If one stood at the very edge of Nuwesca City somewhere in the southwestern front at this very moment, they’d see a strange, gigantic dirt wheel rapidly rolling towards the city, with clouds of dust forming behind in its trail.
A once normal armadillo now evolved into a monster by coming into contact with a crystal, was rapidly moving towards the city, with an unsatiable hunger from the depths of its stomach. Although it had gained great strength, it had to feed its now transcendental body with copious amounts of food, food that was far more than what it previously required.
Only by eating tons of meat, meat that was abundant in the nearby human city, could it finally break free from the constraints of hunger.
However, it was obstructed by a strange barrier of light as it rolled straight into the vertical wall, causing it to squeal out in pain and bounce back a few meters.
“So this is the monster.” Threads wrapped around Braun’s whole body, covering even his face, leaving only small gaps for his eyes to see.
Kaya remained silent and flapped her wings, hovering in the air. Underneath her skintight suit, her skin turned a dark shade of gray with a metallic luster.
Jonas stepped back, distancing himself the most from the giant monster.
“It has Level 2 Earth Manipulation. It’s a relatively common ability. One just needs to remain high in the air or move fast enough to avoid the protrusions on the earth,” advised Karsen from the far back, his legs stepping onto a pair of floating cards high in the air.
“I see.” Braun took in the information and swiftly applied it. A small layer of threads extended out from the soles of his feet, pushing him up into the air.
From a distance, he looked like a man made out of silver levitating in the air.
Jonas, on the other hand, conjured a small platform of light beneath his feet and willed it to lift him up into the air just like the rest of his team.
The armadillo rolled back to its feet, its eyes full of killing intent. It snorted and coiled up, before once again rolling forward, this time, towards Braun.
Mounds of dirt formed in its path, creating a small ramp. It seemed that its intellect had been boosted alongside its strength, as it utilized its ability to manipulate rock and soil to attack Braun in the air with its physically superior body.
“Hmph.” Braun snorted as he watched the massive wheel of dirt approaching him, and pulled back his fist. More threads gathered around his arm, forming a giant mace-like construct with his arm acting as the handle.
With one swing, the gigantic armadillo crashed into the ground, forming a large crater.
“Stupid little rat,” taunted Braun.
Jonas didn’t miss the chance to attack and raised both of his hands into the sky, conjuring a large pillar with a pointy tip at the bottom.
Braun swiftly rushed in, raising his gigantic mace into the sky. “Let me help you!”
Another swing, and the pike made out of light was slammed into the ground.
The armadillo hurriedly reacted by forming multiple layers of rocks above it, which the pike pierced through in rapid succession, before barely poking into its skin.
An angry roar resounded as the land began to shake. Spiky pillars of dirt rushed toward the sky, aimed straight at Braun, while a large earthen wheel burst out of the floor, with dark red eyes glaring at Jonas.
Do I just do nothing? Kaya pondered as she watched from the side, but when she felt a pair of eyes land on her back, she shivered and immediately decided that she should be a good teammate and help her team out.
She flapped her wings and disappeared like a blur, arriving right beside the earth wheel that rolled at surprisingly fast speeds.
Jonas noticed her presence and swiftly made a decision. A giant spike appeared in front of him, launching it straight at the rapidly approaching armadillo.
Kaya grinned and the black fabric of her suit was torn apart around her hands, as dark, metallic claws ripped out. She cried out like a ravenous bird and swooped in at the same moment the armadillo rammed into the abruptly-appearing spike.
Her claws struck at breakneck speeds, tearing through the layer of rocks covering the armadillo’s body that acted as its protective armor. A deep wound was left on its flesh, causing it to roar out in pain.
The land around the armadillo shook as its anger caused it to turn all the more wild. A massive burst of earth raised from the ground like a tidal wave, with the armadillo as the epicenter of the spiky burst of dirt.
Braun ignored it though as he rushed forward at dizzying speeds. His threads practically threw him forward like a ball, and using the sharpness of his threads, he cut through the spiky wall of rocks.
He arrived before the raging armadillo, his eyes shining green. In a single glance, he located the deep wound formed on the armadillo’s back, revealing its flesh and blood.
At this moment, Braun felt his heart pump with exhilaration as he could finally use one of the deadliest applications of his threads.
As strong, as fast, as durable, as sharp his threads may be, Braun knew that there was a way that he could elevate the deadliness of his threads to a whole new level, a way that exploited the formlessness of his power in general.
If he could just find the smallest of openings, whether it be a mouth, a nose, an ear, or in this scenario, a deep wound, then he could most definitely kill even the largest of beasts in one swift go.
He landed on the armadillo’s back, and before the armadillo could even respond, he ruthlessly plunged his arm into the open wound on its back.
A sharp burst of pain greeted the armadillo as it wildly flailed around, but it was already too late.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
It appeared that Karsen realized the same thing too, as he hurriedly flew in, shouting loudly amidst the chaos, “DON’T KILL IT!”
Threads unraveled from the palm of his hands, invading deep into the armadillo’s flesh and skin. As spikes erupted from the inside of its organs out into its skin, bloody threads burst out of the armadillo’s surface, with its whole body coming to a halt, impaled at all sides from inside and out.
Karsen inwardly cursed when he saw the gruesome sight and almost resigned to his fate of having to deal with a ton of bullshit from the higher-ups, but was surprised when the armadillo, through some strange way, was still alive.
“You could have said that sooner!” Braun cursed, pulling out his trembling arm from the open wound on the armadillo’s back, revealing his aching, throbbing hand. “I had to alter the trajectory of my threads last minute to avoid the vital organs! Fuck, this shit hurts… I only thought we weren’t supposed to kill Supers unless absolutely necessary, not some goddamn monsters too!”
“Ho… Ho… Bwahahaha! Thank god, this bastard is still alive!” Karsen hurriedly flew down and pulled out two green syringes from his back, tossing one to Braun while injecting one into the armadillo’s skin, pulling it out from the edge of death; he completely ignored Braun’s outrage.
Braun hissed as he injected the green syringe into his forearm, and his torn hand rapidly healed, patching up the bruises he received from his last-minute save.
“God damn…” Braun leaned back on the armadillo’s twitching flesh, sighing out in relief from the soothing, cold, icy feeling of the syringe’s green liquid.
Karsen, having calmed down, moved his gaze onto the bloody threads protruding out of visibly every part of the armadillo’s body, and murmured, “If you were given some invisibility or movement artifact, then you could probably assassinate me in one go using your threads.”
“Heh, that’s why Monsters are intrinsically superior to their Super counterparts. Us Supers are practically squishy lots that can even be killed by a normal bullet if we don’t have abilities like the ones Terry and Kaya have.”
Braun ignored Karsen’s mumbling and instead slowly stood up, stretching out his right arm around to make sure that it was okay.
“Splendid job, Lucas!” Jonas flew down, stepping off from his platform with a proud smile.
“Thanks.” He smiled and looked at Kaya who remained flying in the air from a distance. “You too! Thanks for opening the wound for me, couldn’t have done it without you!”
Kaya remained aloof, simply nodding her head and waiting for the portal to open up.
Karsen patted the monster next to him, mumbling softly, “We’re gonna patch you up soon, okay? “
In the next moment, a gigantic portal opened up right beside them, with a truck driving through the crack in space. Workers stared in awe at the bloody body of the armadillo and felt their respect for the newbie Super grow.
They swiftly did their job and hauled the armadillo onto the truck.
Watching them curiously, Braun asked, “So, how frequent are Monsters compared to humans? Before the meteor and after the meteor preferably.”
“Before? Hmm, based on my experience in Insea City, there were plenty of monsters in the sea and we usually had to deal with them on a relatively frequent basis since they keep wanting to come up onto land,” Jonas recalled.
“Post meteor though? Well, I supposed more Monsters are out in the wild right now. I haven’t done my research on it yet, but they’re probably feasting on one another, causing a massive shift in the world’s ecosystem if left alone.”
“But that wouldn’t happen, right?” Braun casually asked.
“Not really, no. Aegis is very interested in acquiring everything super, including monsters. Moreover, monsters are also detected by our radars, so it’s very easy for us to capture them whenever we want to since they’d be using their abilities much more than we usually do,” Jonas explained.
So they even have enough manpower to basically regulate remote regions like the sea and forests. Although they do use their radars to greatly increase efficiency, it still shows just how vast their workforce is.
And it’s not like they’re reliant on only Supers. They have plenty of trained combatants who can be given artifacts and advanced technology which further raises the organization’s strength as a whole.
Deepening his understanding of the organization and gaining a greater desire to have the whole world to himself, he returned to his bedroom with eyes glowing green.
He sat down on his chair and opened his laptop, returning to his unfinished project.
“Hopefully, I would never need this program, but considering how messy life has been recently, I don’t think I would stay long in Aegis,” mumbled Braun. Tapping on the keys of his keyboard, he grinned and said, “Let’s finish this by next week.”
…
Inside Civer City’s underground sewers.
A gigantic rat shrieked loudly, its half-rotten skeletal frame releasing an odor of death, its hollow eyes glowing with green ghostfire. It stared at the end of the tunnel and instinctively felt fear from the pressuring aura coming from the darkness ahead.
“Green flames…” A cold voice mumbled and a young man stepped out from the darkness, with messy white hair and glowing white eyes. “Green flames associated with death, what a grim reminder.”
The Level 2 rat monster shrieked once again and living corpses of rats rushed out from behind it without any fear of death.
The young man simply snapped his fingers and light abruptly shifted, going from normal to bent. A gravity well formed with the giant half-rotten half-skeletal rat stuck in the epicenter.
All of the undead rats cried out as they were sucked into the center of the gravity well, unable to move nor escape.
Deciding that he shouldn’t waste more of his time against these weak foes, he extended out his hand and bent gravity to the extreme. Space-time converged, forming a curved blade.
With a flick of his finger, the extremely sharp, vaguely formed blade made out of space tore through the void, cutting all of the undead rats in half.
Gravity returned to normal and the rats fell to the ground.
“Good job, Christopher,” an authoritative voice praised from behind, and a tall, muscular woman approached the cluster of dead rats. She had wild, messy blond hair like an unruly mane of a grand lion, with a body covered in muscles. “As expected of my genius student.”
She wore a black skintight bodysuit that revealed her majestic proportions in all of its glory, detailing every fiber of her muscles.
When she arrived at the corpse of the gigantic undead rat, she noticed a mote of shimmering incandescent light amidst the cluster of bones and pulled it out, ignoring the putrid flesh in her way.
Pulling out the mote of light that was actually a rainbow-colored crystal decently large in size, she whistled and grinned before tossing it to Christopher.
“Are you sure I can have this?” Christopher hesitantly asked, with the crystal floating stagnantly in the air in front of him.
“Don’t worry about it!” The woman waved her arms, dismissing Christopher’s worry. “I’m this city’s Regional Director, I have a lot of say when it comes to matters like this. Besides, you’re my student, you can have a little bit of preferential treatment…”
“And that assimilation speed of yours,” she mumbled. “It’s just insane. There’s a reason Demigods like us would much rather prefer to only assimilate Level 3 crystals and preferably above considering assimilating Level 2 crystals would just waste our time for marginal increases.”
“You, on the other hand? It only takes you a few hours!” She laughed. “Just how do you even do that?”
“I don’t know.” Christopher shrugged his shoulders, touched the crystal with his bare hand, and exerted his power, causing the crystal to disappear and enter a strange metaphysical space inside his body, hovering right beside a gargantuan crystal incomparably large.
Well, I do know. His eyes glowed white once more as he activated his power, with his senses drilling into the crystal.
After all, super force crystals are basically a crystallized form of what I control.
Clapping her hand, the woman pressed something on her wrist and a portal opened up right beside the two.
“Let’s head back to base. You still have a lot to learn before you graduate, and before that, you still have to gain a lot more practical experience before becoming a regional director like me! Strength doesn’t matter much when you don’t even have the practical experience and knowledge required to manage multiple cities and branches.”
Nodding his head, Christopher followed the woman from behind.
Abbie King, the Level 4 Demigod who rules over this entire region. Christopher recalled the information he knew about his teacher, the first other super he met after the incident back in Civer City.
Sighing softly as he remembered the gruesome events that transpired that night, he stepped through the portal, disappearing from the underground sewer where a pile of rat corpses rapidly deteriorated, rotting and withering.