MasukShade Child slipped out of my shadow, fully restored and radiating several times the power she had carried before.She split into six shadows darker than the night itself and latched onto the backs of all six Praetorians at once."Enhanced Psychic Strike. Detonate."Six heads burst open like overripe melons, one right after the other. Every single one of them dropped at the same instant.Roland's strongest card had not lasted a second against me."How... is that possible..." Roland watched his finest creations get cut down like weeds, and the composure he had held onto his entire life finally crumbled. What was left underneath was horror and the first real sense of fear he had probably felt in decades."There's nothing impossible about it." I walked toward him without rushing. "It's just you now.""You little animal! You think you've already won?" Roland let out a roar, and the aging body beneath his uniform erupted with a blinding radiance as bright as the sun.His power kept
A crushing wave of force slammed down from the top floor of the villa."Who... dares kill my son!"The voice was old, but it carried absolute authority and a fury that shook the walls.The entire Wraith Dominion trembled under the weight of it.An elderly man descended the staircase. He wore a black high-collared military suit, and his hair had gone silver-white, but his eyes were as sharp as a hawk's. Every step he took exuded the certainty of a man who had never once been told no.His name was Roland Kain, the founder of Base Seven and a genuine S-class ability user, the highest tier there was.Behind him followed six Augments, but these were nothing like the ones I had faced before. There was no madness or instability rolling off them. They moved like precision instruments, silent and controlled, and each of them carried energy reserves that rivaled a full A-class ability user.They were Roland's final card, the Praetorian Guard."Some piece of garbage that should've been de
The villa's defenses did not last long. The Hellfire Titan tore through the front gate and the guards behind it in under a minute.I found Axel on the second floor, trying to climb out a window. I activated the Wraith Dominion, and the entire building became my territory. The walls pulsed with black light, the air thickened, and every shadow in the villa answered to me.With every step I took, the space behind me warped and twisted.A hand made of pure resentment dragged Axel across the ground like a puppet and dropped him at my feet."Long time no see, Axel." I crouched down with a smile and patted his face, which was contorted with fear."Ghost... you're a ghost..." His teeth chattered and the front of his pants had gone dark and warm."No. I'm much worse than a ghost."I stood up and snapped my fingers.A blurred shadow drifted into view beside me. It was Shade Child, still deep in her dormant state, but recovering fast now that the Wraith Dominion was feeding her."Let me
Sasha was in terrible shape.The expensive dress she had been wearing was torn to rags and caked in blood and dirt. A jagged wound ran from the corner of her eye all the way down to her jaw, carving through the face she had always been so proud of.One of her legs was bent at an angle that no leg should bend. It was clearly broken.The Augments had not killed her. They had toyed with her the way a cat toys with a mouse, then dumped her here with her injuries and left her to die on her own.Now a handful of zombies had smashed through the glass doors and were closing in on her, snarling. The look on her face was pure, bottomless despair.The instant a zombie's claws were about to reach her, the Hellfire Titan let out a single low growl. The zombies froze as though an invisible fist had clamped around each of them, and in the same breath they burst into clouds of red mist.Sasha screamed. Then she saw me.She saw me sitting on the shoulder of a monstrous wraith, my expression empt
Chaos was the best cover a man could ask for.Axel would never suspect that the sudden zombie outbreak was something I had engineered from the ground up. Right now he was probably scrambling to hold his base together, barking orders at whatever garrison troops he had left.However, what they were facing was not just thousands of rabid zombies. They were facing me, a wraith master with nothing left to lose and everything to burn."Master, high energy signatures ahead." The Hellfire Titan's rumbling voice echoed through my mind.I looked up. A convoy of over a dozen armored vehicles had formed a defensive line across the main road. The man at the front was middle-aged and wore a colonel's uniform. His gaze was sharp and his composure was iron-steady even amidst the carnage.His name was Kirk Braddock, Axel's most trusted attack dog and one of the men who had personally ordered the soldiers to drag me out and feed me to the horde."Run them over," I said."As you command, Master."
I stood on top of the quarantine zone's outer wall and looked down at the sprawling compound below, the perimeter covered in razor wires and high-voltage fencing.Inside it, thousands of zombies wandered aimlessly, filling the air with their flat, hungry groaning.They were raw materials for the base, kept alive to be studied, to test weapons on, and to dispose of garbage, the same way they had tried to dispose of me three days ago."You'll do nicely," I murmured. "You're going to be the opening act."I needed a key, something that could tear the defense apart from the inside. My gaze swept across the entire quarantine zone and settled on the center, where a single massive figure sat caged behind a set of reinforced alloy bars, separated from everything else.It was a mutant Titan, over ten feet tall, wrapped in knotted slabs of muscle, its skin a grotesque blue-black. More than a dozen thick steel sedative rods jutted out from its chest, and even with all of them buried deep, eve







