Chapter 3
Phew—
Silence. A deathly silence.
Aside from the puff of instant-coffee-scented carbon dioxide I blew from my puffed-out cheeks, this "Primordial Blood-Wolf Fang" bone whistle—which my werewolf mom had hyped up to godly proportions—didn't emit so much as the faintest squeak.
An incredibly bizarre silence descended upon the bulletproof Jeep's cabin.
Two seconds later, the bald bodyguard in the passenger seat broke the ice.
He erupted into a brazen, mockingly hysterical laughter, almost tearing up. "Hahahaha! Did this kid get scared stupid? You're at death's door, and you pull out a broken plastic whistle to blow air? What, are you calling for a circus rescue dog?"
The mercenaries flanking me immediately joined in the sinister chuckling.
The lethality of them looking at me like I was severely intellectually repressed was honestly more insulting than an annual HR performance review.
"You guys don't understand. This is just a unique psychological-building ritual native to my family, used primarily to soothe the anxiety of bottom-tier employees who feel the urge to flip their desks."
Expressionless, I pulled the unresponsive bone whistle from my mouth and gripped it in my palm.
To be honest, I wasn't surprised. After all, my hot-tempered but scatterbrained mom was always getting scammed by shady vendors in the underground dark magic market.
But the mercenaries next to me clearly lacked the patience to discuss my workplace psychology.
The armored Jeep had already driven out of the bustling main arteries of the Manhattan financial district, turning into a gloomy, narrow, long-abandoned industrial alleyway that never saw the light of day.
"The boss said to chop you to pieces and sink you in the Hudson, but," the tower-like brute on my left suddenly spoke up, the thick flesh on his face bunching together in a sadistic grin, "I've always liked collecting a little 'interest' before the books are fully balanced."
Saying that, he reached under his seat and pulled out a heavy industrial hydraulic shear, easily half an arm's length.
That thing was originally meant for snapping high-tensile steel rebar. The blades even had dried, dark red blood caked onto them, radiating a nauseating stench of rust.
The mercenary on my right made no small talk. Like iron pincers, his massive hand locked onto my right arm and savagely forced my index and middle fingers straight.
Click, clack.
The heavy metal jaws of the hydraulic shear slowly cranked open. The cold, coarse blades pressed directly against my knuckles, even breaking the skin and drawing a bead of blood.
"Gentlemen, this is actually an extremely cost-ineffective leverage maneuver," I said, staring up at the dim reading light on the ceiling with absolute apathy.
"You guys are risking your lives to earn a few tens of thousands in base salary, while I just want an off-boarding certificate that guarantees timely social security contributions and strictly prohibits the use of hydraulic shears for mandatory layoffs. Why can't I just clock out on time? Why must you force me into a non-performing asset spin-off with organized crime syndicates?"
A flash of tyrannical murder flared in the brute's eyes. The muscles in his wrists bulged instantly. He was about to yank down on the handles and execute a "forced margin call" on my right hand.
"Since communication has failed..." I shook my head helplessly, and then, completely naturally, unclenched the five fingers of my left hand.
The "Primordial Blood-Wolf Fang" I had been clutching slipped through my fingers.
The moment it left my palm, the originally pale, hard osseous surface erupted with countless, densely packed, blindingly dark-red divine runes.
Crack.
With a soft snap, the blood-wolf fang hit the anti-slip floor of the vehicle and shattered into powder, as fragile as glass.
In that single second, air stopped flowing.
The blades of the hydraulic shear were millimeters away from severing my finger bones, but the sadistic grin on the giant's face had completely frozen.
He suddenly realized that he couldn't press his wrists down even a fraction of an inch further.
Not because he had lost his strength, but because the primary laws of physics inside the cabin had been directly overwritten by some cross-dimensional force.
Vmmmm—!
Accompanied by a terrifying infrasonic wave capable of rupturing mortal internal organs, the dim yellow light inside the sealed cabin instantly mutated into a dark red glow, as if we were submerged in aged gore!
Time stretched infinitely; gravity underwent a grotesque distortion.
The bald bodyguard in the front slowly turned his head, opening his mouth wide to scream, but no sound came out.
His eyeballs bulged outward due to extreme barometric pressure changes, and his blood floated toward the roof like weightless crimson droplets.
This was the highest-grade protective arcane art of the Werewolf Alpha—the absolute sealing dimension of the "Blood Moon Directive."
"Honestly, I feel pretty bad for you guys."
Suspended in the crimson, hyper-gravity space, I unhurriedly sat up straight and dusted off the wrinkles on my suit.
The next moment, the slaughter officially began.
There were no wolf howls, no physical monsters—only pure, unspeakable dimensional-reduction physical severing.
Riiiiiiip—!!!
The ear-piercing shriek of tearing metal combined with the sound of flesh being instantly pulverized.
Five invisible "Dire Wolf Claws," several meters long and impossible to capture with the naked eye, detonated out of thin air inside the confined cabin with unmatched fury!
The brute who had just been holding the hydraulic shear didn't even have time to scream. His entire upper body, along with the high-tensile tool, looked as if it had been thrown into an industrial shredder running at maximum output.
Blood, shattered bone, viscera, and steel shrapnel splashed like a torrential rainstorm within the exceedingly cramped space!
In the face of the "Blood Moon Directive," humanity's proud carbon-based flesh and tactical Kevlar were brittler than wafers.
Yet bizarrely, all that scarlet tissue seemed to have received explicit "compliance evasion" orders. Not a single drop of blood spatter touched my cheap suit.
Sitting at the epicenter of the storm, I was in the absolute safe zone of the eye of the typhoon.
BOOM—!!!
With an immensely muffled shockwave, the multi-million-dollar military-grade Jeep—touted to withstand RPG attacks—let out an agonizing metallic wail from the inside out.
The heavy bulletproof armor ripped outward violently like a crushed soda can exploding! The roof was peeled clean off by the claws and smashed into the red brick wall of the alley.
Ultimately, the steel leviathan completely disintegrated in the secluded alley.
Meanwhile, those arrogant mercenaries had been distributed seamlessly into the leather interior, reduced to unrecognizable mosaic puddles.
I pushed open the warped half-door and stepped out unscathed from a mixture of scrap metal and gore.
Amid the wreckage of the passenger seat, a tactical radio was strapped to a severed arm, its indicator light flashing frantically.
Communications had never been cut. All the way back at the company, Vincent had live-monitored this unilateral slaughter that lasted less than ten seconds.
I walked over, bent down, and spoke politely into the mic: "Hello? Mr. Vincent, are you still listening? I regret to inform you that the non-performing asset disposal team you deployed has been completely and mandatorily liquidated."
The radio was dead silent for several seconds, followed by Vincent's hysterical, supremely arrogant roaring: "Arthur!! You bomb-tricking, cheap-magic clown! You're dead! I've already mobilized all the high-tier mercenaries from Thunderbolt Security! One hundred and twenty men, fully equipped with heavy ordinance! I'm going to cast you into the load-bearing pillars of this building!!!"
Beep—
Listening to the dial tone, I pinched the bridge of my nose in exhaustion.
Capitalists are always like this. They'd rather spend tens of millions hiring hundreds of gunmen than pay me a few thousand bucks in severance.
Since he locked down the garage, I had to head back.
After all, the Bat-Ford my dad gave me—the one that requires virgin blood to run—was still parked down there, and I still needed it to commute to work tomorrow.
