Chapter 199 | The Meeting

Chapter 199: 199 | The Meeting

The asphalt cratered beneath his impact. A shockwave rippled outward from the landing point, shattering the windows of parked cars and sending pedestrians staggering.

The man’s massive frame was driven into the street surface, his body creating a crater roughly two meters deep and five meters across.

He lay there. In the crater. In his four-meter form. His silver sword buried in the rubble beside him.

Then he moved.

He pushed himself up. His massive arms trembled. His transformed body, which had seemed so invincible moments ago, was battered. Bruised. Cracked in places where the shockwave had exceeded even his enhanced durability.

He stood and then Looked up.

At the twenty-fourth floor of the ruined building.

At Dexter.

Who was standing at the edge of the destroyed floor, looking down at him.

---

People were gathering.

Dozens of them. Pedestrians who had felt the shockwave, heard the explosions, seen the pillar of light, and come running. They stood at the edge of the crater, their phones raised, recording everything. Some were screaming. Some were crying. Most were simply staring with the wide-eyed, uncomprehending shock of ordinary people who had just witnessed something far beyond their understanding.

The transformed man’s massive form was impossible to miss. A four-meter tall, impossibly muscled, white-haired figure standing in a crater in the middle of the street. People immediately recognized him as they saw the power he was Radiating.

And he was looking up at a young man standing in the ruins of the twenty-fourth floor.

Dexter stared down at the old man.

His violet eyes had faded back to their natural brown.

Dexter wanted to go down there, tocontinue the fight. Wanted to finish what the old man had started. Wanted to make him bleed. To make him pay for every word.

But now was not the time.

The street was full of people, cameras were recording and the Hero Association would be responding within minutes.

The police were probably already on their way. Fighting an Ultra Realm expert in front of a crowd of civilians, in the middle of the central district, during broad daylight, would attract exactly the kind of attention he could not afford.

Not today.

Dexter turned away from the edge.

He walked back into the ruins of the office. His eyes scanned the debris. The desk was gone. The bookshelves were gone. The decorative items were shattered beyond recovery.

But Marcus was still there.

The man lay unconscious in a corner of what remained of the office. Blood had pooled beneath him and his breathing was shallow.

Dexter felt no sympathy for him in the slightest.

He walked over to Marcus’s unconscious body and knelt beside it and started to remove the man’s watch. A luxury timepiece. Mana-powered. Probably worth 100,000 dollars.

He removed the gold ring on Marcus’s right hand which seemed to Worth at least a hundred thousand.

He removed the bracelet on Marcus’s left wrist and was about to move when he noticed something in Marcus’s mouth.

A gold tooth.

Dexter reached down, pried Marcus’s jaw open with his thumb, and yanked.

The tooth came free with a faint resistance and a wet sound.

He held it up.

"Gold! Nice!"

Dexter pocketed it anyway.

Then he stood up and walked to the far wall, where the three sword plaques had fallen. The display mounts were broken, but the swords themselves were intact. Type One. Type Two. Type Three. Three relic weapons, undamaged by the battle.

He collected all three.

Seller’s remorse, Marcus?

He placed everything into his spatial storage.

He looked around the ruined office one last time. Scanned for anything else of value. Found nothing that had survived the destruction.

He nodded to himself. Satisfied.

Then he turned and walked out.

---

The elevator was still functional. Miraculously.

Dexter rode it down to the lobby. The doors opened. He stepped out.

The lobby was full of people. Receptionists behind the desk, security guards near the entrance, visitors who had been evacuated from the upper floors, all of them crowded into the ground floor space, staring upward through the skylights at the smoke and debris rising from the twenty-fourth floor.

Several bodyguards stood near the elevator bank. They were armed. Armored. Their postures were aggressive. Their faces were set with the determination of men who had been ordered to stop someone.

They saw Dexter step out of the elevator.

None of them moved.

They had seen what happened. Or heard about it. The security feeds, the frantic radio communications, the bodyguards who had been stationed on the twenty-fourth floor and had been found unconscious in the hallway. The four-meter transformation of their boss. The pillar of light that had blown through the roof.

And they had seen the old man. Their employer. Their leader. An Ultra Realm expert. Lying in a crater in the middle of the street.

Looking up at a young man who was now walking calmly through the lobby.

None of them were Ultra Realm. Most were Peak Superhuman at best. And they had just witnessed their Ultra Realm boss get thrown out of a building by the casually dressed young man now walking toward them.

They stepped aside.

Dexter walked through the lobby without looking at any of them. His pace was unhurried and his expression was neutral.

He pushed through the glass doors and stepped out into the sunlight.

The pillar of energy had dissipated, leaving only a thin trail of smoke rising from the damaged building.

A crowd had gathered behind police barricades that had been erected as Emergency vehicles were arriving.

And in the center of the crater, the transformed man had reverted to his human form. He was surrounded by emergency responders who were wisely keeping their distance.

He was staring at Dexter.

Their eyes met across the chaos of the street.

The old man’s expression was unreadable.

He was reassessing.

Dexter held his gaze for one second.

Then he turned away, walked to his SUV, opened the door, climbed in, and started the engine.

He pulled out of the parking garage. Merged onto the main road and then instantly drove out.

---

He was driving when his phone rang.

Dexter glanced at the screen. Cole.

’Damn! I almost forgot.’

He answered.

"Hey, Dexter. I don’t mean to disturb, but I just wanted to make sure you haven’t forgotten about the meeting we set up."

Dexter checked the time on his dashboard display.

12:30 PM.

He was thirty minutes late.

"I apologize. I got held up by something but I’m on my way."