Chapter 88: The Citadel’s Vanguard

The forty-mile march to the crashed stealth dropship did not take days. For an entity operating at the absolute pinnacle of terrestrial physics, distance was merely a suggestion.

Ren did not run. He simply walked with a terrifying, frictionless efficiency that completely bypassed the standard limitations of human biomechanics. His Level 50 Abyssal Sovereign architecture propelled his two-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame across the petrified obsidian avenues at a steady, silent forty miles per hour.

To Chloe, who was once again enveloped in the perfectly stable, climate-controlled vacuum of his Aura of the Void, the ruined alien metropolis blurred past them like scenery outside a high-speed bullet train. She didn’t have to walk; the localized gravity well generated by Ren’s massive Intelligence and Strength stats effortlessly pulled her along in his slipstream, allowing her exhausted Level 2 human biology to rest while they crossed the dead city.

Exactly one hour later, the jagged, crystallized spires of the capital’s epicenter gave way to the pulverized, ashen ruins of the outer rim.

A massive, thick column of black smoke plumed into the pristine morning sky.

The Old World stealth dropship had carved a catastrophic, three-mile-long trench through the petrified asphalt before violently coming to a halt against a ruined Old World overpass. The massive, matte-grey fuselage was heavily crumpled, its radar-absorbent plating completely shredded, exposing the sparking, dead fusion conduits within.

But the Citadel did not send unaugmented humans on reconnaissance missions into Category-Five zones.

A heavily armed, highly coordinated Old World military perimeter had already been established around the burning wreckage.

“The biological payload survived the crash,” Ren stated smoothly, his heavy combat boots finally coming to a halt exactly a half-mile away from the perimeter. His solid void eyes, ringed with pulsing white light, analyzed the defensive line.

Fifty highly trained, heavily augmented Citadel operatives were rapidly deploying deployable cover shields and setting up heavy plasma-repeater turrets. They were not the horrific, amputated cyborgs of the Apex Project. They were D-Class military shock troops, clad in massive, localized heavy-combat exoskeletons. The hydraulic suits boosted their physical strength to roughly that of a Level 15 biological anomaly, allowing them to wield heavy ordnance with flawless precision.

In the center of the perimeter, a commanding officer with a heavy, localized comms array strapped to his back was screaming into a radio handset.

“Command, this is Captain Vance! The Vanguard is down! I repeat, the Vanguard is down!” the officer barked, his voice carrying faintly across the half-mile of dead air. “We experienced a localized, catastrophic EMP anomaly. The fusion reactor completely stalled. We have fifty effectives, minimal casualties, but we are completely blind. Requesting immediate Subterranean extraction!”

Static hissed violently from his headset. The massive Domain of the Abyss that Ren projected was actively devouring their encrypted radio frequencies.

“They believe the Category-Five storm simply left a residual atmospheric charge,” Ren observed, his completely frictionless voice devoid of any empathy for the stranded soldiers. “They do not comprehend that the planet is already dead.”

“What are you going to do?” Chloe whispered, her hands gripping her P90. She had seen Ren slaughter localized gods and towering obsidian centaurs, but watching him prepare to dismantle human soldiers—even augmented ones—sent a cold shiver down her spine.

“I am going to completely liquidate their localized assets,” Ren replied.

He didn’t activate an invisibility skill. He didn’t flank them through the ruined buildings.

Ren stepped out of the shadows of a shattered skyscraper and began walking directly down the dead center of the ruined, ash-covered highway, his pitch-black silhouette absorbing the morning sun in plain view of the entire military perimeter.

It took exactly four seconds for the Citadel scouts to spot him.

“Contact! We have a biological contact at twelve o’clock!” a scout screamed, raising his heavy plasma rifle.

The entire perimeter violently shifted. Fifty heavily augmented exoskeletons pivoted flawlessly, the loud, mechanical whine of their hydraulic servos echoing across the asphalt. Fifty heavy, localized plasma weapons locked directly onto Ren’s massive chest.

Captain Vance pushed through the defensive line, raising a heavy pair of high-definition thermal binoculars to his eyes.

“Hold your fire!” Vance ordered. “Let the threat-detection matrix analyze the biological mass. If it’s a Level 10 scavenger, we don’t waste fusion batteries on it.”

The Captain stared through the thermal optics. He expected to see the massive, glowing red heat signature of a hyper-mutated beast.

Instead, he saw absolutely nothing.

Through the thermal lens, the massive, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound figure walking down the highway did not exist. There was zero thermal bleed. There was zero biological radiation. The figure was a perfect, localized void of absolute cold, darker than the deep vacuum of space.

“Captain… the targeting computers can’t lock on,” the scout stammered, his hydraulic gauntlets shaking slightly. “The radar is bouncing right off it. It’s not returning a ping.”

“It’s walking right at us,” Vance muttered, a cold bead of sweat rolling down his unmutated face inside his helmet. The sheer, impossible physics of the approaching anomaly completely overrode his Old World military training.

Ren crossed the quarter-mile mark.

“Halt!” Captain Vance’s voice boomed through external localized amplifiers, echoing aggressively down the ruined highway. “You are approaching a restricted Citadel quarantine zone! Halt immediately or you will be pacified with extreme thermal prejudice!”

Ren didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow his perfectly measured, frictionless stride.

“Your quarantine zone is an illusion,” Ren stated.

He didn’t shout, but his voice completely ignored the quarter-mile distance. It bypassed the air entirely, vibrating directly into the audio receptors of all fifty soldiers simultaneously. It was a smooth, absolute fact that chilled the marrow of every human in the perimeter.

“You are trespassing in the abyss.”

Captain Vance’s survival instinct violently seized control. “Open fire! Liquidate the target!”

The Old World military unleashed hell.

Fifty heavy plasma rifles and two massive, deployable plasma-repeater turrets erupted simultaneously. The ruined highway was instantly bathed in a blinding, deafening storm of superheated, localized thermal energy. Hundreds of white-hot plasma bolts, capable of instantly vaporizing a commercial tank, shrieked across the ash-covered asphalt, perfectly targeted at Ren’s center of mass.

Chloe screamed inside the safety of the vacuum bubble, throwing her arms over her head.

Ren didn’t raise a hand. He didn’t draw the Crimson vibro-sword.

He kept walking.

[Passive Activated: Domain of the Abyss (Absolute Consumption)]

The massive, localized thermal barrage never touched his pitch-black, tungsten-sheened skin. The moment the blinding plasma bolts entered the one-mile spherical radius of his absolute control, they violently destabilized.

The Old World military watched in sheer, unadulterated horror as their concentrated, apocalyptic firepower simply dissolved into thin air. The superheated plasma didn’t deflect; it didn’t splash. It was actively, aggressively inhaled by the invisible gravity well surrounding the dark monolith.

The fusion energy was converted directly into baseline caloric fuel for his Level 50 architecture before it could even cross the hundred-yard mark.

Ren walked straight through the massive, blinding barrage of nothingness, completely, flawlessly untouched.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Vance screamed, his voice cracking with absolute panic as the plasma turrets overheated and stalled out. “The thermal payload is completely failing! Switch to kinetic ordnance! Launch the micro-missiles!”

“Captain, the missile guidance systems are totally offline!” a soldier yelled back, desperately slapping the side of his heavy exoskeleton. “The target is generating a massive gravitational distortion! It’s bending the localized telemetry!”

Ren crossed the fifty-yard mark.

He stopped.

He stood perfectly still in the center of the ruined highway, his empty, void-like eyes locking onto the fifty terrified, augmented soldiers cowering behind their deployable shields.

“Your synthetic reliance is a biological dead end,” Ren stated smoothly.

He raised his right hand, his pitch-black fingers spreading slightly. He didn’t use his Rending Claws. He didn’t need physical contact to completely dismantle Old World technology anymore.

[Active Skill Unleashed: Gravity Inversion]

Ren completely inverted the localized physical laws within a fifty-yard radius of the crashed dropship.

He didn’t crush them. He simply canceled their gravity.

The fifty heavily augmented Citadel operatives, weighing over eight hundred pounds each in their heavy exoskeletons, violently shot upward into the air as if fired from a cannon. The heavy deployable shields, the plasma turrets, and the massive, shattered pieces of the dropship fuselage were all instantly ripped from the asphalt, violently launching fifty feet into the crisp morning sky.

The soldiers screamed, their heavy hydraulic suits flailing uselessly in the localized zero-gravity pocket. They were completely, helplessly suspended in mid-air, a chaotic, floating debris field of terrified Old World elite.

Ren lowered his right hand, making a single, slow, crushing fist.

He restored the gravity, but he multiplied it by twenty.

The entire floating debris field slammed violently back down onto the petrified asphalt. The kinetic transfer was absolutely catastrophic. The heavy, localized exoskeletons didn’t protect the soldiers; the suits became multi-ton hydraulic coffins. The Old World armor violently buckled, the pressurized servos rupturing simultaneously in a deafening, metallic shriek.

The fifty Citadel operatives hit the ground and did not get back up.

[Targets Neutralized: Citadel Vanguard x50]

The ruined highway fell completely, terrifyingly silent, save for the soft hiss of leaking hydraulic fluid and the crackle of the burning dropship.

Ren stood exactly where he was, his dark, perfect silhouette casting absolutely no shadow. He had completely liquidated a localized military expedition without taking a single step into their perimeter.

“The Citadel is blind,” Ren stated, his void-like eyes staring at the crushed, sparking remains of the Old World elite. “But they will not stop sending their obsolete technology to the surface. We must descend to the root.”

He turned back to Chloe, who was staring at the pulverized military line in absolute shock.

“The incubation is over,” the Terrestrial Void commanded, adjusting his ruined trench coat. “Now, we go underground. We are going to permanently dismantle the Old World.”

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