"Cough, cough... Bit of a miscalculation there..."
Inside the alien dimension, Rover lay flat on his back, wincing.
Yangyang and Jianxin were still clinging to him.
He'd misjudged the landing. Three people's combined weight had overloaded the Flight module, and the artificial Echo's wings couldn't bleed enough speed from the dive. They'd nearly faceplanted into the ground.
At the last second he'd rolled, taking the impact on his back while locking both girls tight against his chest.
Thank god this body's built like a tank now...
The crash hadn't hurt him at all. His Rover starter gear had held up too, not a single tear, though the contrast between the hard stone beneath him and the soft warmth pressed against his chest was... striking.
"R-Rover, are you okay?!"
"Are you hurt?!"
Yangyang and Jianxin hovered over him with wide, worried eyes. Only after confirming he was uninjured did they exhale with relief, and only then did they realize they were still lying on top of him.
Both faces went red at the same time. Emergency or not, they scrambled upright with flustered apologies.
"Well, that counts as a safe landing. Now, let's assess the situation... Actually, no. The objective's obvious."
Rover stood, dusted himself off, and drew his sword in one smooth motion. Then he unsheathed it and hurled it forward.
"Prey walks right to us, nice and ea... AGH!"
A figure lunged from the shadows, heavy weapon in hand, body wrapped in crimson bandages with a grotesque Tacet Discord arm grafted onto its back. It never finished its taunt. Rover's thrown blade caught it square in the head.
"Careful, they're Fractsidus!"
"Are they even human, or are they Tacet Discords?"
Jianxin stared at the red-clad figures closing in, shaken to her core. Every one of them bore Tacet Discord features fused into their flesh.
This was nothing like channeling an Echo through the Pangu Terminal for a temporary transformation. These people had merged their own bodies with Tacet Discords directly.
"This is how Fractsidus operates," Yangyang said, drawing her own blade. "These are the organization's Followers. They aren't Resonators, but they crave power desperately enough to cross the line between human and Tacet Discord using Fractsidus technology, grafting monster limbs onto themselves. They gain strength beyond ordinary humans, but Baizhi told me the Tacet Discord Frequencies warp their minds over time, eat away at their bodies, and eventually twist them into something inhuman."
In a straight fight, any Midnight Rangers soldier would beat an individual Follower. But the Followers' danger didn't come from raw strength.
It came from how utterly insane they were.
They'd crossed a line no human should cross, yet they weren't mindless beasts driven by instinct like true Tacet Discords. That made them exponentially more dangerous than powerless exiles who could only cause trouble in groups, or Tacet Discords that had raw strength but no cunning. It was the reason Fractsidus was recognized across Solaris-3 as the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence. Bar none.
"Scar's underlings? Their orders are obvious."
Watching their comrade get one-shotted didn't produce a flicker of rage or fear in the remaining Followers. They kept advancing, step by step.
"So this is who Lord Scar wanted captured."
"How come there's a guy? Weren't we told it'd be three girls?"
"Who cares! Grab all of them!"
"You're surrounded! Nowhere to run!"
"Surrender now, or else..."
Their grafted Tacet Discord bodies let them wield heavy weapons no normal person could lift. According to their briefing, they were dealing with three female Resonators. The unexpected male was a wrinkle, but none of them thought for a second they could lose.
"Over a dozen of us against three of them! Advantage: us!"
Excitement burned in every eye. Scar had promised that completing this mission would earn them deep-fusion upgrades, merging with stronger Tacet Discords, gaining greater power.
But as the Followers closed in with hungry grins, Rover smiled.
He drew another sword. Slow. Deliberate.
"Surrounded? Run away?" His voice was light, almost amused. "Who's surrounded? Run where? Why would I run?"
The last word dropped like a hammer.
A pressure crashed down on the space, vast and suffocating, as if an entire army had materialized at once. The dark-haired, golden-eyed Rover no longer looked like a young man with a sword. He looked like a king whose eyes burned eternal gold.
Then the roaring began.
Dozens of Echoes howled in unison, their cries shaking the dimension to its foundations.
Thirty-three Common Class. Seven Elite Class. One Overlord Class.
The half-step Overlord Lightcrusher rumbled a bass growl on his left. The Overlord-class Impermanence Heron shrieked on his right. The two titanic Echoes flanked him like a king's royal guard.
"I believe that's my line. You're the ones who are surrounded. There's nowhere to retreat. So tell me... have you made your peace?"
Rover leveled his sword at the Followers, and his monstrous, ferociously loyal Echo legion began its advance.
The Fractsidus Followers' minds went blank.
Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing?
And what in the world is happening?!
They'd been told this was easy pickings! Nobody had mentioned they'd be delivering themselves as takeout to a Rover commanding an entire Echo army!
One Follower let his weapon clatter to the ground.
Resist? Sure. Go ahead and try.
The only thought left in their collective heads was...
"Uh... c-can we talk this out?" they stammered, almost in chorus.
"Now? You must be joking."
One second later, Yangyang and Jianxin, who'd braced themselves for a fight, quietly closed their eyes. Thirty seconds passed. When the last Echo growl and the last scream faded, both women cracked one eye open.
Every last Follower had vanished. As if they'd never existed.
Rover sat leaning against the Lightcrusher, idly scratching one of the small jingling Echoes on the head. A beautiful blue butterfly had settled on his right shoulder.
He looked like a final boss lounging on a leather throne, casually petting a cat, watching his minions handle the entertainment. These enemies hadn't even qualified for his personal attention.
Once again, both Rovers and the enemies they faced raised the same question: which side was supposed to be the villain, exactly?
Somewhere far away, the Shorekeeper watched with quiet pride.
As expected of them.
Villain or not, she loved what she saw.