The cockpit struck the ground with a violence that stole Arjun's breath.
The impact was not a single collision, but a cascading sequence of brutal shocks — metal screaming, shock absorbers detonating, fractured struts snapping apart as the sealed compartment tore free from the collapsing mech and tumbled across the battlefield like a discarded shell.
For several terrifying seconds, Arjun existed only as a ragdoll inside a spinning coffin.
Then — silence.
Not absolute, but muted. Distant explosions thundered faintly through layers of reinforced alloy. The violent tumbling stopped, replaced by a heavy, suffocating stillness.
Arjun remained motionless.
He counted his breaths.
One.
Two.
Three.
His ribs ached.
His skull throbbed.
But nothing felt broken.
Slowly, carefully, he loosened the emergency restraints and pushed himself upright. The cockpit canopy had cracked but not shattered, its surface spiderwebbed with stress fractures. Through it, he could see a world that looked as though it had been torn apart and stitched back together by a mad god.
Twisted towers of scrap metal rose like artificial mountains.
Craters kilometers wide scarred the ground.
Wrecked mechs lay scattered across the landscape — some half-buried, others stacked atop one another in grotesque piles.
This was not merely a battlefield.
It was a graveyard.
A planetary dumping ground for the dead remains of interstellar wars.
Arjun exhaled slowly.
So this was Helios-9.
A designated industrial salvage world.
A scrap planet.
The cockpit hissed as internal pressure equalized. Warning glyphs dimmed. The emergency power cells, operating at minimal output, stabilized.
He triggered the manual release.
With a groan of stressed metal, the hatch slid open.
Hot, dust-laden air rushed inside.
Arjun climbed out.
His boots sank several centimeters into fine metallic sand — pulverized alloy, oxidized circuitry, and pulverized composites ground down over decades of relentless industrial activity.
The ground glittered faintly beneath the ash-gray sky.
Countless fragments of broken machines reflected dull light.
Kael's memories surfaced.
This place was called the Outer Ring.
The furthest district from Helios-9's central industrial core.
The slums.
Where the worthless lived.
Arjun straightened, ignoring the protest of his battered body, and surveyed his surroundings.
In the distance, enormous industrial towers loomed like metallic giants, belching plumes of black smoke into the perpetual overcast. Conveyor highways snaked between factory complexes, transporting endless streams of raw salvage toward the refining zones.
Closer to him sprawled the slum sectors.
Makeshift shelters assembled from scavenged plating.
Collapsed hangars converted into overcrowded living blocks.
Tangled cables suspended between leaning towers, providing unstable power lines to entire districts.
The air smelled of rust, oil, ozone, and desperation.
Movement flickered at the edges of his vision.
People.
Thin.
Dirty.
Clad in mismatched scrap armor and torn environmental suits.
They emerged cautiously from behind wreckage, eyes fixed on the fallen cockpit.
Scavengers.
Arjun felt their hunger instantly.
Not for food.
For salvage.
The cockpit itself was a treasure.
Before he could react, figures began converging.
Some approached carefully.
Others ran.
A few raised crude weapons.
Pipes.
Cutting torches.
Improvised rail pistols.
Kael's memories surged with urgency.
Run.
This district belonged to gangs.
Anything valuable was claimed.
Anyone weak was stripped.
Anyone slower died.
Arjun moved.
He slid down the cockpit's slanted hull and dropped into a narrow alley formed by collapsed mech plating. His boots struck metal with a hollow clang.
Pain flared.
But he forced himself forward.
He ran.
The slums unfolded like a labyrinth.
Twisting corridors formed by stacked scrap.
Flickering neon signs advertising illegal clinics and black-market refiners.
Steam vents belching superheated vapor from beneath the streets.
Everywhere — eyes.
Watching.
Judging.
Calculating.
Arjun ducked beneath dangling cables and vaulted over a broken grav-lift track, pushing his exhausted body far beyond its limits.
Shouts erupted behind him.
"Fresh salvage!"
"Stop him!"
"That cockpit's worth a fortune!"
He didn't look back.
The Outer Ring had no laws.
Only strength.
After several frantic minutes, his lungs burned and his vision swam. He veered sharply into a narrow side passage and forced himself through a collapsing gap between two wrecked transport frames.
The passage ended in a dead zone.
A collapsed refinery sub-sector.
Silence.
Arjun staggered to a halt.
His chest heaved.
His heart hammered.
But no one followed.
He slid down against a cold metal wall and closed his eyes.
For nearly a minute, he simply breathed.
Then, slowly, he laughed.
A short, breathless sound.
He was alive.
Again.
"System," he murmured. "Status."
The interface flickered.
[Host Condition: Critical but Stable]
[Energy Reserves: 3%]
[Cognitive Load: Normal]
More importantly, new notifications pulsed.
[Survival Event Detected]
[Emergency Engineering Response: Successful]
[Reward Calculation…]
Arjun's breath caught.
[You have acquired: Basic Mech Repair Module]
[You have acquired: Structural Optimization Subroutine]
A surge of comprehension flooded his mind.
Not raw data.
Skill.
His fingers twitched.
Suddenly, he knew how to reinforce fractured plating.
How to rebalance unstable energy circuits.
How to patch ruptured conduits using scavenged components.
The knowledge integrated seamlessly.
This was not learning.
It was assimilation.
Arjun smiled thinly.
"So that's how it works."
Power.
Through survival.
Through engineering.
He straightened slowly and surveyed the ruined sector.
Scrap lay everywhere.
Broken drones.
Fractured armor plates.
Snapped hydraulic pistons.
Twisted servo assemblies.
To others, it was debris.
To him —
It was a goldmine.
Arjun crouched and selected a fractured stabilizer rod. With a few precise movements, he stripped away damaged layers, isolating the intact alloy core.
His hands moved with practiced efficiency.
Within minutes, he had assembled a crude cutting tool from scavenged parts.
Kael's memories overlaid seamlessly with his own engineering mastery.
By the time the dim industrial sun dipped lower, Arjun had gathered a small pile of usable components.
Enough to sell.
Enough to survive.
Enough to begin.
Night descended swiftly on Helios-9.
The slums transformed.
Neon signs flickered to life.
Black-market dealers opened reinforced shutters.
Illegal refineries belched crimson flame.
Gangs emerged from shadowed strongholds.
Arjun moved carefully.
Kael's instincts guided his path.
Avoid patrol routes.
Avoid known gang zones.
Avoid anyone who looked too healthy.
He reached a rusted structure barely standing between two collapsed towers.
His shelter.
Inside, the space was barely large enough to lie down.
A cracked grav-panel provided weak illumination.
A makeshift power cell hummed softly.
Arjun collapsed onto the thin mat and stared at the ceiling.
His body ached.
His stomach growled.
But his mind burned.
This world was brutal.
Yet it was filled with technology beyond imagination.
And he possessed a system designed to master it.
Slowly, deliberately, he clenched his fist.
"From scrap…" he whispered.
"I will build an empire."