It was fast.
Impossibly fast.
Michael blinked, and it was across the room, a blur of motion that his eyes couldn't track.
He used Shadow Step, the world smearing into a nauseating purple slide-show, and reappeared behind it.
ZIP!
He thrust the Reaper's Fang forward, aiming for the exposed power cells on its spine that Chloe, the ghost on his radio, had pointed out.
His blade met only empty air.
The hound had already phased, its body becoming a transparent, shimmering outline for a split second before solidifying a few feet away.
It turned, its empty sockets seeming to stare right through him, a low, guttural growl vibrating in its chest.
"It's learning," Chloe's voice stated in his ear, her tone a cold, clinical observation. "Its combat VI is adapting to your displacement ability."
"Great," Michael grunted, ducking as a clawed, metal foot swiped the air where his head had been. "So I'm teaching the boss monster my attack patterns."
"Wonderful. I'm the tutorial."
Jinx was on the ground, struggling to sit up, her face pale. She'd been tossed aside like a ragdoll, but her eyes were sharp, tracking the fight.
"Its phasing has a cooldown!" she yelled, her voice strained. "It's maybe a second and a half! There's a window!"
A window that was closing fast.
The hound lunged again, not a straight charge, but a feint to the left before it phase-jumped to his right, its metallic jaws snapping shut.
CLICK-CLACK!
He dodged, but he was too slow.
The teeth scraped against his side, tearing through his hoodie and drawing a hot, searing line of pain across his ribs.
[HP: 85/125]
He stumbled back, hissing in a sharp breath.
"Asset Michael, your vitals are fluctuating," Chloe noted calmly. "Maintain combat effectiveness."
"Working on it, Captain No-Fun, and I'm not your f*cking Asset" he muttered through clenched teeth.
He was being outplayed.
It was like fighting a high-level player who had zero ping, while he was lagging his ass off.
The hound didn't press the attack.
It just watched him, its head cocked, its body flickering.
It was analyzing him.
Waiting.
The cold whisper started in the back of his mind.
It was the voice of the 1.2% corruption.
The voice of the Cable Hound's ruthless efficiency.
This is inefficient.
Too much movement.
Too much wasted energy.
There is a faster way.
A more… optimal path.
Michael shook his head, trying to clear the static.
"No," he whispered to himself.
The hound chose that moment to attack.
It didn't phase. It just charged, a blur of raw, physical speed.
It was a test. It wanted to see how he'd react.
He didn't have time to think. He reacted on instinct.
A tendril of black energy shot from his hand.
[VOID TETHER]
It wrapped around the hound's leg, and he pulled with all his might.
The creature stumbled, its charge broken, and it let out a shriek of pure, electronic fury.
It turned its head and bit down hard on the void tether.
BZZZZT!
A wave of agonizing feedback shot up Michael's arm. It felt like sticking his hand in a live power socket.
He yelled, his concentration breaking.
The tether dissolved.
The hound was free.
And it was furious.
He was out of tricks. His Void Energy was plummeting.
[VE: 10/125]
He was running on empty.
He was going to die.
Jinx was going to die.
His father would rot in a DGC cell.
His mother's legacy would be buried forever.
The cold whisper came back, no longer a suggestion, but a command.
It is the only way.
You need power.
Take it.
He looked at the Phase Hound, its body humming with a strange, artificial energy.
A Chimera.
A creature born of the same project that had taken his mother.
A monster made of science and stolen souls.
A flicker of hot rage, pure and absolute, burned through his fear.
It wasn't just about survival anymore.
It was about retribution.
"Fine," he snarled, the word a promise and a curse.
The hound lunged, its jaws open for the final, killing bite.
Michael didn't dodge.
He didn't run.
He met the attack head-on, his own hand outstretched.
From his palm, the vortex erupted.
A swirling, silent black hole that drank the light and the sound from the room.
[SOUL DEVOUR (LV. 1) ACTIVATED.]
Two blocks away, Chloe Ryland stared at her scanner, her professional composure finally shattering.
"What… in the name of God… is that?" she breathed.
Michael's energy signature, which had been a wild, spiky reading of an unknown power source, had just vanished.
It didn't just go to zero.
It went into the negative.
A black hole had opened on her screen, a patch of pure, data-sucking void where the anomaly should be.
It was sucking in all the ambient energy readings around it.
It was a power source that didn't generate energy.
It consumed it.
It was scientifically, fundamentally, impossible.
And it was beautiful.
Back in the storage unit, Michael screamed.
The sound was trapped in his own head, a silent, psychic shriek of pure agony.
The vortex latched onto the Phase Hound mid-lunge.
The creature froze, its body convulsing violently.
It was no longer a physical battle.
It was a war of wills, fought in the space between souls.
He felt the hound's entire existence pouring into him.
Flashes of a cold, sterile lab.
The sting of needles.
The terror and confusion of its own body being twisted, rebuilt, augmented.
The ghost of loyalty to a cruel master with a kind voice.
A man named Gideon.
The pain of its own soul being overwritten by lines of cold, hard code.
He wasn't just consuming its power.
He was consuming its tragedy.
"GIVE IT TO ME," Michael roared, the words a raw, telepathic command.
The hound's ethereal form, its very soul-echo, was ripped from its cybernetic shell.
It spiraled into the vortex in his palm.
The rush of power was a tidal wave of ice and static.
It was cold.
It was clean.
It was perfect.
[CHIMERA-CLASS SOUL-ECHO ABSORBED.]
[VOID ENERGY FULLY RESTORED.]
[HP FULLY RESTORED.]
The lifeless, cybernetic body of the Phase Hound clattered to the floor, a hollowed-out shell of metal and bone.
Michael stood over it, panting, the vortex in his hand receding into nothing.
He was whole again.
He was more than whole.
[WARNING: VOID-TAINTED CHIMERA DATA HAS BEEN ABSORBED.]
[SOUL CORRUPTION HAS INCREASED.]
[SOUL CORRUPTION: 2.5%]
The number glowed on his HUD, a quiet, damning verdict.
The whispers in his head were louder now.
The Cable Hound's urge to patrol.
The Skitterer's instinct to protect the nest.
And now, the Phase Hound's ghost. A chilling, phantom loyalty. A sense of a mission. A deep, programmed need to find and protect… the Legacy Drive.
He pushed the voices down, burying them under a layer of his own sarcastic defiance.
Then came the final notification.
It was new.
Different.
[SUFFICIENT VOID-TAINTED DATA ABSORBED FROM 'CHIMERA' CLASS ENTITY.]
[NEW SKILL TREE BRANCH UNLOCKED.]
[REVENANT CALLING (SEALED)]
[DESCRIPTION: A FORBIDDEN ART. FORGE AN ECHO OF A DEVOURED SOUL. BIND IT TO YOUR WILL. LET THE VOID FIGHT THE VOID.]
He stared at the words, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
Revenant Calling.
He could bring them back.
He could summon the ghosts of the monsters he killed.
He looked up from his HUD, his mind reeling from the implications.
Jinx was staring at him.
She had pushed herself into a sitting position, her hand clutching her bleeding shoulder.
Her face was a mask of pure, unadulterated horror.
She wasn't looking at a hero who had just saved her.
She was looking at the monster who had just finished its meal.