Bertram finally walks up to Jack. The guy's still breathing, barely, a wet rattle in his throat. Bertram puts one more into him.
Clean. Final. No coming back from this.
"Our grudge is settled."
He turns and melts into the darkness like he was never there. Just the body and the blood, cooling on the pavement.
Truth is, Bertram could've ended this a lot easier. A sword energy from the shadows. Or let Dina do the work. Either way, Jack dies before he hits the ground.
But Bertram's just a student. Hasn't seen much blood yet. He chose this fight to be his first.
And if it's going to be his first, he wants to feel it up close. Watch the life leave. Know what it looks like.
Jack was low-level anyway. Even if things went sideways, Bertram had it covered.
He slips back into the school training room, makes a show of being there the whole time, then heads to the dorm. Nobody knows the guy practicing alone tonight snuck out and killed a cop.
"Bertram, you've been training like crazy lately," a roommate says.
"No choice." Bertram shrugs. "I want to live."
The roommates give tight, bitter smiles. Who doesn't want to live? But a few extra days of sweating in a training room? That's not going to save anyone.
Bertram lies down on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
Killing the cop didn't change fate. That means the Jackson Family already knows I'm the snitch. So now it's all on the Olson Family.
The real battlefield is somewhere he can't reach.
---
East Zone 9. Underground Coal Plant.
After the apocalypse, coal became a lifeline. To keep it safe from dimensional creatures, they built the plants underground.
This one in East Zone 9 has been dead for years, just a stopover for patrols passing through.
Nobody expected it to be hiding something else.
One B-rank. Three C-rank. Fourteen D-rank.
All guarding one girl.
"This is ridiculous," a C-rank fighter yawns, bored out of his skull. "All these people for one kid. She's not going anywhere."
He kicks at a loose rock. "This place doesn't even have a decent woman. I'm losing my mind."
"Shut it." The B-rank beside him doesn't even look up. "This is a major family operation. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. Mission ends soon."
"Yeah, yeah. But come on, this place is buried. The Olsons aren't finding it. And even if they did, look at us. What are they gonna do, magically show up with an army?"
He laughs.
"Unless they've got a fortune teller on payroll."
The B-rank opens his mouth to answer.
Then the world turns white.
A wave of energy crashes down from above, thick, rolling, endless.
The entire underground plant drowns in cold mist. Sound dies. Sight dies. Every guard feels it at once: they're alone. Trapped. Cut off from everything.
"What the hell..."
"Who's ability is this?!"
White fog coils into serpents, wrapping around the throats of the D-rank guards. They claw at their necks, faces going purple, bodies buckling.
The C-rank who was just complaining spins toward a direction and throws a punch. His fist slams into an ice shield that wasn't there a second ago.
"WHO?!"
His voice cracks. The panic is bleeding through.
Suddenly, a blue mask flashes before his eyes, followed by a chilling cold that spreads from his arm to his entire body, freezing his blood and energy.
His terrified gaze remains fixed on the unique mark of the blue mask.
"The Doomsday Squad?"
"How could the Doomsday Squad suddenly attack here? This is the core of humanity's resistance against the extradimensional beings!"
The other two C-level guards face similar fates.
One is confronted by a ghostly shadow, while the other has a laser gun pointed at his head.
"Taken care of!"
"Taken care of!"
The squad's communication channel fills with constant status updates.
Meanwhile, bodies drop one by one in the mist.
Deep within the fog, a B-rank warrior rushes toward the imprisoned Olson Family girl, Vanessa. His goal is to get her out as fast as possible.
But the ground starts shaking. A burly figure blocks his path. The figure's arms are like granite, wrapped in white cloth strips. On his face sits a yellow mask.
"You're from the Doomsday Squad. How can you act without the Lord's permission?" The B-rank warrior's heart trembles.
The person in front of him is also B-rank. But every member of the Doomsday Squad is an elite among elites, practically invincible at the same level.
"If you're dead, no one will know we acted without permission," the man in the yellow mask says, his voice cold and final.
It's the same voice from the other end of Whitney's phone call.
"Captain, how's it going?" comes a query over the squad's comms.
"Handled," the yellow-masked man replies.
The B-rank warrior freezes for a second, confused.
Then the yellow-masked man's fist slams into his chest. Starting from his sternum, every bone in his body shatters at once.
"I was asking about my sister!" Whitney's frosty voice cuts through the comms.
"Oh…" The yellow-masked man turns to look at the house behind him. A pale, frightened face lies on a pile of straw, looking like she's asleep.
"She's here. That prophecy ability you found? Real."
"Damn. We hit the jackpot." An excited male voice echoes through the team chat.
"Pack up and head back, Whitney. Don't lose the person you're supposed to find," says the man in the yellow mask.
---
Meanwhile, Bertram takes a short nap in his dorm, making himself look harmless.
Suddenly, a message hits him from the Infinite Life Simulation.
[Reforge Destiny: In the face of a giant like the Jackson Family, you disguised yourself as a prophetic ability user and gained the trust of the Doomsday Squad. This significantly altered your destiny, meeting the requirements to reforge your fate. Your life experiences and insights into martial arts abilities will now merge with your current self.]