Breath of the Idle King

Chapter 6: Corporate Gods Wear Suits

"Do it!" Garou snapped, his voice a low growl that resonated with a frequency that made the very air around them tremble.

Irae wasted no more time on pleasantries. With a single movement of her hand graceful yet cold the shadows beneath the feet of the black-market traders lengthened, coiling around the support beams of the stalls ahead. Crack! Old wood and iron collided, collapsing with a deafening roar. Dust billowed, obscuring the vision of the increasingly suspicious crowd and creating instant chaos.

In the heart of the mayhem, Garou didn't run away. Instead, he lunged straight into the opening.

A voice from a hidden microphone echoed throughout the underground floor, cold and mechanical. "Subject 0 Garou detected. Capture Protocol: Tier Prototype. Activate kinetic restraints."

Without warning, the floor in front of Garou slid open. It wasn't a mere pit, but a magnetic energy field that snared his movements. His boots gripped the floor with enough force to crack the concrete tiles, yet he felt as if he were being pulled by thousands of invisible hands trying to crush his body back to point zero.

"Shit," Garou hissed. The muscles in his arms corded, and the veins in his neck popped like tree roots ready to burst. This wasn't just a physical obstacle; it was molecular suppression.

He glared toward the end of the hallway. There, behind the thick glass of an observation room, a group of people in white uniforms Helix Agents watched him like a rat in a maze. One of them, a man wearing a monocle, typed something onto his holographic screen.

"Physical stress increased by 400%," the man’s voice came through the speakers, devoid of emotion. "Begin the psychological induction phase. Give him his nightmares."

Low-frequency sound waves assaulted Garou’s ears. It was a static noise designed to trigger trauma—the sound of a factory collapsing, the sound of his own heartbeat nearly stopping on the day of the accident. Garou’s vision blurred. His head throbbed, his breath came in ragged gasps, and for a moment, he felt trapped once more beneath tons of steel beams.

No. Not now.

"Garou! Wake up!" Irae’s voice was a faint echo from behind the curtain of dust.

Garou squeezed his eyes shut. He felt his lungs working overtime, trying to filter the oxygen in a room now filling with sedative gas. His system flickered blood-red text flashed across his retina.

[WARNING: OXYGEN LEVELS CRITICAL. BREATH LOOP ACTIVATED. RECALIBRATING CELLULAR DENSITY FOR IMPACT.]

Garou’s breath was no longer just air. It was an energy transmission. He didn't try to fight the magnetic pressure with raw muscle alone that would be futile. Instead, he allowed his breathing rhythm to become one with the frequency of the magnetic field. He drew a deep breath, letting his chest expand to its anatomical limit, then exhaled explosively.

BOOM!

The shockwave from his breath slammed into the magnetic field. The glass surrounding the corridor shattered into a million shards. Garou didn't move as fast as lightning, but every step he took pulverized the concrete floor beneath him, sending debris flying like bullets toward the observation room.

"He’s... he’s adapting to our frequency?" one of the Helix Agents screamed in a panic. "Impossible! A prototype shouldn't have adaptive consciousness!"

Garou was already at the facility’s airtight doors. His hands, now wrapped in faintly glowing bluish veins, gripped the iron doorframe. He didn't pull it. He crushed it. The ten-centimeter-thick metal buckled like clay under the pressure of his fingers.

"You think I’m a test subject?" Garou hissed, his voice heavy with a terrifying intensity. "You’re nothing but a stumbling block."

He stomped his foot. The floor beneath him gave way, creating a gap for Garou to leap into the control room.

Inside, the agents retreated, leveling electric stun weapons at him. Garou was undeterred. Each beat of his heart felt like a sledgehammer pumping the essence of life through his muscles. He could see their movements with haunting precision his AGI stat was at work, projecting the trajectories of the bullets in the air before they even pulled their triggers.

As an agent fired, Garou merely tilted his head slightly. The electric round whizzed past his ear, striking the electrical panel behind him. Sparks showered the room, illuminating Garou’s face as he stared intensely at the lead agent.

"Who sent you?" Garou demanded.

The agent, face pale, dropped his tablet. "You don't understand, Garou. You aren't a mutated human. You are the 'Vessel' designed to contain the Idle King. If you leave this place, the whole world will hunt you down."

Garou smirked, a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Good. Let them come."

With a single crushing blow to the central console, he destroyed the facility's security system. Every light in the building died, followed by the wailing of emergency alarms. But Garou didn't stop. He grabbed the agent by the shoulder, his eyes flickering with an unceasing blue light.

"Where is the location of the other Helix data centers?"

The agent trembled violently. "You... you’ve already surpassed the Tier-Prototype level. You are a T-Class Anomaly."

"Wrong answer," Garou said, releasing his grip as the agent slumped to the floor, unconscious from neural shock.

Irae appeared at the shattered doorway, staring at Garou with a mixture of awe and deep-seated fear. "Garou, this facility is going to blow in thirty seconds. Their self destruct system is active."

Garou turned. His body was still emitting steam, the byproduct of his brutal cellular adaptation. He felt tired exhausted yet his energy was still surging. He knew that if he stopped breathing in this rhythm, his body would collapse.

"Get me out of here, Irae," Garou said softly. "And find out who gave them the orders. If they want me to be a weapon, I’ll make damn sure this weapon explodes in their own hands."

They sprinted through the crumbling corridors. Concrete rained down on them, but Garou swatted it aside as if it were nothing more than paper debris. As they emerged from the building, a chain of explosions from within the Helix facility shook the ground beneath their feet, sending plumes of thick black smoke into the cold night sky.

Garou stood at the edge of a deserted highway, staring at his still trembling hands. He felt something strange. It wasn't just fatigue. Beneath his skin, under the layers of his now much denser muscle, he could feel a constant throbbing sensation. A mark.

His system flashed a new message.

[STATUS: Tier-Anomaly Confirmed.]

[CURRENT LOAD: 15% Capacity.]

[WARNING: Idle King Protocol  Synchronization Level Increasing.]

Garou stared at the horizon, where the city lights looked like spies watching him. He knew that from this moment on, his life was no longer about survival. It was about an all-out war against an entity he didn't even fully recognize yet.

In the distance, an unmarked helicopter began to approach, its spotlight sweeping the streets as if searching for something or someone. Garou took a deep breath, inhaling oxygen that felt increasingly sharp, and felt his second heartbeat begin to thump harder and harder.

"They already know," Irae whispered, her voice trembling. "Garou, they know exactly where we are."

Garou tightened his fists. He didn't run. He stood tall, letting the helicopter's spotlight illuminate him.

"Let them come," he answered coldly. "Today, I'm no longer hiding."

As the helicopter lowered its rappelling lines and black figures began to slide down, Garou felt something he had never felt before a pull deep within his soul, a command that wasn't his own, yet forced him to submit.

A whispering voice, incredibly faint yet enough to make his soul vibrate, echoed in his mind.

"Welcome to the empty throne, O Heir."

Garou closed his eyes, and for the first time, his breathing was no longer rhythmic. His breath stopped completely, and in that silence, his power exploded far beyond the limits anyone could imagine.