Chapter 65: The Darkthar Mech Module

Fortunately, however, he wasn’t the one being called on.

The girl sitting beside him was, and she was asked to name the major types of Mech Modules, which she answered correctly without much trouble.

The brief interruption was enough to pull Declan’s attention back to the lecture, so he settled down and began listening properly while taking notes.

Mech Modules were basic knowledge to someone like him, especially considering his experience as a Mech Scientist.

Even so, he found the lecture surprisingly interesting, as the Nexians’ understanding of Mech Modules wasn’t completely identical to the way he had been taught to understand them, and those differences were worth paying attention to.

Before he knew it, three hours had passed, and the class finally came to an end.

The next class wouldn’t begin for another forty-five minutes.

GRUUUUUUUUUUM!

Declan’s stomach answered the moment the instructor left, the rumbling hunger reminding him that he hadn’t eaten.

"I should go grab something."

He left the classroom and headed toward the cafeteria, spending roughly twenty-five minutes there before finally making his way back out.

Then,

BEEP

BEEP

His device beeped.

Declan glanced down and found a simple message displayed across the screen.

[A Location Has Been Marked On The Map!]

[Get To It As Fast As You Can!]

"Huh?"

His eyebrow rose as he examined the message, finding no sender attached to it or anything indicating who had sent it or why, meaning it could have come from anyone.

Curious, Declan opened the map, and to his surprise, a blinking marker had appeared on it.

"Interesting."

He stared at it for another moment before deciding to follow it.

Ten minutes later...

"Hmmm..."

Declan stood before what appeared to be an endless grassland.

He hadn’t expected an open field this enormous to exist within the academy, yet there wasn’t a single person in sight.

More importantly, the blinking signal that had brought him here had disappeared.

He walked around for a while, searching the area, but found nothing.

"I should be getting back to class now."

He turned around, preparing to leave.

Then,

WHIISSSTLLEE!

A sharp whistle cut through the air, and Declan turned around just in time to see someone descending from above.

"Huh?"

The man appeared to be floating downward.

He had white hair and piercing black eyes, while his clothes were just as immaculate.

A simple long-sleeved white shirt and white trousers covered his body, with a heavy white coat draped casually across his shoulders.

The man landed lightly on the ground and stood roughly two meters tall, making him a full head taller than Declan.

"The message was random, and yet you showed up?" he asked, his tone carrying a faint hint of amusement. "Why?"

Declan simply shrugged.

"I thought it was interesting since it had no sender. It won’t hurt to check it out, would it?"

A small smile appeared on the man’s face as he tapped his wristwatch.

Immediately,

BEEP!

A sound came from Declan’s device.

He looked down and found another notification waiting for him.

[+100 Points Issued For Remarkable Performance In Emergency Class]

"Huh?"

"The class was a mock test for points," the man explained, already beginning to float back into the air. "It’s over, and you performed well enough to pass."

Before Declan could say anything else, the man vanished into the distance in a blur of white light.

Declan stared at the notification for a moment longer before realization slowly dawned on him.

"Emergency Class, huh?"

He nodded to himself.

"Now that makes some sense."

The mysterious message had come without a sender, something most people would have ignored, but it had also been designed to resemble an emergency alert, which fit the class perfectly.

With Emergency Class now finished, there was nothing else scheduled for him today, so Declan returned to his dorm.

Once inside, he set an alarm for 6:00 before tossing his device onto the bed. He then entered his training room, stripped down until he was wearing only his shorts, and lay back on the floor.

"Initiate MDS Protocol."

Immediately, a digital panel appeared before him.

Declan navigated through the interface until he reached the section he had been looking for.

[Rewards:]

[+10% Creation Fusion With The Mecha Overlord Mech Module.]

[+1 Base Fusion with a Darkthar Mech Module.]

Another notification appeared.

[Does Host wish to begin implantation of the Mecha Overlord Mech Module and Base Fusion of Darkthar Mech Module?]

Declan stared at it for several seconds before slowly exhaling.

He had no idea what this would actually do, but he had a rough idea of what it meant.

The system itself was called the Mecha Overlord System, and now it was offering him a Mecha Overlord Mech Module as a reward.

Whatever it was, it had been given to him, and if he was going to use it eventually, there was little reason to delay.

"Yes."

The instant the word left his mouth, countless streams of text flashed rapidly across his vision, and Declan barely had time to process any of it before his consciousness began fading.

The final message he managed to read was:

[The Host will now be rendered unconscious to prevent possible insanity caused by the implantation of the Cursed Mech.]

’C... Cursed Mech?’

That was Declan’s final thought before unconsciousness took him.

Yet his eyes never closed.

They remained wide open and completely lifeless, making him appear as though he had already died, but his heart continued beating steadily.

Then, without warning, pitch-black liquid began seeping from the corners of his eyes, slowly spreading across his eyeballs with an eerie sense of purpose until his eyes were completely engulfed, transforming them into pools of absolute black.

The change did not stop there as every vein across Declan’s body began to bulge beneath his skin.

At first, they were green, but then they darkened, the color rapidly deepening until every visible vein had become an abyssal black.

As the transformation continued, the figure lying on the floor began to look less and less like Declan, his entire body becoming covered in thick black veins whose twisted patterns almost completely obscured his human features.

BAAADUUUMP!

BAAADUUUMP!

His heartbeat thundered throughout the room, and for a moment, Declan’s body remained covered in those thick, dark veins before,

SIIIZZZLLLEEEE

His entire body began to sizzle.

Dark liquid seeped through the veins, and tears appeared across their surfaces, allowing a strange, corrosive substance to spill out.

The liquid immediately began eating away at Declan’s skin, causing flesh to dissolve and skin to burn away until even the remnants of tissue were stripped from his body, gradually exposing the bones beneath.

The bones were the only parts that remained untouched by the corrosive substance, but they did not stay white for long, their color slowly changing until they became completely pitch black.

At the same time, the more of the dark liquid that emerged from Declan’s ruined flesh, the more it began changing, and what had once been liquid gradually became something metallic.

That metal spread across his exposed body, replacing the skin that had been burned away.

If Declan had been awaken, he would have recognized them to be Nanoscales.

Pitch-black Nanoscales rippled across Declan’s body, constantly shifting and changing their shape before eventually settling into a smooth, glass-like layer.

The process continued across his entire body, and even his face was not spared.

The skin was burned away, leaving only his skull, which was immediately covered by the same semi-solid Nanoscales.

They hardened over the bone, forming a dark, scale-like surface that concealed what remained of his original appearance.

[10% INTEGRATION WITH MECHA OVERLORD MODULE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED!]

The system panel flashed once before disappearing.

Declan remained unconscious.

Then the dark, glass-like Nanoscales covering his body began to move, rippling across his skin like a living layer before gradually shifting their form.

Slowly, they became skin.

White skin, just like Declan’s original complexion, except smoother and seemingly of a higher quality.

The dark Nanolayer disappeared beneath it, concealed by the newly formed skin, which reproduced Declan’s previous appearance with almost perfect accuracy.

Then something else happened.

A blue glow began spreading from the place where his heart should have been.

[Integration with the Darkthar Mech Module will Now Begin]

[Choosen Darkthar Ace Type: Golden!]

The blue glow intensified before its color changed, blue becoming golden.

Like countless squirming snakes, golden lines spread from Declan’s chest and traveled throughout his body before converging in two particular locations.

The first was his mouth.

The golden lines stretched from one ear to the other, completely covering the area around his mouth in golden illumination.

The second was his hands.

Both hands, extending up to his wrists, gradually turned completely golden.

The strange illumination continued as a faint mechanical whirring sounded beneath his skin.

For nearly an hour, the process continued before, at last, the golden glow began to fade.

The blue light from his chest disappeared as well.

A final notification flashed across the room.

║INTEGRATION WITH THE DARKTHAR MODULE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED!║

FLICCCKKKKERRR

Green and golden rays suddenly burst outward from Declan’s body, filling the room.

His eyes snapped open, and the powerful light continued shining for several seconds before finally calming down.

Declan slowly pushed himself upright and looked down at his hands, opening and closing his fingers several times.

He didn’t feel particularly different, at least not at first.

But when he examined his hands more closely, he noticed that the scars covering them were completely gone, while his skin also looked smoother than before.

Almost... artificial.

Declan pinched it.

It felt like flesh, but when he pressed harder, his finger encountered something firm beneath the surface, almost like pressing against a wall.

’There’s something thick underneath.’

In that moment, e system panel suddenly appeared:

...