Chapter 3
Bzzzt—RUMBLE—
Thirty meters away, amidst a dense cloud of high-dimensional steam, the heavy airlock doors of the [Ghost Containment Train] crashed open.
Six A-Rank Agents, clad in fully enclosed black tactical exoskeletons and riding anti-gravity thrusters, glided out of the carriages like a flock of predatory vultures, hovering in the void of the Lightless Sea.
The train's high-intensity searchlights ruthlessly tore through the darkness. The beams of light swept across the sea of monster carcasses like broadswords, before finally dead-locking onto me, standing atop the dead Poison Spider.
"Target locked: Former Enforcer, Arthur."
The A-Rank Captain leading the squad stared at my blood-drenched body and the dark-gold cold fire burning on my left arm. Through his visor, a mechanical, icy voice crackled: "Vitals mutated. Confirmed as a high-risk polluted entity. Field Team, on my mark—carpet them with heavy firepower. Execute on-site erasure!"
No pointless banter, no demands for surrender.
Their opening move was to put me in the grave!
Click-clack!
The six agents abruptly raised their arms. The micro high-energy particle cannons on their shoulders and the heavy-caliber kinetic rifles in their hands fully charged in an instant.
Blinding blue rays and kinetic warheads wove into an impenetrable net of lethal crossfire, pouring madly toward my face!
"Erase me? You're not worthy."
Facing a barrage capable of tearing an armored fortress into Swiss cheese, I didn't retreat a single inch. Instead, my legs exploded with force. Like a meteor flying in reverse, I fearlessly charged headfirst into their formation!
"Ji—!"
Perched on my right shoulder, the Night Owl’s abyssal, pitch-black pupils sharply contracted, letting out an ear-piercing shriek.
Though it was currently the size of a hawk, the seven days of feasting on abyssal blood had catalyzed a qualitative leap in its core Law.
[Base Conceptual Law: Causality Blind Zone.]
A dimensional distortion, completely imperceptible to the naked eye, instantly expanded violently with me at its center.
An insanely bizarre scene unfolded!
The high-energy rays and kinetic bullets, now mere centimeters away from my body, didn't vanish or get blocked like they hit a shield. Instead, they seemed to stumble into an absurd "physical fallacy"—
In the exact split-second they were about to pierce my eyeballs, they abruptly and comically "derailed"! Bullets grazed my scalp, turning at perfect ninety-degree right angles and shooting off into deep space. Even more lethally, the firing pins inside the weapons of the two frontline agents inexplicably and illogically jammed into each other.
Bang! BOOM—!
Muffled explosions rang out as the rifles detonated directly in their hands!
The agents' exoskeleton arms were blown clean off. Agonizing screams immediately echoed across the comms channel.
"What... what kind of spatial distortion is this?! He doesn't even have his Sword Bone anymore. How is he doing this?!" The Captain panicked, his face draining of color.
"Take a wild guess!"
Taking advantage of the sheer terror caused by their weapon malfunctions, I had already carved into the dead center of their formation like an enraged, savage beast. In that fraction of a second of absolute vulnerability, my left demonic claw, forged of pale cold fire, brutally plunged directly into an agent's chest armor!
Sizzle! The frozen flames melted entirely through his high-grade armor and his internal organs alike!
I yanked my hand out, dragging chunks of flesh with it, and smoothly caught the kinetic blade dropping from his dead grip. With a pivot step to dodge an attack from behind, I backhandedly swung the blade, decapitating another agent at the neck in a single strike!
Blood erupted like an exploding fountain in the zero-gravity environment.
Like a cold-blooded assassin operating outside the laws of physics, utilizing the localized Causality Blind Zones constantly cast by the Night Owl, I butchered them one by one. With the most savage close-quarters combat imaginable, I reduced these roadblock agents into a floating floor of minced meat.
"Stop him! Fall back to the train! Close the doors!"
Watching his squad crumble in seconds, the A-Rank Captain finally wore an expression of pure, unadulterated horror. Stumbling and crawling, he used his thrusters to aggressively flee back toward the train, desperately smashing the emergency lockdown button.
"Too late."
In the literal last millisecond before the airlock doors sealed shut, I kicked viciously against the heavy blast doors, wedging myself inside through the sheer brute force that overrode the hydraulic jacks.
Inside the train corridor, sirens shrieked miserably, the red warning lights flashing like neon signs from hell.
Dragging my blood-dripping blade, I strolled through the front and middle sections of the train as if strolling through my own backyard.
Any remaining Scavenger agents who attempted to resist didn't even get the chance to scream. Under the flawless synergy between me and the Night Owl, their necks were snapped or they were cleaved in half.
Until, entirely bathed in blood, I kicked open the heavy doors to the very front driver's cabin.
"Die, monster!!!"
With nowhere left to run, the A-Rank Captain let out a desperate, cornered roar. His entire armor exploded outward as his potent A-Rank Thunderstorm ability manifested into a net of pure lightning, crashing down toward my head.
"Too weak."
I casually discarded my tactical blade. Taking the skin-searing lightning net head-on, I closed in on him without a shred of hesitation.
My left hand, burning with demonic cold fire, transformed into an iron vice. With impeccable precision, I clamped dead onto his throat, lifting his entire body off the ground like a helpless marionette before ruthlessly slamming him straight into the metal control console with a resounding CRASH!
"Ugh... ghk..." His legs flailed madly in the air, his eyeballs bulging out from asphyxiation.
Staring at him with absolute coldness, I formed a claw with my right hand and pierced it directly into the armor core at the center of his chest.
Puchi!
Accompanying a sickening, scalp-numbing sound of tearing flesh and synthetic bone, I forcefully ripped out the violently beating [A-Class High-Energy Ability Core] right out of his chest!
The Captain's neck snapped to the side. He was dead.
I turned around and casually tossed the high-tier core, heavily radiating deep-blue light, like a piece of candy toward the Night Owl that had just flown into the cabin.
"Little Night, catch your appetizer."
"Liiii—!!!"
The Night Owl unleashed a sky-piercing cry. Its beak opened like a black hole, swallowing the A-Rank core whole in a single gulp.
BOOM—!
A terrifying aura that felt capable of crushing dimensions erupted from its body.
Sensing something, the Night Owl violently smashed through the bulletproof dome overhead, rocketing straight out into the void of the Lightless Sea!
Immediately after, right before my eyes, its size aggressively multiplied in the freezing wind!
Five meters... ten... twenty...
Thirty meters!!!
In less than three seconds, the Night Owl—whose wingspan previously mirrored a milling stone—had dramatically transformed into a behemoth with a wingspan exceeding thirty meters!
The dark feathers covering its body resembled a swirling galaxy of the void. And the once-faint pale cold fire was now roaring like a tsunami across every single one of its quills!
Unfurling its thirty-meter wings above the train to blanket the non-existent sky, it looked like an ancient, awakened deity, staring down at the steel train as if it were a child's toy.
RUMBLE!!!
The Night Owl aggressively beat its massive wings. An immeasurable downpour of pale cold flames cascaded like a broken dam, aggressively flooding the rear half of the train through the shattered roof!
The surviving agents trying to hide didn't even get to utter a single scream before they were instantaneously incinerated into nothingness by this dominantly tyrannical fire of Conceptual Law!
Standing in the driver's cabin, untouched by the flames, I looked up at the divine bird spreading its thirty-meter wings and howling at the heavens. A towering inferno ignited within my eyes.
The Night Owl had finally passed its juvenile stage.
And I, too, finally held a trump card capable of directly ripping apart the rules forged by those scumbags on the surface.
Right at that moment—
Beep—
An ear-piercing electronic prompt suddenly echoed from a headset left on the deafeningly quiet console.
I looked down. The co-pilot agent—who I had casually chopped in half earlier and who lay bleeding out in the corner—was using his severed, blood-soaked hand to desperately press down on the [Supreme Override Video Link] button.
Coughing up foam and blood, he exhausted the last shred of his vitality before going completely limp the second the screen connected.
Static filled the screen before rapidly clearing up.
On the other end of the feed was the outrageously luxurious Supreme Commander’s Office, located on the top floor of the Control Bureau back on the surface.
My dear little brother, Victor. He was holding a glass of dark red wine, his other arm wrapped around a half-undressed Eleanor. Turning his face toward the screen with utmost arrogance, he sneered, "Team A, did you find my useless older brother's—"
His voice abruptly hitched.
The arrogance plastered on his face completely died the second he processed what was on the screen, instantly warping into an expression of unadulterated, bloodcurdling terror!
There was no victory report. No medals to hand out. Only a floor littered with severed limbs.
I was currently staring dead at him through the lens—standing there bathed in blood, left arm burning with cold fire, looking like a literal tyrant born symbiotically from the abyss.
Crash!
The wine glass in Victor's hand shattered onto the floor.
Horrified as if he had been struck by lightning, he shoved the screaming Eleanor away, stumbling backward until he knocked over a chair, "You... you're not dead?!"
"Long time no see, Victor."
I leaned my bloody face intimately close to the screen, curling my lips into a savage smile that made Victor tremble in utter despair.
"Wash your neck and wait for me. I'm going to drive this train inch by inch right into your office, and grind your bones into absolute dust!"
"No... NO! This is impossible!!"
Driven to the brink by sheer terror, Victor unleashed a mental-breakdown scream. Lunging at his console like a madman, he violently slammed his fists into the [Remote Directive Override] button.
"Go rot back in hell, you monster!! I won't let you come back!!!"
"WARNING: Train's supreme defense protocols have been overtaken by Surface Command!"
"WARNING: Current spatial anchors detached!"
"WARNING: Spatial transit coordinates forcefully altered — Destination: 18th Layer Extreme Abyss. Containment Site of S-Class Anomaly Entity [Dark Star Shadow Beast]!"
RUMBLE—!
The train's dashboard instantly exploded into glaring crimson red. All propulsion systems were forcibly severed as an unprecedented sensation of weightlessness took over.
I immediately went on high alert.
Victor had activated a self-destruct transit protocol. I was about to be sent to a place so astronomically dangerous that the dying agent gladly sacrificed himself just to give Victor the chance to push the button.
The hundred-meter-long steel leviathan aggressively plunged into a sudden, colossal spatial vortex, plummeting madly toward a deeper, blacker hell—a death abyss that radiated a chill cold enough to freeze souls.
With a sharp screech, the Night Owl aggressively dove into the spatial vortex, chasing right after me.
