The soldiers of that unit grabbed him without any gentleness, each one taking a limb. They hauled the burned body out of the shop and carried it back toward the convoy with efficient speed. No dical attention was administered. No attempt was made to treat his injuries or make him comfortable.
They brought the charred body to the back of a large military transport truck that was following behind the tanks. The canvas covering was pulled aside, and they threw the young man inside like he was a piece of cargo. He landed with a dull thump on the tal floor.
Inside the truck, there were already other bodies. Dozens of them. So burned, so torn apart, so relatively intact. All of them were young people, teenagers and young adults. All of them had been killed or captured by the military convoy.
It turned out the convoy wasn’t truly hunting radiants at all. That was just a cover, a convenient excuse that allowed them to move through the city without suspicion.
They were hunting Players. Systematically targeting and eliminating or capturing anyone who showed signs of having awakened special abilities during the trial.
The captain watched as his soldiers completed their task and returned to formation. He nodded once in satisfaction, his stoic expression never changing. Then he raised his hand and made a forward gesture.
The convoy continued moving, rolling deeper into the city, searching for more Players to eliminate.
-----
anwhile, several blocks away in a partially collapsed building, Vogue was completely unaware of the military death squad rolling through the streets. He was focused entirely on examining the loot that had materialized after killing the Thousand-Radiant Baby Ghost.
The legendary creature’s death had triggered sothing in the system, causing several items to appear on the ground where its body had disintegrated into ash. Vogue had collected them imdiately and retreated to a relatively safe location to examine what he had obtained.
Three items lay on the dusty floor in front of him.
The first item was a golden box, roughly the size of a shoebox but made of gleaming tal that seed to generate its own soft light. The surface was covered in intricate engravings that ford patterns he didn’t recognize, swirling designs that might have been decorative or might have been so kind of script or runic language.
The second item was actually a Type 8 Artifact, which made Vogue’s eyes widen with genuine excitent. It was a whip, approximately three ters long when fully extended, made from what looked like segnted tal links that moved with impossible fluidity. The handle was wrapped in black leather, and the tal segnts glead with a dark silver color that seed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Type 8 was a significant upgrade from the Type 9 pseudo-artifact he currently carried. This was a genuine high-tier weapon that would be worth a fortune.
The third item was actually a book, bound in leather that looked ancient but was sohow still in perfect condition. The cover had no title, just a symbol stamped into it that resembled a human skeleton in a curled position. When Vogue opened the book carefully and looked at the first page, he saw flowing script written in a language he sohow understood despite never having seen it before.
[Heaven Grade Technique: Bone Shrinking thod]
Vogue’s breath caught in his throat. A Heaven Grade technique! That was an incredibly rare find, far above the Human Grade and Earth Grade techniques he had access to. Heaven Grade ant this was sothing that even elite Stellar Knights would kill to obtain.
He read through the first few pages quickly, his eyes widening as he understood what the technique allowed him to do. The Bone Shrinking thod wasn’t just about making himself smaller. It was a complete transformation technique that let him manipulate his entire skeletal structure at will.
He could shrink his bones to make himself appear younger, changing his height and proportions to look like a child or teenager. He could shift his internal organs to different positions within his body cavity, making him resistant to attacks aid at vital points since his organs wouldn’t be where an enemy expected them to be. He could even change his facial bone structure, altering his appearance completely to look like an entirely different person!
This was an infiltration technique of the highest order. With enough practice, he could beco anyone, infiltrate anywhere, and escape from situations where being recognized would an death.
Vogue carefully closed the book and set it aside. He would study it more thoroughly later when he had ti to properly learn the technique. For now, he turned his attention to the golden box.
He unlatched the clasp on the front and lifted the lid slowly, half-expecting sothing to jump out or explode. But nothing happened. Inside the box, resting on a cushion of dark velvet, was a single egg.
The egg was roughly the size of an ostrich egg, but its shell was unlike anything Vogue had ever seen. It seed to shift colors constantly, flowing from deep purple to midnight blue to crimson red to golden yellow and back again in an endless cycle. Patterns would form on the surface, geotric designs that would hold for a few seconds before dissolving and reforming into sothing completely different.
Vogue tried to use his system to identify what kind of creature was inside the egg. A notification appeared, but instead of providing information, it just showed question marks.
[??? Egg]
[Grade: ???]
[Species: ???]
[Durability: Unbreakable]
[Hatching Requirents: ???]
Everything about the egg was unknown. The system either couldn’t identify it, or the information was sohow blocked or hidden. All Vogue knew for certain was that it had co from a Legendary Creature, which ant whatever was inside this egg was probably incredibly powerful and unbreakable creature.
He stared at the mysterious egg for a long mont, watching the colors shift and flow across its surface, and wondered what exactly he had obtained.
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