Tyler rolled his eyes. He had clearly seen Ben use every single one of his eyeballs to blast that wall open! Fortunately, once the dust settled, the temple's structural integrity remained mostly intact, save for the jagged gap Ben had "expertly" provided.
The team stepped into the dark interior. A staircase of impossible length stretched into the abyss, disappearing before it reached the floor.
RUMBLE!!
The moment they stepped onto the middle section, the ancient stone gave way. Tyler and the others lost their footing, plummeting into the dark.
WHOOSH!
Gwen reacted instantly. She hooked her staff onto a stable ledge and used her mana-infused sleeves to sprout tentacle-like vines, snagging Tyler, Max, and Ben in mid-air. With a grunt of effort, she hauled them all back onto solid ground.
"Phew..." Tyler wiped the sweat from his brow. "This place is a literal death trap."
"Man," Ben muttered, dusting off his Optic-Slasher chest-eye. "I should've gone with XLR8. At least I could've run up the walls."
Tyler looked down at the Carnitrix. The dial hissed, bulging with a new DNA signature. The Cerebral Architect.
"I have a plan," Tyler smirked. He slammed the dial.
In a flare of red light, Tyler transformed. He was now a crustacean-like entity with a massive, exposed brain pulsing with bio-electricity. An invisible psychic field shimmered around his head like a crown.
"Cool... he looks like a walking laboratory!" Ben exclaimed.
"Don't just look," Tyler's voice echoed with a cold, calculated resonance. "Watch."
Within Tyler's field of vision, the temple transformed. The shadows, the dust, the carvings—everything was stripped down into raw mathematical data. He calculated the structural stress of every tile and the trajectory of every hidden dart trap.
Tyler casually tossed a stone fragment onto a nearby step. CRACK! The tile collapsed into a pit of spikes. He began walking at a brisk pace, throwing debris to trigger pressure plates before the group even reached them. When a stray arrow shot toward his face, Tyler didn't even flinch; his pincer snapped shut on the shaft with millimetre precision, then used the arrow to trip the next mechanism.
"This form is terrifyingly efficient," Max noted, impressed.
They reached the heart of the temple: a massive underground grotto. At the top of a central pedestal sat the Sword of Ek Chuah, radiating waves of dark, pulsating energy.
"Too easy," Tyler remarked, his brain pulsing. "With the Forever Knights out of the way, this was a cakewalk."
Ben dashed toward the sword, eager to claim the prize. But a chilling wind suddenly swept through the cave. Ben's many eyes darted toward a dark corner, and he unleashed a merged laser blast.
BOOM!
A five-meter-tall blue colossus emerged from the shadows. It wore a golden pendant that acted as a shield, shattering Ben's energy beam into harmless sparks. The Temple Guardian roared, a sound that shook the very foundation of the grotto, and swatted Ben across the room.
Tyler caught Ben with a psychic net before he hit the wall.
"Roar!!" The Guardian lunged at Tyler, but Tyler remained calm, his mind already calculating sixteen different ways to dismantle the creature. However, before he could strike, Ben scrambled back to his feet.
"Wait, Tyler! Let me take this guy!" Ben yelled, firing another volley.
Suddenly, it became a training ground. Gwen floated into the air, chanting incantations and lobbing fireballs to test her mana capacity. Even Max drew his laser carbine to test the Guardian's armor density.
Tyler sat back on his crab-legs, watching the "sparring match" with a dry chuckle. The Guardian was powerful—easily on par with a high-tier bounty hunter like Tetrax—but compared to the threats Tyler had faced, it was a perfect punching bag for his family to sharpen their skills.
New Transformation Log
The Cerebral Architect (Brainstorm Variant)
Traits: A crustacean humanoid with a split chitinous skull revealing a glowing, oversized brain. It possesses six insectoid legs and two massive pincers lined with serrated spikes.
Abilities: * Hyper-Calculation: Can process millions of variables in milliseconds, allowing Tyler to predict traps, structural collapses, and enemy movements with 100% accuracy.
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