Chapter: 4. The Power of the Unknown
In the highlands of a village at the edge of the desert, an intense battle was erupting.
This place had once been a military base, but after the army withdrew from this third-world country, it had been abandoned for a long time until it was found and occupied by a mercenary team led by Kane.
There were main buildings, observation towers, and sand wall fences, among other defensive structures. Although the buildings were severely weathered, the interiors had been reinforced and repaired, forming a solid shelter.
Now, this shelter was illuminated by blazing firelight and explosions.
“Still no contact with Captain Kane? That guy better not be getting cozy with someone else while doing business!!!” roared Isabella, the deputy captain of Kane’s squad, a brown-skinned sexy beauty, though her curvaceous figure was now covered in a layer of yellow dirt.
The armed assailants attacking the base were unreservedly unleashing all their heavy firepower onto a position less than a few hundred meters away from her, stirring up waves of dust in the air.
“No, the signal is being jammed. We can’t contact the outside right now,” answered a well-mannered man in camouflage, not far from Isabella. “They came prepared.”
The “they” he spoke of clearly referred to the armed assailants advancing outside the base. Their numbers were great, composed of mercenary groups and local armed forces, all carrying heavy weapons and moving forward under different banners, yet all heading in the same direction.
Before the attack, the base’s outpost had detected no signs of an impending assault, indicating that this attack had been meticulously planned and executed by someone with extraordinary abilities.
Their goal was not to occupy this wasteland or seek revenge on the carefree Captain Kane.
It was the children that the base was protecting.
The next “relocation plan” was still several days away, and the abilities of the special operatives discovered and protected by Kane’s team had not yet boarded a plane to Special Ring SEMA or one of the three major academies; they remained in this base.
Among these special operatives was a child with a very unique ability, one that could be directly classified as above Class A.
Boom—!!
Another grenade shattered the western defense tower, causing stones to rain down and collapse the makeshift cover.
Another member of Kane’s team was blown away at close range, but as an extraordinary, he managed to maintain a magical barrier to survive, though the barrier was nearly shattered and blood dripped from his temple.
“Be careful, there’s an extraordinary among them, estimated to be at least Class B,” he reported urgently to Isabella, who was commanding on-site, as he got to his feet.
And as if to confirm his report—
In the distance, a man wrapped in crimson chains of fire was slowly approaching, the burning metal threads flying from his hands, splitting the walls and tearing apart the body of a nearby squad member.
“We can’t hold out much longer!” The bespectacled gentleman reassessed the situation.
Meanwhile, a hoarse roar came through the internal communications channel: “Underground! They have an extraordinary who can burrow! The bomb shelter has been breached! They’ve taken all the children!”
Bad news kept pouring in.
Isabella and the bespectacled man wanted to do something, but they were clearly the primary targets of the enemy’s assault, and the hail of bullets directed at them showed no signs of letting up.
The moment they realized that failing to take action would lead to an irreversible outcome, they exchanged glances. Having been in this squad for years, words were unnecessary; they nodded tacitly with the resolve of certain death.
They decided that one would reveal themselves from behind the cover to protect the other in chasing after the armed assailants who took the children.
“GO!” shouted the bespectacled man as brilliant magic sparkled in his eyes. He suddenly sprang up from behind cover, while at the same time, Isabella rushed out from behind the cover as well—
The two of them were mentally prepared to be torn apart by gunfire.
But the expected bullets did not come.
Instead—
Isabella and the bespectacled man instinctively froze.
In the next moment, they almost simultaneously noticed something strange:
—their enemies’ gun muzzles and the gazes of the extraordinary had all turned in a different direction.
No longer aimed at them, but instead uniformly directed toward the sky.
“…What’s going on?” Isabella murmured in confusion.
The next second, a hoarse yet excited voice came through their communication devices: “—! The sky! Look up at the sky!!”
They raised their heads suddenly, only to see the smoky sky pierced by a brilliantly white bolt of lightning in an instant.
With a deafening flash, a giant bird formed from thunder descended from the heavens, its wings billowing like waves of clouds, with blazing currents of electricity and storm-like magical ripples swirling between its feathers, the sound of thunder roaring around it.
It tore through the night sky, illuminating the charred ruins below.
At the same time, the armed assailants on the ground unconsciously unleashed their firepower and abilities at the thunderbird, dense large-caliber bullets shooting upwards like a raging tide, drawing bright tracer trails in the night, like scorching light serpents entwining and weaving through the air, cutting through the darkness and creating deep red arcs.
The trails of tracer bullets wildly shimmered around it, the dense barrage akin to chains trying to capture a deity, yet could not touch its wings at all.
With every flap of its wings, a violent airflow and electric light were generated, and those tracer rounds that approached its body were consumed by lightning, deflected, and melted down, shattering into dark red flecks of light, scattering like a meteor shower as they fell to the ground.
“I’ve received the deposit, thank you, honor student, and your friend.”
As Kane’s silhouette slowly materialized on the back of the thunderbird, he prepared to leap into the fray below.
Meanwhile, standing on the thunderbird, Nayin silently watched the inferno below.
This was one dark side of the world, where humans fought against each other, and extraordinary beings clashed; even with the common enemy of fantastical monsters, they would not ceasefire.
What mattered more to Nayin was the magical responses emitted from the extraordinary beings below.
It made her feel both unfamiliar and familiar.
—————–
“Isabella, report the situation.”
After Kane ended the life of the extraordinary creature ensnared in fiery chains with his last bullet, the battle finally came to a close.
It was unclear whether it was Kane’s remarkable strength that controlled the battlefield or the fear felt by the enemies at the sight of the thunderbird soaring in the sky, but many armed assailants had already begun to flee.
Kane retracted his abilities, feeling as though his head might explode from prolonged use of “Full-Scale Composition.”
“This isn’t good; we’ve lost quite a few people, and many of the children have also been taken away.” As Isabella reported to Kane, her gaze couldn’t help but drift past her captain’s shoulder to the scene behind him.
There lay the thunderbird that had descended from the sky, along with a black-haired girl stepping down from its back.
The magical response emanating from the former made even veterans like Isabella feel uneasy, while the latter instilled in her a deep-seated fear—she could not gauge the opponent at all, whether in terms of power or otherwise.
However, the temporarily good news was that this girl had returned with their captain, so she would not be an enemy for now.
“How long ago did they leave?”
“Less than ten minutes.”
“Okay, Isabella, you stay here with the injured; I’ll take a squad to catch up with them and rescue the children.” Kane pushed himself to stay conscious and turned to face Nayin behind him: “…You should stay as well.”
“Don’t you need my help?”
“This is our responsibility—” But before Kane could finish, a bloodied hand quietly propped itself up from his blind spot.
A gasping armed man struggled to rise, his trembling hand reaching into the inside of his coat to pull out a syringe.
The liquid in the syringe was semi-transparent, seeming to glow faintly bluish in his peripheral vision, and within it was a black thread twisting like a flame.
He thrust the needle sharply into his neck and clenched his teeth as he pressed down the plunger—
In an instant, his eyes exploded with blinding red light.
His whole body convulsed, veins bulging, and beneath his skin, crimson patterns like chains of fire frantically emerged, winding and burning along his muscles, revealing the very power of the extraordinary creature that Kane had just killed.
He swung the chains of fire and lunged at Kane.
“—Kane!” Isabella, standing next to Kane, instantly noticed the anomaly. Without any hesitation, she forcefully collided with him, attempting to push him away with her body.
She knew she couldn’t withstand that power, yet still dashed forward without regard.
Kane, too, realized he wouldn’t make it in time to save Isabella—
However, just before the chains touched Isabella’s body, a bolt of lightning split the night sky, as if a pale thunder sun had suddenly illuminated the heavens.
Nayin raised her arm, gathering a brilliant white spear of lightning at her fingertips, which she instantly hurled.
Boom—!
In the instant the lightning struck, the newly awakened man and his chains shattered in the air, flames not yet ignited, his figure turning to charcoal.
His remains thudded to the ground, burning with a charred needle hole opened at his neck.
With their lives spared, Isabella and Kane, still in shock, could only utter, “Thank you.”
But Nayin ignored them and walked straight toward the pile of charred remains.
With her back to Kane and Isabella, she coldly asked:
“What was this? Just a moment ago, this person was clearly an ordinary man…”
Nayin trusted her perception abilities; just seconds ago, this gasping man was a hundred percent human, yet he had suddenly unleashed extraordinary powers without any awakening.
What was even more astonishing to her was—
In that split second, she sensed a very faint but familiar magical response.
“…We call it ‘elixir’; now you know why some want the bodies of extraordinary beings,” Kane replied.
[Master, this is one of your fiancé’s mutated creations.] A voice echoed in Nayin’s earpiece belonging to the End of Days Nayin.
[The black flame vaccine developed by the three major academies not only suppresses fragments; with slight modifications, it can grant extraordinary abilities to others.]
[One of the raw materials for this modified vaccine is the bodies of extraordinary beings.]
Nayin knew that the End of Days Nayin was not lying.
Because she sensed the magical response of Kanade from that recently deceased man; although faint, she could not mistake it.
“They’re capturing the children of extraordinary beings to create this stuff?”
“Exactly, because the extraordinary powers granted by this elixir depend on the abilities of the deceased extraordinary beings,” Kane answered. “Among the children we are protecting, there is one with very unique abilities… damn it, how did the news leak? Someone must be trying to acquire that ability.”
“I understand; I’ll go with you to rescue those children.”
Kane was taken aback by her response: “But this matter has nothing to do with you.”
“No, my relationship with this matter—far exceeds what you think.” Nayin turned her head, her icy gaze enough to send chills down one’s spine.
