Boom boom boom!
Grenades were hurled out from within the barrier one after another, thrown with all the soldiers' strength. They exploded amid the swarm of purple beetles. For a moment, flames scattered in every direction, and severed insect limbs were blasted into the air. The surrounding swarm was briefly cleared by the fierce barrage.
The officer directing the retreat caught sight of Kiana and Maria from the corner of his eye. They stood within the swarm, completely unharmed, not attacked in the slightest. He immediately raised a hand and pointed at them, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Those two! They might be the ability users creating these bugs—kill them!"
At this moment, he did not care whether they were truly the ones responsible.
Most likely, they were superpower users.
As long as they were superpower users, he intended to eliminate them first—better to kill the wrong person than to let one slip through.
Even if they were ordinary civilians, it did not matter.
Hearing the order, two soldiers raised their rifles without hesitation. The dark muzzles locked onto Kiana and Maria. Fingers pulled the triggers, and dense bullets poured out like a torrential downpour.
At the critical moment, Maria swiftly activated her ability.
The ground beneath her feet trembled violently. Soil and rubble churned upward in a frenzy. In the blink of an eye, a massive mound of reinforced concrete, five meters tall, rose from the earth, standing firmly before them. All the bullets struck its surface, sparking in clusters before clattering to the ground.
"As expected—ability users!" The officer gritted his teeth. Pulling out the pistol at his waist, he fired two shots at the bulging concrete barrier. "Bang bang!"
The bullets left only two shallow dents. They failed to penetrate it at all.
An elemental-type ability?! the officer wondered, unease surging in his chest.
Kiana looked at the crude earthen guardian formed of concrete and curled her lips in amusement. "You're pretty casual about aesthetics."
"Appearance isn't important," Maria replied. "What do we do next?"
"What do we do? Do you even need to ask? Of course we eliminate them," Kiana said as if it were only natural.
As her words fell, pitch-black flames ignited around her body. The rifle in her hand rapidly mutated within the blaze. The gun barrel twisted and deformed, exuding a strange black aura.
Kiana raised her right hand high, the muzzle pointing straight at the sky. Bang bang bang! A string of bullets shot upward, howling into the heavens.
"What are you shooting at?" Maria asked, baffled. She looked up, unable to understand the point of firing into the sky. Was she trying to shoot the air?
"Relax. Let the bullets fly for a while." Kiana smiled faintly.
After a short moment, the mutated bullets traced eerie arcs in midair. At incredible speed, they curved sharply and shot toward the military personnel.
"Pfft pfft pfft!" The bullets were astonishingly precise. They easily pierced through the barrier raised by the superpower user and shot straight into a soldier's body. Then they burst out from his back and flew toward the next soldier.
The male superpower user maintaining the barrier paled, terror flooding his face. He scrambled frantically to reinforce the shield, but he barely managed to protect himself.
He was utterly powerless to stop the twisted bullets that curved midair and slaughtered without mercy.
In the blink of an eye, the surrounding soldiers fell one after another. Blood spread across the ground.
After completing their massacre, the mutated bullets leisurely flew back, returning at a slower pace and drilling back into the gun barrel.
Maria saw clearly that the bullets were completely intact. The tips had not separated. Eyes had grown upon them, and their mouths—lined with sharp teeth—grinned hideously. Shreds of flesh clung to them, making the sight especially horrifying.
The only survivor—the male superpower user who had used the barrier—could not stop his legs from trembling. Looking at the corpses scattered around him, fear engulfed him entirely. With a "thud," he dropped to his knees, raising both hands high as he cried, "D-Don't kill me... please, don't kill me."
The swarm of purple beetles seemed to receive some kind of command and ceased their attack.
At the same time, a group of black ants, each the size of a fist, crawled out from all directions. They began methodically transporting the soldiers' corpses.
Maria dismissed the concrete guardian and walked toward the man alongside Kiana.
As the male superpower user watched them approach, a trace of vicious resolve flickered in his eyes.
Suddenly, he activated his barrier again, trapping himself and Maria inside it. Then he sprang to his feet like a mad dog and charged at her, detonating the bomb strapped to his body.
Boom!
A violent explosion erupted. Rolling smoke instantly filled the air, and flames illuminated the surroundings in red.
When the dust gradually settled, Maria and Kiana stood unharmed in place. At some unknown moment, a semicircular concrete wall had formed before them. Where the concrete had been torn from the ground, a crater now remained—the very spot where the man had blown himself up. The pit and the wall had greatly reduced the force of the explosion.
Kiana reached up and patted her ear, clicking her tongue in annoyance. "Tsk. Next time, we should just kill him outright."
Maria's expression was complicated. She sighed softly as she looked at the bloodstains on the ground.
"That was loud. My ears are almost ringing deaf," Kiana said, turning to her. "Speaking of which, you're pretty strange. You had time to defend—why not just kill him directly? Then we wouldn't have had to hear that explosion."
Maria shot back immediately, "You could've just shot him yourself. Why didn't you?"
Kiana shrugged lightly. "Wasn't I giving you a chance to perform?"
"I don't need it," Maria replied irritably.
This Kiana from the Will of Ruler treated everything like a game. That attitude made her deeply uncomfortable.
In the other girl's eyes, everyone seemed like NPCs.
"Don't tell me you've started identifying with the ordinary humans?" Kiana looked Maria up and down. "You can't even figure out your own stance. How did you get in?"
"Why are you asking that?" Maria frowned, displeasure rising in her heart.
"Nothing. Just curious. Don't you ever attend ideological education classes?"
"I've never attended," Maria answered honestly.
"Well then. A fish that slipped through ideological education. Let's keep moving." Kiana smiled and grabbed Maria's hand, heading off in a certain direction.
The two arrived at a pharmaceutical company and walked straight inside. Finding an elevator hidden in a corner, they pressed the button and slowly descended into the underground laboratory.
As soon as they stepped inside, Maria saw a voluptuous woman with long purple wavy hair, wearing a black evening gown.
"Queen of Insects, we're here," Kiana said with a smile, waving in greeting.
The Queen of Insects lifted her head. Her orange pupils fixed on Kiana and Maria. A charming smile curved her lips as she swayed her boneless slender waist and walked toward them with elegant steps.
"Kiana, we meet again," she said. She extended her slender arm and embraced Kiana intimately before turning her gaze to Maria. "And this is?"
"She's Maria. We just happened to be assigned to the same group," Kiana introduced.