Chapter 45: Protocol War Begins
The quiet that lingered in the aftermath of the Dead Zone discovery was deceptive—an unnatural lull before the inevitable storm.
Ryo Kazen stood at the edge of the subterranean ruins, the fractured remnants of a forgotten civilization stretching into the black. The air was heavy with electromagnetic pressure, thick enough to press on his skin like water. This was no ordinary dungeon. It was the staging ground for something far greater—something ancient. Something waking up.
Behind him, Ayaka adjusted the settings on her scanner. "I'm picking up Protocol imprints everywhere," she murmured. "But these… they're different. Not like yours or the Overseers'. It's almost like… a different version of the system."
"An older version?" Ryo asked, his eyes still on the depths.
"Possibly even the original," Ayaka replied.
That word sent a cold ripple through Ryo's chest. Original. The one that came before the Shadow Protocol. The one buried to prevent it from rewriting the world.
Footsteps echoed behind them. Kaede, the leader of the newly restructured Protocol Hunter Squad, approached with a grim look.
"The Council just declared Code-Level War," he said, voice tight. "All users of unauthorized Protocols—especially Shadow variants—are now classified as 'rogue anomalies.' They've issued kill-on-sight orders."
Ryo didn't flinch. "So it's started."
Kaede nodded. "The Protocol War begins today."
They didn't even wait a full day.
By nightfall, Ryo's hideout in Sector Delta was swarming with motion. Screens flickered with warnings, satellite feeds, and communication intercepts. The Overseers had already sent elite enforcer units to track and neutralize him.
"They're targeting our allies first," Ayaka said, pointing at red-marked zones on the holographic map. "Raids on safehouses, blackouts in key cities. They're trying to cripple the resistance before it has a chance to regroup."
"Let them try," Ryo muttered.
The Shadow Protocol pulsed faintly under his skin. It had grown stronger—more sentient, even. In moments of stillness, he could hear it whispering. Not with words, but with instinct. Urging him toward conquest, domination, evolution.
"We're not ready for a full-scale war," Kaede warned. "We need time."
Ryo turned to face him. "We don't have time."
He tapped a command on the console beside him. The floor panels hissed, sliding open to reveal a chamber below, bathed in violet light. Inside, dozens of rogue Protocol users—volunteers—were undergoing synchronization tests with subroutines of the Shadow Protocol, guided by Kael's fragmentary data from past encounters.
"They volunteered to fight," Ryo said. "I gave them power. Not enough to dominate, but enough to survive."
"You're building an army," Ayaka said softly.
"I'm preparing one," Ryo corrected. "Because the Overseers aren't the only enemy. There's something deeper, beneath the Protocols, under the system's very code. The Dead Zone wasn't just a ruin. It was a prison."
Kaede's eyes narrowed. "For what?"
"I don't know yet. But we're going to find out."
The first real strike came without warning.
A high-level Guild compound in Zone Theta—secretly housing several Shadow-touched refugees—was obliterated by a Protocol Tactical Nuke. Not just a weapon, but a command injection—rewriting the area's very reality before incinerating it.
Ryo watched the footage in silence.
"Forty-six dead," Ayaka whispered. "Including three of our sleeper agents."
"They're trying to bait me," Ryo said.
"And it's working," Kaede replied.
He was right.
Ryo activated a Shadow Gate, stepping directly into the outskirts of the Protocol Enforcer HQ in central Nexis. Shadows coiled around him like armor. The system core flared within his chest as he emerged from the gate, cloak snapping in the wind.
"I'm done hiding."
He raised his hand—and the sky cracked.
The battle was chaos incarnate.
Protocol Enforcers unleashed wave after wave of reality-manipulating strikes—firewalls that bent light into blades, time-slow fields, null zones that erased code itself.
But Ryo wasn't just surviving.
He was learning.
Every system he touched, he absorbed. Every Protocol he broke, he rewrote.
Soon, the battlefield twisted to his will. Shadow tendrils tore through barriers. Echo clones of himself struck in perfect synchronicity. Every strike, every counter, was being recorded and optimized by the Shadow Protocol in real time.
Even the Enforcers began to panic.
"HE'S EVOLVING MID-FIGHT!"
"He's not just using the Shadow Protocol—he is the Shadow Protocol!"
And then Ryo reached the command center.
Inside, Overseer Marlen waited.
Tall, white-haired, clad in a sleek armor laced with pulsating data lines, he was the executioner of rogue Protocols. His own Protocol—Final Command—could override lesser systems.
"You've grown, Kazen," Marlen said, drawing his twin blades.
"So have you," Ryo replied, calling his scythe from the void.
The room became a blur of motion. Blades clashed, time distorted, shadows ripped through dimensions. Ryo barely kept pace at first—until something clicked.
He stopped reacting—and began anticipating.
He predicted Marlen's next ten moves, weaving through them like water. The Shadow Protocol mapped the battlefield like a three-dimensional chessboard, analyzing countless futures in milliseconds.
And then—he saw it.
The vulnerability.
Ryo struck.
Marlen's Final Command shattered.
But Ryo didn't kill him.
He looked down at the broken Overseer, blood trailing from his mouth.
"Why spare me?" Marlen asked, coughing.
"Because you're not the real threat," Ryo said. "You're just another pawn."
"Then what is the real threat?"
Ryo didn't answer.
He simply turned away.
Back at the hideout, Ayaka was waiting.
"You shouldn't have gone alone," she scolded.
"I had to send a message," Ryo said.
"And did you?"
Ryo looked out at the growing shadows along the horizon.
"Yes," he said. "The Protocol War has begun. And I won't lose a second time."
End of Chapter 45