Chapter 48: Protocol for a Walking Disaster

If Ilya’s last guiding session really was last year, then didn’t that mean he had gone an entire year without being guided?

Unlike Archer, though, Ilya had at least had a few formal Guides before. And strangely enough, that actually put him at a disadvantage.

A Sentinel who had never been properly guided for years would eventually have no choice but to get used to the pain and learn how to slowly bring their pollution level down on their own.

But Ilya was different.

He already knew what proper guiding felt like. His body had gotten used to having that kind of help.

So for him, suddenly going without it was almost like taking candy away from a kid who had been allowed to eat it for years.

On the other side, the swarm around Ilya was still enormous. Dozens of polluted bees filled the sky, their wings buzzing so loudly that even from this far away, the sound seemed to crawl into her ears through the livestream.

However, Ilya did not retreat. He suddenly stopped moving in the middle of the air.

For one short second, he simply hovered there, surrounded by the swarm as if he had been trapped.

Not long after, golden light burst out of him. It exploded from his metal arm and spread through the sky like a giant wave.

The flash was so bright that Summer almost had to squint.

A second later, the entire swarm was swallowed by it.

Boom!

The sound reached the rooftop a moment later, and Summer could even feel the ground beneath her trembling so hard that she had to crouch down.

Not long after, bodies began to fall from the sky one after another.

Some were already torn apart. Others dropped like stones, their wings burned black by the blast. In just a few seconds, the swarm that had covered half the sky was gone.

The livestream comments exploded at once.

[WHAT THE HELL?!]

[HE JUST WIPED THEM ALL OUT!]

[THAT WAS INSANE.]

[Did he just clear the whole sky by himself?!]

Summer could barely read any of it because her eyes stayed fixed on Ilya.

Ilya was still in the air. He was still breathing normally, but something about him looked wrong.

Before she could think more about it, Ilya suddenly lifted one arm again.

Several small black objects shot out from his side and fell toward the ground below.

Summer frowned and immediately guessed, "Explosives?"

In the next second, the ruined streets below erupted.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

One explosion went off after another. Fire and smoke rose from the ground as the blasts swallowed the remaining polluted creatures below. Red dots on Summer’s map disappeared so quickly that the screen almost looked broken.

It was like he had stopped caring about precision and decided to erase everything at once.

The viewers quickly noticed it too.

[He’s bombing the whole area?!]

[That’s way too reckless!]

[No, look at the map! It’s working!]

[Captain is going crazy.]

[Summer, tell him to stop!]

There was nothing wrong with bombing the whole area, but in his current condition and in the middle of such a heavily polluted zone, his pollution level could rise even more in a short amount of time.

[Warning! Warning!]

[Sentinel Ilya Noctis’s pollution level has reached 95%!]

[Guide is required!]

[Emergency Protocol Activated.]

[Threat Level: Critical.]

[Sentinel stability has fallen below the safe limit.]

[All nearby civilians are advised to evacuate immediately.]

[Military units have been notified.]

[If Sentinel Ilya Noctis loses control, lethal force is authorized.]

What the hell?!

These kinds of notifications had never appeared even when Archer’s pollution level reached ninety percent. So why was the military being deployed immediately when it came to Ilya?

Summer’s eyes moved quickly across the screen too seek for more informations from the comments.

[Wtf is happening? I thought S-Rank sentinel wouldn’t be as lethal as SSS-Rank?]

[The fuck??!! Anything above A-Rank is lethal! And rank ≠ threat level!]

[Exactly. Rank measures combat ability, not how much damage someone can cause if their body goes unstable.]

[Captain Noctis is a special case.]

Summer raised her eyebrows when she saw the last comment. A special case?

[His blood can create metal, right?]

[Yeah. And most of the tech inside his body reacts directly to his blood and energy.]

[If his pollution gets too high, his blood, energy, and internal tech can all become unstable at the same time.]

Summer slowly looked back toward Ilya. Golden light still flashed around his body from time to time.

[Think of him like a walking reactor.]

[More like a walking bomb.]

[That sounds dramatic as hell.]

[It isn’t.]

[If the internal system overloads, his body can basically go nuclear.]

[No fucking way!]

[How big are we talking?]

[Depends on the level of the overload.]

[Worst case? Around ten zones could be affected.]

[TEN?!]

[That has to be fake.]

[It’s in old military reports. That’s why he has a separate emergency protocol.]

[So that’s why they’re sending troops already.]

[Exactly. They’re not scared because he’s S-Rank. They’re scared because if his body collapses, the explosion won’t care what rank he is.]

The radioactive fallout created by a nuclear explosion would definitely become lethal if it mixed with the polluted air.

Even the safe zones in each zone would probably be affected by it.

[What’s the last emergency protocol for him?]

That comment asked the same question that was already in Summer’s mind.

[Well, we’re talking about our government here. Wdyt?]

[Kill him?!]

[They probably already created a protocol to kill him if he goes berserk.]

[Would Archer let them do that?]

[Archer isn’t even here! What if he doesn’t know about this situation?!]

That made sense. He had been offline for a long time, so there was a possibility that he was currently in an area where it was difficult to get a signal.

But wasn’t that strange?

This whole situation sounded too staged.

It started when Summer received her first mission to go to Zone 41, and then the polluted air suddenly blasted through the zone.

Archer went offline, and suddenly the military was ready to open Zone 41’s gate the moment Ilya lost his mind.

Summer let out a sigh, and even without anyone clearly saying it, she could guess that the government just wanted to find an excuse to eliminate Ilya.