The Mithril scalpel was no longer enough. When facing a biological porcelain god, normal tools are just toothpicks.

  Hélio Veras disappeared.

  It wasn't teleportation. It was pure optimized muscular speed. The air cracked with the mass displacement, and in the next millisecond, he was in front of me.

  The immaculate bone blade emerging from his forearm came down in a perfect arc, aiming for my jugular.

  I raised my left arm. The Black Crystal clashed against Hélio's bone.

  The sound wasn't a metallic clink, but a high-frequency boom that made the room's translucent walls vibrate. I was pushed backward, my boots tearing up the organic floor.

  "You are slow, Batch 42," Hélio didn't sound breathless. His voice was a melody of absolute superiority. "Your Parasite wastes energy trying to heal you. Mine doesn't need to heal anything, because I don't suffer damage."

  He spun, delivering a roundhouse kick that hit me in the ribs. I felt three of them break. I spat blood, rolling on the wet floor and narrowly dodging another thrust that pierced the pavement as if it were butter.

  "Your perfection is boring," I snarled, getting to my feet and activating the black chitin claws on my human right hand.

  I advanced with chaotic brutality. I punched, cut, and tore. With every strike I landed, Hélio's carapace merely glowed. The veins of liquid gold on his body pulsed, and any scratch I managed to make closed instantly, bathed by the mana pumped from the room.

  He grabbed my right wrist, twisting it with colossal force.

  "Don't you see? I am a closed, perfect ecosystem. You are a leak!"

  Hélio drove his knee into my stomach. The air left my lungs. The Parasite howled in agony. Then, my father grabbed me by the neck and threw me against the tower's organic window.

  The biological glass cracked under my weight, and I could see, far below, the blue flames of Valéria and Gristle consuming the Gardeners of Genesis. They were winning out there. But up here, I was being dissected alive.

  I fell to my knees, coughing up black fluid. My digital eye blinked erratically.

  [SYSTEM ALERT: ENEMY REGENERATION: 100%.]

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  [EXTERNAL ENERGY SOURCE DETECTED. CONTINUOUS TRANSFER.]

  My cybernetic eye locked not on Hélio, but on the red arteries scattered across the floor. They weren't just feeding the room. They were pumping the mana from Patient Zero—my mother, imprisoned in the central cocoon—directly into Hélio's heels.

  He wasn't invulnerable. He was simply plugged into the socket. And the socket was Helena Veras.

  Hélio walked toward me, the blades dripping my blood.

  "Any last words, Arthur? As a doctor, I recommend you don't try to speak; you have severe internal bleeding."

  I leaned on my crystal arm, forcing myself to stand.

  "The Hippocratic Oath says to do no harm," I murmured, blood dripping down my chin. "But euthanasia, sometimes, is the only ethical treatment left."

  Instead of charging at Hélio, I sprinted toward the central cocoon.

  Hélio widened his perfect eyes, understanding my intention.

  "NO! DON'T TOUCH HER!"

  He leaped to intercept me, but the distance was in my favor.

  I stopped in front of the cocoon of black roots and translucent membrane. My mother's face, frozen in silent agony, was inches away from me.

  I felt a pain in my chest much sharper than my broken ribs. I had spent my whole life trying to heal the world, fighting to keep people alive. And now, the ultimate act of love was the exact opposite.

  "I'm sorry, Mom. The shift is over. You can rest."

  I plunged my Black Crystal arm deep into the roots and arteries at the base of the cocoon.

  I didn't channel mana to heal. I channeled the dead code of Europe. The cold of the abyss, the pure entropy of the virus I had left.

  CRACK.

  The black ice spread across the base of the life support. The red arteries froze instantly, becoming dark glass. The mana flow stopped abruptly.

  Inside the cocoon, my mother's milky eyes blinked one last time. The tension in her muscles vanished. Her face softened, losing the expression of torment of two decades.

  Helena Veras took her last true breath, and the biological machine shut down.

  The scream that followed wasn't my mother's. It was the city's.

  Genesis shuddered violently. Without Patient Zero anchoring the network, the tower walls began to necrotize. The bioluminescent lights flickered and died. The floor began to rot.

  And Hélio Veras collapsed.

  He fell to his knees, clutching his own chest.

  The perfect porcelain carapace began to crack. The veins of liquid gold turned into black sludge. The Alpha Parasite inside him, deprived of its infinite mana supply, panicked and began consuming the host's own reserves to survive.

  "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" my father screamed. There was no more superiority. Only the raw terror of a mortal man feeling his organs fail. "YOU KILLED HER! YOU KILLED THE NEW WORLD!"

  I withdrew my arm from the dead cocoon. I spun on my heels, watching the man who had proclaimed himself God kneel in his own rot.

  "The old world was already dead, Dad," I walked toward him, picking up the Mithril scalpel from the floor. "And your new world failed the health inspection."

  The room shook with a colossal explosion coming from the base of the tower. The Dreadnought truck had just breached the main structure. The tower was falling.

  Hélio tried to raise his bone blade, but he was trembling, coughing up the same black fluid I had spat minutes before. The Apex of Evolution was dying of multiple organ failure.

  I raised the scalpel. There was no hesitation in my wrist.

  "Doctor Veras. The patient has entered terminal failure. Time to call the time of death."