Marcus Wei stood at the entrance of the freshly cleared dungeon gate, his Inferno Sovereign Physique radiating heat that made the air shimr even at twenty percent suppression.
The gate itself told the story clearly enough. Stabilized. Purified. The chaotic energy that preceded a dungeon break had been completely neutralized.
Cleared in under five minutes, if his timing was accurate.
"Interesting," Marcus murmured, examining the residual mana signatures. Purple flas—the sa ones he’d been tracking since the goblin territory. The anomaly’s distinctive energy was everywhere, layered thick with the concentrated violence of overwhelming power applied without restraint.
A System notification hovered in his peripheral vision:
[System Event: Dungeon Break Prevention - COMPLETED]
[Event Clearer: UNKNOWN]
[Rewards Distributed]
Marcus dismissed it with a thought. The rewards for an E-rank event completion were trivial—maybe 1,000 experience and 5,000 skill points. Barely worth ntioning for soone at his level.
But for the anomaly...
He pulled up the system interface he’d been following, watching the purple marker move northwest at speeds that continued to break the sound barrier. Still running. Still thinking Marcus was here to kill him.
Which makes his recent action all the more puzzling. Unless...
’Unless his current combat power is only temporary?’
Marcus’s eyebrows rose. He began moving, his enhanced physique carrying him across the broken landscape with the effortless grace of an S-rank awakened. He kept his distance deliberately—close enough to track, far enough to avoid triggering another panicked flight response.
’Let’s see what you’re really after, anomaly,’ he thought, a small smile crossing his scarred face. ’Show how you think.’
-----
Zeph’s lungs burned despite his 999 Vitality as he pushed his speed to the absolute limit. Buildings blurred past in streams of gray and brown, the ruined Seattle skyline reduced to impressionistic sars by his velocity.
The Soul Mark on his forehead pulsed with each heartbeat, but the sensation was different now. Weaker. Like a radio signal fading in and out of range.
’Running out of ti.’
He angled northwest, his enhanced spatial awareness mapping the fastest route through the maze of collapsed skyscrapers and broken highways. The goblin chieftain’s massive axe was strapped across his back—crude, oversized, but functional enough for what he needed.
Assuming he’d have ti to use it.
His soul-sense painted a three-dinsional picture of the region around him. Dozens of awakened signatures scattered throughout the ruins, most of them converging on the goblin territory where he’d been.
A few were trying to track his current trajectory, following the map provided by the system to pinpoint his location.
But Zeph was simply moving too fast and too randomly for them to close the distance. He was impossibly fast!
And behind all of them, one presence burned brighter than the rest. The S-rank. Still following with the patient inevitability of a hunter who knew his prey couldn’t run forever.
’Doesn’t matter,’ Zeph told himself, forcing his burning muscles to move faster. He had a plan that would hopefully solve all his problems.
Swish!
The entrance to the Underground Bazaar appeared ahead—an abandoned subway station half-buried in rubble, its entrance concealed by carefully positioned debris that would look natural to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
Zeph didn’t bother with subtlety.
Bam!
He hit the concealing wall at full speed, his Force-enhanced montum carrying him through brick and concrete like they were made of cardboard. The impact created a explosion of dust and debris that announced his arrival to anyone within a mile radius.
Then he was falling.
The tunnel dropped two hundred feet almost vertically, a maintenance shaft that led to the old tro system where the Bazaar had established its illegal operations. Zeph’s stomach lurched as gravity took hold, the walls of the shaft rushing past in the dim light cast by ergency mana crystals.
Bang!
He landed in a crouch that cratered the concrete floor, the impact sending spiderweb cracks radiating outward for thirty feet in every direction. His enhanced durability absorbed the force that would have liquified a baseline human.
Zeph straightened slowly, taking in his surroundings.
The Underground Bazaar spread before him like a neon-lit maze. Mana crystal lights in purple, blue, and green cast everything in an otherworldly glow. Holographic signs flickered and rotated, advertising goods in dozens of languages.
The architecture was a chaotic blend of salvaged pre-Descent technology and post-Descent magical infrastructure—cables and pipes running alongside glowing formation arrays, makeshift buildings cobbled together from shipping containers and crystallized mana.
And it was completely, utterly empty.
No rchants hawking illegal goods. No custors browsing for black market treasures. No guards maintaining order or information brokers selling secrets.
Just flickering lights, automated holographic displays, and the eerie silence of a place that should have been packed with life.
Zeph’s lips curved into a cold smile.
"Perfect."
He slowly turned to his left, where three figures had been hiding behind a makeshift stall, probably the daredevil ones hoping to take him out with a surprise ambush. They were low-level awakened judging by their soul signatures, maybe level 15 at best.
For the current Zeph, they were as good as dead. Even without the enhancents from the soul mark, he was already a bonafide Level 25!
He was already a D Rank awakened!
There was a reason he ensured he completed the E Rank Dungeon despite the ti crunch and this surge in his level was only the beginning of the benefits he had gained.
The three froze when his storm-gray eyes locked onto them, the purple flas wreathing his body casting dancing shadows across their terrified faces.
Zeph moved.
Whoosh!
His enhanced speed turned him into a blur of motion. The first awakened died before his brain could process the threat, Zeph’s hand punching through his chest with casual efficiency.
Crack!
The second tried to activate so kind of defensive skill—a shimring barrier that materialized for exactly 0.3 seconds before Zeph’s fist shattered it and the skull behind it.
Poof!
The third attempted to run.
Zeph caught him in two strides, his clawed hand closing around the man’s throat and squeezing until vertebrae crunched. The body dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
Three kills in under five seconds. Efficient. Clinical. No wasted motion.
’Don’t need witnesses,’ he thought, stepping over the corpses without a second glance. ’Not for this.’
There was no regret or guilt in his heart. His code was very simple: if you were a threat to his survival, then you had to go.
It was that simple.
His soul-sense swept through the empty Bazaar, mapping its layout with perfect clarity. The main thoroughfare stretched for nearly half a mile, lined with abandoned stalls and darkened storefronts. Side passages branched off into specialized districts—weapons, artifacts, services, information.
And at the heart of it all, exactly where the rumors had suggested it would be: the unsealing chamber.
Zeph moved through the empty streets with purpose, his enhanced hearing picking up the hum of automated systems still running on backup power. The rchants had fled in a panic, abandoning everything they couldn’t grab in the first thirty seconds of evacuation.
Smart. The System Event notification had marked him as a Regional Extinction Event. Nobody with functioning survival instincts stuck around when one of those appeared in their neighborhood.
Which was exactly what he’d been counting on.
The unsealing chamber was located in what had once been a bank vault, its entrance marked by elaborate runic script that pulsed with faint blue light.
The formation arrays built into the walls were still active, designed to break mana signature locks on storage devices for the right price.
Or, in this case, for free.
Zeph stepped inside the circular chamber, his purple flas reflecting off the polished tal walls. The unsealing formation was carved into the floor in intricate geotric patterns, each line pulsing with carefully structured mana flow.
He looked down at his right hand. At the simple silver band on his middle finger that had caused his soul flas to react so violently after killing the scout with the Titan physique.
Chen’s storage ring. Locked with an unknown mana signature, its contents inaccessible to anyone who didn’t have specialized equipnt.
Equipnt like the formation he was standing in.
Zeph removed the ring and placed it carefully in the center of the array, where the geotric patterns converged into a single focal point.
His fingers found the activation runes along the chamber’s wall—manual controls designed for ergency operation when specialists weren’t available. The proper thod probably involved careful calibration and precise mana channeling.
Zeph just pushed mana into every rune simultaneously and hoped for the best!
Hum!
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