The rain came down in sheets over the Western Industrial Sub-District, slicking the jagged corrugated rooftops and washing chemical runoff into the grated gutters. Unlike the neon-drenched central avenues of Lock Night City, where high-ranking martial artists flaunted spirit robes and gilded crests, this zone smelled of heavy motor oil, ozone, and wet concrete.
The armored limousine slowed to a crawl before a rusted, nondescript security perimeter surrounded by triple-layer electrified mesh and high-grade dampening wards. A flickering neon sign above the gate read: Apex Biomolecular Synthesis & Research.
To the Imperial Commerce Bureau and the City Administration, Apex Biomolecular was a mid-tier research firm owned by the Halcyon Group—a regional conglomerate that had barely avoided liquidation three years ago.
What the public records omitted, however, was that the Halcyon Group's sixty-eight percent controlling stake had been secretly leveraged, bought out through blind accounts, and converted into debt held entirely by the Lock Night Central Banking Consortium.
A banking consortium that answered to a single signature: Amar Roy.
"Clear," an automated synthetic voice chimed as the scanner at the gate registered the vehicle's encrypted frequency.
The heavy blast doors groaned as they parted, allowing the limousine to glide down a long, subterranean incline that plunged three levels below ground level. The air grew progressively chillier, filtered through thick industrial purifiers that hummed with a deep, vibrating bass.
The car came to a smooth halt inside an airtight docking bay lined with pristine, white-paneled composite walls.
Ronald stepped out first, checking the security perimeter with practiced vigilance before opening the rear passenger door. "Master Ryuk. Director Chen has cleared the lower research corridor as instructed. All surveillance feeds in Sub-level 4 have been looped through our private terminal."
"Good," I replied, stepping out into the sterile white light.
I had changed out of my academy coat into a simple, tailored black turtleneck and dark trousers. The fine viral lattice beneath my skin felt cold, humming in sync with my steady, slow heartbeat.
Waiting at the decontamination airlock was Director Chen—a stooped, nervous man in his late fifties wearing a crisp lab coat and round, wire-rimmed spectacles. Despite being a certified grand-master in imperial biochemical theory, his hands trembled visibly as he clasped a holographic datapad to his chest.
Chen knew better than anyone who paid the laboratory's multi-million star-coin operational deficits. He also knew that one word from the teenager standing before him could revoke the lab's credit line, leaving him and his team at the mercy of imperial debt collectors.
"M-Master Amar," Chen stammered, bowing until his spine was practically parallel to the concrete floor. "W-Welcome to the Quarantine Core. When Ronald relayed your directive, we immediately sealed off Sector 7. The live specimens from the Southern Rift border have been kept in containment stasis."
"Stand up straight, Chen," I said, my voice quiet, carrying an effortless chill that made the old researcher's knees wobble. "Walk me through the inventory."
"Y-Yes, of course, right this way!" Chen hurriedly keyed his biometric pass into the heavy blast door.
The airlock hissed violently, releasing a pressurized blast of sterilization gas before the heavy titanium bulkheads slid open.
As we walked down the quiet, vaulted corridor of Sub-level 4, Chen adjusted his glasses with trembling fingers and tapped his datapad, projecting a glowing green diagnostic log into the space between us.
"Two weeks ago, the Third Garrison Division managed to retrieve the remains of a Class-3 Rift Poison Arcanades from the southern abyssal gate," Chen explained in a hushed, anxious tone. "Most of the tissue was incinerated under imperial purification protocols, but we managed to preserve three viable metabolic clusters. Specifically... the Necrotic Blood Rot bacterium, and the Abyssal Chitin Parasite."
Chen paused before a thick, three-layer reinforced observation window made of blast-proof spirit quartz.
"The Necrotic Blood Rot is classified as a Grade-A biohazard by the Imperial Ministry of Health," Chen whispered, pointing toward a cylindrical isolation chamber sitting in the center of the reinforced room. Suspended within a glowing blue stasis field inside the chamber was a thick, pulsating mass of dark-violet organic sludge. "It thrives exclusively in the blood of alien rift beasts. It reproduces at three times the speed of terrestrial microbes, dissolving host meridians and turning organic flesh into liquefied toxic slurry within twenty minutes. It is utterly untreatable by ordinary alchemical pills."
Looking at the pulsating purple mass behind the glass, a sudden, electric ripple shot through my chest.
Inside my bloodstream, one million eight hundred thousand bacteriophage clones flared with an intense, biological resonance. My six-fibered viral predators didn't recoil from the horrifying biohazard.
They salivated.
To a normal human martial artist, that violet sludge was a terrifying, flesh-melting poison.
To my Z-rank Bacteriophage Clone, it was an all-you-can-eat nursery.
"Director Chen," I said calmly, resting my hand against the cold quartz surface of the observation window.
"Y-Yes, Master Amar?"
"Open the inner isolation chamber. Decant five hundred milliliters of the Necrotic Blood Rot culture into an unsealed containment tray on the central table."
Chen's face drained of every speck of color. His jaw dropped, his datapad clattering to the floor.
"M-Master! That... that is madness!" Chen cried out, horrified. "The atmospheric dispersion of Blood Rot spores can bypass standard Apprentice-level qi barriers! If a single micro-droplet penetrates your skin or respiratory tract, your martial meridians will dissolve into poison! Not even a Martial Master can survive direct exposure without high-tier alchemical antidotes!"
Ronald stepped forward, his eyes narrowing, his hand resting on the pommel of his concealed blade. "Director Chen. The Master gave an order."
Chen swallowed hard, a cold sweat drenching his collar. He looked at Ronald, then at my calm, abyssal eyes, realizing that arguing with me was far more dangerous to his life than the alien sludge.
"I... I will execute the sequence immediately," Chen whimpered, scurrying toward the master control console with shaking hands. "P-Please, Master, at least put on a Grade-4 hazard suit..."
"That won't be necessary," I replied smoothly. As going there myself is indeed a risk, so I simply pricked my finger and dropped a drop of blood on tissue and said, "Director Chen, thankyou for your advise. Now, I have decided that I will not go there myself, but you have to put this tissue in direct contact with those Bacterium.
"Understood, Master," Ronald bowed.
The heavy decontamination door hissed open.
As Director Chen used a robot coated with heavy layers of Hazmat suit, to put that tissue in that plate of Necrotic Blood Rot bacterium. As the tissue fall into the container, the reaction started.
The purple liquid was actively bubbling, sending faint, oily violet vapors rising into the sterile air.
Clack.
Slowly the tissue dissolved into that puddle of Blood Rot bacterium, to all of them it seems that I am trying to check potency of that bacterium, but I myself focused on the thousands of bacteriophage clones present in that drop of blood.
I activated my newly unlocked Stage-1 Swarm ability:
I exhaled a slow, controlled breath downward, focusing my intent and consciousness on those clones.
Clack-clack-clack.
In an instant, my secondary consciousness exploded into a panoramic, microscopic slaughterhouse.
Through two hundred thousand crystalline viewpoints, I saw the true face of the Necrotic Blood Rot.
They were massive, monstrous bacteria—grotesque, multi-flagellated rods covered in jagged, toxic protein spikes that radiated a vile, corrosive purple energy. They were rapidly dividing, churning through the ambient nutrient solution with terrifying, feral aggression, designed by nature to dissolve organic tissue into mush.
To my phages, however, their thick, protein-rich cell walls were nothing more than soft clay waiting to be pierced.
Attach, I commanded, cold and absolute.
Two hundred thousand bacteriophages slammed onto the outer membranes of the alien bacteria like obsidian harpoons. Their six tail fibers dug deep into the toxic peptidoglycan layers, ignoring the corrosive violet acid that would have melted human bone.
Penetrate. Inject.
Click.
Two hundred thousand central protein tubes fired simultaneously, puncturing the alien microbes' rigid walls. The icy, black genetic code of my Z-rank talent surged down into the cytoplasm of the rift bacteria like liquid void.
The hostile takeover was instantaneous.
The alien bacteria didn't just lack immunity to terrestrial phages—they possessed zero defenses against a Z-rank cosmic entity that operated on the fundamental laws of biological piracy. The moment my genetic strands invaded their nucleoid regions, the bacteria's voracious, rapid-fire ribosomes were seized.
The alien bacteria stopped producing their toxic enzymes.
Instead, every ounce of their hyper-accelerated rift energy was diverted into assembling my army.
Plaintext
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SWARM MATRIX: ALIEN BIO-SYNTHESIS INITIATED
=====================================================
[Host Biomass Target]: Necrotic Blood Rot (Class-3 Rift Strain)
[Replication Yield per Host]: 850 New Clones (Extremely Dense Host)
[Takeover Efficiency]: 100% (Zero Genetic Resistance)
[Estimated Time to Mass Lysis]: 6 Seconds
=====================================================
Eight hundred and fifty clones per cell.
Because of the massive spirit-density and hyper-mutative nature of rift biology, each alien bacterium was yielding four times the clones of a standard Earth microbe!
Three... two... one.
BOOM.
In the microscopic ocean of the surgical tray, a simultaneous, catastrophic chain reaction erupted.
Millions of swollen alien bacteria burst violently at their seams, their cell walls shattering into harmless, purified amino acids. The thick, dark-violet sludge in the steel tray rapidly lost its toxic color, fading from a vile purple into a clear, completely inert, pale gray liquid.
And out from the wreckage of the alien strain rose an absolute, overwhelming tide of new soldiers.
Two hundred thousand became one hundred and seventy million.
The sensory feedback hit my human consciousness like a bolt of cosmic lightning. The hive-mind expanded at an exponential, terrifying scale, thousands of new data points locking into my neural matrix every microsecond. My vision sharpened to an absurd degree; I could see the individual microscopic dust particles floating in the air, could hear the faint, high-frequency hum of Chen's monitor through three inches of blast-proof glass.
My physical muscles tightened, the fine viral lattice beneath my skin solidifying into a diamond-dense web that hummed with cold, terrifying power.
Plaintext
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SWARM STATUS PANEL
=====================================================
[User]: Amar Roy
[Physical Realm]: Martial Apprentice (Peak Limit Reached)
[Main Form]: Human
-----------------------------------------------------
[CLONE SWARM MATRIX]:
- Active Bacteriophage Clones: 171,840,000 / 1,000,000,000
- Colony Tier: Primary Swarm (Tier 1 - Approaching Saturation)
- Host Bio-Sync: 100% Flawless
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[NEW TRAIT INTEGRATED]:
- Toxic Immunity (Passive): Full cellular immunity to
all Class-3 Rift Bio-hazards and Acid Corrosives.
- Rift Gene Resonance: Swarm can now consume alien beast
pathogens directly from wounds or open air.
-----------------------------------------------------
[NEXT MILESTONE]: 500,000,000 Clones
=====================================================
One hundred and seventy-one million clones.
This is more than enough to give every threat present in that trial to give a hellsih experience, meanwhile Director Chen, looked horrified as that Necrotic Blood Rot baterium which is classified as Grade A plague is now converted into a puddle of clear water as my bacteriophage clones eat every bacteria present in it.
Despite being more dangerous than those bacteria, my bacteriophage clones are rather environmentally friendly, as by eating this corruption and pollution, I am helping the environment of this planet.
"Director Chen," I spoke softly, looking down at the trembling old man on the floor.
"Y-Y-Yes, Master Amar?!" Chen squeaked, pressing his forehead against the tiles.
"Prepare the remaining two specimens—the Abyssal Chitin Parasite and the preserved tissue samples," I said, a faint, predatory smirk dancing on the edges of my lips. "I will be back in two days to harvest them."
"I-It will be done! Immediately, Master! Anything you command!"
I stepped past him, walking alongside Ronald toward the private elevator.
Three weeks until the Black Crag Trial.
Arthur Vance and his uncle were sharpening their steel, assembling their allies, and preparing their cowardly ambush in the wilderness.
They had no idea that when I stepped into that trial realm, they wouldn't be hunting a wealthy, defenseless heir.
They would be locking themselves in a cage with a living, breathing plague.