Second Genesis

The heat became overwhelming the instant Grey’s crystal armor shattered, but that didn’t stop him for even a moment.

The new shingles already beginning to reform over his skin shifted in color before they could fully settle, their internal composition changing as Grey reached into the abilities he had stolen from the Dormaji.

He had already absorbed what their strange crystalline bodies could do, but when he used that power against the bastard lying behind him with a hole through its spine, he had mostly been showing off.

He hadn’t needed the armor to beat that Dormaji, he had only wanted to piss him off by copying something the bastard probably considered unique to his Race. That and reminding him that Grey got his hands on those abilities by eating his kind.

But since Veyrath wanted to play, they would play.

Grey had already said before that his ability to use the Dormaji’s gifts was probably better than the Dormaji themselves, and it wasn’t just because his Resonant Sense gave him finer control.

Grey was a mech craftsman, and his understanding of raw materials had reached a point that would have sounded completely ridiculous to the version of himself who first stumbled into the Genesis Games.

There wasn’t a single material at or beneath the Dominion Class that he didn’t know. And in the rare case there was, it would have taken him an instant of time to comprehend its properties just based on his knowledge of everything else.

In the past, that knowledge had only helped him work around Elementals indirectly. Against lightning, for example, he had once needed to use Resonant Sense to barely interfere with the conductive pathways of the attack, redirecting just enough energy to keep himself alive.

If he fought those same opponents now, he wouldn’t even bother with something so delicate, because he could simply build an armor that lightning had no fucking interest in passing through.

So if Veyrath wanted to cook him alive...

Grey would make something that didn’t care about heat.

The first crystalline layer formed from Mirrorglass Quartz, a Vector Class material whose internal lattice reflected almost the entire visible and near-infrared spectrum back outward. It wasn’t especially good at surviving blunt force by itself, but against radiant heat it was absurd, because a large portion of the energy Veyrath was throwing at Grey never had the chance to enter the armor in the first place.

Beneath that came Glacierite, another Vector Class crystal, though one from environments so cold that ordinary metals became brittle long before Glacierite even started behaving differently.

Its lattice remained stable under extreme thermal contraction, meaning Grey could push the temperature of the armor far beneath anything his own body would normally tolerate without worrying about the structure cracking apart around him.

The final layer was the important one.

Nullice.

Grey’s eyes sharpened as pale-blue veins spread through the armor.

Nullice had one of the strangest thermal properties of any Vector Class material Grey had studied. Its crystalline lattice existed naturally in a metastable compressed state, and when it absorbed heat, that energy wasn’t converted into a higher temperature like normal.

Instead, the thermal energy forced microscopic portions of the lattice into a more ordered, lower-entropy state, locking the absorbed energy into structural rearrangement while simultaneously reducing the vibration of the surrounding lattice.

Basically, the hotter it got... The colder the damn thing became.

There was a limit, obviously. Feed it enough energy and eventually the phase transition would finish, at which point it would heat normally, but why did that matter?

When it reached that tipping point, Grey would just form more of it, replacing what had over extended itself in his armor.

Normally, surrounding himself with this much cold would have created a whole new problem. Glacierite and Nullice working together could drag the temperature near his skin down to levels that would freeze blood inside an ordinary person’s veins within seconds, but after what Grey had endured in the rebirth waters, cold had become one of the few things in existence he simply didn’t give a shit about anymore.

His body had adapted too thoroughly. The cold couldn’t hurt him.

The armor snapped together in an instant.

Silver-white plates formed first, reflecting Veyrath’s flames back into the air, followed by translucent blue crystal beneath them and finally the pale veins of Nullice threading through every seam.

Grey took one step, and the remaining pieces closed over his face until the armor became seamless.

Veyrath’s eyes narrowed.

Grey swung The Virtueless and the wall of heat split.

Not because Grey had extinguished the flames, but because the armor ignored enough of their effects for him to force his way through the rest.

The radiant heat reflected away, whatever penetrated was absorbed by Nullice, and Glacierite kept the entire structure from collapsing as temperatures on either side of the armor fought like opposing worlds.

Grey disappeared.

For the first time, Veyrath reacted.

His flaming whip snapped inward, but Grey had already crossed the distance that had seemed impossible to breach only moments ago.

The Virtueless slammed into Veyrath’s side.

BOOM.

The Elemental was launched.

His body streaked across the arena, flames pouring from him as he tore through the air before finally twisting and landing several dozen meters away.

Grey didn’t chase.

Instead, he planted a hand on his hip and spun The Virtueless lazily through his palm as frosty air rolled from his armor. The burning floor beneath him hissed wherever the cold touched it, while his white hair danced above his head, somehow completely unaffected by the inferno surrounding him.

The faceplate shifted and jagged crystal teeth spread into another monstrous grin. Grey seemed to get a kick out of playing the villain. Not only was he going to destroy all his enemies, he was going to make sure they were pissing blood with rage before they croaked.

Grey tilted his head toward Veyrath.

"Is that all you’ve got?" A wave of frost poured from the armor around his shoulders. "I’m still freezing over here."

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