Chapter 250: End of Line

The laughter dying in Hide's throat was replaced by predatory violence.

Before the squad leader could even process the sound, Hide lunged forward. His bare, scaled right hand shot out like a viper, fingers hooked into razor-sharp talons aimed straight at the man's throat.

SWOOSH!

From the leader's left flank, one of the surviving assassins moved with desperate speed, thrusting an alloy longsword to sever Hide's outstretched wrist.

CLANG—CRACK!

The reinforced steel blade did not cut. The moment it struck the overlapping draconic scales of Hide's forearm, the weapon shattered into dozens of jagged metallic fragments.

The kinetic backlash deflected the shards in every direction. One spinning, razor-sharp sliver of broken steel tore through the air and drove itself deep into the right eye of the squad leader.

"ARGH!"

The leader screamed in agony, clutching his bloodied face as he stumbled backward, tearing himself out of Hide's reach.

Hide didn't even glance at him.

Using the forward momentum, Hide's left hand snapped outward, his scaled fingers clamping around the skull of the assassin who had just swung the sword. His grip sinking into the assassin's temples through the porcelain mask.

Abyssal Frost.

A burst of black ice detonated from Hide's palm. In less than a second, the assassin's head, flesh, bone, and mask were frozen into solid black ice.

CRUNCH.

Hide closed his fist.

The assassin's frozen head shattered into hundreds of brittle, crystalline cubes that clattered harmlessly across the soot. The headless corpse went instantly limp, tumbling heavily to the earth without spilling a single drop of blood.

"You... you are a monster!"

A high-pitched, furious shriek echoed from the dust. It was the voice of a woman, raw with rage and completely devoid of the disciplined calm expected of an elite assassin.

The female assassin threw her hands outward. A torrent of thick, choking grey-black smoke erupted from her sleeves, expanding outward to engulf the entire clearing in an opaque fog. Her physical silhouette seemed to dissolve, melting seamlessly into the vapor until she was the smoke itself.

The remaining four masked killers capitalized on the distraction, converging on Hide's position from within the blinding fog, their weapons poised to strike at his blind spots.

To an ordinary warrior, fighting an enemy that had become the air itself was a death sentence.

To Hide, it was utterly meaningless.

His true sight pierced straight through the smog.

After that moment, he didn't fight like an Exterminator, or even a human.

Driven fury and months of bloodshed, Hide moved like an unhinged predator. Feral and grotesque.

He blurred into the smoke, his bare talons tearing through flesh, cartilage, and bone with sickening ease. When an assassin lunged with a curved dagger, Hide caught the man's forearm, snapping the radius like a dry twig before driving his fingers clean through the assassin's ribcage.

From the edge of the clearing, six feral bound bounded out of the dust, drawn by the smell of fresh blood. The remaining assassins tried to use the beasts as shields, but Hide showed no discrimination.

He ripped the lower jaw off a beast with his bare hands, swung its massive carcass into a charging swordsman to break his spine, and pivoted on his heel to catch the smog-user as she condensed from the vapor behind him.

Before she could even manifest her dagger, Hide's hand clamped around her throat.

Her eyes widened in horror behind her cracked mask. "How... how can you see—"

SNAP.

With a effortless twist of his wrist, Hide crushed her windpipe and threw her lifeless body aside, letting it tumble onto the growing mound of corpses.

Within four minutes, the smog cleared, carried away by the cold wind howling over the sinkhole.

The silence returned.

Ten elite assassins lay dead across the scorched gravel, surrounded by nearly twenty slaughtered subterranean beasts. Hot crimson human blood and foul, black acidic ichor pooled together beneath Hide's boots, dripping steadily from the tips of his dark-scaled claws.

He stood in the center of the carnage, his chest heaving, his silver hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and grime.

The squad leader was crawling across the dirt, whimpering as he clutched the bloody ruin of his right eye and left leg, desperately trying to drag himself toward an overturned armored transport.

Hide stepped forward to finish him.

CRACK.

A sharp, nauseating jolt of pain shot up Hide's left leg.

His knee buckled inward, and his tibia gave out with an audible groan. Hide tumbled forward, hitting the gravel hard on one knee.

"Damn it!" He hissed through clenched teeth, clutching his left thigh.

The massive warhammer strike from the armored assassin earlier had fractured his bone. In the heat of the frenzy, his adrenaline had masked it.

Abyssal Regeneration! Hide commanded mentally.

Nothing happened.

Hide's heart sank slightly as he remembered the circular apparatus still clamped to his upper spine.

His passive adaptations, his True Sight, and his physical strength did not require mana—they were etched into his biological vessel. But Abyssal Regeneration and Mana Blast were two of his active techniques that required the conscious intake and circulation of mana. With the titanium talons locking behind him, those two skills were completely offline.

He would have to do this the hard way.

Dragging his broken left leg through the dirt, Hide pulled himself upright. He limped forward, his boots crunching methodically over the gravel as he closed the distance on the crawling leader.

The leader heard the dragging footsteps and turned over on his back, his single remaining eye widening in terror as the silver-haired demon loomed over him.

"You think you can just run away after trying to kill me?" Hide asked, his voice low, hollow, and devoid of warmth.

Before the man could beg, Hide raised his right hand.

A wave of dark ice erupted from the earth, rapidly climbing up the leader's boots, torso, and shoulders, permanently sealing the screaming man inside a jagged pillar of black frost.

"Hide..."

A faint, trembling voice broke through the desolation.

Hide snapped his head around, his combat senses instantly flaring.

Bouncing wildly over the cracked asphalt of the perimeter road, an open-topped military light utility vehicle was speeding toward the clearing.

Behind the wheel was Fikel, one of the rookies from his agency. And sitting in the passenger seat, clutching the dashboard with pale, white knuckles, was Risa.

Hide let out a ragged exhale, dropping his defensive stance as he limped toward the edge of the road.

The vehicle skidded to a violent, dusty halt ten paces away. Fikel cut the engine, and both he and Risa scrambled out of the cab.

"President! Are you okay?!" Fikel shouted, sprinting toward him with wide, panicked eyes. The young recruit's uniform was covered in dust, his hands trembling as he saw the sea of corpses and shattered beasts littering the ground behind Hide.

"I'm fine..." Hide managed a thin, strained smile, waving a bloody hand to keep the boy calm.

Then, his gaze locked onto Risa. The faint smile vanished, replaced by a sharp scowl.

"Why are you here, Risa?!" Hide scolded her, his voice rough with exhaustion. "It's dangerous. I was just ambushed! I specifically ordered you to stay back!"

Risa walked toward him, her steps unsteady, her eyes wide and glossy with unshed tears. Her long white hair, once turned pale from her cure, fluttered in the ash-laden wind.

"I saw it, Hide..." she whispered, her voice cracking with profound emotion. "I saw you trapped out here. I saw you bleeding alone in the dark, and I saw... I saw that you needed help. I couldn't just sit in a bunker and do nothing while you bled for us again."

Hide's chest tightened. He looked past her toward Fikel. "What about the others? Kai? Elara? Did they make it out?"

"Yes, Sir!" Fikel nodded rapidly, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. "Your phantom summons escorted Miss Elara and the remaining squad out. They managed to evacuate Kai to the mobile surgical unit, and... and they brought Fuu's body back to the transport. Everyone who survived is safe at the forward base. But you weren't there. Miss Risa started having a panic attack, saying you were surrounded... she begged me to drive her out here to find you."

Hide let out a long, shuddering sigh of pure relief.

Kai was alive. Elara was safe. The agency hadn't been completely wiped out.

"Good..." Hide murmured, feeling the crushing weight on his shoulders lighten by a fraction. He turned his back slightly toward Fikel, pointing over his shoulder. "Fikel, do me a favor. Pull this damned metal spider out of my spine."

"Right away, President!"

Fikel immediately stepped forward, reaching both hands toward the circular titanium apparatus clamped between Hide's shoulder blades.

TINKLE.

A tiny, delicate sound broke the silence.

It sounded like a crystal champagne glass fracturing on a marble floor.

Before Fikel's fingers could even graze the metal device, he stopped.

Fikel didn't even scream. His eyes rolled back, and his limp, lifeless body crashed heavily onto the gravel right beside Hide's boots.

"You are much stronger than I had anticipated, Hide Volter."

The cultured, aristocratic voice drifted down from the upper floor of an abandoned corporate communications relay thirty yards away.

Hide's breath hitched. He snapped his head around, his pupils shrinking to needlepoints.

Standing atop the jagged, broken frame of a shattered glass window, stepping casually onto the empty air as if descending a flight of stairs, was Walter Bigiva. The 1st Commander of the International Exterminator Corporation looked down at the carnage with a mild, disappointed scowl, his pristine grey trench coat fluttering in the wind.

"Sickel's dogs truly were incompetent," Walter sighed, brushing a speck of ash from his collar. "Ten seasoned executioners, an S-Rank suppression device, and a 4-Star Calamity Lord... and you still stand."

Hide tried to lunge forward, but his shattered left leg gave out, dropping him hard onto the dirt.

Walter didn't even look at the dead assassins. He simply raised his right hand toward Hide's chest, his fingers slowly curling inward.

The air between Walter and Hide violently distorted.

Hide couldn't dodge, because he couldn't even see the attack.

'NO!'

In that frozen, horrifying fraction of a second, a slender figure blurred across his vision.

Risa.

She didn't hesitate. She had seen this moment in her dreams. She had known the price from the second she begged Fikel to turn the ignition key.

Risa threw her body forward, spreading her arms wide to completely cover Hide's chest.

CRACK—SHATTER!

The sound of breaking glass echoed across the wasteland once more.

The invisible attack did to Risa what it had did to Fikel.

A choked, wet gasp escaped her lips.

The concussive force hurled her backward. Hide reached out instinctively, his arms catching her falling form against his chest as they both collapsed into the blood-soaked dirt.

"R... Risa...?" Hide choked out, his voice trembling so violently the name barely formed.

The world went completely silent.

The howling wind, the crackling fires of the burning sinkhole, and the arrogant presence of Walter Bigiva faded into a ringing void.

Hide looked down at the girl in his arms.

Risa lay entirely limp, her head resting weakly against his shoulder. Her white hair was stained with hot, spreading crimson, and a steady stream of blood bubbled from the corner of her lips, dripping onto Hide's scaled wrists.

She was the girl he had bled for. The childhood friend whose mana poisoning had driven him to enter the meat grinder of the gates. He had raided the Sihue clan for her. He had butchered Calamity beasts, fought S-Rank commanders, and traded his own humanity just so she could wake up and smile under the sun.

And now, her body was growing cold.

"Risa... no... no, no, no..." Hide stammered, his fingers clawing frantically at the wound in her chest, that he couldn't even see. Trying desperately to hold the life inside her.

Silence.

He called for the system.

The system did not answer.

Risa slowly opened her eyes. The irises were already clouding over, the light draining away, but as she looked up into Hide's terrified, tear-streaked face, the faintest, softest smile curved her lips.

"Hide..." she whispered, her voice barely a breath against his cheek. "There... There is a... Ring in... my bag."

"Don't talk! Stop talking!" Hide sobbed, his vision completely blurring with hot, streaming tears. "I'm getting you out of here! I'll fix this! I promise, Risa, I'll fix this!"

"It's okay..." she breathed, her trembling. "Enji... wanted me to... give it to you. It... It also has a... a Letter."

Her hand slipped.

It fell limply dropping onto the soot with a soft, final thud.

Her head rolled back against his arm. Her chest stopped moving. The faint, fragile warmth in her frame dissolved into the freezing air of the wasteland.

Risa was dead.

Hide knelt in the dirt, clutching her lifeless body against his ribs. His ocean-blue eyes were wide, vacant, and hollow, staring down at her pale, still face in an ocean of despair.

Then he heard another sound of breaking glass... this time from inside his chest. He looked up at the smiling old man, as his vision went blank!