Chapter 271: Chapter 271

The forest had grown deadly quiet, with only the soft rustle of the trees whispering in the morning breeze and the blood-soaked silence of the aftermath. Liam stood tall, the broken bodies of the powered enemies sprawled around him like discarded dolls. His white wings folded slowly into his back with a soft shimmer, vanishing beneath his skin as if they were never there. His face was unreadable.

He turned his head slightly—his eyes falling on the last man standing.

The shield user.

The same one who’d hidden behind his glowing blue barrier when the fight began. The only one who hadn’t lifted a finger during the battle. And now, he knelt there frozen, legs trembling, sweat dripping down his forehead as he watched the young man who had just annihilated eight exogen-enhanced warriors without even breaking a sweat.

Liam’s voice came low and steady. “Stand.”

He didn’t shout. He didn’t bark the order. But the weight of it was undeniable. It hit like thunder in the chest, and it carried an edge that made disobedience impossible.

Before the word had even left Liam’s mouth fully, the man’s knees had already locked straight, and he shot upright as if a rope yanked him by the spine. His body moved out of pure survival instinct.

Liam took a step toward him, eyes locked.

“Who sent you?” Liam asked, voice still quiet, but now laced with cold steel.

The man gulped audibly. “B-Boss… It was Boss who sent us.”

Liam nodded slowly. “And how does your power work?”

The man’s lips trembled. He stammered, “I—I don’t really know… we just… we get a bottle. We drink it. And then it activates the power.”

Liam’s brows twitched with irritation as he exhaled through his nose. He looked up to the trees above them, clearly unimpressed. “I already knew that,” he muttered under his breath, voice full of threatening disappointment.

The man’s eyes widened in panic. “Wait—wait! I remember something else!”

Liam’s cold gaze snapped back down to him. “Then talk.”

The man swallowed again and said quickly, “We were injected before… in a lab. That’s what they told us. They said the injection planted something inside our bodies. Some kind of formula that gives us dormant powers. But it doesn’t activate on its own. It needs the liquid in the bottle.”

Liam narrowed his eyes. “What’s in the bottle?”

The man shook his head, desperate. “I swear I don’t know. They never told us. They just said drink and obey.”

“Do you have one on you?”

The man didn’t hesitate. He reached into the pocket of his dark vest, hands shaking, and pulled out a tiny glass vial—no bigger than a finger. The liquid inside glowed faintly, an eerie silver-blue color that shimmered with unnatural light. He tossed it gently toward Liam.

Liam caught it with one hand, fingers curling around the cool glass. It was light. Too light. And barely a few drops remained inside. But it was enough.

If Vanessa could analyze this…

Liam rotated the vial in his fingers, watching how the light danced inside it. It felt dangerous. Like a secret too powerful for most to hold.

Then he looked back up at the man.

“Thank you,” Liam said calmly.

The man’s eyes lit with hope. He relaxed slightly. “So you’ll spare me?”

Liam’s lips curled slowly into a ghost of a smile—one that didn’t reach his eyes. “I never said that.”

Before the man could react, Liam’s hand shot forward. Inhumanly fast.

His fingers wrapped around the man’s neck, locking in place like a vice.

“Wait—no—no, please! I told you everything—!”

Liam leaned in, voice barely a whisper. “You don’t walk away after trying to kill me.”

Snap.

The sound of a neck breaking echoed through the forest like a crack of fate itself.

The man’s body dropped limp to the ground with a dull thud, his eyes still wide in stunned betrayal.

Behind Liam, the Black Lotus members watched with a mixture of awe and bloodlust. They didn’t flinch. Didn’t wince. They had just seen one man tear through nine powered enemies and end the last one without a blink.

He was no longer just their inspiration. He was something else now.

Something terrifying.

Something divine.

Lilith stood quietly a few steps behind them, watching everything unfold. And even she, proud and commanding as ever, felt a chill in her bones.

Liam’s grip finally released the lifeless body, and it slipped from his clutching hand, thudding onto the forest floor without ceremony. A hush fell over the clearing—only the distant rustling of leaves and Lilith’s shallow breathing remained.

Without hesitation, Liam’s wings erupted from his back once more. White and formidable, they unfurled with a soft snap, catching the diffused morning light. The feathers glimmered as he flexed them, ready to ascend.

Lilith broke from the group, boots pounding the earth with urgent desperation. “Wait!” she cried out, voice shaking. Liam’s wings shuddered but didn’t beat just yet. He turned slowly, his gaze sharp yet unreadable as he watched her approach, the huntlight finally focused on her.

For a long moment, Lilith opened her mouth. She wanted to say something—apologize, ask him to stay, tell him how much he mattered—but the words lodged in her throat. It wasn’t fear. It was regret. Guilt.

She stepped forward, then stopped. Liam’s wings bristled with expectation.

He spoke finally—quiet but uncompromising. “Call me when the next job comes.”

That was it. No protest, no pleading. Only those four words—sharp enough to sting, cold enough to snap bones.

Liam bent his knees smoothly, down and then up in a single fluid motion. His wings beat once, then twice, and he rose on a current of power. Lilith watched him slip into the clouds, disappearing, a living myth leaving in his wake.

A single tear slid down her cheek—unseen among the chaos, but there.

She paused until the last silhouette of his wings had disappeared.

Turning slowly, she addressed her men who had pressed into the clearing behind her.

“Clean this place up,” she said, voice tight, commanding. “Every body. Everything.”

The fighters exchanged glances, fear pulsing beneath their discipline. Lilith’s eyes widened as she pressed a hidden command on her earpiece. A mechanical click resonated faintly through the woods.

“We leave now,” she continued, voice low but urgent. “I’ve set the timer bomb in the house. Twenty-two minutes until we clear the building.”

At the word “bomb,” their disciplined calm shattered. They swallowed hard. One of them—with a grimace on his face—grabbed the charred torso of the man Liam had severed. His face turned pale as he lifted it, using two hands; scorched flesh stuck to his gloves.

Another dragged the lower half, its foot hitting overgrown roots and stones. He stumbled over a branch and nearly dropped it, shock breaking through his composure. A third hauled the crystal-spiker’s shattered legs as though lugging dead cargo out of a crate.

The others wrenched weapons from unconscious bodies, knelt to gather them, then stacked them in piles. Only Lilith moved swiftly—crisp, purposeful. She slipped from body to body, extracting anything valuable.

The men followed her. Their faces drained—fear taking them. But a new thought, sliding beneath words, began to form:

Why did Lilith set a bomb?

They each replayed her presence here. She’d arrived alone—no explosives, nothing suspicious about her arrival. She hadn’t brought any heavy gear. Yet there it was: a concealed bomb, primed and ticking back in the safe house.

What secret was so vital that she would obliterate its finale? What was she hiding?

A young recruit—a lanky man with a buzzcut—dumped his body in the pile and looked Lvith in the eyes.

“What… what are we hiding, Boss?”

Lilith didn’t look at him. She only flicked her wrist for the group to move faster. Her stare remained fixed on the pile.

22 minutes until boom.

The forest was alive with their breaths and the distant pulse of sound—feeble birdsong, the hush of wind, and the faint hum of time slipping away.

Another soldier—older, more scarred—knelt by a body, wiping sweat and blood from his blade. He swallowed hard. “We will never speak of this, right?”

Lilith nodded once without turning. Her chest rose and fell steadily. She finally said, voice even but low: “Burn the remains. Erase the place. No one questions why.”

They all nodded, the request heavier than the bodies they carried.

They worked faster. Bodies were rolled and hidden beneath leaves. Weapons locked into satchels. Biometric tags wiped. The clearing became an empty expanse once more—no holy ground, no massacre, only earth.

Yet every man who carried a corpse, every one who scrubbed vegetation wondered.

What is Lilith hiding?What was worth blowing up—worth erasing—worth letting Liam fly away from?

That uncertainty hovered above them, more dangerous than any weapon.

——

Lilith stayed a long distance, she then stared at the house and looked at her watched, “It should be about now” She murmured to herself.

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