Chapter 88: Kneeling Before the Princess

Austin gave his father the nastiest glare he had ever shown in his entire life. He had already suggested wiping out the Rogue leader the moment she and her convoy entered the settlement.

Back then, his father had stopped him, arguing that a sudden massacre within the caves was tantamount to ruining his carefully cultivated military image among the survivors.

Austin had fought back furiously at the time, demanding to know why his father was still wasting breath caring about a public image when survival was at stake.

But the Supreme Commander had remained stubbornly fixed on his decision, prioritizing politics over absolute eradication.

Because of that single, foolish decision, they were trapped in this exact life-or-death situation right now.

Austin truly believed that Salma and the little girl had somehow sneaked into their restricted caves because of help from internal traitors within the military ranks.

He convinced himself that if his elite personal bodyguards managed to receive his alert, he would be completely saved.

With shaking hands, he silently activated the hidden emergency alarm switch built into the side of his smartwatch.

His bodyguards should have received his distress signal by now. They would arrive in no time. Until then, he just needed to stall and survive.

He deliberately ignored Summer completely, his main focus locking desperately onto Salma standing in the doorway.

In his arrogant mind, he had never considered the young zombie girl to be a genuine threat, assuming all the terrifying lethality belonged to her mother.

The true extent of Summer’s monstrous combat strength had been meticulously hidden from him, largely because the so-called spies feeding him information were actually Salma’s shadows.

Therefore, Austin had absolutely no idea that the little child standing right in front of him was an absolute harbinger of death. By the time he finally realized the terrifying truth, it would be far too late to save his skin.

His mind raced as he calculated his next move. Since fighting Salma head-on was suicidal, he needed a hostage.

He planned to make a sudden dash, grab Summer by surprise, and use her own child as human leverage to force the terrifying woman to back down.

Without warning, Austin lunged forward with explosive speed, his hand outstretched to grab Summer by the collar and pull her into a chokehold.

Summer did not even blink.

As his hand came rushing toward her, her shadow domain flared with violent intensity. A dense surge of cold, corrosive darkness whipped outward like a striking viper.

Before Austin’s fingers could even brush the fabric of her dress, a heavy wave of invisible gravity slammed down onto his chest with the crushing weight of a falling boulder.

Crack!

Austin let out a strangled, agonizing gasp as his momentum instantly halted. The invisible pressure crushed his ribs, forcing the air straight out of his lungs in a violent spray of saliva.

Before he could process what had happened, Summer raised her right hand encased in her dark golden gauntlet and flicked her wrist forward with casual disdain.

A sharp, jagged spike of condensed shadow energy materialized in the air and shot straight through Austin’s right knee.

"Aaaaargh!" Austin shrieked in absolute agony, his leg buckling instantly under his own weight. He crashed hard onto the stone floor, clutching his bleeding, mangled knee as tears and snot streamed down his pale, distorted face.

The pain was so intense that his vision flickered white.

"You... you bitch!" Austin wept openly, crawling backward in the dust, completely abandoning all his aristocratic pride. He dragged himself toward his silent father, desperately screaming for help. "Father! Father, are you blind?! Kill them! Kill these monsters right now! Do something!"

He grabbed the hem of the Supreme Commander’s olive-drab trousers, shaking his father’s legs frantically while begging for protection.

Yet, to Austin’s sheer horror, his father did not move a single muscle.

The Supreme Commander stood frozen in place, staring blankly ahead with dead, unblinking eyes. He looked completely lifeless, like an empty mannequin stripped of all human emotions, ignoring his only son’s desperate screams entirely.

Before Austin could even comprehend his father’s bizarre, paralyzed behavior, the Supreme Commander’s knees suddenly buckled.

With a loud, heavy thud that echoed sharply inside the quiet office, the most powerful military leader of the country dropped straight to the floor, kneeling humbly on the cold stone before the small zombie girl.

"Andro greets the young princess," the Supreme Commander spoke, his voice carrying an eerie, multi-layered resonance that sounded nothing like his usual tone.

"Father..." Austin whispered, his eyes widening in absolute horror as his brain scrambled to comprehend the sight. "What the hell are you doing?"

For a brief, desperate moment, a pathetic flicker of hope crossed his mind. He foolishly thought his father was kneeling on the stone floor solely to beg for his son’s life, humbling himself before these monsters out of paternal love.

But that delusional notion vanished the exact second it formed.

He knew his father better than anyone. The Supreme Commander was a man of immense, unyielding pride.

He was a military dictator who valued his dignity above all else, a man who would willingly choose a thousand deaths before ever submitting to humiliation like this.

"Arise," Salma muttered softly, her voice cold and commanding.

Austin watched with his breath caught in his throat as his father instantly heeded her command. The older man snapped upright, pulling himself out of the kneeling posture, though he still maintained a stiff, submissive bowing position toward the mother and daughter.

"You..." Austin choked on his own words, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips.

His mind was fracturing under the weight of the impossible reality unfolding before him. What on earth was going on? What kind of dark sorcery had completely rewritten his father’s mind and body?

"Is he your shadow?" Summer asked, tilting her head in mild confusion as she looked between the kneeling military leader and her mother.

"Yes. His original soul was completely replaced by Andro. Do not worry about the details right now, my little duck. I will teach you all about soul annexation later. Right now, take care of this annoying idiot," Salma instructed calmly, pointing a slender finger directly at the trembling, bleeding young man on the floor.

Austin let out a choked sob of terror as Summer slowly turned her crimson gaze back toward him.

The little zombie girl took a deliberate step forward, her dark golden gauntlets clanking softly against the stone. The heavy, suffocating aura of her shadow domain closed in around him like the walls of a closing tomb.

"P-please... wait," Austin stammered, frantically dragging his mangled, bleeding leg backward until his back hit the cold stone wall. All his aristocratic arrogance, all his superiority, and all his cruel entitlement had completely evaporated, leaving behind a pathetic, weeping animal. "I am the son of—!"

He never got to finish his sentence.

Summer raised her right hand casually and snapped her fingers. A dense, crushing wave of gravitational force pinned Austin’s arms and uninjured leg flat against the floor, rendering him completely immobile.

She walked up to him slowly.

"You are so annoying," Summer whispered, her voice carrying a haunting, chilling echo.

Without waiting for a reply, she drove the sharp tip of her dark golden gauntlet straight down into his left shoulder. Austin let out a deafening, blood-curdling shriek as the metal pierced through muscle and bone, pinning him firmly to the rug.

Summer did not pull it out immediately. Instead, she slowly twisted the gauntlet, grinding the jagged edges through his flesh while watching his face distort in agonizing pain.

"Does it hurt?" she asked innocently, leaning her head to the side. "She might have cried too."

In an instant, an image of a girl appeared once again in her head. Those always-smiling eyes had now become haunting to her.

Austin wept uncontrollably, coughing up thick, dark blood as his nervous system overloaded from the sheer intensity of the agony. He looked desperately toward his father for salvation, but the Supreme Commander merely stood frozen in his submissive bow, staring blindly at the floor as if his son meant nothing at all.

Seeing that no help was coming, Austin’s eyes rolled back in despair.

Summer did not drag out the torture endlessly. With a final, dismissive flick of her wrist, she manifested a dense, volatile spike of corrosive shadow energy directly above his chest.

"Goodbye," she said flatly.

The corrosive spike plunged downward with brutal speed, obliterating his chest cavity and piercing straight through his heart.

Austin’s body convulsed violently once, twice, and then went completely limp, his vacant eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling as a pool of dark blood slowly spread across the stone floor.