"Attack him! Kill him!" Julian screamed, scrambling backward against the concrete wall, his hands clawing uselessly at the dirt. "He's an unregistered threat! Kill him now!"
Driven by sheer survival instinct, the two Section 1 students on the catwalk reacted. The axe wielder, despite his dislocated shoulder, gathered every remaining drop of his Level 38 energy into his physical frame. He leaped from the metal platform, throwing his entire body weight behind a desperate, downward strike with his bare fist, aiming directly for Caine's skull.
Caine didn't even look up at the descending attacker.
As the student fell into range, Caine simply pivoted his hips and threw a straight, rising left hook into the student's descending body.
BOOM!
The impact sounded like a heavy iron vault door slamming shut at high speed. The compressed shockwave passed clean through the student's high-grade body armor, bypassing his kinetic shields entirely. The force lifted the Level 38 fighter out of the air and drove him horizontally across the courtyard. He flew thirty feet before slamming into the heavy steel wall of a storage tank, leaving a deep indentation in the metal before slumping unconscious onto the ground.
The second student—the twin-blade user—stopped mid-stride. He looked from his unconscious teammate embedded in the storage tank to Caine, who was calmly dusting off his left sleeve.
The twin-blade user slowly released his grip on his weapons. The two short-swords fell to the gravel with a faint metallic clatter. He raised both hands into the air, stepping backward until his back hit the catwalk ladder, his entire body trembling violently.
"I... I yield," the student whispered, his voice cracking. "Please. I was just following Julian's orders."
Caine paid him no further attention. He turned his gaze back to Julian, who was now backed entirely against the facility's outer concrete foundation, trapped between Caine and the dead Dread-Tusk corpse.
"Please..." Julian stammered, his arrogant composure entirely demolished. "My family... the Marcus Syndicate... we have millions of credits in Sector 1! We own energy refineries, weapon foundries, private training grounds! I can give you the Dread-Tusk core! I can give you property in the Upper Ring! I can guarantee you a spot in Section 1!"
Caine stopped two feet from Julian. He looked down at the elder Marcus brother with cold, unblinking eyes. Behind him, Jax was sitting frozen on the dirt, his jaw loose, while Lyra stood holding her injured wrist, staring at Caine as if he were an ancient entity wearing the skin of an Academy cadet.
"I don't want your credits, Julian," Caine said softly. "I don't care about your family's refineries or your place in Section 1."
"Then what do you want?" Julian wept, his hand clutching his broken halberd handle like a lifeline. "What do you want from me?"
"I want your silence," Caine said.
Caine reached out with his right hand, extending his index and middle fingers. He tapped them lightly against the central power node of Julian's chest plate.
It was not a punch. It was a precise, micro-impulse of compressed density—a technique Silas had mentioned during their late-night training sessions in the black market.
THUMP.
A microscopic shockwave penetrated Julian's armor, entering his main sternum node and traveling directly into his primary CrystalHeart channels. The intense internal pressure forced Julian's energy pathways to instantly collapse inward, locking his core in a state of absolute shock to prevent his organs from rupturing.
Julian gasped, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his breath catching in his throat as his internal power went completely dark. His body went limp, and he slouched sideways into the dirt, unconscious.
Silence returned to the water treatment facility.
Caine turned around smoothly, looking at his own squadmates. The heavy pressure that had filled the alley vanished instantly, returning the atmosphere to the cold, damp quiet of the Ruin Zone.
Jax swallowed hard, his voice trembling as he looked up from the dirt. "Caine... man... what... what are you?"
Lyra took a slow step forward, her hazel eyes searching Caine's face for any sign of hostility. She looked at the shattered alloy halberd, the crushed storage tank, and then at Caine's unblemished, unarmored hands.
"You didn't just block a Level 42 strike," Lyra whispered, her voice tight with awe and caution. "You suppressed three High Intermediate fighters without using a weapon form. Caine... who are you really?"
"I'm an Auxiliary cadet who wants to finish his deployment," Caine replied, his voice returning to its normal, calm cadence. He walked over to the containment crate resting beside the Dread-Tusk corpse, lifting the heavy, glowing blue sphere with one hand as if it weighed nothing. "We take this core back. We tell the Enforcers that we found Section 1 incapacitated by the beast surge, and we retrieved the stolen material."
Jax looked at Julian's unconscious form, then back at Caine. "Will... will he be okay?"
"His core is locked," Caine said, adjusting his grip on the crate. "It will take months of specialized therapy for his channels to reopen. By the time he wakes up, his memory of the impact will be scrambled by energy shock. He won't be able to tell anyone anything useful."
Lyra looked at Caine for a long moment, then slowly nodded. She walked over to Jax, offering her uninjured hand to help the heavy vanguard to his feet.
"Auxiliary Squad 4 sticks together," Lyra said firmly. "Let's make the call."