CALAMITY : Legends Of The Chosen

Karl Mitsubishi's Maze Death – "The Last Calculation"

The stone corridors twisted endlessly, but Karl had stopped walking. He stood still in the center of a forked path — arms folded, breathing steady, surrounded by shifting Nanite drones orbiting like a digital halo.

He knew he was being watched.

"Visual dead-zones: none."

"Peripheral scan: 360 degrees."

"Threats: neutralized."

He had dozens of cameras set — mechanical irises blinking from every wall, ceiling, and corner. Drones hovered over his shoulders, his back, even one inside his coat collar, wired directly to his optic nerves.

"You can't sneak up on a man with no blind spots."

Statues stood still.

Unblinking. Unmoving.

They couldn't act.

Karl smirked.

"That's what I thought."

He passed them — slow, confident — like a god who'd mapped every line of code in this twisted labyrinth.

But then…

The maze… shifted.

Literally.

The walls began to move.

New pathways opened.

And more statues entered — not from behind, but from within. From underneath the floor, from holes in the ceiling, crawling upside-down, like insects.

Karl's mechanical eyes tracked them all.

He deployed more drones.

"No problem. I can calculate."

He built a spherical sensor dome of nanite cameras — each giving him perfect vision.

For hours, he moved like a master tactician. Never blinking. Never breathing wrong. Every time they tried to move, he adjusted. Every second, a perfect counter.

But the maze didn't stop.

New rules emerged.

Suddenly — his own drones started breaking. Not physically… but mentally.

Karl frowned.

"Wait… the visual data isn't matching."

One drone saw the statues standing still.

Another saw them moving.

A third… just saw Karl, staring at Karl.

His own eyes began lying to him.

"...No. That's not possible."

"Nanite Vision Feed: Desynchronized."

The maze had evolved.

"That shouldn't be possible. I made the rules."

But this wasn't logic anymore.

This was horror.

The statues had learned from him.

They were mimicking his drones — posing as surveillance bots. Feeding false visuals. Creating blind spots where none should exist.

He tried to reset.

Tried to shut down and reboot his neural uplink.

But the statues moved.

One whisper of hesitation — that was all they needed.

They cut off his wrists.

Nanites spilled out like smoke.

He dropped to his knees, eyes wide.

"How… how did you—?"

One statue twisted his jaw open. Another bent his spine backward.

But they didn't kill him quickly.

They studied him.

Tore apart the Nanite core in his chest — slowly, piece by piece — as if they were unraveling the man who built machines.

He struggled to speak, voice cracking.

"No… no no no—this doesn't make sense…"

"You're just statues…"

They weren't.

Not anymore.

Karl's final moments weren't spent fighting.

They were spent thinking.

Realizing.

Calculating.

And finally—

"Heh… you learned."

"Guess I built my own death, huh…"

Darkness swallowed his vision.

Karl Mitsubishi — "Protocol Overrun"

"Pain is a design flaw. And I don't make flaws."

The maze changed. Karl had been aware of it — not through panic, but through data. The walls moved with patternless rhythm. The statues shifted without sound. But he didn't blink. He didn't need to.

He had eyes everywhere.

Nanite drones hovered in formation. Walls were mapped. Sound tracked. His limbs constantly restructured — transforming from blade to cannon to radar dish with seamless logic.

The statues? Predictable. They couldn't move if seen. And Karl never left anything unseen.

They advanced.

He counted them all.

They charged.

He became a fortress.

—Nanite shields.

—Arm-cannons.

—Leg-mounted seismic boosters.

—Rotating drone-mounted turrets.

—Nanite claws that grew and retracted like liquid metal.

"You want war? Download it."

For ten hours, he fought — never sleeping, never resting, converting every bit of internal VYTHRA into cold, unstoppable firepower. His calculation time dropped to near-zero. He could intercept a blink with a cannon blast.

He didn't let a single one touch him.

But the maze… evolved.

And it played dirty.

They stopped trying to outnumber him.

Instead, they began to consume his Nanites.

At first, it was microscopic. A single claw brushed his leg — and the Nanites in that area refused to obey. Karl recalibrated.

Then another touch — and a black rot spread.

Some kind of anti-Nanite corruption — like organic static, interfering with his code on a quantum level.

"New protocol required."

"Purging compromised segments."

He ripped off his own leg and grew another. Then his torso. Then a shoulder. But for every part he restructured, the maze sent more corruption.

His calculations started falling behind. Microseconds turned into full seconds.

"System lag detected."

"Visual sensors… desyncing…?"

He blinked.

The moment he did — one statue leapt through the blindspot, slamming into his chest with enough force to break titanium.

Karl grunted.

Not in pain — in realization.

"They've stopped mimicking life… they're mimicking me."

The statues now had Nanite-contaminated claws. They weren't moving like creatures anymore — they moved like him.

Calculating.

Adapting.

Evolving.

His own code was being used against him.

He unleashed Final Form: Chariot Overdrive.

His body split into a six-wheeled mech with mounted artillery and high-frequency shockwave emitters. He became a demonic war tank, carving the maze apart in a blaze of synthetic rage.

And he still fought.

Even when they tore his drones apart.

Even when his limbs fell off.

Even when the last of his Nanites began to glitch and melt.

He kept his sensors locked on the enemy. His AI tried to upload his final will.

He looked at his hand, cracking apart.

"System… overclocked."

"No backups remaining."

"I see."

And then…

He smiled.

"I am not afraid. I'm made of answers."

The statues collapsed on him — not like predators, but like scavengers picking apart a god.

He never screamed.

He simply stared — right until the very last optic nerve went dark.

KARL MITSUBISHI — "Protocol Reforge: Spiral Exe Drive"

Karl lay still.

Or… so it seemed.

His Nanites were flickering, corrupted. His limbs were missing. His power source was bleeding out, like smoke from a dying star.

The statues surrounded him now, claws raised.

Their code had eaten his.

They were ready to finish him.

Until…

"...drillhead.exe initialized."

A single spark of pure blue fire flared from Karl's chest.

And then—

A SCREAMING, ROARING, NANITE-DRIVEN DRILL ERUPTED FROM HIS SPINE.

Twisting, spiraling, howling with raw, mathematical purpose.

It wasn't meant for them.

It was aimed DOWN.

"The maze has three dimensions."

"It locked the sky. It walled the sides."

"But it forgot about one thing."

"The Earth belongs to machines."

The drill turned red-hot.

The statues lunged.

Too slow.

Karl's entire body shifted into drill mode — a screeching metal missile of AI-fueled rage and defiance. Nanites reinforced the cone. Friction ignited the edges. And with one brutal thrust—

HE PIERCED THE MAZE FLOOR.

Stone exploded.

The ground gave way.

And Karl vanished into the abyss — statues falling in after him, unable to follow without sight.

But Karl?

Karl kept digging.

Through stone.

Through roots.

Through a whole forgotten underlayer of the maze.

"If I can't break the system...

…I'll bypass it."

"Override this, you bastards."

EPILOGUE SNIPPET:

Karl, buried deep in the earth, connected to a minor power vein.

He'd lost 94% of his Nanites.

His left arm was a spinning remnant of the Spiral Drill.

His right eye flickered red.

He looked up.

Whispered.

"I'm not dead."

And smiled.

KARL MITSUBISHI — THE RELIQUARY BELOW THE MAZE

Karl dug for what felt like eternity.

Every strike of his nanite drill echoed against bedrock older than time. His HUD flickered. Death counter: 49. Each death reset his body, but not his memories. His pain. His growing detachment.

He hadn't spoken in weeks. Not even to himself.

"I am data. I am code. I am alloy."

But even the alloy cracked.

Then—his sensors pinged.

A hollow space beneath him.

One final drill. A shudder.

The ground beneath him collapsed—

And Karl fell into a perfect sphere of obsidian and deep blue light. Ancient circuitry lined the walls like metallic veins. The room thrummed with dormant power.

In the center, on three glowing pedestals, were the relics.

I. The Sword — EXCALIBUR (SEVERED LINEAGE)

A blade forged from the concept of kingship itself. It pulsed with raw command. Its edge was impossibly straight, its surface engraved with names no longer spoken.

Karl approached, eyes narrowing.

"If this is Excalibur... it doesn't belong to me."

He reached out—

And his entire body locked up.

His nanites screamed.

The sword rejected him.

He collapsed, coughing steam. His hand was burned from the inside out.

Unworthy.

It wasn't a weapon.

It was a legacy — and his wasn't ready for it.

Not yet.

II. The Cube — AEON LOCUS: ARC NODE ZERO

The cube hovered with unsettling stillness. Six sides, each inscribed with recursive patterns and logic-defying engravings.

As he neared it, the cube opened.

A flash of light.

Karl's consciousness fractured into a thousand angles.

He saw the maze. Every corner. Every statue. Every wall. Every death.

Then—

He reassembled.

And the cube floated gently into his palm.

Teleportation. Not with distance, but intent.

He now held the ability to anchor space itself.

Only where memory and emotion aligned.Karl's Aeon Locus (Arc Node Zero) — The teleportation cube he discovered in the maze chamber — has no limits on usage, range, or frequency. It's not bound to emotions, memory, cooldowns, or "once per day" rules.

III. The Third Discovery — THE SEALED GRAVE

Then came the third relic.

But it wasn't a weapon. It wasn't a tool.

It was a door.

Tall. Black. Breathing.

Laced with gold-thread seals pulsing faintly, like arteries on a corpse.

No handle. No hinges.

Just a carved message, burned into the stone.

"WHEN THE 50TH DEATH IS REACHED, I WILL WAKE."

Karl froze. His nanites shivered. The core in his chest dimmed slightly. This wasn't Hephaestus's work. This was something older.

He stepped back.

But his reflection remained.

Not on the blade.

Not on the cube.

But on the door.

It wasn't Karl.

It was someone else. Wearing his face. But smiling with no eyes.

DEATH COUNTER: 49

Karl's systems recalibrated.

His time was running out.

And whatever was behind that door…

It was waiting for death #50.

Karl Mitsubishi — Death #50: "Pathway to Zero"

The chamber was silent.

The glow from the ancient cube pulsed with soft, arrhythmic light — like a heartbeat struggling to remember what life felt like. Karl, for the first time in days, wasn't speaking to himself. No diagnostics. No sarcastic commentary. Just… breath. Mechanical and shallow.

His body was more nanite shell than flesh now. The carbon-plate armor along his arms flickered with exposed circuitry. His synthetic lungs hissed. From the ceiling above, a single statue had dropped down — one of the angels. This one was different.

It spoke in static.

"SEVENTY-TWO OBSERVATIONS. SIXTY-NINE INCOMPLETE. YOU CANNOT UNBIND YOURSELF FROM THE MAZE."

Karl didn't answer. He looked at the cube in his hand — the Arc Node — and, for a second, he felt it... respond. It shivered. Like a scared child.

He knelt, cradling it gently in his palm.

"Hey. You've been alone here a long time, huh? I get it. I was built for war too. Then abandoned when peace showed up with a new shiny toy."

The cube flickered once. A soft hum rippled through the chamber.

"Don't worry, little guy. You're not gonna be alone anymore."

Karl stood up. The statue lunged.

He didn't move.

The blow pierced clean through his torso. Nanites sprayed like liquid mercury, sizzling against the floor. Karl's vision dimmed. His systems screamed. Then… silence.

As his body slumped, crumpled against the cube, his HUD flickered weakly.

SYSTEM OVERRIDE.

ARC NODE RECOGNIZED.

BOND CONFIRMED.

50 DEATHS RECORDED.

UNLOCKING: CLASS—ZERO ENGINEER.

The cube glowed brilliantly.

And Karl's body detonated into light.

Death #50: Rebirth

He reassembled in pure voidspace.

No body. No sound. Just data — and her voice.

Not Alex.

Not a Primordial.

"You were built to design… not survive. Yet you chose survival. So we chose you."

The cube hovered in front of him, unraveling like a hyper-dimensional flower.

"You're not a Chosen anymore. You're a Conduit. The last Architect."

With a gasp, Karl's systems reinitialized. His body rebuilt from the ground up — sleeker, sharper, surrounded by a permanent warping field of data particles and quantum lattice-code.

NEW ABILITIES UNLOCKED:

Karl's Post-50 Abilities

1. Quantum Displacer (from Arc Node Zero)

Can teleport anywhere, instantly.

Can store blueprints of environments to return to later.

Can swap places with allies or redirect attacks through spatial folding.

2. Zero Fragmentation Core

Karl can now split his body into swarms of nanite drones that move independently.

Perfect for infiltration, rescue, or battlefield surveillance.

Even if his main body is destroyed, the drones can rebuild him from 1% nanite concentration.

3. Omega Forge Pulse

His arms can morph into any mechanical weapon he has seen or scanned.

Limitless modular transformation.

Each weapon forged in Omega mode is temporarily imbued with VYTHRA resonance.

4. Redline Protocol (Passive)

Every time he dies, he downloads and learns from the exact cause of death.

Permanently immune to the last method that killed him.

Death makes him stronger. Smarter. Deadlier.

5. System Ghost (Eidolon Upgrade)

His system AI can now manifest briefly as a separate projection.

This "ghost" can intercept enemy attacks, access ancient code, or link minds with other Chosen.

Karl looked at his new hands — blue-black alloy flexing like synthetic muscle. He stood up as the cube floated behind his shoulder, now integrated with his spinal chassis.

He cracked his neck. A new HUD pinged softly in his vision.

"VYTHRA: 122% — SYSTEM STABLE."

He grinned.

"Alright, maze. Time to break physics."

The cube in his palm pulsed violently, as if it sensed something ahead — something wrong.

Karl stepped cautiously into the dim corridor revealed beneath the shattered foundation. The red lights grew more rhythmic. Not mechanical… organic. Almost like a heartbeat.There was nothing.

Or so he thought — until… the faintest flutter.

A pulse.

One, maybe two. Then nothing again.

He followed it.

And then he saw her.

A girl.

He ran forward — and for the first time in the entire war, he didn't scan first. He dropped the cube. Dropped everything.

Stripped down, suspended in the center of a grotesque cathedral chamber — her body impaled to the wall with jagged bone-pikes, arms stretched cruciform, veins stitched into the architecture like roots feeding the maze. Her skin was pale, drained, riddled with incisions. Her mouth was sewn shut. Thick, rune-covered black thread stretched across her lips.

Karl froze.

"Who the hell…"

He ripped the black wires from her arms. They tore skin as they came free. Blood sprayed — still warm.

He didn't recognize her. But he didn't need to. The pain radiating from her was unmistakable.

She was alive. Barely.

[System Scan: Vital Signs Detected – 0.2%]

[Biological Signature – Chosen (Unknown)]

[Soul-Bond to Yggdrasil confirmed]

[Warning: Subject has been used as an energy conduit for extended duration]

"You're not dead. You're not dead." His voice trembled as he pressed two fingers against her neck.

"You're a Chosen. You can't…"

Her blood was flowing from dozens of open wounds, dripping into channels that ran into the walls — fueling the maze, feeding its infinite hunger.

And the statues…

He turned slowly — hundreds of them.

Standing motionless behind him. Silent. Watching.

Not moving.

Not attacking.

Because they were full. Satisfied.

Because they were feeding off her.

"This is your battery, huh…" Karl muttered, voice shaking. "This… girl?"

His hands clenched. Nanites began crawling up his arms, reacting to the surge in emotion he never thought he could feel again.

He didn't know her name.

He didn't need to.

He walked up to the girl carefully. The threads on her mouth were tight. Her eyes fluttered for a second — almost imperceptibly.

She was conscious.

"I don't know who you are," Karl whispered. "But no one deserves this."

His knees buckled.

"Why… Why didn't anyone find you…?"

He reached for the spikes in her wrists, and one by one, began removing them, carefully keeping her upright as her limp body began to collapse.

He cradled her limp body, gently lowering her down from the wall, her back sliding wetly against the blood-slick stone.

He noticed her mouth had been sewn shut, crude wire and dried blood sealing her lips together. A horrific method to silence her.

His hands trembled as he touched her cheek.

"What did they do to you…?"

Then, from his back, the Arc Node Cube began to pulse rapidly. A soft tone echoed, followed by an update:

[Blood Seal Detected]

[Spiritual Transfer Link Active]

[Source: Zixy Miya – Chosen of the Sixth Flame]

Karl's breath caught in his throat.

"She's... still alive?"

[Vital Signs: Negligible. Yggdrasil Core Detected. Resurrection Delay Estimated: 4 Hours]

[System Alert: Proximity to Artifact "Cube" Detected – Binding Now Complete]

[50 Deaths Registered – Threshold Crossed]

[Nanite Protocol: CHIMERA BLOOM – Unlocked]

Karl didn't look at the notifications.

He was focused entirely on the girl — on keeping her steady, on carrying her away from this nightmarish machine she had become.

"You're not going to be their power source anymore."

He cradled her broken form in his arms.

And behind him, the statues began to stir again — as if sensing their feast was leaving.

Karl looked over his shoulder, jaw clenched.

"Try it."

"I dare you."