Like muffled thunder rolling deep beneath the earth, the low rumble grew sharper and sharper as the blue light intensified.
The instant the blue glow reached its peak, the buzzing roar surged upward and exploded into a deafening howl that shook the heavens.
"ROAR!"
The massive wave of sound carried overwhelming pressure with it, sending ripples through the air itself. A suffocating force came crashing down together with the terrifying sound pressure.
In the very next instant, before anyone could react, a dark blue beam wrapped in pure destruction erupted outward.
The night was torn apart by blue light. Scorching heat spread in all directions, and the searing temperature twisted the air into boiling waves.
Everything in the beam's path was ignited, unleashing a devastating shockwave.
The dozens of armored vehicles Stryker had sent slammed head-on into that raging atomic torrent. The moment the thick armor was touched by the blue light, it warped violently. The metal surface flash-vaporized under the heat, and amid rising silver-white steam, the vehicles visibly caved in and melted away.
The ordinary soldiers stood even less chance. In almost an instant, they were reduced to ash by the extreme heat.
No one knew how long the frenzied breath attack lasted.
When the roaring tide of energy finally died away, the horrifying blue light slowly faded, revealing a vast blackened trench ripped across what had once been level ground.
In only a few brief moments, more than half the enemies standing before Fenris had been annihilated. The armor and heavy weapons they had relied upon had long since been reduced to nothing, as flimsy as paper before that crushing wave of destruction.
"W-What... what kind of monster is that...?"
"Is that the lizard man...?" Stryker said he was just..."
The surviving soldiers all stopped in place, staring at one another. Their hands clenched stiffly around their rifles as they looked at the terrifying figure glowing faintly blue in the darkness. An indescribable silence began to spread through their ranks.
"Fenris, you..."
Scott had not taken the blast head-on, but from his high position in the rear, his superior eyesight had allowed him to see nearly every detail of the atomic breath.
One attack had all but split the dense forest in two. The unbearable heat had set everything around it ablaze. In the brilliant firelight reaching into the sky, Fenris looked like an unscalable mountain.
He was just standing there, yet the remaining soldiers feared him like a tiger and dared not make a single rash move.
"Don't just stand there, Scott."
Fenris smacked his lips. The aftertaste of the breath attack was still a little weird.
But the power was immense, and he was very satisfied with it.
"There are still helicopters. Don't let them get away."
"Right."
Scott glanced at Fenris.
By now, the soldiers who had already been scared out of their minds seemed to have received the order to retreat. They turned and fled desperately, as if some ancient nightmare were chasing them from the darkness ahead.
Fenris had no intention of sparing a routed enemy.
His huge body charged into the forest with startling agility. His claws had become nothing less than scythes of death. As his form flickered through the trees, soldiers fell one by one without a sound.
Desperate terror spread through them. They wanted nothing more than to throw away every ounce of gear weighing them down, but the very equipment meant for killing had now become the burden that kept them from escaping.
"Die!"
Fenris struck again and again, his eyes cold and utterly without emotion.
Inside the school, Scott precisely fired at each helicopter racing away in the distance.
Soon, several explosions rang out. Under the force of his optic blasts, not a single one of those war machines escaped. Every last one crashed.
A heavy smell of blood began to spread through the woods. As the fires grew larger and larger, Scott let out a breath of relief, grateful that the school had survived. At the same time, his curiosity about Fenris's strength only deepened.
Fenris had practically carved through an elite force by himself, and that devastating breath attack was something he had never shown before.
In only a few short months, his strength had increased almost exponentially.
"He used to be barely over seven feet tall, and now he's pushing thirteen... Fenris isn't going to grow to dozens of meters tall someday, is he?"
The absurd thought flashed through Scott's mind, but in the next moment he mocked himself and dismissed it.
"How could that happen?"
"No mutant can do that. Impossible."
After thinking for a moment, Scott took out his communicator.
"Logan, the enemy's been defeated... no, wiped out. You can all come out now."
"And bring Bobby and the others too. We need people to put out fires and clean up the battlefield, now!"
...
At the same time, Alkali Lake Dam Base.
Bang!
Watching the soldiers on the screen run for their lives only to be harvested one after another without mercy, Stryker slammed his palm down on the desk. His face was dark as frost.
"Wasn't I told that without Professor X in the school, this place had no real combat strength?"
Seeing Stryker's rage, the subordinates around him all shrank back and lowered their heads, not daring to make a sound.
Two days earlier, Professor X had deliberately created the illusion that he had left the school, then quietly returned through Fenris's portal.
That move had successfully fooled Stryker, prompting him to send people after Professor X without hesitation while also preparing to use the opportunity to attack Xavier's School and obtain all the detailed data on Cerebro.
But now, not only had Professor X seemingly vanished from the face of the earth, even the elite unit Stryker had confidently gone to the President to request had been wiped out by what had once been nothing more than a lab rat from his facility.
"Find everything!"
As time passed, every last soldier was exterminated, and Stryker completely lost all battlefield surveillance.
In the final image transmitted back, there had only been one thing visible:
A pair of ice-cold eyes.
"I want every scrap of information on this lizard man dug up!"
"He was just a joke of a Level Two mutant before. How did he suddenly become this strong? Pull all his research records. Read every single word of them carefully!"
Stryker flew into a rage. One failure after another had turned all the boasts he had made in front of the President into a complete joke.
This defeat not only meant his plan to use Professor X to exterminate all mutants had failed, it could also affect his future mutant research projects, and even his status and influence within the military.
"Fenris!"
Even from thousands of miles away, Stryker could still clearly feel the suffocating pressure and overwhelming intimidation carried in that destructive breath attack from the footage sent back from the front lines.
"One move. Just one move was enough to wipe out a modern elite force..."
"I'll dissect you completely. I'll understand every last inch of you. And one day, I'll make you pay for this."
Stryker's gaze locked onto Fenris's massive body on the screen, his eyes filled with icy malice.
"Oh? You want to kill that child?"
A man's voice suddenly sounded from behind Stryker.
The tone was full of amused contempt, as if he had just heard a joke too stupid to laugh at.
"I'm afraid you don't have what it takes."
(End of Chapter)
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