Second Genesis

The open mind field that was Esmeralda’s Neural Frame was blocked by the barrier formed under the forced fusion of the Ball Bearing Eye. Unfortunately for Esmeralda, she had done exactly as Grey had said, focusing her entire mind on the intent of her eye...

And because of that she had amplified all of the errors.

Her head exploded with blood and gore even as Grey stumbled back, huffing for breath.

’It worked. It fucking worked.’

Grey watched as Esmeralda fell and collapsed to the ground, his grin beaming beneath his Skrill Mask.

The diagnostic had given him 31 Errors to work with, but all things considered, most of them were minor errors. It was best to look at the diagnostic tool of Prometheus more like the most hardcore teacher there was.

In reality, the mech would work fine, it just wouldn’t be perfect. For Esmeralda, that was a good enough result that she didn’t need to complain too much about. But for Grey, it was a matter of life and death.

What these listed Errors had helped Grey to finally understand, though, was the difference between Resin L-Frame Mesh and the R-Frame version.

Just like he was expecting, the type decided the direction of energy flow. The Mesh was kind of like a diode, only allowing a flow in one direction and blocking it in the other. Many of the Errors were related to exactly this.

Prometheus seemed to believe that most of the Errors were actually directly related to the resin.

Because of the complexity of Neural Frame networks, at the Proving Class it was nearly impossible to actually reflect all of those branching paths. So, the Ball Bearing Eye cheated a little bit, limiting the number of branches by focusing on circulation of just one direction and almost "greying out" the others.

The result was a simplified Neural Frame that just barely acted as a bastardized version of the real thing. The Glass Rotating Eye worked in the exact same way, it just reversed it.

The trouble was that the entire system was like a series of complex logic gates. A logic gate was something that decided whether there would be an output based on what the input was, and because of the complexity of Neural Frames and the limitations of a Proving Class prosthetic, you couldn’t just allow natural flow to continue.

Thus where the resin came into play.

All Grey had to do was select the most volatile of the nodes and tweak it, changing the logic gate so that it allowed flow at the most inopportune time. And then...

BANG.

Esmeralda would kill herself under her own power.

Grey started to laugh, laughing so hard he was sure tears would come out from his eyes if he wasn’t so damned tired and dehydrated.

"WATCH OUT!"

Amunet’s voice just barely cut through Grey’s laughter and he subconsciously chose to follow, diving to one side.

Something clipped him in the arm, ripping a piece of flesh with it.

He tumbled forward, cursing his chainsaw. It was such a useful weapon, but it was so unruly at the same time.

Barely managing to roll back to his feet, Grey looked toward where Esmeralda’s corpse was only to find nothing but skinned flesh. His gaze slowly moved up toward the blood creature that stood over it, his lip continuously twitching.

’That’s so gross...’

What was barely the silhouette of a woman almost hovered in the air. Or, at least it wasn’t clear where the streams of blood stopped and her feet started, giving exactly that sort of illusion.

Despite the very clear curves where breasts and hips should have been, there wasn’t the slightest thing erotic about it. It was like looking at a dissected carcass, skinned down to the muscle. It definitely didn’t help that a large chunk was missing out of one side of its head.

The only thing about her that seemed even remotely human was the blue eye that remained, the one thing that wasn’t completely soaked through in blood.

—

[BOSS BATTLE]

[Grey Temolt AND Amunet Khepri VS. The Last Blood Witch]

—

[Description: The Last Blood Witch carries the forgotten pride of a fallen race. Once an honored being with royal blood running through their veins and the pride of mages rampaging in their hearts, the witches have fallen far. No longer are they seen as commanders of life and creation, but are instead savages and barbarians. Only the Last Blood Witch remembers.]

— 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

[Congratulations, Genesis Candidate! You have triggered a Rare Tutorial Instance! Good luck and don’t die! :)]

—

"I’ll rip you limb from limb. I’ll rip your balls out from your throat and your tongue out through your butt—."

"You know, if you’re going to say all that stuff, you might as well say ass. Who are you trying to impress with your decorum right now?"

Grey received a shriek in response.

Esmeralda lunged at him, but her speed wasn’t what he was expecting. Every other time, he had died before he could even register what she was doing. This time, though, it was practically like she was moving in slow motion compared to before.

—

Stamina: 6/10

—

’Shit.’ Grey cursed.

He hazarded a glance over at Amunet to find that she was already charging over. It seemed that he had at least gotten lucky with the teammate he drafted. She was a survivor.

She couldn’t do much while he was stuck crafting, but it seemed that during most loops she had found some way to cling to life at least as long as he had.

Even if Esmeralda was weakened, something told Grey that there was no way he was going to be able to defeat her on his own.

Quickly, he yanked his Curved Rusted blade free from his hip. But instead of attacking with it, he threw it right at the charging blood witch.

BANG.

Esmeralda swatted it right out of the air and it went careening across the ground and through the pools of blood.

Grey was quick to pull his chainsaw from his back, but he was still a small bit too late.

Esmeralda rammed right into him, sending him flying into a wall.

A projectile of blood came from Grey’s lips, his body shuddering beneath the pain.