Chapter 27: Kill zone

The second truck’s engine gave a final, violent shudder before dying completely. The lead truck wasn’t faring much better, its hull scarred by acid and its fuel cells draining fast.

"Full stop!" Darwin’s voice crackled over the bracelets. "Engineering, assess. Everyone else, dismount. We make a stand here."

Gio climbed out, his head pounding in time with his heartbeat. His Bioenergy was at a miserable 3. His mind felt like bruised fruit. He couldn’t even summon a single wasp without risking a total system crash.

They were in a narrow, dry riverbed, flanked by the rusted, collapsed remains of an old-world highway overpass. It was a natural choke point.

"Recruits, form a perimeter!" Darwin ordered, his bionic arm humming as he scanned the treeline. "Soldiers, take the high ground on the concrete slabs. We’ve got company incoming."

The bracelets on their wrists suddenly flared blinding red.

[Bracelet Alert: Multiple Signatures Detected]

[Rank: E-Rank]

From the shadows of the dead city, they emerged. Not the bioengineered dogs from the fog, but something far more primal. Wolves. Massive, E-Rank mutant wolves with scales of dull, metallic grey plating their muscular frames. Their eyes glowed with a sickly yellow light, and their jaws dripped corrosive saliva that hissed as it hit the asphalt.

There were at least twenty of them.

"Gio, you look like hell," Kojiro rasped, stepping up beside him. The older man was still pale from the worm core incident, his purple veins pulsing faintly. "Stay back. Let us handle this."

Gio nodded, gripping his plasma handgun. "My Bioenergy is too low... I can’t summon anything."

"Then watch and learn," Melody said, her cat ears rising above her skull as her claws extended with a sharp snikt.

The alpha wolf let out a deafening roar, and the pack charged.

"Lloyd! Front and center!" Darwin barked.

The noble didn’t hesitate. He dropped his rifle and thrust both hands forward. A translucent, hexagonal blue barrier erupted from his palms, expanding into a wide dome that shielded the soldiers and the weaker recruits behind him.

The first three wolves slammed into the barrier. The physical feedback shattered their metallic scales and sent them tumbling, but the shield held.

"Let’s gooooood!!!" Blaze roared. His hands ignited with roaring flames. He and Reuben, whose skin had hardened into a dense, stone-like armor, charged the flank. Reuben absorbed a glancing bite from a wolf, his stone skin sparking against the beast’s teeth, before delivering a devastating punch that caved in its skull.

Melody and Tabitha were the hammer. Moving faster than the eye could track, Melody darted through the gaps in the wolves’ formation, her claws severing tendons and throats. Tabitha flickered in and out of invisibility, her electric whip cracking like thunder, stunning the beasts long enough for the soldiers on the overpass to pick them off with plasma fire.

It was a brutal, perfectly coordinated slaughter. Without Gio’s constructs to draw aggro, the squad had to rely entirely on their own synergy. And they delivered.

Within three minutes, the last wolf let out a gurgling whine and collapsed, its metallic hide scorched and pierced.

Silence fell over the riverbed, broken only by the heavy breathing of the recruits and the crackle of Blaze’s dying flames.

Nobody was dead. Not a single recruit.

"Good work," Darwin said, his mechanical pupil whirring as he scanned the corpses. "Harvest the cores. We need to keep moving before the beacon draws something worse."

Kojiro didn’t wait for the soldiers. He limped over to the nearest wolf corpse, pulling a combat knife from his boot. With a few practiced slices, he pried a fist-sized, pulsing grey core from the beast’s chest.

Without hesitation, Kojiro popped the core into his mouth and crunched down.

Gio winced. "You’re eating that again?"

"Yep," Kojiro corrected, swallowing the shards. A faint purple mist exhaled from his pores. The sickly bruised lines on his neck immediately began to recede. The color returned to his cheeks, and his breathing steadied. "Nothing beats a fresh core, kid. Sure, our bodies recover Bioenergy slowly over time, but if you want to heal fast and refill your tank? You eat the cores. Lower rank, same rank, doesn’t matter. It’s the fastest way."

He tossed a bloody, grey core at Gio’s chest. Gio caught it reflexively.

"Your turn. You’re running on fumes."

Gio looked at the core in his hand. He brought it to his mouth, but before he could bite down, his System chimed.

[Scanning...]

[E-Rank Mutagenic Core detected.]

[Host Core Rank: E-Rank.]

[Absorption method updated: Ambient Bioenergy Siphon.]

[Swallowing is no longer required. Crush the core to siphon raw Bioenergy directly.]

Gio blinked. He didn’t need to eat it?

He closed his fist and squeezed.

The E-Rank core shattered like glass. Instantly, a warm, rushing sensation flooded his palm, traveling up his arm and sinking deep into his chest. It was intoxicating. The blinding headache that had been plaguing him for two days vanished in a heartbeat.

[Bioenergy: 3 → 18 → 35]

"Holy..." Gio muttered. He walked over to another corpse, pried out a core, and crushed it.

[Bioenergy: 48]

He did it again. And again. And again.

With every crushed core, his Bioenergy skyrocketed. The mental strain evaporated, replaced by a surging, vibrant power that made his skin tingle. By the time he crushed the fifth core, his System displayed a beautiful, healthy number.

[Bioenergy: 100/100]

He was fully recharged. He could summon the bear. He could summon a dozen wasps. He felt like he could take on the entire wasteland.

But as Gio stood there, his mind drifted back to the battle they’d just fought.

Something had bothered him during the fight. The wolves hadn’t attacked randomly. They’d moved with coordination, with purpose. When Lloyd’s barrier went up, they’d split their forces. When Blaze flanked, they’d adjusted. When Melody darted through their formation, they’d tried to box her in.

’They were organized,’ Gio realized, his tactical mind working through the implications. ’Not just a pack. A swarm. They were responding to each other, adapting as a unit.’

He looked at the dead wolves scattered across the riverbed. Their yellow eyes were dull now, but even in death, their bodies radiated a faint bioenergy signature.

’Was that the cores? Or something else? Something controlling them?’

Gio shook his head. It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that they’d survived, and they were stronger for it.

He walked back to the wolf corpses and knelt beside one of the larger ones. He pried open its chest cavity and extracted a core that pulsed with a slightly brighter grey light than the others.

[Scanning...]

[E-Rank Mutagenic Wolf Core detected.]

[Unique Trait: Swarm Coordination.]

[This core contains the genetic blueprint for hive-mind tactical awareness.]

[Absorb into Bioform Storage? Y/N]

Gio’s eyes widened. This wasn’t just a power boost. This was a tactical advantage.

’If I absorb this, I could replicate it. Give my constructs the same swarm intelligence the wolves had. Make them coordinate without me having to micromanage every single one.’

He didn’t hesitate.

[Absorbing...]

[E-Rank Mutagenic Wolf Core integrated into Bioform Storage.]

[New Bioform available: Swarm Wolf.]

[Replication Cost: 10 Bioenergy.]

Gio felt a subtle shift in his core. It didn’t rank up—he was still E-Rank—but it felt denser, more refined. Like his entire system had been upgraded with better firmware.

He pulled up his storage panel.

[Bioform Storage: 3/3]

[1. F-Rank Mutagenic Wasp - Replication Cost: 3 Bioenergy]

[2. E-Rank Iron-Boned Bear - Replication Cost: 15 Bioenergy]

[3. E-Rank Swarm Wolf - Replication Cost: 10 Bioenergy]

Gio blinked. The Wasp’s replication cost had dropped from 5 to 3.

’Wait... that’s lower than before. Why?’

He thought back to when he’d first absorbed the Wasp core. He’d been weaker then, his own core barely stabilized. Now, after absorbing multiple E-Rank cores and integrating the Wolf core, his core was stronger. More efficient.

’It’s the scaling,’ Gio realized. ’The stronger my core becomes, the less it costs to replicate bioforms. The system’s adjusting the price based on my own power level.’

He looked at the Bear’s cost, still 15 Bioenergy. That made sense. The Bear was a higher-tier construct back then, more complex, more demanding. But the Wasp was F-Rank and the E-Rank Wolf demanded less from him now that he was stronger, so now that Gio’s core had strengthened, the replication cost for them had dropped.

’This is huge,’ Gio thought, a grin spreading across his face. ’If I keep absorbing cores, keep strengthening my own core, the replication costs will keep going down. I’ll be able to field entire swarms without draining myself dry.’

"Feeling better?" Kojiro asked, wiping a smear of wolf blood from his chin. He looked completely revitalized, his lazy grin returning in full force.

"Much," Gio said, clenching his fist. White light flickered at his fingertips for a fraction of a second before he suppressed it. "A lot better."

"Mount up!" Darwin’s voice cut through the air. "We’re burning daylight. The trucks are patched, but they won’t hold up to another ambush."

The recruits scrambled into the vehicles. As Gio climbed into the second truck, he caught Lloyd wiping a streak of blood from his nose, the noble’s hands still trembling slightly from the exertion of holding the barrier. Melody was cleaning a shallow cut on her arm, her tail swishing with adrenaline.

They had survived. They had fought as a team, without relying on Gio’s summons, and they had won.

But as the engines roared back to life and the convoy rolled out of the riverbed, Gio’s eyes drifted to the black data drive still sitting in Darwin’s console.

The beacon was still active. The signal was still broadcasting. They had cleared this kill zone, but the hunt was far from over.

Gio leaned back against the cold metal wall, his Bioenergy humming at a comfortable 100, and stared out the slitted window into the toxic fog of the King’s Road.

Whatever was tracking them was still out there. And next time, it wouldn’t just send E-Rank wolves.