"Why don’t we send the single digits?" a scientist whispered. "They outnumber the intruders."
Rain shook his head.
"Bad idea. You’ve treated them like lab rats. If you open those doors, they won’t fight for you. They’ll join the parade."
The room went silent. The truth was a bitter pill that no one wanted to swallow.
"Then what do we do?"
Rain closed his eyes. Numbers flickered through his mind, probabilities, variables, outcos.
"Twenty percent," he muttered aloud.
He turned to Jackson. "Open the door."
Elaine planted herself in his path. "Master, you can’t be serious! These are supernatural beings—we don’t know what they can do."
He just smiled and patted her head. "Never in my life have I known defeat... I hope today will be different."
She opened her mouth to argue, but the words wouldn’t co. He didn’t care about winning. He wanted a real challenge.
Jackson stepped in, his face a map of sweating tension.
"The ergency elevator, Master. It heads straight to the lobby. No stops."
"That would be convenient."
Up on the main floor, a silver-haired man stopped. He raised a hand, and the humming magnetic field around him suddenly paused.
"Hold," he barked. "Sothing is coming."
They moved into a defensive formation right away.
The elevator doors hissed open, the sound making them tense up.
A figure stepped out. He didn’t rush. He didn’t take a defensive stance. He simply occupied the space, his monk’s robe catching the flickering ergency lights like ancient parchnt.
"Who are you?" demanded by the silver-haired man.
"That’s not quite how etiquette works. You’re the ones who ca here, so it’s proper for you to introduce yourselves first— "
Without warning, a steel spike lanced through the air.
Clang.
Rain snatched it mid-flight. The spike groaned and twisted, unable to break free.
"I’ve heard the younger generation lacks respect for their elders," he remarked, his grip tightening until the reinforced steel began to weep flakes of rust. "But attempted murder over an etiquette lesson? That seems... excessive."
Uneasy glances passed between the intruders.
"My na is Maxwell. I’m one of the team leaders of the ’Children of Darkness.’ We’re here to free blessed people like us—including you."
Rain smiled. So now they were weaponizing the word freedom.
In a way, he had to admire it. Nothing was more dangerous than a pretty word wrapped around ugly intentions.
They’d probably studied this country’s playbook—step one: shout "freedom." Step two: hope no one reads the fine print.
"?"
The word wasn’t a question. It was a dismissal. He let the crushed spike drop; it hit the marble with a thud.
"You should worry about yourself, considering the cris you’ve committed here today."
"Cris?" Maxwell laughed. "We are liberating this world from the chains of—"
"The future is built on discipline," Rain interrupted. "Power without self-control has no substance. You aren’t leading a revolution. You’re just soone who is intoxicated with power."
"End him!" a woman with brown hair scread.
Her footsteps cracked against the marble, closing the gap between them.
Before the air could settle, her hand lanced forward.
There was no impact. No sound of tearing flesh. Her arm simply ceased to be solid, passing into Ran’s abdon as if his skin were made of mist.
"No matter how tough your exterior," she sneered, her fingers seeking the wet heat of his liver, "organs are still—"
She stopped. Her eyes went wide.
"Soft?" Rain finished the thought for her.
He didn’t even look down at the limb buried in his gut. Instead, he simply exhaled.
With a single contraction of his diaphragm, the internal cavity didn’t rely tighten—it compressed, defying the limits of biology.
Crack.
The sound wasn’t his ribs breaking—it was her wrist snapping as his muscles clamped around her arm.
"Kill him!" Maxwell raised his right hand, sending tal shards flying.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
They didn’t even move to help their comrade, who was now kneeling on the ground, crying out in agony.
Rain’s fingers brushed her neck in a movent so small it looked harmless. The next instant, her body collapsed.
Before she hit the floor, he caught her by the collar. He didn’t throw her; he set her down while casually swatting the annoying attacks away.
"Abandoning a comrade simply because she was trapped. I expected better. Especially after all the lofty words you spoke earlier."
Maxwell was furious and changed tactics—debris ripped from every surface, forming a screaming do of tal around his target.
"Nice try." Rain delivered a single punch to the surface, shattering it.
The others attacked in tandem. Fire and wind rged, forming a cyclone that engulfed anything on its path.
"Keep it going." Maxwell sent tal into the firestorm.
The shards superheated, lting and trapping their opponent in the inferno’s core.
"Is... is it over?" the wind user asked, eyes on the cooling tal.
Maxwell approached in silence. His hand touched the cooling surface, eyes closing as he reached out with his power.
No heartbeat. No breath. Only residual heat and the sll of charred at.
He smiled. "We did —"
A fist punched through the tal and hit Maxwell’s back skull.
Rain stepped out of the mound, the exposed bone beneath his charred skin knitting itself back together in seconds.
He rolled his shoulders with audible pops. "That was fun. The last ti I felt that much heat, I was swimming in an active volcano."
To anyone else, it would’ve sounded like a joke. He wasn’t.
"Your leader is finished. Now—are the rest of you capable of reason? Or do I need to give you more lesson in etiquette?"
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