"Watch above!" Major General Moretti's warning hadn't even landed.
A gunshot like a thunderclap exploded behind Heisenberg. A blond man had appeared at his side, seemingly out of nowhere.
Ethan Winters stood expressionless, holding a double-barreled shotgun that Star Fire's weapons division had modified to a caliber so absurd it might as well have been a mortar.
A two-meter tongue of bright blue flame erupted from the muzzle. In midair, a dark-gold monster that had just leapt up for an ambush from above took a Star Fire osmium alloy slug packed with devastating kinetic energy dead center.
No contest. The creature's prized chest armor caved in and shattered instantly, and the sheer force blasted its entire upper body into a shower of pulped meat. Only two legs dropped uselessly to the ground.
"Ethan, you stole my kill." Heisenberg curled his lip.
"Ryan said efficiency first. I want to finish up and get home to Mia." Ethan's tone was so flat he might as well have been discussing what to have for dinner. One-handed, he slotted two shells as thick as carrots into the breach.
Heisenberg snorted. The angle of the metal storm shifted a few degrees without him really thinking about it, shredding an ambushing creature on Ethan's rear flank. "You owe me a drink."
Ethan didn't answer. Close enough to a yes.
A creature blinding fast burst from behind a stone pillar on Ethan's side, exploiting the gap while he reloaded. Its razor-sharp dark-gold claws punched clean through the left side of his chest and pinned him to the ground.
"No!" A coalition soldier cried out from the distance.
But what happened next made every hair on their necks stand up. Ethan, heart skewered, didn't go down. He didn't even flinch.
He looked down at the dark-gold claws jutting through his chest, then looked back up at the creature inches from his face. Something almost like confusion flickered in its eyes.
"That's it?"
Ethan sighed. His free left hand clamped down on the creature's arm. A nauseating crack, and he snapped the entire limb clean off.
Then, under the ghost-white stares of the coalition soldiers, Ethan calmly pulled the severed arm out of his own chest and tossed it on the ground.
At the wound site, a black substance resembling the Mold surged and writhed. In under two seconds, his chest cavity and heart had regenerated completely.
Since receiving Star Fire's enhancement serum, the Mold inside Ethan had been pushed to a level of regeneration that was functionally immortal.
"I've had my hands and feet hacked off more times in my life than you've eaten people in yours."
Ethan said it cold and flat, then shoved the shotgun barrel straight into the creature's mouth.
The shot blew its head apart like a watermelon. Ethan flicked the blood off the barrel and kept walking, a killing machine without an off switch.
He paused for one step as he passed Moretti, glancing down at the Major General still frozen in place with his pistol raised.
"You can put that away. It's no use here."
Moretti's wrist finally dropped. He didn't know who these people were. But he knew that he and the remnants behind him weren't going to die today.
Between Heisenberg's industrial meat grinder and Ethan's immortal gun platform, the dozens of advanced creatures in this block were slaughtered in minutes.
Heisenberg shook the dark-gold debris off his magnetic hammer. Ethan topped off his shotgun. The two stood side by side in the middle of a street carpeted with monster remains, breathing still perfectly even.
But the ground kept shaking.
Heavier footsteps were closing in from the far end of the street.
With the vanguard wiped out, a deeper rumble rolled in from the distance. Thousands of dark-gold New Humans surged up the street like a tidal wave.
Worse, they seemed to be operating under some unified will, shifting tactics.
No more raw physical charges. Instead they began coughing violently, spewing massive clouds of thick, impenetrable dark-gold toxic fog from their mouths.
The fog was viciously corrosive and could assimilate anything it touched. Even the scrap metal under Heisenberg's control hissed and pitted where the fog reached it, rust blooming along the edges of his metal storm.
Heisenberg frowned and adjusted the angle of the magnetic hammer in his palm. Physical force could deal with anything that had bones. Poison gas was a different problem.
"Trying biological warfare?"
A voice, cold, imperious, utterly inhuman, echoed across the battlefield from above.
Miranda had arrived in the sky without anyone noticing.
She wore that black-feathered robe that seemed to swallow all light, half her face hidden beneath a golden mask, hovering in the air like a goddess of death descended upon the mortal world.
"Before a true wellspring of life, this crude patchwork is revolting."
Miranda slowly raised both hands. In the next instant, a torrent of pure black Mold, ten times the volume and a hundred times the depth of the dark-gold fog, erupted from beneath her robes like a dam breaking into a tsunami.
Enhanced by Star Fire's technology, this Mold had become the most aggressive biological weapon imaginable, surging toward the dark-gold fog like a living thing.
No explosions. No fire. Just a devouring sound that crawled under the skin, like a billion sheets of paper being crumpled at once, everywhere at once.
The black Mold engulfed the dark-gold fog instantly, absorbing and breaking it down the way ink consumes clear water.
And it didn't stop there. The Mold spread down the street in a vast black carpet, ensnaring the thousands of dark-gold New Humans charging at the front.
The speed they were so proud of vanished completely under the Mold's grip. They froze in place like flies trapped in amber, helpless, wailing, watching death come for them.
"What... what is that?!" Major General Moretti stared at the black mass, and felt a dread even deeper than what the dark-gold monsters had inspired.
"One of our aces, General."
With the heavy thud of mechanized footfalls, hundreds of Star Fire Dawn Corps soldiers appeared at the rear of the street. Each stood two and a half meters tall, encased head to toe in heavy exoskeleton armor. They carried multi-barrel rotary cannons, cold electronic eyes flickering with red target locks.
Miranda looked down from above at the creatures writhing in agony inside the black Mold. Beneath the golden mask, the corner of her mouth curved into something cruel.
"The field is set."
She raised her right hand, fingertips aimed at the Mold-covered battlefield.
"Now grind them all to dust."
[This novel is now COMPLETE. Read the entire series right now on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]