Chapter 259: Criminal

The remains of Arius hit the pulverized rubble with a wet thud. Hot crimson blood flowed down the cracked concrete, making its way down.

Then, the sky shrieked with mechanics.

BZZZZT—WHINE!

From the rim of the crater, surveillance drones descended, projecting harsh white searchlights onto the wreckage. Loudspeakers mounted on the perimeter walls crackled to life.

“Hide Volter. Raise your hands and surrender. Do not drag this any further.”

The voice echoed through the rising dust.

“The area is under total containment. Step away from the casualty and submit to custody. Any further resistance will be met with lethal force.”

Hide did not raise his hands. Surrender to Walter Bigiva? Surrender to the man who had turned a 4-Star meat grinder into a trap, murdered his friends, and strapped him like a laboratory specimen?

Walter and his hired people can go get themselves fucked.

Hide turned his back on the drones.

He went in the opposite direction from the speakers. Beside him, Aegis stepped forward. The four-meter iron titan held Risa’s body cradled in its armored gauntlets.

Hide bent his knees to leap into the ruins, but his boots suddenly halted.

He looked back.

Kiko sat slumped against an overturned generator. Her mask was shattered, her cropped grey hair caked with blood, and her left leg was crushed. She wasn’t moving or trying to crawl. She sat in the soot, staring up at the drones with dull, vacant eyes, quietly waiting to be executed for treason.

Hide clicked his tongue. He had claimed to be the embodiment of death, yet he could not stomach leaving someone behind who was trying to save him. Besides she had not done anything wrong.

“Zenith,” Hide commanded softly.

WHOOSH!

A pillar of dark mana erupted from the earth, and the seven-meter executioner phantom materialized. Its hollow sapphire-blue visor locked onto Hide, bowing its horned head.

“Take her,” Hide ordered, gesturing toward Kiko. “Keep her steady.”

In a fluid motion, Zenith crossed the debris, gently scooping the girl’s broken frame off the gravel. Kiko let out a weak gasp as her vision wavered, the searing pain in her leg dragging her under into unconsciousness.

Hide vaulted over the southern lip of the crater, plunging straight into the wastes of the Dead Zone. Flanking him like shadows, Aegis and Zenith tore through the forest, carrying their fragile burdens beneath the cover of the smog. Behind them, corporate turrets opened fire, chewing up empty rubble as the sirens faded into the distance.

They pushed deep into the badlands for hours.

The terrain was an expanse of sunken earth, bottomless fissures, and shales where the caves of the 4-Star dungeon, had collapsed inward. The sky had started to turn darker with clouds holding back the sun completely, suffocating the wasteland in an endless twilight. Feral Calamity packs roamed the dark ridges, their snarls echoing through the winds.

Hide ran until he was sure that every radar and surveillance objects were out, putting kilometers between themselves and the mainland.

As they crossed a ridge of vitrified stone, the atmospheric dark mana spiked to lethal levels. In Zenith’s grip, Kiko’s breathing grew shallow, thin violet veins spiderwebbing across her neck as the toxic energy invaded her pores.

Hide ordered the abyssal slime to wrap around her body to protect it.

The Slime slid from under his body, wrapping around Kiko in a protective, pressurized membrane that filtered the poison from the air.

Soon they were out of the much lethal part and close to the sea. The beaches and ports that had been abandoned for hundreds of years.

At the base of a craggy granite hill, hidden behind a thicket of dead trees, Hide spotted a narrow natural cavern.

he chose it as his place of stay for now.

The phantoms ducked beneath the rocky overhang, stepping into the dry, quiet hollow. Aegis carefully laid Risa’s body upon a flat slab of granite in the center of the cave, while Zenith set Kiko down against the far wall.

Hide walked over to the granite slab.

He pulled the white coat back slightly, gazing down at Risa’s pale face. Her skin was immaculate, devoid of life.

Hide had told Aegis earlier that she will have a proper burial in her home.

Hide closed his eyes, a bitter ache constricting his throat. But he could not afford to do that.

He was a branded criminal, Carrying her across burning war zones was a hollow fantasy. If Walter’s hounds ever intercepted them, they would steal her corpse again, put her back inside a glass cylinder, and desecrate her vessel.

He would not let them touch her.

“Rest now, Risa,” Hide whispered softly. “No more cages.”

He extended both hands over the slab.

Abyssal HellFlame.

Fire edged in crimson erupted from his palms. The flames consumed the stone slab in a shroud of destruction. The fire devoured flesh, bone, chemicals, and the coat alike, leaving behind no smoke and no ash. In seconds, her physical body was returned to the void.

Hide stood before the scorched rock for a long time, letting the silence settle over him.

Finally, he turned and knelt beside Kiko.

The slime pulled back from her crushed left leg, revealing bone shards puncturing swollen, bruised tissue. Hide placed his palm over her knee.

Abyssal Healing.

Emerald light washed through the mangled limb. Bone fragments realigned with soft, muted clicks, torn muscles knitted together, and the broken skin sealed smooth until no scar remained. Her ragged breath steadied into a calm, restful sleep.

Hide rose and walked to the mouth of the cave, sitting down upon a cold boulder to keep watch. Outside, yellow eyes flickered in the dead woods, but none of the beasts dared approach the dark aura rolling off the entrance.

The mocking voice in his head was completely gone, leaving an eerie stillness.

Soon, the clouds had taken all of the sky. Hide stared into the dark, his mind dissecting the horrifying timeline.

Two months.

How had Walter Bigiva kept him locked for sixty days without his conscious mind tracking a single second? The titanium apparatus on his back had blocked his mana pathways, but ordinary biology still aged and dreamed. To lose two full months in what felt like hours defied standard human talents.

‘What is Walter’s talent?’ Hide wondered grimly.

In the sinkhole, Walter had stepped out of empty air, flicking his fingers to shatter space like glass. There were no projectiles or incantations or any visible object to that.

And then there was the laboratory.

he suspected that Walter had carefully mended Risa’s corpse, suspending her in green stasis fluid to preserve her core. He had kept Hide in chains, preparing an extraction protocol to harvest his Core as well.

But such experiments are highly illegal and frowned upon. But that’s the catch. The International Exterminator corp was supposed to be the one looking over these. Who would look over when the commander of IEC himself conducted such things.

But how did he knew of Hide’s core and Risa’s talent? No one except him knew.

“Some humans are also working with the higher beings,” the Doom Overseer had warned.

Lord Wartz’s words returned to him: House Odo and House Mord seeking the convergence of Earth and Rilth to fuel their ascension.

Walter was their lapdog. An emissary carrying out the orders of higher gods.

Hide’s fists tightened.

The world thought that he had slaughtered his own comrades. Let them believe it.

He was going home to the Southern Continent. He was going to find his people.

But he wondered. Would they still believe him?