Marvel's Kryptonian Scientist Chapter 398 398

The commotion outside snapped the Tarikha leader out of his fantasy.

His brow furrowed. "What's going on?"

He thought he had heard explosions. Gunfire too.

But how was that possible? With Tarikha's ard force in Chaos Land, who was insane enough to co after them?

A panicked subordinate burst into the room. "Leader, sothing's wrong. A flaming skull monster on a motorcycle just smashed through the periter. He's killing everyone in sight!"

Back in a world before alien invasions and public miracles had made the supernatural common knowledge, Barnes's appearance was enough to terrify these n. They were terrorists bound together by religion and fear, and now they were staring at sothing that looked like a demon from the underworld had personally rolled into their camp.

"What monster?"

The leader did not believe it at first. He strode over to the surveillance monitor, and the mont the feed ca up, he saw it.

A flaming skull.

Riding a blazing, snarling motorcycle.

Cutting through Tarikha's n like a scythe through dry grass.

The organization's fighters, who usually acted like death itself owed them respect, were now shrinking back in pure terror. Their courage evaporated on the spot.

They were convinced this thing was so devil co to drag their souls straight to hell.

Tarikha's propaganda always told them that if they died for the cause, they would go on to paradise and live in comfort. But dying at the hands of a demon was a different story entirely.

"Damn it," the leader muttered, swallowing hard. "What the hell is that thing?"

Even he could not help it. For years, he had told himself religion was just a tool for manipulating people. Now, for the first ti, doubt began to creep in.

Were gods and demons real after all?

Most of the forces Tarikha had spread around the periter were tribal militia cannon fodder.

But hidden among them were also a few properly trained mortar and sniper units.

The sniper team was led by a one-eyed man who had only just returned from the Steel Citadel in the northern bear country.

"Stay sharp," he barked. "That thing out there is a demonic incarnation. It's not normal. Tell the mortar team to start a full bombardnt."

Still, he forced himself to focus. This was no ti for disbelief. Judging by the way the enemy was moving, they would not stop until everyone here was dead. The only option was to kill him first.

At the leader's order, mortars opened fire with shrieking whistles.

A few seconds later, Barnes's position disappeared beneath a storm of fire and explosions.

Tarikha's fighters quickly recovered their nerve and started shooting back.

Barnes ignored all of it.

Bullets, shells, heavy weapons, light weapons, none of them mattered. The mont they touched him, the hellfire wreathing his body burned them away into nothing.

Drex had given him that upgrade as a reward, strengthening his hellfire and turning him into sothing even more dangerous. Now he would not be dragged down by ordinary firearms or slowed by artillery while he butchered his way forward.

"Fire! Keep firing!"

"Shoot him!"

The tribal militia unleashed everything they had. Light machine guns, heavy machine guns, all of them opened up at once.

The one-eyed sniper leader even personally shouldered his rifle and pulled the trigger.

Barnes beca a blur.

He leapt over the line of fire, landed beside a gun emplacent halfway up the mountain, and brought one boot down.

The bunker collapsed instantly, crumbling into rubble.

The machine gun inside went silent.

Barnes did not even pause. He sprang away and redirected himself toward another firing position.

The snipers tried desperately to track his movent.

What they found instead was a nightmare.

The faster Barnes moved, the faster he seed to beco.

At that speed, hitting him was impossible.

The tribal militia had never received proper military training. Their quality was uneven, and their morale was the first thing to break.

They watched Barnes close the distance while smashing bunker after bunker apart, and their will collapsed completely.

Weapons were thrown aside. Armor was abandoned. n scattered in every direction, fleeing in disgrace.

Several tribal nobles scread themselves hoarse, furious, but there was nothing they could do.

One of them, apparently the son of a tribal chief, grabbed a handgun and shot several deserters dead on the spot, screaming at his slaves to turn around and fight.

Then a blur appeared beside him, taking the shortest possible path to get there.

Barnes's hand flashed out and slapped away the noble's two bodyguards.

"Monster!"

The noble shouted in his local dialect and raised his pistol.

He squeezed the trigger.

Barnes did not even look at the bullet.

He flicked a finger.

The noble's head exploded in a red mist, and the force of the strike flung the headless body backward into the mortar position.

The gunners there had barely enough ti to panic before Barnes appeared above them.

The Ghost Rider, engulfed in roaring hellfire, dropped directly into the center of the mortar team.

Boom.

The entire position erupted.

The gunners were blasted skyward.

The mortars themselves shattered into loose parts, scattered across the ground.

The one-eyed sniper leader sucked in a sharp breath.

Barnes was tearing through the battlefield like a one-man apocalypse.

Cold sweat rolled down the man's back as he grabbed an anti-tank sniper rifle and forced himself to aim at the shape just landing in the distance.

Bang.

He fired.

The instant Barnes felt the attack, he locked onto the shooter's location.

He snatched up a mortar tube, gripped it like a javelin, and hurled it with brutal force.

The one-eyed man had just pulled the rifle down and was preparing to run when his vision flashed white.

The mortar tube slamd into his chest.

His entire body was launched backward, tumbling down the mountain slope from the sniper nest to the foot of the hill.

The other snipers froze.

They had not even seen what happened. They only knew one thing for certain.

This invader was terrifying.

Far beyond anything they could stop.

They abandoned their weapons and fled in panic toward the rear.

Along the way, the team spotted more than ten tan armored vehicles rushing in to reinforce the battle.

For a brief mont, so of the snipers thought the arrival of actual war machines might finally be enough to slow that monster down.

Then a deafening crash rang out right next to them.

The sound hit so hard they all dropped flat to the ground, too terrified to move.

When they finally dared to look up, one of the armored vehicles had been driven vertically into a cliff face.

Its front end was gone.

The exposed body of the vehicle had a massive crater punched into it, and cracks spiderwebbed outward from the impact site.

Blood was leaking steadily from those cracks.

"Even armored vehicles can't stop that thing?"

One sniper had just gotten to his feet and was staring at the wreckage when another armored vehicle ca falling out of the sky.

It hit the ground roof-first, crumpled into scrap tal, and flattened him beneath it.

The remaining snipers stared in horror for a split second, then started screaming and running again.

They were not alone.

Over the course of those ten or so seconds, even more militia fighters and Tarikha elites lost their nerve. Before orders could even reach them, they were already pulling back from their bunkers and positions.

The defensive line Drex's enemy had spent so long building was collapsing without a real battle.

Under the rolling smoke and choking dust, the entrance to the valley, defended by more than a thousand Tarikha fighters, had fallen to one man in less than a minute.

And Barnes was still moving.