The silence in the sanctum was the calm before the storm. Kurok, lit by the pale, consuming void-light, stood as the eye of a new hurricane. The air grew heavy, tasting of ozone and raw power.
The lead Purifier lunged, its ceramic hand aimed to nullify Kurok's heart. But Kurok was faster. He didn't dodge. He met the hand with his own, and the consumption began.
It wasn't a clean deletion. It was a violent, visceral unraveling. The Purifier's arm didn't just vanish; it dissolved upwards from the wrist, flaking away into grey, inert ash that stank of burnt plastic and dead magic. The creature emitted a distorted, digital shriek as the nullifying void it was meant to wield was turned inward, eating it alive.
"Open fire! All units!" Mr. Silas shrieked, his composure shattered.
Security panels slid open in the walls, and automated turrets emerged, barrels glowing with concentrated energy. They weren't designed to kill, but to incapacitate with brutal force.
WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!
Stun-blasts the size of trash cans hurtled towards them. Nana became a silver cyclone, her tendrils a blur, deflecting one blast into a console that exploded in a shower of sparks. Another she sliced in half, the two halves detonating against the ceiling and floor, showering them with hot shrapnel and the acrid smell of melted wiring.
"Gloubi! The distraction! Now would be good!" Nana yelled, parrying a blast that sent shockwaves up her arms.
Kael, meanwhile, was a phantom. She ducked under a Purifier's grasp, her movements economical and deadly. She didn't have fancy weapons, just a shiv made from a hardened data-slate. She drove it into the knee-joint of a Purifier, and a spurt of viscous, green coolant erupted, sizzling on the floor. The creature stumbled, its leg locking up.
But they were being overwhelmed. The turrets were endless, and the remaining Purifiers were adapting, moving to surround Kurok.
"We need to break the Engine!" Kael shouted, barely avoiding a stun-blast that left a smoldering crater where her head had been.
Kurok felt it. The pale consumption was a drain on him too. It was sustainable, but slow. They needed a surge. A jolt of pure, unadulterated chaos to shatter Aethelburg's order.
He looked at the Source-Engine, the captured heart beating in its cage. It was raw power. Untamed. Dangerous.
"Cover me!" he roared to Nana.
He closed his eyes, and for the first time, he didn't just let the virus out. He pulled. He reached deep into the well of his power and the connection to the city's magic, and he forced a reaction. He wasn't asking for a snack. He was demanding a feast.
\[TEMPORARY POWER ACTIVATED: GLUTTON'S GAUNTLET\]
A sound like shattering glass filled the room. The pale light around Kurok's hands didn't just brighten; it crystallized. From his wrists to his fingertips, his arms were sheathed in jagged, overlapping plates of iridescent energy that looked like solid, hungry void. The air around them warped, and a low, gravitational pull began to draw loose objects towards his hands.
\[DURATION: 04:59\]
His eyes snapped open, glowing with the same voracious light.
A turret fired a full-power stun-blast directly at his chest. Kurok didn't block it. He caught it. The Glutton's Gauntlet flared, and the energy of the blast—a concentrated ball of pure force—was compressed, twisted, and consumed in his palm with a sound like a dying star. He didn't just absorb it; he felt its "flavor"—sharp, metallic, aggressive.
He grinned, a wild, feral expression.
He thrust his gauntleted hands forward. From his palms erupted not a wave of light, but a tidal wave of manifested consumption. It wasn't an energy beam; it was a roaring, black-and-violet vortex that tore through the sanctum.
It didn't transform what it touched. It devoured.
Three turrets were ripped from the walls, shredded into component atoms and sucked into the vortex. Two Purifiers were caught in the edge of the storm. Their ceramic bodies didn't crack; they were sandblasted into nothingness, their nullifying fields offering no more resistance than tissue paper. The vortex hit the far wall of the sanctum and left a gaping, smoldering hole, revealing the twisted infrastructure of the building beneath. The edges of the hole weren't melted; they were gnawed, like a bite taken from reality itself.
The power was insane. It was glorious. It was terrifying.
\[DURATION: 03:12\]
"THE ENGINE!" Kael screamed over the roar of the dissipating vortex.
Mr. Silas was frantically inputting commands into a terminal, trying to initiate a emergency lockdown. "Containment breach! Total meltdown protocol!"
Kurok turned his gauntleted hands towards the crystalline prison of the Source-Engine. He could feel the heart within, a trapped sun of chaotic potential. It was the ultimate meal.
He unleashed the Glutton's Gauntlet one last time.
The vortex that shot out was thinner, more focused, a drill made of nothingness. It struck the center of the crystalline structure. For a second, nothing happened. Then, a web of black cracks spread across the surface. The containment field flickered and died.
The Source-Engine was exposed.
But the Glutton's Gauntlet was fading. The crystalline sheen on his arms flickered, the plates beginning to dissolve back into light.
\[DURATION: 00:05\]
He was out of time.
With a final, desperate effort, Kurok slammed his now-fading hands onto the exposed heart of the Engine.
He didn't consume it. There was no time. Instead, he did the only thing he could: he gave it a command.
He poured every ounce of his will, every memory of Grimecity's chaotic beauty, every sensation of flavor he'd ever experienced, directly into the raw magical core.
BREAK FREE.
The Source-Engine pulsed. Once. Twice.
Then it detonated.
But it wasn't an explosion of destruction. It was an explosion of life.
A wave of pure, untamed creation erupted from the heart. The sterile metal walls didn't just become edible; they blossomed. They erupted in forests of giant, glowing mushrooms that released clouds of sparkling, intoxicating spores. The floor split open, geysers of fizzing root beer erupting, flooding the room with a sweet, sticky tide. Wires dangling from the ceiling sprouted leaves and began bearing fist-sized, electrically charged fruits that popped and crackled.
The sanctum was transformed in an instant from a sterile lab into a magical, overgrown, and dangerously unstable rainforest. The remaining Purifiers spasmed as wild vines, hard as steel, erupted from the floor and ensnared them, pulling them down into the sugary mud. The turrets were crushed under the sudden growth of crystalline candy-canes that shot towards the ceiling.
The Glutton's Gauntlet was gone. Kurok collapsed to his knees, gasping, the massive energy expenditure leaving him drained and shaking. The temporary power had saved them, but the cost was immense.
Nana and Kael fought their way to his side through the newly formed jungle, their faces etched with awe and horror.
The Source-Engine was gone. In its place was a small, bubbling spring of pure, clear liquid that smelled of rain and infinite possibility.
Mr. Silas was on his knees, his perfect suit stained with root beer and mushroom spores, staring at the ruin of his life's work.
Kurok looked up, his normal glow returned, but dimmer. He had used a cheat code, and the level had been reset in the most chaotic way possible. They had won. But the battlefield was now a sentient ecosystem, and the power he had just channeled had left a permanent scar on him, and on the world.