Split Heat

In the sky, a man was standing. That was all that could be said. No, he did not have any ship, nor wings, nor any other advice that one would use to assume an individual was flying. He was just there, standing in the air as if it was solid. He had a humanoid shape but for Yuumi it was difficult to say if he was truly human or not, as it could also be a metal armor of sort.

"Primes cannot de truly destroyed conventionally. Even if you reduce them to lone atoms, they'll just reconstruct themselves in a matter of seconds."

"However, it is possible to hinder this effect with their own technology."

As he says this, he slowly descends into the ground. Upon reaching Yuumi's location, his design becomes clear to her. There was no other way to describe if not a cyborg samurai. He lacked human skin and was instead made of metal everywhere. He however still had a humanoid shape, but with horns and the lack of a mouth. On his waist, he had a utility belt that also held three sheathed swords.

He approaches Yuumi and takes something out of his pockets.

"Drinks this, it'll cure you of their poison. You can thank me later."

He throws a bottle next to her.

"Who are you?"

"My identity is of no importance now. You should take care of yourself in the meanwhile."

He says this while slowly unsheathing one of his swords.

"I shall take care of the beast."

Looking closer, Yuumi notices that his eyes are green, and the rest of his metal body is partially illuminated by green neon light. A beautiful design, she thought.

Not too far away from them, the Prime starts to regenerate again, but this time taking longer than usual.

"That's..."

"My Muramasa is capable of inflicting cellular damage at the sub-atomic level, in a way that those creatures have a hard time trying to regenerate. It's the perfect weapon to use against them."

The mysterious samurai rapidly advances towards the Prime's direction. While trying to regenerate, the Prime was still able to detect his presence and prepare for a counterattack.

"It's useless."

From the Prime's body, an omnidirectional heatwave of around 1.000.000° C is released. Compared to the surface of the Sun, this would be a temperature 180x greater. Even reinforced steel would be melted nigh-instantly. Despite this, the samurai kept advancing without changing his stance. When the wave was about to affect his body...

"Voidstyle, Form One: Kagutsuchi."

What happened afterward could only be described by Yuumi as logic-defying. The wave that was supposed to hit and meltdown the cyborg could not reach him...No, it did, but this was irrelevant, for a moment after the wave was completely split in half. Indeed, the samurai simply swung his sword down. The heat was split, alongside the ground and air, all the way up to the Prime, cutting it not only in half but covering its whole body, destroying it for good. The shockwaves reached a nearby mountain, also fragmenting it. Such actions completely defied reason. Yuumi could not come up with an explication for what she had just seen.

The samurai slowly sheathes his sword back, and casually walks away from the already deceased robot.

"Amazing..."

"Apologies for not introducing myself properly earlier. My name is 01000001 01100100 01100001 01101101. In your language, this would be Adam."

"Right...so, Adam. Thanks for saving me."

"No problem milady, I've been hunting these things for years now."

"Wait, how old are you?"

"More or less 120 years old."

"You are not human, right?"

"I was, once. But I was weak. I had to become stronger to fight them, so I gave up on my humanity."

"So you are a cyborg now?"

"That's one way of saying it. I prefer the term [Bio-enginerred lifeform]."

"Wait, you are not totally robot?"

"My brain is still of human physiology somewhat, so yes. Just being an emotionless robot would probably not be as effective as a human mind with robot powers, if you know what I mean."

"I guess...who are they anyway?"

"They have many names. The Primes, Primebots, Bulkbots, Patterns, Harbingers of Chaos, etc. A cyber-organic species that came from beyond this dimension, whose goal consists of draining universes out of their resources while they keep evolving non-stop, searching for the final step of evolution."

"Wait, what do you mean, "beyond this dimension"?"

"It's a bit hard to explain, but imagine that a multiverse with infinite universes exists. The place or structure in which these universes are placed upon is called the Bulk. The universe would be a dimensionless point, with the bulk being the paper. This species came from the Bulk. It is unknown if they came from a specific universe, however. They might as well not even be from our multiverse."

"How do you know all of this?"

"Remember when I said that I gave up on my humanity to become a cyborg? I did so by merging my body with their technology. Prime technology. It was really painful, but I managed to make it work. Upon doing so, I gained significant data from their endeavors and information about their physiology."

"Wait a minute. You said you were human before, right?"

"Yes. What about it?"

"Is there a planet called Earth from where you came from?"

"If you mean my native planet, no, that's Aeria 22b."

"But humans exist there, right?"

"They should. Aside from political inflicts, humanity wasn't suffering from extinction when I left."

"Thank God..."

Yuumi says with a bit of relief.

"Can you help me get there? Also, how come you reached this place without a spaceship of the sort?"

"My body is built-in with antimatter propulsion allowing me to fly in outer space just fine. And as I'm a cyborg now, lack of oxygen in the vacuum isn't an issue. But to answer your question, I'm afraid I cannot serve of help anymore. I have my own goals to pursue, and this involves hunting the rest of the Primes that are still wandering around this sector, with the possibility of Omegas being one of them."

"Omegas?"

"A sub-specie of Prime. The one we just destroyed was an Alpha. Dangerous, but not as much as an Omega. Compared to them, even an Alpha may as well be of primitive technology."

That was certainly a kind of enemy that Yuumi wouldn't want to stumble upon under any circumstance. The universe was scary, but now this fact suddenly became exponentially greater.

"Great..."