They navigated the high-security corridors, passing through humming energy gates until they reached the main control center.
Inside, the room was a hive of activity, filled with engineers and scientists hunched over glowing consoles.
"Giji, you’re finally here," the head engineer called out without looking up from his tablet.
"It seems your observer has developed a stubborn fault.
We’ll run a diagnostic; it won’t take long."
"Understood, sir," Nightfla replied, bowing his head with the practiced respect of a low-ranking soldier.
"Good.
While we’re getting the tools ready, I have a quick task for you to run," the engineer said, finally turning to face him.
His eyes were devoid of any warmth.
"What is the task, sir?" Nightfla asked.
The trap was sprung from a blind spot at the far corner of the room, a place where no rational mind would expect a weapon to be concealed.
A microscopic aperture opened, and an ultra-high-speed pulse of antimatter hissed through the air.
"Die for ," the engineer whispered coldly.
The antimatter beam was true.
It pierced Nightfla’s chest, vaporizing his heart in a clean, silent hole.
The engineer watched the body slump, a triumphant grin spreading across his face.
"Why are you grinning?" a chilly, detached voice whispered directly into the engineer’s ear.
The man froze, his triumph turning to ice in his veins.
He turned his head slowly, his breath hitching as he saw the real Nightfla standing over his shoulder, a shadow among shadows.
"You... but I saw..."
"A clone," Nightfla clarified, his voice like a winter wind.
"Did you really think I would be that careless?"
Before the engineer could even formulate a scream, Nightfla’s hand moved.
The engineer’s head was severed in one clean stroke, sent rolling across the sterile floor.
Nightfla had known the security was too tight for a simple disguise to hold.
He had anticipated the betrayal the mont he stepped into the room.
While his clone played the role of the guard, the true Nightfla had dissolved into a shadow, hiding within the very observer device the engineers were ant to "fix."
Now, he didn’t hesitate.
He split his form into several dozen living shadows that surged across the floor.
He Shadow Stepped into the literal shadows of every living being in the room.
Before a single scientist could reach for an ergency protocol or an alarm, Nightfla executed them all.
The control room fell into an eerie, oppressive silence.
Nightfla stood amidst the carnage, his necromantic aura flaring as he devoured the souls of the fallen staff, raiding their mories for any scrap of information regarding the Mad One.
He searched through the ntal archives of high-level engineers and security chiefs, but he found nothing.
It was as if the Mad One was a ghost—a na that didn’t exist in their world.
"This doesn’t make any sense," Nightfla muttered, his brow furrowing.
"Every lead pointed here.
This should be his primary stronghold."
A sudden, sharp realization pierced through his confusion.
"Unless... it’s an even bigger trap!"
In the sa heartbeat the thought ford, Nightfla executed a desperate ti Step, tearing himself out of the planet’s atmosphere and into the vacuum of space.
BOOM.
The planet didn’t just break; it detonated with the force of a dying star.
A lethal chain reaction of antimatter cores turned the massive, C-shaped world into a blooming flower of fire and debris.
Everything and everyone on that planet was erased in an instant, leaving Nightfla staring at the expanding cloud of dust where his only lead had been.
"Hah... hah... hah," Nightfla panted, his chest heaving as he drifted in the silent vacuum.
The heat from the explosion still radiated against his back, a blistering reminder of how close he had co to total annihilation.
He had escaped the blast radius by a fraction of a second, his heart hamring against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"You escaped.
I knew whoever had been on my tail for so long wouldn’t be ordinary," a thick, resonant masculine voice rumbled through the void, transmitted by so unseen frequency.
Nightfla snapped his head up, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the debris.
Standing a vast distance away, frad by the dying embers of the planet, was a towering figure.
The man was massive, built with the heavy, dense musculature of a world-class powerlifter, yet his fra remained smooth and efficient rather than bulging with unsightly veins.
He was encased in a strange, intricate chanical suit that humd with a low-frequency power, its plating shifting like the scales of a serpent.
"You are the Mad One?" Nightfla asked, slowly centering his gravity and forced his breathing to steady.
"Yes.
What is the matter?
I thought you were desperate to find ," the Mad One replied, his voice devoid of any warmth.
"It isn’t that.
You just look... different than I envisioned," Nightfla explained, taking in the sheer physical presence of the man.
He had expected a frazzled hermit, not a titan of industry and iron.
"Oh, that?
It is because I am both my own brain and my own brawn.
Because of that, I have no need for anyone to help ," the Mad One replied, a touch of arrogant pride coloring his words.
"That’s convenient.
So, do I get a free pass then?
Since you don’t need my help, but I definitely need yours," Nightfla asked, his voice regaining its sharp, calculated edge.
"And what is it you want?" the Mad One asked.
"Everything.
Tell about this universe, how it functions, and most importantly, how to leave it," Nightfla requested, his eyes locked onto the chanical giant.
"I could give you those answers easily.
But for a prize like that, I will require sothing very specific in return," the Mad One inford him, his suit’s lights flickering from blue to a predatory crimson.
"Oh?
And what might that be?" Nightfla asked curiously, though he already knew the answer wouldn’t be pleasant.
"Your body!" the Mad One roared.
He didn’t wait for a reply.
He leaped through the void, his specially designed boots exerting a terrifying force.
The technology allowed him to treat the intangible vacuum of space as a solid, tangible floor, giving him incredible leverage.
He soared above Nightfla, his shoulder plates sliding open to reveal hidden silos.
He fired a volley of antimatter-honing missiles, their trails glowing with a lethal, purple light.
Nightfla Ti Stepped instantly, his silhouette flickering as he reappeared a hundred ters to the left.
But the missiles were relentless; they banked in a sharp, impossible arc, their homing sensors locked onto his biological signature.
"How annoying," Nightfla muttered in displeasure.
He swung his arms in a wide arc, manifesting a torrent of obsidian flas.
He released several concentrated bursts of fire, intercepting the missiles mid-flight and detonating them in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics that illuminated the dark space.
"It seems I won’t be getting what I want the easy way.
Very well," Nightfla said, his voice dropping to a chilly, murderous register.
"I will simply extract every bit of knowledge I need directly from your skull."
Utilizing another Ti Step, he closed the distance in a flash, appearing directly in front of the Mad One.
His right fist was clenched so tightly the air around it seed to warp.
"This will hurt," Nightfla muttered.
He didn’t hold back.
He funneled his energy into his Werewolf variant, increasing his bone density and hardening his muscles until they were stronger than reinforced steel.
He launched a devastating punch aid squarely at the Mad One’s abdon, intended to shatter the suit and the man inside.
But the Mad One was faster than he looked.
He moved with a chanical precision, his massive hand shooting out to catch Nightfla’s fist in mid-air.
The impact sent a shockwave through the void.
"I told you, didn’t I?
I am also the brawn," the Mad One inford him, his grip tightening until Nightfla’s reinforced bones began to groan under the pressure.
With a grunt of exertion, he attempted to hurl Nightfla away into the deep reaches of space.
His hand, however, t no resistance.
His fingers passed through Nightfla’s arm as if it were made of nothing but smoke.
Nightfla had shifted his physiology into the intangible, flickering embers of a Fla Spirit, allowing him to slip through the Mad One’s grasp like a ghost.
Wasting no ti, Nightfla swiped his other hand upward in a vicious arc.
He tapped into his necromantic earth-bending, and from the empty space beneath the Mad One’s feet, jagged spikes of ancient, cursed bone erupted.
They slamd into the chanical suit, piercing the plating and driving the Mad One backward with a violent, bone-jarring force.
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