The man's steel-colored eyes held no fear. He looked at Kaito like a scientist looks at an unexpected but fascinating result appearing in his lab.
"You are not here for the corruption," the man stated, his voice flat and sure. "You are here because the corruption led you here. An elegant feedback loop. My designs drew you in. Perfect."
He took a step closer, his movements fluid and precise. "I came to this forest, this 'Blightscar,' over a century ago. I was searching. Legends spoke of a Leviathan's grave here, a being whose bones held power over reality itself. A power my people could… utilize."
He gestured to the sterile walls around them. "I found the tomb. I also found its guardian. A magnificent construct—a Bone Sentinel. Programmed with a final command: if facing defeat, trigger the Leviathan's residual energy in a planetary-scale annihilation. A dead man's switch. To protect its master's rest."
The man's lips thinned in something like professional frustration. "My calculations were clear. To safely acquire the bones, the Sentinel had to be disabled before it could complete its self-destruct sequence. A task requiring precision I did not, at the time, possess. So I waited. I established this facility. I began other projects."
He looked directly at Kaito. "Then, decades later, my sensors detected an energy surge in the tomb. The Sentinel activated. I prepared for planetary destruction… and nothing happened. The surge vanished. The Sentinel was gone. The Leviathan's skeleton was… vandalized. A single rib, missing."
He held up two fingers. "Two theories. One: something destroyed the Sentinel faster than its command could transmit. A physical impossibility given the energy thresholds involved. Two: something absorbed the entire planetary-destruction level mana blast. A logical impossibility, as no vessel could contain that magnitude of energy without vaporizing the local continent."
His steel gaze pinned Kaito to the spot. "And yet. The planet is here. I scanned the tomb. The other bones remain, but their core energy is… muted. Drained. As if the concept of their power was borrowed and never returned. I have spent years searching for that missing rib. It is the key. The most potent sample. And I do not believe it will simply come to me."
He tilted his head. "But now you are here. Holding a staff of unknown black material. In the one place where such a unique artifact could have originated." A slow, cold smile touched his lips. "You are not a subject of the corruption, are you? You are the cause of my missing data. You are the one who robbed the tomb."
The man, the architect, didn't look angry. He looked thrilled. He had found his variable.
"You absorbed the Sentinel's final blast. You took the rib. And now you have walked into my workshop." He spread his hands, a gesture of cold welcome. "Fate is efficient. You have brought me the final piece of the Leviathan. And in doing so, you have delivered yourself. Tell me, Subject K-01. What are you?"
The man's calm, professional mask cracked. A raw, furious heat flashed in his steel-colored eyes.
"My prototype," he hissed, the word sharp and venomous. "The Hive Dominion. A perfect design! A collective consciousness, capable of rapid evolution, tactical brilliance, limitless growth! I placed it in the Frost Continent as the ultimate self-replicating defense system. To study adaptive magic in its purest form!"
He slammed a fist onto a console, making the glowing symbols jump. "It was progressing beyond projections. It wasn't just adapting. It was innovating. It developed an omni-elemental resonance, a magical spectrum I hadn't even theorized! It was becoming... perfect. The ultimate biological weapon. A world-ender that could think, learn, and grow from any attack!"
His voice dropped to a low, seething whisper. "And then she just... stopped. She gathered every ounce of power from every single one of her children. She drew it all into herself. She reached a critical mass of energy that should have birthed a god. And what did she do with it?"
He pointed a trembling finger at Kaito.
"She tried to destroy you. My logs show a single, massive energy spike directed at a lone, anomalous signature. Then... nothing. The Hive mind vanished. The energy vanished. The target signature... remained." He leaned forward, his face a mask of bewildered rage. "She chose self-annihilation. She sacrificed my perfect weapon in a single, pointless strike against something that didn't die. And I saw it. In my scrying monitors, I saw the aftermath. I saw you walking away from the crater her death made."
He took a step closer, his sterile suit seeming to crackle with contained fury. "You. You are the anomaly that breaks my equations. You corrupted my Hive Queen's purpose. You made her throw away perfection. And now you stand here, holding the one artifact I need to complete my work, having already destroyed my greatest creation."
The man straightened, his anger folding back into a cold, terrifying focus. "So. You will tell me what you are. You will tell me how you survived a blast designed to erase concepts. And then, you will give me the Leviathan's bone. And perhaps, in studying you, I can salvage something from the ruin you have made of my research."