The violet interface flickered violently, a rhythmic pulsing that felt like a migraine behind Jax's eyes. Unit-01 stood motionless, its mag-blade sparking against the wet scrap, but the "Legacy System" was no longer showing him stats or levels.
A jagged red box had overtaken his vision.
[CRITICAL ERROR: DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED]
[SOURCE: SECTOR 7-B ARCHIVE]
[WARNING: LOG FILE 'PROJECT_REBIRTH' IS UNREADABLE]
"Dad?" Jax whispered, leaning against a stack of discarded fuel cells. "Talk to me. What's wrong?"
The synthetic voice of his father crackled, sounding like it was being broadcast through a thousand miles of static. "...Jax... if... is fragmented... don't trust the... [STATIC]... white light is a lie..."
The screen suddenly shifted. The "System" wasn't just malfunctioning; it was trying to show him something that had been forcibly erased.
[RECOVERING FRAGMENT...]
[MEMORY TRACE: THE NIGHT OF THE FALL]
Jax froze. His vision blurred, the rainy scrapyard fading away into a ghostly, high-resolution reconstruction of the Royal Palace. He saw his father, the Necromancer King, standing not before an altar, but before a massive, pulsating Bio-Server.
His father wasn't casting a spell to save the kingdom. He was uploading something.
"It's not a crown, Jax," the memory-ghost of his father said, looking directly into the 'camera' of the system. "It's a key. The Paladins think they're fighting a war of religion. They don't realize they're just trying to delete the only backup of the human soul."
A massive explosion rocked the memory. The screen turned white.
[FRAGMENT LOST]
[RESTORATION FAILED: ENCRYPTION KEY REQUIRED]
[KEY LOCATION: BIOMETRIC SCAN OF PALADIN COMMANDER 'VALERIUS']
The vision snapped shut. Jax was back in the rain, gasping for air. His heart hammered against his ribs. Valerius. The man who had personally executed his father and led the purge of his people.
"You want me to hunt a Commander?" Jax laughed, a dry, bitter sound. "I have one zombie and a broken HUD, and you want me to kill the man who leveled a city?"
[OBJECTIVE UPDATED: THE KING'S TRUTH]
[REWARD: RECOVERY OF 'PROJECT_REBIRTH' LOGS]
[NEW SYSTEM PASSIVE: 'GLITCH STEP' (EXPERIMENTAL)]
Jax looked down at his feet. His shadow seemed to lag behind his movements, flickering like a frame-rate error. He took a step, and for a split second, he was two feet ahead of where he should have been, his body warping through space.
"Experimental, huh?" Jax looked at Unit-01. The zombie tilted its head, the violet light in its visor steady and waiting. "Well, if I'm going to die, I might as well see what the 'Truth' is first."
Suddenly, a loud, siren-like wail echoed from the city spires above. A massive transport ship—a Paladin Dropship—was descending toward the scrapyard, its searchlights turning the night into day.
"Unit-01," Jax commanded, his voice turning cold. "The Commander wants to finish the job. L
et's show him that some things don't stay deleted."