The sub-basement of the lab had no concept of a "floor."
It was a vast, metallic stomach composed of fiber-optic cables and hydraulic lines. All the wiring writhed with a semblance of life, converging upon a singular, massive shadow at the center.
The Chief Researcher. Or what was left of him.
He was a three-meter-tall freak now, his spine replaced by a heavy-duty power cable, half his cranium embedded in a flickering monitor. Dozens of mechanical arms sprouted from his ribs, their fingers clutching scalpels, blowtorches, and beating Source Cores.
"Subject 01... you are three years late." The monster's vocalizer emitted a piercing electronic synthesis, accompanied by flickering garbled code on the screen.
Evan wasted no breath. He reversed his grip on the short blade.
The black tactical tape on his right arm had already begun to fray, revealing thin, jagged cracks. Due to the Source resonance in this chamber, the crystals within him started to glow with an eerie, translucent violet light. The pain had transcended the threshold of the nervous system, settling into a mechanical, deathly numbness.
He stepped into the monster's kill zone.
Five meters. Expanded.
BOOM.
The writhing cables surrounding him withered and paralyzed the moment they lost their supernatural drive. But this time, the long-accumulated black "sediment" burst forth like a levee breaking, cascading frantically along the edges of the radius.
The air in the lab turned pitch black.
It was the howling of a thousand dead rules.
The monster let out an inhuman roar. Even without supernatural enhancement, his mechanical limbs possessed terrifying raw power. A massive hydraulic pincer swung toward Evan's head with the force of a falling anvil.
Evan slid to the side, his blade cutting a cold arc through the gloom.
Screeech.
The manganese steel tore through the monster's bio-synthetic skin. What leaked out wasn't blood, but thick, black sludge.
"The rules here... are defined by ME!" the monster shrieked. He forcibly severed his own power source, switching to a primitive, spring-loaded physical mechanism for his next strike.
It was the ultimate counter-measure against a Null Zone: If abilities are void, use the sheer mass of steel to crush the interloper.
Evan was forced back, step by step. His right hand was losing its grip on the hilt.
The crystals pried under the last of the tape.
SNAP.
A sharp crack echoed. The black tape severed completely.
In that instant, Evan felt a devastating surge of energy pour into his right hand—not an ability, but a purified "void" sucked in through the crystals. In a heartbeat, his entire right arm transformed into solid violet crystal. Unable to carry the load, his skin began to flake away like parched porcelain.
"ARGH—!"
Evan let out his first true scream of the series.
The thousand broken radios in his head detonated simultaneously.
The five-meter radius went feral.
It was no longer a circle; it was an expanding black hurricane. The surrounding steel, the instruments, even the massive researcher—everything began to disintegrate before this uncontrolled erasure.
"Contract..."
Evan knelt on the ground, cold sweat and blood dripping into his eyes. He remembered the words of the ten-centimeter girl.
"Shrink it... until you can hold yourself."
He bit his tongue until it bled, using his last shred of sanity to drag the wild power inward.
Five meters. Four. Two. One.
It felt like trying to fold a tattered umbrella in the center of a cyclone. With every inch he retracted, the agony of the crystals grinding his nerves doubled.
When the radius finally snapped back to a tight ten-centimeter shell around his body, a miracle occurred.
The violent, pressurized sediment vanished.
They hadn't been purged; they had been compressed into the violet crystalline casing of his arm. Evan's right limb now looked like a heavy maul forged from the abyss itself.
He looked up at the monster, half of whose body had been erased by the storm.
"Now," Evan whispered.
He vanished.
No air resistance. No gravity. Under the extreme suppression of ten centimeters, he became the only "Absolute Physical Quantity" in this chaotic ruin.
He reached the monster in a blink. His crystallized right hand punched clean through the metallic chest cavity, seizing the throbbing Source Core that housed the Neutralizer.
"Protocol... executed."
He crushed it.
Violet fire erupted, and the laboratory fell into absolute darkness.