The giant wall of blood stood in the dark cavern. It was impossible. It defied gravity. Commander Oliver stared at the massive, red liquid wall. The ancient, terrible voice of the Overlord had just laughed at him. The Overlord said he was locked inside the castle with a god. "Boss!" Billy the hacker screamed. He pointed at the heavy metal pumps. "The pumps are sucking up the blood! The blood is going into the glass pipes! It is going up to the plasma reactor!"Captain Ren raised her rifle. "If that monster blood hits the clean reactor, the reactor will explode! The heavy doors will open! We have to turn the pumps off!""If we turn the pumps off, the doors open anyway," Oliver stated cleanly. His voice was a flat, cold, robotic hum. Oliver did not panic. His supercomputer brain ran the math in one microsecond. Variable A: The reactor needs cold water to stay stable. Variable B: The Overlord is feeding hot, magical blood into the cooling pipes. Variable C: The blood contains highl

PEW-PEW-PEW! The blue lasers shot through the tiny crack in the doors. They hit the glowing green pool. Just as Oliver calculated, the thick magic liquid acted like a mirror. The blue lasers bounced perfectly upward, striking the giant, sleeping turtle-monsters directly on their soft, unarmored stomachs. The four massive beasts roared in sudden, terrible agony. They thrashed wildly in the pool, splashing green magic everywhere. But they could not escape the burning plasma. In exactly eight seconds, all four monsters melted into black sludge. "Targets destroyed," Oliver noted cleanly. "Open the doors completely."Billy pressed a button. The heavy iron doors slid wide open. The squad walked into the bright green room. "We did it," Davis smiled. "We cleared the room without taking a single hit."Oliver walked to the edge of the giant, glowing green pool. "This energy cache feeds the entire Eastern Sector of the underground," Oliver said flatly. "We must neutralize it.""How do we

"We use your legs," Oliver stated. "Mutants are incredibly heavy. If you stomp the ground at the exact same millisecond, the combined kinetic force will create a massive shockwave. It will push the collapsing ceiling back up."Oliver looked at the giant mutants. "When you feel three pulses of heat on your weapons, every mutant will lift their right foot. Exactly one second later, you will stomp the floor with maximum force. We will call it the Anchor Stomp.""We understand, Commander," Gorrok growled, slamming his fist against his chest. "We are the machine.""Good," Oliver said. "We march now."Oliver turned and led the way into the deep, dark tunnels. Behind him, an army of five hundred mixed rebel squads marched in perfect, absolute silence. There was no talking. There was no yelling. There was only the soft, terrifying sound of heavy boots stepping in unison. Step. Step. Step. They moved like a single, giant, deadly organism. Oliver walked at the very front. The giant purple ho

At the front of the bridge, the mind-controlled human army pulled their triggers. PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW! A massive, blinding storm of blue plasma lasers flew across the bone bridge. "Take cover!" Sergeant Miller roared. The humans and mutants dropped to the floor of the bridge. The blue lasers flew right over their heads. Some lasers hit the thick bone railings of the bridge, melting the white bone into hot black liquid. "We are pinned down!" General Vega yelled. "Commander! The network is still down! We cannot fight back!"Ding. Suddenly, the dead purple marks on the mutants' weapons flashed back to life. Gorrok looked at his giant bone sword. The purple fingerprint was glowing brightly again. "The magic is back!" Gorrok roared with joy. "I feel the Commander's voice!"Oliver stood up slowly. He stood right in the middle of the flying blue plasma lasers. A laser hit his black metal shoulder. It sparked harmlessly and bounced off. The Wraithborn metal was too strong to be melted by

The sky was no longer a ceiling of dark stone. The sky was an ocean of boiling water, burning cities, and endless terror. Commander Oliver stood on the broken white bone bridge. He looked up through the massive, clear magical portal. He stared directly at the Overlord. The Overlord was not a man. It was not a simple beast. It was a god made of nightmares. The creature was larger than a continent. Its body was a twisting, swirling mass of thick black tentacles and glowing red eyes. The eyes were the size of entire cities. They burned with ancient, evil fire. The monster pushed its massive tentacles down through the magical portal. The heavy black limbs broke the edges of the portal glass. The sky screamed with a horrible, deafening sound of tearing magic. On the bridge, five thousand human soldiers woke up from their mind control. The dark veins on their necks were gone. The red fire in their eyes faded back to normal human colors. They dropped their weapons. They fell to their k