Silence as it looked upon the solder standing.
It moved like a cannon firing.
No warning.
No sound before the sound.
The water on the floor split where it passed through.
Two clean lines.
Then closed back.
The shields never came up.
Not in time.
One soldier.
There one moment.
Not the next.
Blood.
Guts.
Iron in the air.
Mixing with the water below before anyone had processed what had left with it.
The rest stood frozen.
Shock living in the body before the mind catches up.
Just a second.
But a second was everything in here.
Minjun saw it moving.
The pattern of it.
The way it displaced water before it arrived.
How it telegraphed through the surface before the eyes could find it.
He roared.
Skill activated — Unraveled Presence.
The world slowed.
Just a fraction.
Just enough.
Two soldiers read it without being told.
Blades already moving.
The mana between them finding the other.
Unifying.
Building toward something neither blade could do alone.
They hit the creature from behind.
The combined slash opening it from one side to the other.
The sound it made wasn't a sound that belonged in the world above.
It screamed.
The room shook with it.
The crystals vibrating.
The water rippling outward from the center.
Then the system.
High mid level skill activated — Poisonous Foul.
The green came from its mouth first.
Then everywhere.
Smoke but not smoke.
The color of something that had no business being breathed.
It moved low.
Hugging the water.
Spreading.
Minjun's voice.
"Get back. All of you."
The two soldiers who had landed the slash were already inside it.
Still cutting.
Relentless.
Their blades finding the creature over and over.
Not stopping.
The green found them.
They coughed first.
Small.
Then not small.
Their eyes went.
The color leaving them.
Green replacing what had been there.
They vomited.
Not from the stomach.
From somewhere deeper.
Something that wasn't meant to leave the body leaving it anyway.
They hit the water.
The creature above them dissolved into laughter.
A sound like stone grinding against stone at the bottom of something very deep.
Then the bullets came.
Another round.
Consuming it from every direction that still had someone standing in it.
The drones lifted from the wet floor.
One by one.
Water dripping from their casings.
Rotors finding air again.
Rising.
Cameras turning back toward the center of the room.
Finding what was still moving.
Finding what wasn't.