Utopian System

'Impressive,' thought Zantem while preparing for the final assault, 'but useless.'

With one arm less, Selene's ability to control impulses would be severely compromised. Her speed, her main advantage, had been significantly reduced.

She would be easy prey.

Zantem launched forward, his claws extended for the final blow...

The impact came from nowhere.

Once again a damn fool interfered at the worst possible moment.

Like a meteor falling from the sky, a new figure struck Zantem with a force that shouldn't be possible. The power behind the blow defied all previous encounters with humans, a level of strength that shouldn't exist among these parasites.

The transformed Artromus was sent flying through the air, his body spinning uncontrollably. The sheer force of the impact scattered nearby cores like leaves in a storm.

But the most shocking aspect wasn't the blow's force.

It was the pain.

For the first time since adopting this aberrant form, Zantem felt real pain. Not a nuisance, not an irritation, but genuine, searing pain that radiated through his transformed body. The sensation was so alien, so unexpected, that for a moment he couldn't process what had happened.

'Impossible,' his mind screamed while stabilizing in the air. 'More than two hundred damage points? From a human?'

The figure that had interrupted his victory now interposed between him and Selene, its presence radiating a power that felt fundamentally wrong to Zantem's senses.

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A moment before...

Selene's strength was rapidly depleting.

The loss of her arm and the massive damage she had received were pushing her to the limit, but her soldiers hadn't yet completed their retreat. Blood dripped steadily from her severed limb, though the system armor was already working to regenerate it.

She had to resist, had to gain every precious second she could.

Each moment she bought could mean another life saved, another soldier who made it to safety.

Her speed, severely compromised by the loss of her arm, barely allowed her to maintain distance. The imbalance made each movement a struggle.

It was a lost battle; the artromus would eventually catch her.

She knew it, but still continued moving, seeking to stretch until the last possible instant. The lives of her soldiers were worth any price she had to pay.

Then she saw it: a blur of movement passed above her... so fast that her enhanced perception barely registered it.

The impact that followed in front of her raised a dust cloud and sent the artromus flying like a ragdoll, the force of the collision creating a shockwave that made the very air tremble.

But that wasn't all...

In the instant the blur of movement struck the artromus, Selene felt the ground shake beneath her feet. Her senses, still sharpened by enhanced perception despite the pain, immediately caught the change.

The city wall had begun to pulse.

Blue light lines, similar to those emerging from the deposits when they were active, began traversing the divine structure like brilliant veins. Each pulse sent waves of power through the air that made Selene's skin tingle.

The wall, which for just over a century had remained immutable, began to move.

'Is it... approaching?'

It was almost imperceptible at first, but the wall was slowly advancing toward her, as if the city itself was extending to reach her. The sight defied everything they knew about the divine barriers.

But the priority was still the battle behind her...

When the dust settled, Selene had to blink several times, unsure if her vision was deceiving her. The figure before her was familiar and strange at once.

It was Lucien, but not as she remembered him.

His body had undergone an astonishing transformation. The system armor covering him had evolved, developing what appeared to be miniature artromus wings. His hair, now longer, floated with its own energy, and strange intricate tattoos covered his exposed face skin, glowing with a power Selene had never felt before.

But most shocking were his eyes. A crystalline layer covered them, giving them an unsettlingly similar appearance to the artromus's multifaceted eyes, though maintaining their underlying humanity.

The sword in his hands was equally strange, different from any weapon she had seen before. Its edge seemed to ripple with contained power, each movement leaving trails of energy in the air.

He raised it pointing at the artromus, who was already recovering from the initial impact, fury emanating from his transformed form in almost tangible waves.

He was almost unrecognizable, but she knew it was him.

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'What has happened to you, Lucien?' The thought barely had time to form in her mind...

The monster launched forward with devastating speed, but Lucien didn't retreat. Instead, he released a frontal magical explosion that not only stopped the monster... it did the unthinkable: damaged the artromus.

Before the creature could process what had happened, Lucien's sword found its mark.

An acid cut appeared on the artromus's face, the damage real and visible for the first time since its transformation.

The monster's expression was a mixture of disbelief and rage. Its transformed jaws contracted in a fury grimace while processing the impossible: a human, though one who seemed to have stolen characteristics of their species, was capable of causing it real damage.

"Impossible," roared the artromus, his voice mixing disbelief and fury. "You... you dare to imitate our sacred form!"

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The wall's transformation caught Zantem's attention for an instant.

The blue lines pulsing through the divine stone were an unmistakable sign: the parasites had managed to connect their parasitic mouths more deeply to their mana cycle.

Ten percent.

The realization hit Zantem with greater force than the transformed human's attack.

A 10% of their future siblings, 100 million sleeping innocently in their eggs inside the chamber, would never wake up.

They would silently dry up, victims of a mana flow diverted toward these usurping parasites.

'My Queen...'

The sadness his sovereign would feel upon discovering this loss made his fury grow even more.

But it was knowledge she would never have if he didn't return and give it to her. The eggs would simply wither in darkness, with no one knowing they once contained life.

Zantem's rage acquired a new shade of desperation.

It was no longer just about the insult of this human who dared to imitate their sacred form. It was about his mission's failure, about those lives that would never come to be.

"Tell me, aberration," Zantem snarled, his transformed features twisting with fury, "how dare you steal what belongs to the goddess?"

Zantem launched himself against Lucien, filled with rage.

Lucien didn't respond with words. Instead, his sword traced another arc in the air, the promise of more damage gleaming on its edge.