Nathaniel approached the door. It slid open with a faint hiss, revealing a room that resembled a classroom—no, more accurately, a tactical briefing room.
His hands remained in the pockets of the white hooded jacket he wore over his undersheath and gauntlets. The room was dim, the atmosphere thick and oppressive, aided by the brooding grey clouds that choked out the sunlight through tall windows.
At the center stood a white-haired individual wearing a sleek visor, speaking to five others scattered around the room. Nathaniel's gaze swept across them with practiced calm, and instinctively, his senses activated.
His Stat Sense kicked in.
And the truth hit him immediately—they were all stronger than him.
Their energy signatures hummed in the background like pressure systems tightening around his lungs. Each presence left no room for doubt. In pure output, they outclassed him by a wide margin. If it weren't for his mind and calculated combat style, he had no business standing among them.
He knew it.
On paper, his rank as High A made sense—but only due to his planning instincts and control under pressure. His augment alone, Kinetic Muscle, barely touched High B-tier potential by itself. When he compared his reserves to theirs, the gap was like a housecat pretending to belong among lions.
And yet—he was here.
His body, his Uratsu pathways—they were still developing, stunted, nowhere near the capacity they should've reached by his age. A flaw in his system. A weakness he could never ignore.
So how did he keep up?
Simple: attack efficiency. Every move, every step, was weighed. Measured. Calculated. He couldn't afford wasted energy.
Not yet.
His maximum output—if funneled into a single, decisive attack—would barely qualify him as Low A-Rank in raw destructive capability.
That was the truth. Brutal. Measured.
His eyes shifted rapidly, the pale grey flickering with faint activity as he took in every detail—body language, posture, energy presence, subtle movements. Information streamed through his mind like flickering threads, drawn from confidential files he had... ethically bypassed for "necessary research." Nothing in-depth, just surface-level bios. Enough to work with.
His pupils began to glow with a dull white light, imperceptible to the naked eye, as he expanded his sensory threshold.
Sense Stat: Expanded Field Activated.
It was like his brain split the room into layered grids—heat patterns, muscle tension, energy fluctuations, all calculated subconsciously.
These weren't just squad members.
They were predators.
And he needed to be very sure he wasn't walking in as prey.
Starting off with the elephant in the room—the man standing at the head of the group: Erementaru Hayate.
He hadn't even looked in Nathaniel's direction. Not out of disrespect… but pure unawareness. Or maybe disinterest.
Yet his presence burned like a damn beacon in a storm, impossible to ignore. Nathaniel could feel it—the raw density of his Uratsu, refined and weaponized. Even with no outward aggression, the pressure he exuded sat like a weight on Nathaniel's lungs.
He noticed it then—the unnatural flow of Uratsu within his limbs. Artificial. Prosthetics. His arms weren't real. Neither were his legs. His eyes.
Nathaniel's stomach twisted.
Phantom limb procedure.
That meant soul damage—injuries so severe that even high-level healing techniques couldn't regenerate what was lost. These weren't just normal replacements. They were forged by violating nature's laws, tailored to channel energy beyond human limits.
His armor was blackened steel layered atop the standard undersheath, sleek but brutal in design. His visor had five narrow vertical slits that glowed a faint orange, the artificial optics behind them ticking like the inner workings of a stopwatch.
Like they were measuring time until you died.
And yet... Nathaniel knew.
If Hayate wanted to—if he so much as twitched—he could blur into motion and take out everyone in this room before they even reacted.
Those oversized limbs weren't for show. Each was made of dual-layered tech: one component as the prosthetic, the other a weapon system. He saw the faint ridges of vent ports across Hayate's body—coolant lines for high-energy output. Residual power leaked from him even while idle, like a dormant volcano waiting to wake.
Nathaniel had seen footage once—blurry and unofficial—of Hayate holding up a seventy-story building with nothing but those energy tendrils, stabilizing the collapsing structure like it was scaffolding.
He could burn hot. He could fire beams that split hillsides. He could tear apart armor with a flick of his wrist.
He was dangerous.
And Nathaniel knew one thing with absolute certainty:
If he ever slipped—if he ever gave them a reason—it would be his head on the floor.
His gaze shifted next—to the giant standing at the far left.
Alucard Haemo.
A monster of a man, towering at 7'5", with the kind of musculature that suggested he could wrestle a tank into submission. His skin was pale—unnaturally so—and beneath his single visible eye were faint but unmistakable dark circles, the kind carved by long nights and longer battles.
That eye locked onto Nathaniel.
Blood red. Slitted. Predatory.
The other eye was concealed beneath a piece of dark crimson metal fused directly to his face.
A regulator.
Nathaniel felt his stomach tighten. That kind of gear wasn't cosmetic—it was a failsafe. Berserker-types only wore them when their bodies had adapted so violently to combat that they couldn't be trusted not to go feral. That meant Alucard wasn't just strong.
He was volatile.
The mask pulsed faintly with Uratsu dampeners, likely feeding into his neural system to dull the bloodlust when it surged. Yet even with that, Nathaniel could tell… it was barely holding.
A sharp grin peeled across Alucard's face—sharp canine teeth glinting faintly in the dim light. Whether it was a threat or a greeting, Nathaniel couldn't say.
His uniform was the standard undersheath, but layered over it was a blood-red cloak. It draped from his shoulders like a royal banner, regal and heavy, somehow contrasting the savagery in his eyes.
Strapped to his back was a weapon that defied conventional classification. A greatsword, though calling it that felt… misleading. It was more a chunk of sharpened ruin, forged from blackened steel and finished in jagged edges like a piece of industrial wreckage. It was nearly three-fourths the length of a standard lance, and probably three times the weight. No balance, no elegance—just brute force forged into a killing tool.
Nathaniel instinctively knew: that wasn't a sword for dueling.It was a sword for ending things.
Just a meter to the side of Alucard stood someone Nathaniel almost didn't notice.
Oliver Narite.
Shorter—about five-foot-nine—but no less dangerous. His platinum-blond hair contrasted oddly against his lightly tanned skin, but what truly unsettled Nathaniel was how he seemed to blend into the air itself. Like a smudge in reality, faint and shifting.
There was no fluctuation of Uratsu, no emotional presence, just… void. His irises looked like collapsed stars, black pockets that devoured ambient light. Nathaniel's instincts screamed caution. He wasn't just silent—he was empty, a portal masquerading as a person.
And yet... Oliver was tracking him.
With a gaze.
With an awareness that slithered across Nathaniel's senses like cold smoke.
He wore the standard uniform without any modification. No color changes. No armor plating. No vanity.
No need.
The lack of flair was the warning.
Oliver Narite, user of abyssal darkness. A being who walked through shade as though it were breath. Nathaniel didn't need a file to know—he was an assassin-type. Not the kind who wore it proudly.
The kind who had nothing left to prove.
To the right, leaning slightly against a bench, stood the fourth.
A dark-skinned man with dreadlocks the color of onyx, his energy thick and trembling, like lightning suspended in fluid. Nathaniel's eyes narrowed the moment he saw the scar—a jagged, unnatural path carved from the left side of his forehead, curling down his neck, across his shoulder, and disappearing beneath his combat gear.
It was clean. Deliberate.
And it conducted.
There was no doubt—it was a scar born of electricity. Not just injury, but mutation. Fused into the burn marks was a thin, silvery network—like conductive veins reinforcing the skin itself.
But it was the eye that caught him.
Its sclera was black, the iris pulsing yellow, syncing in strange rhythm with the rest of his body. Energy built behind it in waves, like an overloaded capacitor threatening to arc. Nathaniel felt a jolt—not just from the field the man projected, but from within himself.
Something in his subconscious shook. A repressed memory flashed:
Green lightning. A scream. His own? Someone else's?
He exhaled through his nose. Tension. Recognition.
George Stiney Jr.Lightning incarnate. A living circuit of storm and rage.
It made sense—the scar, the eye, the unnatural efficiency of voltage flowing through his muscles. He wasn't just a walking shockwave. He was engineered by trauma.
Nathaniel mentally filed him under "volatile but valuable."
George's attire complemented his raw voltage—he wore a compression shirt tight against his form, the material laced with conductive threads and plating, specifically across the arms where bolt-shaped conductors rose from the undersheath glinted with a dull, metallic sheen.
Copper-alloy excrema sticks were strapped to his lower back, sheathed in magnetic clamps. Hardened, grounded weapons meant for brutal, high-speed impact. Designed to channel and discharge electricity on contact—nonlethal if controlled, devastating if not.
Everything about him screamed precision in chaos.
He was built to hit first, hit hard, and if necessary, fry the battlefield in one sweep.
Nathaniel's instincts evaluated him quickly:Close-range dominance. Blitz fighter. High stun potential.Unpredictable when emotionally triggered.A living weapon system wrapped in trauma.
And yet, he stood relaxed—like a coiled Tesla coil in a calm before the storm. His eye met Nathaniel's just once.
There was no hostility. Just recognition.
A flicker of something unspoken.
Nathaniel's jaw tensed as the vague memory itched again—green sparks, someone screaming, hands trembling.
Whatever link existed between them… it wasn't time to unravel it.
Not yet.
From his right, he caught the weight of a gaze—luminous scarlet-red eyes tracking him from across the room.
Ria Bergschrund.
A familiar face. Unmistakably the daughter of Arete—the resemblance so precise it bordered on uncanny. Had he not seen them side by side once before, he might've assumed they were sisters.
Her posture was relaxed, but her eyes were working overtime. Scanning him. Judging. Thinking.
What are you looking for?What makes me so damn interesting to you—or to your mother?
She said nothing, but the look said everything: evaluation.
Her armor was custom—thin, light, and highly reflective. Not standard issue. Nathaniel's eyes narrowed slightly. The sheen across its surface wasn't just aesthetic; it was refracting ambient light, bending angles subtly around her silhouette.
Then there was the hair—a cascade of long, scarlet strands, glimmering faintly under the dim overhead lights. That shade wasn't natural, but neither was it cosmetic. It was genetic inheritance, spectral saturation passed down like royalty.
He didn't need confirmation. He knew what her augment was.
Light manipulation, same as her mother. Possibly more refined.If her father's spectrum attribute was integrated, that meant advanced control over light, color, and perception.
She could blind, bend visibility, create illusions, distort color fields—maybe even bend light-speed motion detection.
Dangerous in a fight. Deadly in the right setting.
Still, her eyes lingered. Not with hostility—more like a challenge unspoken.
And then, lastly—there was her.
She didn't speak. Didn't need to.
Shirou Livinrock.The quiet girl in the corner, radiating calm like a blade sheathed in velvet.
Grey hair tied in a modest bun at the back, with stray bangs framing a pale face. Her grey eyes held a strange kind of stillness—calming, yes, but not soft. They looked through you, like mist gliding over a graveyard.
He knew why she was mute. The file spelled it out in cold, medical terms.
But files never told you the weight of a scar.
Her larynx had been severed.A divine weapon, wielded during a violent purge.The injury had damaged the soul thread—permanently.
Even healing left behind a mark that wouldn't fade. A jagged scar across her throat, mostly hidden beneath the black choker she always wore like a brand. He knew it was there.
He also knew who had done it.She was the illegitimate child—born of the Reverbo patriarch's sister, after she was used and discarded.
Shirou wore the standard undersheath, but everything else about her aesthetic rejected uniformity.Large cargo pants hung loose, adorned with braces holding modular gear.Black studs in her ears.A grey crop-top, simple but sharp. Over the undersheath.It gave her the look of a punk rocker who'd survived the end of the world.
She didn't need a voice to send a message.
And Nathaniel knew—piss her off, and he might find himself crushed against the ceiling, blood dripping sideways, unsure if he was dead or just wishing for it. her augment was gravity and soun
his analysis had took place in seconds it was strange to look at each one of them up close.
His analysis had taken place in mere seconds—yet standing among them, up close, was another thing entirely.
These weren't peers.They were monuments.
That's when he felt it.
A heavy hand pressed against his shoulder.Mechanical. Cold. Deliberate.
He hadn't even noticed Erementaru's disappearance—his presence had simply vanished, like a shadow folding into the room itself.
Nathaniel's eyes flicked back over his shoulder, narrowing—
There it was: a massive prosthetic palm, resting lightly but with intent.
And from within the slits of that obsidian visor, dull orange light leaked like pressurized fire.Like heat waiting to become motion.
"You're a minute late, Alderman,"Erementaru said, his voice even—but with the gravity of a falling structure.
A chill shot through Nathaniel's spine.
Fight or flight kicked in—
He blurred forward, boots scraping the ground, momentum snapping his coat behind him as he put two meters of space between them in a blink.
The pressure lifted.
But the tension? It stayed.