Chapter 237: The Last goodbye (II)

The flat, hollow buzz of the disconnected dial tone hummed in the dark office, vibrating like a death knell against Commander James Maddox's ear.

Slowly, methodically, Maddox lowered his black communicator. His jaw clenched so violently that the muscles along his jawline bulged against his pale skin.

All hell had broken loose.

Watchtower Eight—the subterranean vault hidden miles beneath the bedrock of the Tarita coastline—was one of the humanity's most classified, deeply guarded black site. Inside that facility rested three fully grown, preserved A-Rank Calamity Lords and six genetically engineered embryonic horrors. Every single containment unit, every neural clamp, and every glass vat had been reinforced with intricate runic seals woven directly from Maddox's own refined white mana. Those beasts were biologically paralyzed, their cores completely isolated from the atmosphere.

There was zero possibility that they had broken out on their own.

It had to be an external breach, Maddox reasoned, his brown eyes narrowing into slits.

None of the senior geneticists or security operatives stationed beneath the coastline were suicidal enough to tamper with the vats. They were veteran researchers who understood all too well that unleashing an A-Rank Calamity Lord meant instant death.

Maddox's thoughts instantly flashed back to the infiltration from days prior. The mysterious, plain-looking boy who had effortlessly bypassed everything, murdered a C-Rank guard in silence, and vanished. Following that breach, Maddox had personally ordered the coastal perimeter security to be tripled, stationing additional elite squads across all eight watchtowers.

Yet, somehow, the enemy had bypassed it all and shattered the seals.

'Damn it,' Maddox cursed internally, his fists tightening inside the pockets.

A chaotic dilemma tore through his mind. His immediate instinct was to go directly into the ruins of Tarita. But he couldn't leave Varisus—not tonight, and not tomorrow.

The World Exterminator Ranking Tournament was approaching rapidly, and the sinister preparations he had observed in the Central Continent signaled that something big was brewing. He had committed himself to personally training Hide, Sora, Gideon, and Ryan. If he abandoned the four rookies now, if he delayed their intensive development by even a few days, he would be sending them to Ufrifa as lambs to the slaughter.

Time was too scarce. He could not afford to halt their progress.

Making a swift, decisive calculation, Maddox unlocked his master terminal and dialed three emergency numbers simultaneously.

He contacted the heads of the three great legacy houses—the ancient, hidden families who had covertly financed and supported his classified research beneath Tarita for decades. The first two clan leaders answered immediately, accepting the deployment order without a shred of hesitation upon realizing the catastrophic stakes.

Then came the third line.

The screen flickered, connecting to Hiken Sihue, the ruthless, cold-blooded patriarch of the notorious Sihue assassin clan. Maddox despised the old man with every fiber of his being. The Sihue were cutthroats who operated purely on transactional malice, refusing to move a single finger unless it directly expanded their shadow empire.

But to Maddox's surprise, the old patriarch didn't scoff or deflect. The mere mention of Tarita caused a heavy, tense pause on the other end of the line.

"Tarita..." Hiken murmured, a calculating edge entering his voice. "A messy affair. But understand this, Maddox: the Sihue Clan does not throw its lives away for government failures. If the situation collapses, I will withdraw." he said, latter.

Maddox let out a low, dangerous chuckle that carried the weight of an impending storm.

"Do not play games with me, Hiken," Maddox warned, his voice dropping into a chilling register. "Have you forgotten the prize resting beneath your own estate? The A-Rank beast you have been chaining and dissecting in your basement for years was delivered to your doorstep by my hands."

Maddox stepped closer to the screen, his brown eyes gleaming. "I gave you that Calamity Beast in exchange for your compliance."

A long, suffocating silence hung between the two titans.

"Hmph. You drive a hard bargain," Hiken sneered. "I have already departed."

Click.

Maddox severed the connection, letting out a long, exhausted breath as he slumped back into his leather chair. It took him nearly an hour of mental focus to steady his swirling mana and regain his composure.

Picking up his communicator once more, Maddox directly called and ordered to Hide, Sora, Gideon, and Ryan, commanding all four of them to assemble at the designated training grounds in exactly two days at dawn.

The following day, the domestic news networks across the world erupted into absolute chaos.

A viral video had flooded every major social forum and Exterminator bulletin board. The footage showed Hide Volter single-handedly dismantling the corrupt Vice President of the Green Horn Exterminator Agency. The Vice President was a seasoned A-Rank veteran with a versatile mana-shaping talent, yet Hide had outmaneuvered, sliced, and humiliated the man before a crowd of stunned onlookers.

Sitting at his desk, Maddox watched the recording with a dry, fascinated smirk curling on his lips.

The boy took down an A-Rank combatant without even tapping into his core's true ceiling, Maddox thought, shaking his head in disbelief.

The next two months passed in a relentless, exhausting blur.

True to his word, Maddox dragged Hide, Sora, Gideon, and Ryan through the deepest pits of hell. He forced them into unmapped 4-Star Gates, threw them against grotesque horrors, and battered their bodies until their bones restructured and their mana circuits adapted past their limits. Under his brutal tutelage, the four rookies shed their hesitation, forging a lethal, unified synergy that made them look less like academy students and more like seasoned warriors.

Yet, as the date of the World Tournament drew near, the intelligence reports filtering in from the Eastern Continent grew darker by the hour.

The disaster at Tarita was spiraling into an unmitigated nightmare. The legacy house strike forces had suffered catastrophic casualties.

The day of departure finally arrived.

At the international transport terminal in Varisus, Maddox saw the four youths off as they boarded the airship bound for the grand tournament arena in Ufrifa.

Standing on the tarmac, Maddox pulled Claire aside. He handed her an encrypted datapad containing every piece of information he had about their team for all the tournament duration.

"Keep your eyes open, Claire," Maddox said softly. "Protect the kids, do not trust the foreign council, and above all else... stay alive."

Claire looked into his eyes, nodding with a heavy, resolute expression. "I will, Commander. Come back in one piece."

Maddox offered a faint, melancholy smile. He told her he would come tomorrow, it a lie.

The moment their transport lifted into the sky, Maddox turned on his heel straight into the warzone of Tarita.

When Maddox materialized on the jagged cliffs of Watchtower Eight, the sight that greeted him was absolute desolation.

This was not an infestation that could be resolved in an instant.

Four colossal A-Rank Calamity Beasts—mutated by human gene-splicing and fueled by raw dark mana—were roaming the Dead Zone. They did not charge blindly like mindless animals. Possessing twisted, cunning intelligence, the beasts waged a brutal guerrilla war across the terrain, striking from the shadows when human guards lowered their defenses and vanishing into the subterranean fissures before heavy artillery could lock on.

For days, the Dead Zone ran red with blood.

Maddox and the surviving elders fought without sleep, tracking the horrors through the ruins. But the cost was catastrophic.

On the third evening, deep within the fractured caverns beneath the cliffside, Hiken Sihue met his end. The ancient patriarch unleashed the absolute pinnacle of his arts, fighting with savage, demonic desperation. He successfully slaughtered two of the mutated A-Rank beasts, ripping their cores from their chests, before his aging body finally gave out under the combined onslaught, succumbing to his fatal wounds amidst the shattered stone.

With Hiken fallen and the other house leaders dead or incapacitated, James Maddox was left standing completely alone.

Maddox stood amidst the carnage, his tailored coat torn to shreds, his skin drenched in a mixture of dark beast ichor and his own crimson blood.

Three colossal beasts still remained.

But on the fourth day, the reality around him fractured.

A colossal pillar of pitch-black, light-devouring energy plummeted from the heavens, engulfing Maddox before he could even take a breath.

The roar of the ocean and the smell of burning ash vanished instantly.

When the blinding darkness cleared, Maddox found himself standing on the cold, cracked flagstones of a colossal, gothic throne room. The air tasted of rot, ancient ozone, and suffocating death.

Standing in the corner of the hall, clutching a blood-stained blade with trembling hands, was Ren Sihue.

And seated upon the massive obsidian throne at the end of the hall was a towering, skeletal nightmare—the Lich, the ancient Overlord of Death.

"How have you been... Vincent?" the ancient monster rasped, its voice echoing across two hundred years of blood and betrayal.

Maddox looked up at the nightmare from his past, his brown eyes turning stark and tranquil as he gathered the last embers of his life force.

That day was his last.

And the war had finally began.

[End of Volume 4]