Esper Harem in the Apocalypse

Chapter 1138 1138: The Assembly

The high school gymnasium smelled of floor wax, and absolute, suffocating terror. Over five hundred students and faculty members knelt on the hardwood basketball court, surrounded completely by heavily armored HWSD kill squads.

At the front of the hostage crowd, Rize knelt with her hands tightly clasped behind her head. Her crisp white blouse was wrinkled, and her red-framed glasses sat slightly crooked on her nose, but her dark eyes glared fiercely at the enforcers pacing in front of them.

Inquisitor Vance, the high-ranking executioner sent to replace Manuel Bailey, walked heavily across the painted court. Blue kinetic energy crackled violently around his steel gauntlets.

"The old government is dead!" Vance shouted, his voice bouncing sharply off the high ceilings. "The New World Order requires soldiers. It requires power. Since this pathetic school refuses to implement the mandatory hero curriculum, we will forcefully trigger your awakenings right here. Fear forces mana to bloom in the human body. And nothing causes more fear than a live demonstration."

Vance reached into the front row of kneeling teenagers. He grabbed a terrified, crying senior by the collar, dragging the boy out into the open space.

Rize immediately broke rank, jumping to her feet.

"Stop!" Rize screamed, stepping in front of her students. "He is just a kid! He doesn't have any powers! You are going to kill him!"

"Casualties of progress, Ms. Rize," Vance sneered, swatting her backward with a wave of kinetic force. Rize hit the floor hard, gasping for air as the enforcer raised his glowing gauntlet. The blue energy formed a massive, razor-sharp blade of pure mana, aimed directly at the weeping student's neck. "Let the harvest begin."

Vance swung the blade down.

The air in the exact center of the gymnasium violently shattered.

A localized, catastrophic collapse of physics ripped a jagged, crimson rift straight through the fabric of reality. The sheer atmospheric pressure of the tear knocked the front row of HWSD enforcers flat on their backs.

The kinetic blade stopped a single millimeter from the student's neck, frozen completely in mid-air by an invisible, crushing gravity.

Rudy stepped out of the crimson rift. He kept his hands casually in the pockets of his dark slacks, his tailored jacket perfectly neat. Right beside him walked Heim Lu Bela. Her white coat flared around her sleek combat suit, and her galaxy-swirling optical sensors locked onto the terrified HWSD squad.

"You are interrupting my class," Rudy stated smoothly.

Vance's eyes widened in sheer panic. He tried to pull his gauntlet back, finding the space around his arm completely locked.

Keeping his hands securely in his pockets, Rudy glanced at the enforcer's trapped limb. With a sickening, metallic crunch, the invisible gravity collapsed inward. Vance's steel gauntlet, along with the entire arm inside it, instantly crushed into a flat, bloody paste.

Vance dropped to his knees, screaming in absolute agony as the severed limb hit the floor.

"Fire!" the HWSD captains roared, scrambling to their feet. Dozens of heavily armored enforcers aimed their hyper-advanced pulse rifles and hero devices directly at Rudy and Lu Bela.

"Disable their toys," Rudy ordered softly.

Acting as the living network, Lu Bela simply looked at the armed squad, her flawless face completely devoid of mercy.

"Override authorization: Genesis," Lu Bela spoke, her voice ringing clearly across the gym.

Every single pulse rifle, kinetic shield, and hero device in the room sparked violently. The glowing blue lights on their armor snapped to a dead, flat black. The hyper-advanced tech turned into useless, heavy scrap metal in a fraction of a second. The enforcers pulled their triggers frantically, completely locked out of the system they thought they controlled.

"What did you do?!" a captain yelled, backing away as his armor locked up completely.

Rudy pulled his hands from his pockets and cracked his knuckles.

"I brought the savior of humanity to school," Rudy smiled, his dark eyes glowing with lethal intent as the crimson mana flared wildly around his shoulders. "And she agrees that you are all expelled."

Moving faster than the human eye could process, Rudy appeared directly in front of the captain and drove a fist straight through the dead, heavy chest plate. The man's ribs shattered instantly, his body flying backward and crashing into the concrete bleachers.

The bloodbath started immediately. Rudy tore through the elite kill squad with barehanded, brutal violence. He snapped necks, crushed skulls, and used his telekinesis to fold heavily armored men in half, executing them with the raw, terrifying physical dominance of a ruling god. Blood sprayed across the polished hardwood, pooling around the scattered basketballs and dead pulse rifles.

Rize sat frozen on the floor, pushing her glasses up her nose. Her jaw hung completely open. The student she had been servicing in her private office just an hour ago was currently turning highly trained government assassins into bloody smears across the gymnasium walls. The shock completely overwhelmed her fear, replacing it with a deep, burning, undeniable awe.

In less than thirty seconds, fifty elite HWSD enforcers lay dead on the court.

Rudy stood perfectly clean amidst the carnage, not a single drop of blood touching his expensive jacket. He walked over to the whimpering, one-armed Inquisitor Vance and placed a heavy boot squarely on the man's chest, pinning him to the floor.

Leaning down, Rudy narrowed his eyes and spoke directly into the hidden comms piece still lodged in Vance's ear—speaking straight to the digital parasite controlling the dead founders.

"I know exactly what you are," Rudy whispered, his voice dripping with lethal promise. "And I am coming to burn your fortress to the ground."

Rudy kept his boot firmly planted on Inquisitor Vance's chest. He leaned closer to the hidden comms piece lodged in the dying enforcer's ear, waiting for the parasite's response.

A sharp, agonizing screech pierced the air. The sound bypassed the small speaker entirely, vibrating directly through Vance's own vocal cords. The Inquisitor's eyes rolled back into his skull, flooding instantly with a pitch-black, viscous fluid.

The digital parasite had hijacked the broken body to deliver its message.