"Let's get started," Chloe spoke coldly.
As I was the closest to the door, I pushed it open and stepped out into the night air, only to be met by a sky choked with numerous fire orbs zooming directly toward our transport vehicle. Lorn had followed close behind me, casually holding out a hand toward the incoming projectiles.
A shimmering glyph materialized instantly across his open palm. With a flick of his wrist, an invisible blast of compressed air destabilized the orbs, instantly shattering them into harmless embers.
Impressive, I exclaimed inwardly. So this is the true power of a glyph warrior?
Chloe walked up beside me and spoke in a barely audible voice, keeping her eyes locked on the perimeter:
"I gave Sebas the wrong timing for the attack. I deliberately told him that the assault would begin tomorrow morning, exactly as you advised."
"So he still firmly believes he's part of this mission... Now, let's see whether we can catch him lacking."
"If he's involved in any way..." She left the threat hanging, but her crimson eyes shimmered with a severe, merciless light.
During this brief exchange, the rest of the strike team had exited the vehicle. Seeing their initial magical barrage neutralized effortlessly, the swarming enemies apparently decided to pivot to close-quarters combat.
Various dark shadows sped toward us from the treeline. Some sprinted on all fours like feral beasts, while others skimmed across the grass so lightly they barely seemed to touch the ground. We immediately dropped into a tight defensive circle, waiting for the inevitable collision.
Lorn held his longsword pointed outward, suddenly radiating the stern, unyielding vibe of an ancient knight. Kelia spread her palms forward, a dense red mist coiling sinuously around her frame. Arum had stripped off his outer layers, wearing nothing beneath his Crimson uniform; his heavily muscled, rippling chest was fully exposed to the night air, and the intricate beast tattoo etched across his skin glowed with a soft, pulsing light.
The shifter twins suddenly blurred, their bodies violently morphing into two massive, terrifying tigers. One sported pristine white fur with stark black stripes, while the other featured midnight-black fur striped with white. Their stature was immensely imposing—easily as tall as adult humans, even while locked in their animal forms.
The vanguard of enemies reached us, and absolute chaos erupted.
Instantly, I lost sight of the others as we were completely swallowed by a surging tide of combatants pouring in from every direction.
A rogue vampire lunged forward, trying to gouge my eyes out with razor-sharp, claw-like nails. Sadly for him, his reflexes were far too sluggish. I simply slid back half a step and delivered a heavy, straightforward punch directly into his chest. The kinetic impact blasted him backward through the air, crashing hard into a cluster of his advancing comrades and inflicting severe collateral damage.
Hmm? This vampire has to be a young, inexperienced novice.
Suddenly, the wicked, dripping fangs of a coyote shifter flashed into my peripheral vision as he lunged to sink his teeth into my calves. I spun on my heel, lashing out with a fast rotational kick that caught the shifter squarely on the snout. Ducking instantly to evade a barrage, I narrowly avoided an ice needle hurled by a hostile mage.
Raising my head, the massive, lethal paw of a grizzly bear filled my field of vision. I stepped forward directly into his guard before the downward swipe could land, driving my palm upward straight into his gut. My hand punched clean through, withdrawing with the still-beating heart of the beast clutched in my fist. I casually dropped the organ onto the dirt.
The display momentarily gave the surrounding assailants pause, affording me a brief window to take stock of the situation. I was handling nine opponents—now eight—by myself. Judging by the sea of bodies and the violent sounds echoing across the wider clearing, their total headcount exceeded ours by at least fivefold. The rest of the team was carving through the remainder.
For an average supernatural syndicate, these guys might suffice as standard perimeter defense. But for a high-level cabal of soul-stealing bastards, this line of defense feels woefully underwhelming. Sure, there's plenty of cannon fodder, but I've yet to encounter a genuine heavy hitter.
Are they all just expendable fodder? Is something far more dangerous waiting for us once we clear out these grunts?
While I was deep in thought pondering the enemy's hidden reserves, I was caught completely off guard. Suddenly, the night was illuminated by a flash of light so blindingly brilliant it seared my retinas, followed by an explosive concussive blast that hurled me backward through the air. As I tumbled, I scanned my surroundings in utter incomprehension.
Ah, I see... That spellcaster must be the one responsible for launching all those fire orbs at the start.
In the distance, standing atop the reinforced perimeter wall surrounding the factory, a rogue mage stood fully exposed, chanting an incantation. He had just raised his hand, summoning a devastating bolt of lightning straight from the clouds down onto my position. The strike had been instantaneous, leaving me zero window to dodge.
If there's a strict hierarchy among these defenders, I'd wager this lightning-slinging mage acts as their chief guard.
The heavy, metallic smell of ozone hung thick in the cool night air as I lay flat on my back. Every single muscle from my neck downward felt completely paralyzed and numb. The attackers evidently assumed I was finished, because the same low-level vampire I had punched earlier blurred toward my neck, his fangs fully extended in a greedy snarl.
To my heightened perception, everything moved in agonizingly slow motion. I had been warned on numerous occasions just how intoxicatingly attractive my blood-signature was to vampires; I figured this particular guy wanted to secure first dibs on my carcass, which fully explained his reckless charge.
Does he genuinely believe I'm nothing more than a helpless fish on a chopping board right now? I wondered idly.
Or is he simply blinded by impulsive greed?
In either case, it's high time I stop playing around and get serious.
Without relying on any traditional physical mechanics, my body smoothly lifted itself off the ground, completely ignoring the fundamental laws of physics. It was a deeply unsettling sight, to be honest. The surrounding attackers, who had been certain I was dead to rights, collectively gasped in shock. I watched the vampire's eyes widen in absolute horror as he hurtled toward me, but he was moving far too fast to alter his momentum.
I hung suspended at an awkward, oblique angle, still rising upright to my feet. Despite my immobilized motor functions, my head snapped around to face him. While I couldn't physically contort my facial muscles into a proper expression, I did my absolute best to transmit pure, unadulterated schadenfreude straight through my eyes.
Suddenly, without a single prior warning sign, he spontaneously burst into flames. It was total spontaneous combustion. He threw his mouth open in a silent, agonizing shriek before being rapidly reduced to a pile of glowing ash. His surviving comrades froze in their tracks, entirely rooted to the spot as the horrific spectacle short-circuited their cognitive functions.
By that point, my internal recovery cycle had finished repairing the nerve damage, and I righted myself fully. The entire sequence—from taking the heavy lightning strike that paralyzed my body to the vampire's fiery demise and my subsequent recovery—had transpired in a matter of seconds.
"So, gentlemen, I'll admit your sneaky lightning spell was entirely on point," I called out, dusting off my tactical jacket. "If you had pulled that on any average supernatural, they would have been instantly killed or thoroughly incapacitated for hours. Sadly, you're dealing with me. Though it dealt heavy damage and temporarily locked up my nervous system, I wasn't put down for the count." (Though that miraculous survival was largely thanks to the Crimson Clan uniform's damage-absorption properties).
"I must confess, now that we're on civilized speaking terms... I don't even need to rely on physical combat prowess to wipe the floor with all of you."
My quiet declaration sent an instant shiver through their ranks. The wider battlefield remained a chaotic warzone, punctuated by periodic magical flashes and the dying screams of their associates. I had zero doubt that Chloe's elite squad members were making short, brutal work of the remaining forces.
As for the rooftop mage responsible for the lightning bolt, he had already pivoted his attention toward the alternate skirmish lines, signaling that my teammates were pressing their offensive hard and running up a heavy casualty count.
I now realize I was fundamentally approaching Willpower all wrong during my previous fights. I had been treating it like a specialized form of telekinetic energy. Even the way I conceptualized its application was overly detached—functioning much like the relationship between a carpenter and a tool, entirely separate from one's own hand.
I finally unlocked numerous crucial insights while facing Arum—more accurately, while struggling against the maddening opacity of his impenetrable aura armor.
Willpower doesn't require a physical manifestation to burst outward, it doesn't need to be awkwardly projected across a vector, and it doesn't have to travel down a specific kinetic path to impact targets. It is a purely ethereal concept. Because it lacks a physical footprint in baseline reality, it should inherently remain entirely free of physical constraints.
There were a handful of isolated instances in the past where I instinctively utilized it correctly—such as when I confronted the werewolf mercenaries hired to assassinate me and casually set them ablaze, or when I stripped the oxygen away from the Aso continent warrior, or even during my very first awakening when I mentally bridged the distance to reach Chloe in an entirely different city...
All I truly require is direct, unshakeable intent coupled with a targeted focus. No grand, sweeping hand gestures or meaningless ritualistic processes. Absolute simplicity remains the ultimate policy.
That fundamental realization is the master key to achieving maximum operational efficiency. Like this...
The exact moment that conceptual breakthrough crystallized in my mind, my cold gaze drifted across the remaining cluster of attackers. The grunts looked utterly desperate; they could clearly hear their comrades screaming in agony as they perished one by one, and their bizarre, unkillable enemy was rapidly draining their remaining morale. I could read their panicked expressions like an open book.
Before long, driven entirely by sheer desperation, they lunged forward to swarm me. They rushed me with a frantic, suicidal energy.
I raised a single eyebrow in mild amusement.
Collapse.
I watched in macabre, detached fascination as every single one of them instantaneously imploded in synchronized showers of blood and viscera, bursting like grotesque fireworks across the clearing. A few wretched souls somehow clung momentarily to life—like the unfortunate vampire whose torso, neck, and head remained intact.
I strolled casually over toward their writhing, mutilated forms scattered across the blood-slicked grass and squatted down.
Sigh. I suppose I'm simply far too kind-hearted for my own good.
"Let me alleviate your unbearable pain."
Stop.
Their brains instantly ceased all electrical firing, permanently shutting down. Their muscle fibers continued to spasm involuntarily, but their consciousnesses had already departed.
Burn.
The piles of gore instantly caught fire, blazing brightly before reducing to sterile ash.
I turned my attention back toward my strike team, noting that the surrounding skirmishes were rapidly winding down as well. Amidst the thick carpet of fresh corpses, I finally spotted the rest of the crew. Chloe had just dispatched her final opponent by casually ripping his head clean from his shoulders—a feat she accomplished without ever drawing her custom scythe or invoking her volatile blood magic.
Surrounding Arum lay a messy cluster of thoroughly butchered combatants. The shifter twins had reverted from their colossal tiger forms, though small crimson traces clung to their jaws as though they had sampled every single enemy they put down.
As for Lorn, the enemies lying near his boots looked as though they had been sliced up with absolute geometrical precision, like vegetables on a professional kitchen cutting board. Intriguingly, there wasn't a single corpse or drop of blood anywhere near Kelia; she stood completely isolated, maintaining an immaculate, pristine appearance as though she were standing in a clean gallery rather than a slaughterhouse.
"Well, I believe everyone is finished here," Chloe stated calmly once we had regrouped.
"Yes, looks like it. Though the mage who was throwing high-level spells down from the wall..." I pointed an index finger upward toward the parapet, "...decided to dip. I suspect he's already dashed inside to raise the alarm, assuming the noise of combat didn't already give us away."
"I know precisely the annoyance you're referring to. What a thoroughly irritating pest," Vina, one of the shifter twins, muttered aloud.
I was momentarily startled, as I hadn't realized they retained the capacity to speak while locked in animal forms.
Before anyone could reply, the harsh, blaring wail of an industrial security alarm shattered the quiet. The entire factory complex—or at least, our sensory perception of it—suddenly shifted and rippled violently.
In place of the decrepit, decaying series of dilapidated warehouses and rusted tin roofs, a massive, monolithic cubical white structure abruptly snapped into view. Its architecture was sleek, minimalist, and thoroughly futuristic, with complex, glowing geometric lines tracing continuously across its seamless metallic walls.
A single, heavily fortified bulkhead gate marked the only apparent threshold leading directly into what was evidently the true, hidden headquarters of the enemy cabal.
"What the hell is that?" I blurted out in sheer disbelief.