Chapter 50: Hunting the Grey Plague

  The moment Marcus’s chassis began to dissolve into the crimson vortex of the Portal, a priority override flashed across his internal HUD. It pulsed a violent red, overlaying all telemetry data, clawing at his cognitive processors in the final millisecond before transmission.

  > **INCOMING TRANSMISSION (ENCRYPTED CHANNEL)**

  > **FROM:** Guild Council "Free Spectrum" (Sender: Vega)

  > **SUBJECT:** Status of "Vanguard" Unit

  >

  > *"Team. We are registering a total signal loss from your sector. Your vital signs are unstable/non-existent. Does this imply the 'Legion' incident is concluded? The Council is prepared to discuss terms for unfreezing your assets and renegotiating your contract. Respond immediately. Continued silence will be interpreted as hostility or liquidation."*

  Marcus didn't even have the cycles to formulate a "block" command. His consciousness was torn into bytes, hurled through the void, and reassembled on a hard, cold surface.

  ***

  **Death Zone: The Bio-Steel Hive**

  Marcus touched down softly, engaging the inertia dampeners in his legs to silence the impact.

  His sensors immediately screamed a warning. This place... it was fundamentally "wrong."

  It wasn't a desert, nor a factory. It was a gargantuan organism, a grotesque fusion of heavy metal and raw flesh. The walls of the colossal cavern pulsed, covered in a grey moss that, under macro-zoom, revealed itself to be billions of nano-wires writhing like cilia. Thick, oily fluid dripped from the stalactites, smelling of ozone, sulfur, and rotting meat.

  — [LOCATION: Nest of the Grey Plague] — the interface highlighted. — [THREAT LEVEL: BIO-HAZARD].

  — [ATMOSPHERE: Toxic. High concentration of airborne nano-virus].

  Marcus instantly activated **[Stealth Mode]**. His black armor, the "Shadow Shroud," blended with the cavern's gloom, blurring his thermal outline.

  He didn't have Vance to act as a kinetic sponge. His reactor was running on efficiency protocols. He was not a warrior here. He was a ghost.

  ***

  **Observation: Real-Time Evolution**

  He began to move, gliding from shadow to shadow. His scanners operated in passive mode, collecting data without emitting active pings that could betray his position.

  Marcus froze near a calcified column, observing a scene that would make even a veteran stalker's gyros shudder.

  Below, in a fissure, a small scavenger bot resembling a crab attempted to saw through a cable. Suddenly, tentacles erupted from the ground. But they weren't organic. It was a **Cable Boa**—a creature comprised of thousands of braided wires. It coiled around the crab, constricting until the chassis buckled, and plunged dozens of needle-injectors into the breach.

  Marcus engaged his optical zoom.

  He watched the virus work. The crab's metal began to liquefy, sucked into the Boa's body.

  Within seconds, the Boa changed. Its wire "skin" thickened into plating, and new optical sensors—identical to those of its victim—sprouted along its head segment.

  — Adaptive virus, — Marcus analyzed. — The strong consume the weak and instantly compile their hardware traits. There is no waste here. Everything is a resource.

  He moved on, calculating every step. His cloaking energy was depleting, so he identified "blind spots"—areas with high radiation or magnetic interference where local predators couldn't track him—and deactivated stealth for brief recharge cycles.

  ***

  **The Pride: Apex Killers**

  Pushing deeper, Marcus found his primary target.

  On a plateau made of twisted titanium piping, the Pride was resting.

  These were the apex of the local food chain. **Virus-Panthers**.

  There were five of them. Their bodies were a seamless fusion of black bio-flesh and polished chrome. Their levels ranged from 75 to 79.

  Marcus observed them for an hour. They made no sound. They communicated via a localized, encrypted mesh network.

  Suddenly, they locked onto prey. It was a massive **Bio-Reactor Slug**, slowly dragging its bulk across the cavern floor. A grotesque mountain of armored segments and translucent sacs glowing with toxic green light—it was a walking refinery, digesting the Hive's toxic waste.

  The Panthers didn't rush in a mob. Two flanked wide, cutting off retreat paths. One began to harry the prey, forcing the Slug to spit corrosive slime that burned through stone. They were draining its ammunition.

  This wasn't animal instinct. This was special forces tactics.

  When the Slug exhausted its acid reserves, the Pride Leader—the largest Panther with burning violet optics—leaped from above, crushing the main energy sac on the victim's back.

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  An explosion of green plasma weakened the Slug's armor, and the pack tore it apart.

  Marcus witnessed something disturbing. The Pride Leader stepped aside. The others ripped open the carcass and... brought the choicest parts—the acid glands—to the Leader.

  He devoured them greedily. Right before Marcus's eyes, the Leader's claws and fangs began to glow with the same toxic green luminescence as the Slug's innards.

  — Hive Mind, — Marcus realized. — And distributed resources. They assimilated the acid attack capability.

  ***

  **Ambush and Chaos**

  Marcus ran the combat simulations. Attacking the weaker ones was illogical.

  He took a position on a rusted beam high near the ceiling.

  His "Plasma Bolter," scarred and carbon-scored but charged to maximum, settled into his grip.

  — Two shots, — he whispered. — The weapon thermal limits won't allow for more.

  He waited until the Pride huddled together after the feast for a "data sync."

  *VOOM-VOOM.*

  The first globule of plasma shattered the Leader's energy shield. The second burned a hole through its flank, forcing the beast to shriek—a sound that was a mix of grinding metal and a siren's wail.

  But the Leader didn't die.

  The remaining four Panthers reacted instantly. They didn't scatter. They leaped *onto* the Leader, covering him with their bodies, creating a living barricade.

  Marcus watched in horror as their metal began to melt and flow toward the wounded alpha, sacrificing their own armor integrity to patch his breach.

  — Predictable, — Marcus stated coldly. — You bunched up. A perfect target.

  He switched the Bolter to "Barrage" mode.

  He began to bathe the living pile of metal in plasma. Their mirror-polished armor initially deflected the beams, but the density of fire was so high that the metal began to boil.

  He fired until the weapon's HUD screamed: **[CRITICAL OVERHEAT]**.

  Two Panthers were reduced to slag. The Leader was critically damaged. But the two survivors raised their heads. They sniffed the air with sensory arrays.

  Marcus realized his error. The stealth field hid his visual spectrum, but not the smell of ozone and superheated metal radiating from his gun.

  They snarled and scrambled up the beams, heading straight for him.

  ***

  **Improvisation**

  Marcus looked at his Bolter. The barrel glowed white-hot. The weapon was dead as a firing tool, but alive as an explosive.

  — Final gift, — he activated the reactor overload timer.

  Marcus engaged invisibility and leaped into the abyss, using his grappling hook to swing wide.

  The Panthers reached his position. They found only the Bolter, humming like an angry hive.

  *KA-BOOM!*

  The plasma capacitor explosion shattered the beam. A wave of fire and shrapnel engulfed the predators. They were blasted down to the cavern floor, stunned, their systems rebooting.

  Marcus landed nearby. He was unarmed.

  He sprinted to the mangled corpse of the Leader. Protruding from its jaw was a fang—the length of a forearm, translucent, shimmering, now pulsing with a faint green acid hue.

  He braced his foot against the beast's snout, grabbed the fang with both hands, and engaged all servos to pull.

  *CRUNCH.*

  He ripped the fang out along with a chunk of the jawbone. It was heavy, and when he gripped it, his palms burned with cold.

  — Adaptation! — he exclaimed.

  As soon as he activated his stealth, the fang in his hands vanished too. It read his cloaking field code and synchronized with it.

  The stunned Panthers began to reboot.

  Marcus leaped on the first one. He was an invisible demon.

  *SHUNK.*

  The crystal fang slid into the beast's armored neck with zero resistance. It was the perfect material. Five rapid strikes—and the enemy went offline.

  The second Panther, the strongest survivor, managed to react to the displacement of air. It snapped its jaws, catching Marcus’s forearm.

  **[WARNING: VIRAL CODE INTRUSION]**

  Marcus watched silver threads spread from the bite mark across his armor. They were trying to hack his firewall and rewrite his DNA.

  — Not today!

  He dropped stealth and rerouted all available reactor energy to his external plating, heating it to 400 degrees Celsius.

  The virus hissed and burned away, flaking off as grey ash.

  Marcus drove the fang directly into the last enemy's optic sensor and twisted, destroying the CPU.

  ***

  **The Collector**

  The next few hours turned into the monotonous work of a butcher.

  Marcus carved out the second fang. Now he wielded dual blades.

  He began to methodically purge the cavern, using his new weapons. He killed everything that moved, dragging the carcasses into one gigantic pile in the center of the zone. He wouldn't leave anything behind. These were resources for Vance.

  When the Portal timer showed [00:05], he climbed to the top of the mountain of corpses, stabbed his blades into the carcass of the decomposing Bio-Slug, and braced himself.

  ***

  **Quarantine**

  A flash of light. The Bunker.

  Marcus spilled onto the floor along with a ton of mangled, virus-infected biomass. The stench of rot and ozone instantly filled the sterile workshop.

  Spark, who was monitoring Vance’s capsule, recoiled, shielding his sensors with a hand.

  Vance was conscious but immobile inside his pod. He was connected to dozens of thick cables running from the generator directly into his chest. His eyes glowed dimly.

  "What... the... hell... is that?" Spark hissed, looking at the pile of meat that was twitching even after death.

  "Loot," Marcus replied hoarsely, standing up. His armor was coated in grey slime.

  Spark ran a scan, and his optics widened in horror.

  "You idiot! You brought active 'Grey Plague' in here!"

  He pointed to a severed Panther limb that was trying to crawl toward a power cable.

  "It's alive! It will eat our base!"

  Spark instantly activated force fields, isolating Marcus and the loot pile in the center of the room.

  "Nobody move! Vance, cut external ports!"

  Vance, looking like a chained Prometheus behind the thick glass, gave a heavy nod.

  Spark dashed to his cabinets. He pulled out a strange device resembling a cannon with a cluster of lenses and Tesla coils.

  "**Protocol: Total Decontamination!**" he shouted.

  "Will it hurt?" Marcus asked.

  "It'll be like bathing in the sun," Spark replied and pulled the trigger.

  A flash of blinding white light, mixed with hard UV and electrical arcs, flooded the room.

  The loot pile hissed. Thousands of micro-viruses began to burst, making a sound like frying bacon. The grey slime dried up and turned to ash.

  Marcus fell to his knees. His armor heated up, sensors screaming from overload. He felt Spark's beam burning the alien code off his own surface.

  It lasted a minute that felt like an eternity.

  When the light faded, the room smelled only of ozone and sterility. The loot pile no longer moved. Now, it was just high-quality, dead metal.

  Spark approached Marcus and poked him in the chest with a scanner.

  "Clean. But bring this contagion in again without warning, and I will dismantle you for spare parts."

  Then he looked at the mountain of materials and clicked his glossal sensor.

  "Although... this is S-Class Bio-Metal with acid-resistant properties. From this, I can craft Vance a new plating. And maybe something interesting for you."

  Marcus sat wearily on the floor, revealing the two crystal fangs that became visible again.

  "The Guild wants to talk."

  Vance, whose voice thundered through the capsule speakers, signaled:

  "Let them wait. We are a threat now, not subordinates."

  ***

  ### [SYSTEM REPORT: BIO-HIVE RAID]

  **Player:** MARCUS

  **Status:** Solo Clear (Difficulty: High).

  **XP Gained:**

  * Pride & Boss "Alpha Panther" Kill: **Maximum Coefficient**.

  * Unarmored Survival Bonus.

  * **GROWTH:** **+5 Levels**.

  * **CURRENT LEVEL:** **80**. (Status: Shadow Magister).

  **New Skills:**

  1. **[Virus Hunter]:** You identify weak points in bio-mechanical entities. +20% Critical Damage vs Mutating Targets.

  2. **[Adaptive Melee]:** Proficiency with improvised weapons (fangs, claws) at Master level.

  3. **[Stealth II]:** Masks thermal signature and olfactory trail.

  **Key Loot:**

  * **Alpha Panther Fangs (2 units):** Unique Weapon. Traits: "Chameleon" (syncs with invisibility), "Acid Touch" (corrosive damage).

  * **4 Tons of Bio-Metal:** Raw material for crafting with high regeneration properties.

  Hello everyone! We have officially reached Chapter 50.

  I want to take a moment to share something personal with you all. This is the very first book I have ever written in my life. In the real world, I work as a technician at a factory. When I started this journey, I had no idea how much I would genuinely love the process of writing. I have completely fallen in love with this world and my characters—Marcus, Vance, and Spark. They feel real to me, and I know exactly what epic challenges await them next.

  Unfortunately, I am going through some very tough times right now. Severe financial difficulties and exhausting shifts at the factory are draining all of my free time and energy. Because of this, I am forced to put the regular release schedule on hold—I simply don't have the physical ability to keep writing at my current pace right now.

  If you have enjoyed Vanguard's story so far and have the desire and ability to support me financially, I have set up a page on . Your support will literally 'buy' me the time I need, allowing me to work less overtime at the factory and focus more on writing the next adventures of our favorite trio.

  I will gladly and with immense gratitude accept any help you can offer. Thank you so much for reading, commenting, and being on this journey with me!

  https://buymeacoffee.com/Damaskus. Your support will literally 'buy' me the time I need, allowing me to work less overtime at the factory and focus more on writing the next adventures of our favorite trio.