Episode-910
Chapter : 1819
Ben stopped. He didn’t gasp; he let out a low, vibrating growl that rattled the internal speakers of his helmet.
"Father?" Ben hissed, the word dripping with a lethal mix of recognition and immediate, icy suspicion.
Lloyd turned. He didn’t see Ben’s father. He saw a jungle—a steaming, humid hellscape on Earth. The smell of napalm and rotting vegetation filled his helmet, overriding the suit's filters.
But Lloyd ignored it. He focused on Ben.
Ben was staring into the empty air, his prosthetic hand balling into a fist so tight the high-tensile metal joints emitted a sharp, protesting whine.
He didn’t back away. He took a heavy, deliberate step forward, right into the center of the swirling mist. "You dare?" he breathed, his voice a razor-edged threat. "You dare wear his face, you formless trash?"
In Ben’s mind, the fog had coalesced into the form of Lord Kyle Ferrum. The father he had once looked up to, who had died at Ashworth.
But this wasn't the heroic Lord Kyle. This was a mockery—a rotting, animated corpse with a hole in his chest, designed to break a man’s spirit.
"You failed me," the hallucination of Kyle rasped. "You let him kill me. You were weak. You are still weak. A cripple playing at being a lord."
Ben didn’t stammer. He didn’t weep. A harsh, barking laugh erupted from his throat, echoing with cold arrogance.
"Weak?" Ben mocked, stepping within inches of the phantom's face. "I am the Sovereign of Ironwood. I am the man who ground your murderers into the dirt. I didn't just avenge you, old man—I surpassed you."
"You are nothing," the Kyle-thing sneered, trying to maintain its psychic grip. "Just a broken boy in a metal suit. Look at you. Hiding. Running."
Ben’s eyes burned with a Sovereign's fury through his visor. He didn't flinch. "I am the iron that doesn't bend. I am the nightmare that haunts the Abyss. Now, get out of my sight before I show you what a real monster looks like."
The Hallucinogenic Guardians—spectral entities that fed on trauma—realized too late that they hadn't caught a victim. They had accidentally invited a predator into their midst.
Lloyd grabbed Ben’s shoulder. "Ben! It's not real! It's a Psi-Op!"
Ben didn't hear him. He shoved Lloyd away with enhanced strength.
"Get away!" Ben screamed at the empty air. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
Lloyd stumbled back. The jungle around him intensified. He saw his squad. His old squad from Earth. They were lying in the mud, their bodies torn apart by Firefly drones.
"Major," one of them gargled, blood bubbling from his mouth. "Why did you leave us? You had the extraction codes."
"It's a lie," Lloyd hissed, closing his eyes. "I didn't leave you. We were overrun."
"You survived," the ghost whispered. "You always survive. You use people as shields. Just like you used Jasmin."
The name hit Lloyd like a physical punch. Jasmin. He saw her now. Shattered diamond dust on the floor.
"You killed her," the ghost of Jasmin said, her voice cold. "You made me a weapon, and then you let me break."
Lloyd’s heart hammered against his ribs. The guilt was a tidal wave. It was suffocating. He wanted to fall to his knees. He wanted to apologize.
"No," Lloyd said.
He forced his eyes open. He forced his mind to work. This was a tactical assault. This was enemy action.
"System," Lloyd growled. "Activate [Blue Ring Eyes]. Protocol: Sensory Seal."
[Acknowledged. Initiating Emotional Dampening.]
Lloyd’s eyes, hidden behind the visor, changed. The sclera turned black. The blue rings glowed.
He didn't look outward. He looked inward.
He visualized his emotions—the grief, the guilt, the fear—as a room. And he slammed the door.
CLICK.
The feeling vanished. The pain in his chest evaporated. The tears stopped.
He felt nothing. He was cold. He was logical. He was a machine.
He looked at the jungle. It flickered. The dead soldiers dissolved into gray mist.
He looked at Jasmin. She wasn't Jasmin. She was a swirling vortex of purple mana, a parasite trying to latch onto his aura.
"Target identified," Lloyd said, his voice devoid of inflection. "Class: Psionic Parasite. Threat level: Annoying."
He turned to Ben. Ben was on his knees, sobbing, clawing at his helmet. The parasite feeding on him looked like a bloated tick made of smoke, hovering over his head.
Lloyd walked over to Ben. He didn't offer comfort. He didn't offer pity. He offered a solution.
He grabbed Ben by the chest plate and hauled him to his feet.
Chapter : 1820
"Ben," Lloyd said, his voice amplified by the suit's speakers. "Listen to my voice. Pattern recognition. Look at the image. Look at the flaws."
"He's here," Ben wept. "He hates me."
"He is dead," Lloyd stated flatly. "That is a mana construct. It has no heat signature. It has no mass. It is a glitch. Reboot your brain, soldier."
Lloyd activated his [Blue Ring Eyes] again. He projected a "Seal of Clarity" into Ben’s mind. It wasn't a cure, but a shock. A bucket of ice water for the soul.
Ben gasped. His eyes widened. The image of his rotting father flickered and turned into a gray smudge.
"It's... it's not real," Ben whispered, his voice trembling.
"Correct," Lloyd said. "It's a vampire. And we don't feed the wildlife."
He released Ben. "Can you walk?"
Ben took a shaky breath. The grief was still there, but the panic was receding. "Yeah. Yeah, I can walk."
"Good," Lloyd said. "We have a bridge to cross."
They pushed forward. The fog swirled around them, shrieking with the fury of a thousand scorned memories. The Guardians realized their prey wasn't just resisting; it was mocking them. They threw images of slaughter, of the burning ruins of the past, of every failure Lloyd and Ben had ever endured.
Lloyd ignored them, a tank of icy apathy. He walked with a steady, rhythmic pace, his thumb hovering over his ammo counter as he calculated the mana density of the mist.
Beside him, Ben didn't struggle. He didn't flinch. He walked with a deliberate, heavy swagger, his prosthetic hand dragging along the stone railing, carving a jagged groove into the rock just to hear the screech of metal on stone. To Ben, the psychic screams of the fog were nothing more than background static.
"Keep moving," Lloyd said, his voice a flat drone. "Don't look left. Momentum is the only thing that—"
"Shut up, General," Ben snapped, his Sovereign aura flaring in a localized pulse of dark iron that physically shoved the fog back ten feet. "I don’t need a tour guide for my own nightmares. If these 'Guardians' want to show me my sins, they better have a longer scroll. I've already memorized the first ten volumes."
They reached the midpoint of the bridge. The gravity didn't just increase; it attempted to flatten them into the bedrock. The air grew thick, like cooling lead, trying to force their joints to lock.
"They're trying to pin us down," Lloyd noted, his armor’s servos beginning to hum in protest.
Ben let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. He straightened his back, the metal joints of his legs letting out a lethal-sounding whine as he forced himself to stand taller against the crushing weight. "Gravity? Really? That's the best they can do? I’ve carried the weight of a fallen house since I was a child. This is a light workout."
Lloyd raised his rifle. He didn't fire a bullet. He channeled a pulse of pure Void energy, a conceptual wedge that tore a hole through the physical fabric of the mist.
THOOM.
The path cleared for a heartbeat. "Step on it," Lloyd commanded.
They didn't run like frightened animals. They surged. Ben moved like a black streak of iron, his cloak snapping in the wind as he bypassed Lloyd, refusing to be the one following. The fog clawed at them, its whispers turning into desperate, ear-splitting shrieks of "Stay!" and "Yield!"
Ben’s only response was to flex his prosthetic fist, the mana-reactive steel glowing with a dull, murderous violet light. "Make me," he hissed.
The purple sky finally bled away, replaced by a horizon of absolute, light-swallowing black. The nausea vanished, replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of ozone and high-grade spiritual pressure.
They stepped out of the fog bank and onto the obsidian plateau.
Ben landed with the weight of a falling meteor, his boots cracking the volcanic glass of the floor. He didn't fall to his knees. He didn't gasp for air. He simply stood there, his chest barely heaving, as he looked back at the swirling Gate of Despair with a look of supreme, arrogant disappointment.
"That was it?" Ben spat, wiping a smudge of grey ash from his shoulder plate. "I’ve had more traumatic experiences at a formal dinner."
"Save the ego for the locals," Lloyd said, though he adjusted his own grip on his weapon. He was looking at the path ahead.
Standing in the center of the plateau, silhouetted against the blood-red flashes of the Abyss, was the true Bouncer.