A crimson droplet slid slowly down the side of a broken pillar.
Leon flicked open a lighter, igniting a cigarette. He leaned casually against the Diomas Nilo, inhaled deeply, then exhaled a thick stream of smoke that curled upward into the deathly quiet air.
The silence was unnatural. Just minutes earlier this Eteon base had been alive with shouting soldiers, clattering boots, roaring engines. Now, it was a graveyard. Corpses lay strewn everywhere, blood pooling across the concrete floor, the metallic tang saturating the air.
Leon stood there amidst it all, calm as stone, his cigarette glowing faintly in the dim light. The dripping sound of blood — echoed like a morbid metronome.
There was a strange magnetism in that image: one man, a burning cigarette, surrounded by destruction he alone had wrought.
Then — ding ding ding — his phone rang.
"Yeah?" Leon answered.
"Elena here," came the bright voice from the other side. "We got it! Mission accomplished. We're coming to back you up." She sounded relieved, almost joyful.
Clearly, retrieving the virus sample on their end hadn't been too difficult.
"No need," Leon replied flatly, glancing over the mountain of bodies. "They're all dead."
Indeed — at least two, maybe three hundred Eteon soldiers had fallen. After Brixton (the "Black Ghost") was taken out, the rest collapsed into chaos like a swarm without a queen. Even armed to the teeth, they couldn't organize. Leon had cut through them like a farmer harvesting wheat.
"You… you killed them all?" Elena's voice cracked with disbelief.
"They were too weak," Leon said, flicking ash off the cigarette with disdain. "Not a single real fighter among them."
Only Leon dared to speak about Eteon that way. One man against an entire fortified base — and he'd not only lived, he'd annihilated it.
On the other end, Elena fell silent, shaken. Her mental picture of Leon shifted yet again. He was like a bottomless abyss: no matter how deep you looked, you could never see the end.
"Finish up and head out. Skip the tunnels — just bring me the virus directly." Leon crushed his cigarette under his boot and pushed off the car, strolling toward the gates like he owned the place.
The base was his now. No guards left.
"Got it. We're on our way," Elena replied, hanging up.
Minutes later, Elena, Hattie Shaw, and Andrek emerged, with the Dog Doctor trailing nervously behind.
Seeing Elena and Hattie unharmed, Leon finally relaxed a fraction. "The virus?" he asked.
"Here." Hattie, her cheeks flushed again with color, reached into her coat and pulled out a small, ominous object: a black pill, pulsing faintly with malignant energy. Even sealed, it radiated something unnatural. Released into the world, it could easily be humanity's worst nightmare.
A system notification rang in Leon's head:
Mission Complete. Rewards Granted:
+4 Levels
Dual-Engine Chassis Upgrade
Laser Headlamps
Funds: 200 million
Leon's eyes lit up. The dual-engine chassis alone promised insane speed. Add the weaponized laser headlamps — capable of slicing through walls, even countering helicopters without missiles — and the Diomas Nilo was now more fortress than car. A mobile tank bristling with futuristic weapons.
Of course, lasers had their limits: sandstorms, fog, hurricanes, or heavy rain would drastically reduce their power. Still, combined with his machine guns and unmatched acceleration, the Nilo was now nearly unkillable.
Planes, tanks, artillery? They'd break before he would. The harder the world tried to kill him, the sharper his claws became.
As the rewards registered, the virus pill shimmered. Before their eyes, it began to glow, then slowly fade, until Elena's hand was empty.
"What… what kind of technology is that?" Andrek pushed his glasses up, utterly stunned. "Making matter vanish in plain sight — that breaks half of physics as we know it!"
Leon smirked. "Chinese tech. You wouldn't understand."
But Andrek's eyes blazed with fanatic hunger. "China really has this?!" he pressed, gripping Leon's sleeve like a desperate man. Science was his religion, mystery his gospel. It was the only thing that could ignite him like this.
Leon's smile deepened. If this mad scientist really went to China… they'd probably love him. The knowledge in his head alone could supercharge their advancement.
"Go there yourself one day. You'll see," Leon said cryptically.
Then he glanced back at the base — or what was left of it. "Time to erase this place from the map. Get in the car."
Everyone climbed into the Diomas Nilo. Leon started the engine, its deep growl reverberating like a predator roused from slumber.
"Activate gravitational wave cannon," he commanded.
"Initializing," came the AI response.
BOOM!
A thunderous blast rolled across the sky, so loud the entire team flinched. It wasn't just sound — it was as if the atmosphere itself had been punched.
Elena and Hattie whipped their heads toward the windows. Their faces drained of color.
From above, an enormous translucent pressure dome was descending, blanketing the entire power plant complex.
Inside the car, they barely felt anything. Outside? It was Armageddon.
Crack crack crack!
Cooling towers, hundreds of meters tall, split like glass under a hammer. Spiderweb fractures raced downward. Chunks the size of houses sheared off, plummeting to the ground with cataclysmic crashes.
The earth trembled. Shockwaves rolled out like tsunamis of stone and dust.
"God…" Hattie whispered, her eyes wide.
"This is the end of the world…" Elena muttered, horrified.
Andrek, ever the scientist, whipped out his phone and started recording, his hands shaking but his eyes alight. "I have to document this!"
Then it happened — two hundred cooling towers collapsed almost in unison, imploding as if expertly demolished. Mushrooming plumes of dust shot skyward, swallowing the skyline. The ground heaved beneath them, rattling even the Nilo's reinforced chassis.
Leon, however, stayed calm, his hands steady on the wheel.
BOOM!
A boulder the size of a house slammed down in their path. Dust roared over the car, choking the world into blindness.
"Ultrasound imaging, engage."
The windshield HUD flickered, cutting through the dust storm with sonar outlines of the blocked road. Leon's vision sharpened again.
While the others cowered — Andrek even clamping his eyes shut — Leon yanked the handbrake, whipping the Nilo into a drifting arc. The car slid around the boulder with surgical precision, mere inches to spare.
As they passed, the passengers caught a glimpse of raw concrete and jagged steel rebar where the tower had been torn apart — like a giant had ripped it down by hand.
"What in God's name is happening out there?!" Elena gasped.
Leon's lips curled into a grin, his voice low and calm: "Nothing much. Just testing a new weapon."
The others shivered. In Leon's voice was the chilling certainty of a man who wasn't lying.
~~----------------------
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