Boom!
It felt as if Ethan's brain had exploded from the inside.
The moment the Sandevistan's effect ended, the silent world shattered. Sound rushed back all at once. The battlefield turned noisy again, and the pain hit him like a tidal wave. His body convulsed as though a monstrous electric current had just run through every nerve in his flesh. His skull throbbed so violently that it felt ready to split apart.
A flood of scarlet warnings flashed before his eyes.
Current cyberware load: 290 / 300
Warning. Warning.
You are approaching the limit. Further overload may cause catastrophic damage to brain tissue, central nervous system failure, and irreversible soul instability.
The warnings kept flashing, frantic and relentless.
Ethan ignored every one of them.
He knew the price of using the Sandevistan. He had always known. Every activation ripped through his body like a storm. It damaged his nerves, strained his implants, and pushed his cyberware load higher and higher. This time alone, the spike was so severe it practically shoved him straight to the edge.
But the reward had been real.
With that one burst of impossible speed, he had cut down a god.
One of the towering false Buddhas had lost its head.
That single strike shattered the holy calm on the faces of the others.
"What was that?!" Brother Elias shouted, staring at the giant monk beside him whose head had just been split apart. His voice had lost all of its fake peace.
"It's a military-grade implant!" Master Rowan's huge face twisted in alarm. "I didn't expect him to be carrying something like that! Move now! Bring him down together!"
The giant monks moved at once.
Master Rowan thrust both hands forward, and the empty space around Ethan rippled like black water. Beast after beast spilled out of the void, spawning in endless numbers until the land around him was packed with demonic shapes. They crowded together so densely that they looked like a living ocean of claws, fangs, and shadow.
Ethan gritted his teeth through the agony splitting his skull.
"Sandevistan."
The world slowed again.
Silence swallowed everything.
Within that frozen moment, Ethan became a streak of death.
He rushed through the black tide with his alloy battle blade in hand, cutting apart every beast in his path. Heads flew. Bodies split open. Black blood and rotten flesh burst across the air in slow motion. He carved a violent road straight through the center of the horde, charging toward the towering mockeries of enlightenment.
Then the effect broke.
Noise crashed back into him.
His ears rang. His mind reeled. He did not even realize yet that blood had already started pouring from both nostrils.
That was the cost.
That was what the Sandevistan was doing to him.
When the remaining giant Buddhas saw Ethan appear in a completely different position, they understood at once.
He had used the implant again.
"Careful! Brother—"
Master Rowan's warning had barely begun when it stopped in the middle.
Ethan activated the Sandevistan again.
Another burst.
Another leap beyond human limits.
Another kill.
The golden Buddha in front of him never even had time to react before Ethan took its head off.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
That was all that remained in Ethan's mind now.
But repeated activations were pushing him past the breaking point. His vision started to blur. The towering Buddhas seemed to multiply, their forms splitting and shaking until the sky itself looked filled with giant faces.
He shook his head violently, trying to force the hallucination away.
It did not help.
"Form the array!" Master Rowan roared, and now there was real panic in his voice. "He's already suffering the side effects! Hold him there and he'll destroy himself!"
He knew exactly how dangerous military-grade implants could be. No normal person should have been able to push one this hard and remain standing. The backlash alone should have reduced Ethan to a corpse already.
All they had to do was outlast him.
That was enough.
The giant monks responded instantly.
Each of them raised both hands into a lotus gesture.
From their fingers burst countless streaks of golden light. They shot across the battlefield like ribbons of sunlight, twisting and curling through the air as they rushed toward Ethan from every direction.
Ethan's pupils shrank.
There was no room to dodge.
"Sandevistan!"
He tried to force it on again, intending to break through the flood of golden restraints and take Master Rowan's head before the trap could close.
But the activation failed.
A violent surge of pain stabbed through his skull.
He coughed and spat blood.
His vision went black for a second.
Using the Sandevistan too many times in a row had finally caused a misfire.
The golden bands struck.
They wrapped around him like a living plague.
His wrists.
His ankles.
His neck.
His head.
Every movable part of his body was bound in glowing restraints, locking him in place.
Clang.
The alloy battle blade slipped from his fingers and hit the ground.
"Sandevistan!"
He tried again, desperate now. But a glowing formation flared to life beneath his feet. Streams of data erupted across it like a net, suppressing every implant in his system at once.
The Sandevistan died.
His Kerenzikov died.
Every enhancement in his body went silent.
In a single moment, Ethan fell into complete disadvantage.
Master Rowan looked down at him from above, cold and indifferent. Around him stood the giant Buddhas that remained, while the headless forms of the fallen ones loomed nearby like broken idols.
Then the puppet that looked like Ethan's sister stepped forward.
The AI girl.
The one wearing his sister's face.
By now Ethan's thoughts were already fraying. Blood ran down from his forehead into his eyes, blurring the world further. His mind, weakened by pain and overload, could not hold onto reason as tightly as before.
For one terrifying instant, he thought she was real.
"Xiao Tao…" he whispered hoarsely. "Why are you here? It's dangerous. Go… get out of here…"
The puppet bent down.
Its expression stayed empty.
It picked up the alloy battle blade Ethan had dropped.
And then—
it drove the blade straight into Ethan's body.
The pain hit like fire.
Ethan's body jerked.
At that very moment, the light returned to the girl's eyes.
Her normal awareness came back.
She looked down at the sword in her hands, now buried in Ethan's body. Then she looked at the blood all over him.
Her face broke.
"Brother! Brother!" she cried, dropping to her knees. "What happened to you? I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Waaaah…"
She sobbed helplessly, as though she truly did not understand what she had just done.
Even through the terrible pain, Ethan tried to smile.
"Xiao Tao… it's okay… I'm okay…"
The words turned into coughing. Blood filled his mouth.
Even that tiny attempt to comfort her sent agony tearing through him.
So this was it.
This was the end.
Master Rowan looked down at Ethan with the same detached indifference one might show an insect trapped underfoot.
And then—
The world began to shake.
A deep rumbling rolled through the battlefield.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
The sky darkened.
At first Master Rowan frowned, confused. This world was fully under the Nine Lotus Temple's control. Nothing should have changed unless they willed it.
Then he understood.
The sky was not darkening.
Something enormous was blotting out the light.
A shadow spread overhead, vast and crushing.
Master Rowan knew at once what it was.
The Demon King.
It had come.
From far away, a towering presence approached with an aura so terrifying that even gods would want to kneel before it. Space itself seemed to crack beneath its arrival. Everything in its path twisted, warped, and submitted.
Johnny Silverhand had arrived.
The emperor of the cyber world descended like a force of annihilation.
There was no holiness in him.
No mercy.
No false compassion.
Only brutal, absolute destruction.
With a single gesture, he crushed the Buddhas.
With a single wave, he tore apart the world.
The giant monks shattered like toys. Their golden bodies burst apart. Their chanting died. The battlefield ripped open. The sky split. Space itself collapsed into nothingness beneath his fury.
Everything was being erased.
And then—
Ethan gasped and woke up.
He tore the Braindance rig off his head and smashed it to pieces against the floor.
The temple room spun before him, but he forced himself upright.
All around him, the monks were in chaos.
The backlash from the failed mental prison had hit them hard. Corrupted data streamed wildly through their black cybernetic eyes, flashing in mad patterns. The weaker monks collapsed to the ground, twitching or unconscious. Even the higher-ranking ones could barely remain seated.
The room that had once seemed so serene now looked like a nest of broken machines.
Ethan's expression turned ice-cold.
Without hesitation, he raised the Crusher.
Boom!
Brother Elias, standing closest, lost his head instantly. It burst apart into blood, bone, and shattered cybernetics.
The others panicked.
Gone was their calm.
Gone was their detachment.
Now they were terrified men trying to flee.
"Sandevistan."
Ethan's voice was flat and freezing.
Time slowed.
Silence returned.
Before him, the red WARNING signs flashed over and over, brighter than ever, as though screaming at him to stop.
He did not care.
"Noisy," he muttered.
He lifted the Crusher and blew apart the head of another hacker monk. Then he moved with the battle blade, cutting across throats with clean, efficient strikes. One neck after another opened under his blade while the monks remained trapped in suspended time, still frozen in the middle of their panicked retreat.
Then the effect ended.
Time resumed.
Blood erupted from multiple throats at once.
The monks clutched at their necks, making choking sounds as they collapsed. Most of them never even understood what had happened.
The survivors recoiled in horror when they saw Ethan standing behind them.
One of the Cyber monks shouted, "What are you doing? Go! Stop him!"
The ordinary monks hesitated.
Then the eerie red light flashed through their cybernetic eyes again.
Whatever will remained in them vanished.
Their faces went blank.
They charged Ethan like puppets.
Ethan gave a cold snort.
"No matter how many of you come, it changes nothing."
There was no time to reload the shotgun. He holstered it, gripped the alloy battle blade with both hands, and stepped into the crowd.
What followed was not a fight.
It was slaughter.
His footwork was precise. His sword strokes were clean and vicious. He moved like a reaper in the middle of a field, and every swing harvested another life. Heads fell. Bodies crumpled. Blood sprayed across the temple floor.
The Cyber monk directing the charge watched the defenders drop one after another, his face filling with disbelief and terror. His body kept backing away, unable to stop.
Just as Ethan was about to finish the last of them, more footsteps and shouts erupted from outside.
Reinforcements.
More monks from the Nine Lotus Temple poured in, along with two more high-level Cyber monks.
Ethan glanced at them and understood immediately.
This had to be all of them.
Every remaining high-ranking Cyber monk in the temple had gathered here.
His lips curved into a grim smile.
"Good," he said. "That means all of you can die together."
He activated the Sandevistan again and charged.
Fresh blood streamed from his nostrils.
He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
The pattern was familiar now. First the bleeding. Then the splitting headache. Then the blurring vision. Then the collapse of thought. Then death.
It did not matter.
He had enough time left.
Enough to kill every last one of them.
He plunged into the new crowd. In frozen time, the monks' angry faces looked almost ridiculous, still locked in expressions they would never finish. Ethan slid past them, cutting throats and stabbing hearts. Life after life ended before time could catch up.
He reached one Cyber monk and drove the blade straight into his chest.
One down.
He turned toward the other.
Then the Sandevistan ended.
The surviving Cyber monk looked around and saw his companions falling all around him. Terror seized his face.
Ethan smiled coldly and raised his blade for the killing strike.
Then something changed.
The monk's terrified face shifted.
Melted.
Became someone else.
Master Rowan.
Ethan's eyes widened.
A hallucination?
His mind reacted instantly. He tried to trigger the Sandevistan again to eliminate the threat before it could do anything—
Too late.
The monk had been ready.
He struck the wooden fish in his hand.
Dong.
It sounded simple.
Ordinary.
But to Ethan, it was the sound of disaster.
Immediately, his senses began to fail.
The sounds around him weakened, as if the world were sinking underwater. Light dimmed at the edges of his vision. Darkness began to spread inward.
He knew this feeling.
He knew exactly what came next.
The loss of the five senses.
The fall into the abyss.
The helplessness.
The control.
No.
Never again.
He would not be dragged back into that prison.
He would not let them turn him into another hollow puppet.
He would not let them erase his sister from his heart.
If he was going to die, then he would die by his own choice.
Ethan lifted the alloy battle blade.
The false Master Rowan across from him was already retreating, wooden fish in hand, a thin smile on his face. He believed he had won. He only had to stay back and watch Ethan lose the last of his resistance.
Ethan stared at him through fading sight.
There was no way to reach him in time.
No way to stop him.
So there was only one thing left.
Ethan's eyes turned blood-red.
His face hardened with final resolve.
He reversed the blade in his hand—
And cut his own throat.
His body dropped to the ground.
As his vision faded, he saw shock finally appear on Master Rowan's face.
So even now, the monk could still be surprised.
A strange peace touched Ethan then.
"So… this is how it ends…"
His body was growing cold.
His consciousness drifted.
He thought of only one person.
"I hope Xiao Tao can take care of herself…"
His soul dimmed.
Everything was fading out.
Then—
A familiar prompt appeared before his eyes.
You are dead.
The power of reincarnation is still in cooldown. You have entered deep sleep. Rebirth will be available after twenty-four hours.
23:59:58
And with that final message hanging in the darkness—
Ethan sank into death, waiting for the next chance to rise again.
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