Chapter 98: The Storm Part 3
"I did not expect things to escalate this early, so don’t blame me for what will happen next."
Harlan crossed his arms. The gauntlet in his hand began to vibrate.
Along with it, his skin turned gray, its texture turning rough like dry ground.
But it did not stop there. It kept spreading until only his neck and face remained human.
The same dark red eyes appeared. When he looked down, he saw the corpse beneath his feet begin to turn into stone.
Lyrica watched the transformation with interest. Her rapier stayed raised, its tip making small adjustments that tracked his center of mass as he changed.
She also maintained enough distance from Aris, whose own transformation was cut off midway.
"Petrification abilities. I’ve read the files."
"Then you know what happens when I touch you," Harlan bumped his fists together.
"Do you really think you can touch me? Even the Lightning Empress is—"
"Shut up."
Leah moved first. Her tail extended and lashed out at Lyrica, forcing her to evade.
"Don’t be too arrogant. Lady Aris hasn’t even used a quarter of her power yet. You’re not even worth it." Harlan sneered.
"Tsk. You two talks too much." Her rapier turned into a blur and arrived at his throat in an attack so fast its starting point could no longer be traced.
His arm came up.
CLANG.
The tip struck the stone surface and deflected without penetrating.
He felt nothing through it, not even vibration. The contact between them lasted less than a tenth of a second before she was already gone.
He turned.
She was behind him, weapon already mid-thrust toward his spine.
CRACK!
Leah’s tail cracked across the gap between them.
The strike forced Lyrica to abort and skip sideways, the tip of the tail carving a shallow groove in the pavement.
Lyrica landed six meters back.
"Lady Aris, please go. We’ll deal with this pest." Harlan announced.
Aris nodded and accelerated toward the capitol building.
"Two on one." Lyrica glanced between them without lowering her guard. "Fine."
Leah rolled her tail and got closer. "I’ll take the front,"
Harlan advanced without answering.
Their opponent did not wait for them to close the gap.
She stepped left, found a line of approach that kept Harlan between herself and Leah, then vanished from her spot.
Her rapier went for the shoulder joint, the one place where stone coverage was uneven.
"No, you don’t." Harlan rotated and caught the thrust on the flat of his forearm. The blade scraped across it without breaking the skin.
Leah saw a chance.
She sent her tail snapping wide, curving around Harlan’s left side to cut off the angle Lyrica would naturally retreat toward.
However, to her surprise, she flickered out from that weird angle, and a split second later, Leah found a rapier inches from her throat.
CRACK!
Her tail managed to deflect it in time, and the moment their weapons collided, the two immediately began exchanging attacks.
Their weapons moved so fast that the sparks from impacts were the only way to tell what was happening.
Wounds started appearing across Leah’s body as the agent overwhelmed her.
"Time to end this."
Lyrica thrust her rapier one last time toward the throat, but her balance suddenly got disrupted and the attack missed.
In that split second, she noticed the cement beneath her feet had caved in from Harlan’s interference.
"Annoying."
She jumped back to regain her footing.
Fifty meters north, the sound was different.
Blunter but more powerful.
BOOM!
Nathan hit the ground hard, one knee down, the stone cracked in a radius around him from the impact alone.
Tron stood six meters away, the obsidian hammer resting across his shoulder like it weighed nothing.
Up close, the hammer looked different than it was from a distance. The head was not smooth. It was layered, like compressed sediment, bands of dark material running through it horizontally.
Nathan spat once and stood back up. "You hit hard,"
Tron said nothing.
"Not going to respond?" Nathan raised his right. "Alright then."
He closed the gap in a single burst.
Tron swung his hammer, but Nathan ducked and threw a liver punch.
BOOOM!
The discharge punched through the power suit. . Tron moved with the force instead of against it, stepping back, letting it travel through his body and out through his planted heel into the ground.
Nathan straightened up. It seemed the Elite Rank’s title was not just for show.
"Alright. Then let’s find out who has more power!"
He took a deep breath. The hot air around his arm got sucked in for a second, then snapped free in a single burst, pushing his speed up instantly.
He threw a punch midair and met the hammer head-on.
BOOOOM!
The two forces collided. The impact sounded like a bomb going off.
BOOOOM!
BOOOOM!
BOOOOM!
Far from the capitol, a lone figure stood on a raised stretch of a rooftop.
Francis stood with both hands in his jacket pockets.
The rooftop gave him a clean view of the boulevard below.
Smoke from the early explosions had thinned enough that visibility was good across most of the access road.
He could see the wreckage, split concrete barriers, and dark patches where fire had already burned itself out.
Most important of all, bodies were scattered across the ground, waiting to be taken.
He made the right decision coming here after all.
To everyone else, this was a warzone. To him, it looked like an open invitation to an all-you-can-eat buffet, with choices ranging from cheap scraps to high-grade cuts.
His eyes moved between them without hurry.
The woman with the rapier was very fast. Fast enough that even from this distance, tracking her required actual attention.
She moved like something that had decided friction was optional — no wasted motion, no recovery time between exchanges, each attack already containing the seed of the next one.
’He is as fast as Vance.’ he thought. ’Makes sense.’
He watched her slide through Leah’s tail strike, redirect off Harlan’s forearm, and come back at a completely different angle before either of them finished processing the previous exchange.
It was impressive.
The other fight was louder and simpler on the surface. Two people trying to find out which one of them was harder to break.
Francis recognized one of the combatants.
Nathan hit fast and hot. The air around him bent from the heat output alone, and every discharge from his arm landed with enough force to destroy armored vehicles.
The other one — the large man with the hammer — barely seemed to acknowledge any of it.
Francis watched the hammer user take a clean hit to the ribs, absorb it, and send the force back down through his leg into the ground in under a second.
’Kinetic dampening? No... I think one is much higher level.’
He pulled one hand from his pocket and rested it on the rooftop.
’I should start eating.’ His grin widened and he transformed into his beast form.
The concrete was cold under his claw.
He checked his energy without looking away from the fights.
[Energy: 70/70]
Full.
SWOOOSH!
He dove down. By now, he already pinpointed the locations of the Special Categories that just met their demise, plus the Covenant member who could transform into a beast.
’I hope most of them gives me a lot of points.’
THUD!
He hit the boulevard at full speed. A crater punched into the concrete that radiated outward and threw every loose fragment skyward at once.
The shockwave reached a wide area.
Men stumbled. One fell. A Covenant operative mid-sprint toward the barrier lost his footing entirely and went down hard.
For two full seconds, both sides of the battle stopped.
Francis straightened up from the crater slowly.
His grey skin caught the remaining floodlight from the one working lamp still mounted to a boulevard pole.
Four eyes moved independently, each tracking a different section of the road without rushing.
Then he moved.
Not toward anyone alive.
He went for the corpses first.
Three dead Defense Force agents lay near the overturned Gatling mount.
He reached them in under three seconds, crouched beside the first without fully stopping, and tore the stomach free before consuming it and moving to the next.
[Special Category Liver Consumed +190]
[Special Category Liver Consumed +145]
[Special Category Liver Consumed +125]
’This is much better,’ he chuckled and began dodging the bullets.
His main priority now was to conserve energy and earn as many points as possible.
More Special Category corpses were open for grabs, so the sound of notifications kept ringing in his ears like music.
[Special Category Liver Consumed +90]
[Special Category Liver Consumed +65]
[Special Category Liver Consumed +110]
New alerts stacked one after another, each one signaling another liver, another upgrade, another step toward the next category.
There was no time to read. No time to pause.
Only movement mattered. Unlike before, where he drained his energy fighting, he now focused only on devouring corpses left and right before escaping.
With his speed, not even a sports car could easily keep up with him.
[Liver 7200/10000]
’I’m close. I can’t afford to stop now.’
He devoured a hybrid for the first time, and when he did, the notification that followed was louder than usual.
[Liver +320]
[Beast Points + 1]
The large increase was a welcome reward, but the Beast Points were something he was unfamiliar with.
’What are Beast Points? And why didn’t I get any talents?’
Unfortunately, he did not have time to study it properly.
Another wave of enemies came rushing in.
’Come. The more, the better.’
