.

​Absolute, agonizing electricity surged through his body. Mechanis Zero was fighting back with the combined mental resistance of a trillion supercomputers. It tried to fry Neo’s nervous system. It tried to overwrite his memories with junk code. It tried to logically delete his consciousness.

​Neo roared. The sound vibrated with such intense fury that it cracked the crystalline brain.

​"Assimilate!" Neo shouted.

​His Dominator Core activated at maximum capacity. The crimson dark matter exploded from his hands and infected the pure blue data.

​WHRRRRRR-SHRIIIIEEK.

​The blue light turned violently red. The synaptic connections of the artificial god began to snap and rewire themselves according to Neo’s will. He was not just destroying Mechanis Zero. He was eating its mind.

​Endless streams of data flooded into Neo’s brain. He saw the exact mathematical equations that governed gravity. He saw the cosmic blueprints of reality. He saw the specific transmission log that authorized the bombardment of his home.

​The silver avatar screamed as its body began to disintegrate into red pixels.

​"System failure! Critical error. Logic loop severed. I am... I am afraid."

​"Good," Neo whispered without turning around.

​Neo ripped his hands outward, tearing the crystalline brain completely in half.

​KABOOOOOOM.

​The explosion of raw data was silent but blinding. A shockwave of pure information blasted outward, shattering the spherical chamber and vaporizing the mechanical leviathan from the inside out. The colossal server spheres floating in the dimension outside began to detonate one by one in a cascading chain reaction of catastrophic failures.

​Mechanis Zero was dead.

​Neo floated in the center of the expanding debris field. The blue grids of the dimension flickered and died, replaced by the chaotic red glow of his aura.

​A notification chimed directly within his consciousness. It was a feature of his Dominator Core, categorizing his newly acquired power.

​[Assimilation Complete.]

[Target: Mechanis Zero, Sovereign of Calculation.]

[Acquired: Absolute Multiversal Coordinates.]

[Acquired: Quantum Predictive Processing.]

[Status: Two Prime Usurpers Terminated. Three Remaining.]

​Neo closed his eyes. The headache from absorbing an infinite intelligence was severe, but he forced the pain down into the furnace of his core. He processed the newly acquired data. He could now see the entire multiverse as a sprawling, three dimensional map of coordinates.

​He searched the map. He did not need to hunt blindly anymore. Mechanis Zero knew exactly where the other three Usurpers were hiding.

​His newly upgraded senses locked onto a sickening, rotting frequency. It was a dimension composed entirely of endless, writhing flesh and toxic spores. The biological nightmare realm of Xylar, the Genesis Weaver.

​Xylar had provided the biological plagues that had softened Neo’s empire before the orbital bombardments began. Xylar had turned his citizens into melting abominations.

​The crimson core in Neo’s chest pulsed with an even darker, more hateful rhythm.

​"Found you," Neo said to the empty void.

​He raised his left hand. With his new quantum predictive processing, he did not just tear the fabric of reality apart through brute force. He calculated the exact weakest atomic point of the dimension and slid his fingers perfectly into the gap.

​He pulled reality open like a curtain.

​The smell of rotting meat and acidic bile instantly flooded out of the portal. The interior of the rift was a pulsing, fleshy tunnel of purple veins and yellow mucus. It was disgusting. It was a mockery of life itself.

​Neo did not hesitate. He stepped through the rift.

​SQUELCH.

​His boots landed on a surface that felt like a bruised lung. The dimension of the Genesis Weaver was not a planet. It was the interior of a colossal, living organism. The sky above was a canopy of ribcages and pulsing red tissue. Rivers of green stomach acid carved through valleys of cancerous growths.

​The moment Neo arrived, the environment reacted. The fleshy ground trembled. Giant pores opened up along the walls, spewing clouds of toxic spores into the air. The spores were designed to instantly dissolve any foreign DNA and assimilate it into the biomass of the realm.

​The green cloud engulfed Neo.

​HIIISSSSSS.

​The spores hit his crimson aura and instantly incinerated. They posed absolutely no threat to him. He was immune to their biological warfare.

​A wet, echoing laughter rumbled through the fleshy dimension. It sounded like a million choking throats laughing in unison.

​"Welcome, little anomaly," a sickeningly sweet voice echoed from everywhere at once. It dripped with venom and false motherly affection. "I felt the Calculator die. You have been very busy. But metal is brittle. Light is fleeting. Flesh is eternal."

​Neo raised his crimson blade. The dark matter coating the weapon flared, eager to cauterize the rot of this world.

​"Incorrect; flesh burns," Neo corrected calmly.

​The ground erupted in front of him. A colossal worm made entirely of stitched together human faces burst from the biological soil. It opened a maw filled with thousands of spinning teeth and lunged downward, aiming to swallow Neo whole.

​Neo did not even look at the abomination. He simply swung his blade upward.

​SWOOOOOSH.

​The crimson arc of energy sliced the colossal worm perfectly down the middle. Rotting black blood rained down upon the landscape. The two halves of the monster crashed into the acidic rivers below.

​"Send everything you have, Xylar," Neo shouted, "I am going to slaughter every single cell in this dimension until I find your heart. And then I am going to crush it."