Biocores: The Legendary Weapon Designer

Akron's boots slammed into the earth with force, sending cracks spiraling outward.

With a scream of fury, she burst forward again, flinging her broken vine-arm in a wide arc. It unraveled mid-strike, transforming into writhing whips of green liquid stone—like living chains lashing out. The tendrils screamed through the air toward Hephaestus.

Hephaestus raised one palm. A magnetic pulse detonated from her chest, and the vines halted in midair—suspended, jittering, caught in the field. Her expression didn't change.

"Even your ancestral relics are predictable," she said, tone sharp as a blade.

With a flick of her wrist, she reversed the polarity. The vines tore apart, flinging Akron backward—again.

But Akron flipped in midair, blood trailing from her lip. She hit the ground running.

"SHUT UP!"

A massive earthen spike exploded from beneath her feet. She grabbed it mid-rise, using the momentum to launch herself skyward, coming down on Hephaestus like a divine hammer. Her right arm reeled back, the green altar armor concentrating into a single dense, spiked gauntlet.

Hephaestus didn't dodge.

She stood there—arms down, still.

Boom!

Akron struck with everything. The shockwave flattened the nearby terrain, splitting a crack through the ground. A thousand sparks shot into the air. The light swallowed both women.

Akron stumbled forward, gasping.

Then her eyes widened.

Hephaestus stood there—unmoved. Her left arm was transformed into high-density reactive shielding, catching the entire blow. Steam hissed from pressure vents.

"…Better," Hephaestus admitted, voice low. "But still not enough."

Without warning, her back split open. A halo of mechanical arms erupted from her spine, each one locking into position around her. A ring of weapons: rotating saws, cryo-surge cannons, missile tubes, gravity wells.

Before Akron could react, she was hit.

A barrage of micro-missiles rained down. Akron screamed, shield raised, armor fragmenting piece by piece.

Then—crack—a graviton field dragged her into the air, suspending her like prey. A plasma blade slashed across her back. She howled. The machine arms moved again—cutting, searing, suppressing.

Akron dropped.

But she didn't stay down.

She forced herself to her feet, shaking. Her biocore roared, veins of green light surging through her body like a wildfire.

"This isn't over…"

She tore off her remaining armor, her frame shaking, muscles burning. She lifted her hand to the sky again—and from the clouds, a second altar descended, the twin of the first. It struck the earth with a deafening boom, disintegrating into emerald tendrils that coiled around her entire body.

One final transformation.

Her mech twisted into a hybrid form, nature fused with machine—spiked, monstrous, divine.

She didn't speak this time. She just ran.

And Hephaestus smiled. "Now this is more fun."

They clashed again.

Fist against blade. Whip against cannon. Akron roared, tearing through the ground with a punch that would fell a war machine. Hephaestus pivoted, countered with a chain-blade, slicing into her ribs. Akron swung her meteor fist—a chunk of altar rock the size of a car—crushing one of the mechanical arms.

Hephaestus responded with a blast from her back-mounted cannon, vaporizing the rest of Akron's armor.

Akron's last move was pure rage—she grabbed Hephaestus by the waist and suplexed her into the ground, a quake roaring from the impact.

And yet, Hephaestus only laughed.

"I told you, Akron…"

Boom.

A final blade. Through the abdomen.

Akron gasped, eyes wide, blood spilling from her mouth. Her legs gave out.

"…you can't beat me."

Hephaestus pulled the blade free and let Akron collapse into the rubble, unconscious and broken.

The battlefield fell quiet again. The others, still fighting their own brutal wars, could feel it:

One of their brightest flames had been snuffed out.

And Hephaestus stood still, her expression unreadable. Her blades retracted with a hiss, and the light in her biocore dimmed slightly. She turned toward the epicenter of chaos—the body of Nioh, or what was left of him, still lying among shattered earth and scorched stone, his relics slowly rotating above him like forgotten stars.

She blinked, brushing her hair back, trying to reorient herself.

A gust of wind.

Sudden. Violent. Wrong.

Her senses screamed.

She turned—and her heart skipped.

Nioh's body was gone.

A flicker.

He was already crouched beside Akron's ruined form, one hand pressed over her chest, the other drawing from her biocore—extracting the corrosive energy, siphoning it with surgical precision. The glow around him was unstable, unnatural.

He shouldn't be standing.

Her breath caught. She raised her cannon, targeting center mass. One shot, that's all she needed.

Then Nioh turned.

Hair blazing red. Skin bare, bloodied. Eyes—feral, burning.

Not just anger. Wrath. Pure, ancient, impossible.

And something in her froze.

Her finger wouldn't pull the trigger.

That stare, that pressure—it coiled around her like a vice. For a fleeting second, she was back in the lab, facing the prototype they were never meant to wake. She felt like prey.

He didn't move toward her. He didn't speak. He just returned to Akron, finishing the purification. The glow of her biocore slowly calmed, the dangerous buildup dissipating. She was unconscious—but stable.

Still, the pressure didn't fade.

Hephaestus couldn't move. She wasn't restrained physically. But her body would not obey. Her instincts screamed at her: run. But there was nowhere to go.

Then he stood.

Slowly. Methodically.

And walked forward.

Step by step.

That's when her systems surged in alarm.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

She gritted her teeth and forced her will through the paralysis, spinning her biocore to maximum output. Energy flooded her limbs, her spine lit with fire, and the mechanical arms reformed around her like a blooming steel lotus.

Every barrel. Every cannon. Every blade. All aimed at Nioh.

"Die."

She fired everything.

A sun bloomed—

—And he vanished.

A sonic boom cracked the air.

Then—

Boom.

Her back hit the ground with an impossible slam.

The impact echoed like a thunderclap across the battlefield, shaking the earth for miles. All combat froze. Fighters across the region felt it. A ripple of shock through the atmosphere—something ancient had awakened.

Hephaestus gasped. Pain radiated through her spine. Her mechanical arms—shattered. Internal damage alerts screamed through her HUD. Her systems were collapsing.

She hadn't seen the strike. She hadn't even processed the movement.

Her mind scrambled to make sense.

It shouldn't be like this…

We destroyed the Warden weapon… He was a corpse—he was dying. How could he still have this much power?

Above her, the sky flickered.

And then she saw them.

The truth slammed into her like another punch.

She forced herself to sit up, pain exploding through her side.

"Nioh…"

Her voice trembled.

"…how long have you known?"