2026-01-01 05:00:24Thwip.
The sound of the crossbow firing was barely audible, but Alex heard it. His [Agility +3] kicked in instantly. The world seemed to slow down for a fraction of a second. He twisted his torso to the left, his boots digging into the dirt. A steel bolt whizzed past his ear, missing him by an inch, and embedded itself deep into the tree bark behind him with a dull thud. "He dodged it?!" The Crossbow Hunter’s eyes widened in disbelief. "Shoot him! Kill him!" But Alex was already moving. He wasn't running away. He was closing the gap. Ten meters became five in a heartbeat. The Hunter with the Chain Flail stepped forward, swinging a heavy iron ball covered in spikes. "Get back, you rat!" He swung the flail horizontally, aiming to crush Alex’s ribs. It was a wide, clumsy attack, relying on brute force. Alex didn't stop. He didn't even slow down. He slid on his knees across the muddy ground, ducking under the swinging chain. The iron ball whistled harmlessly over his head. "What—" Before the Flail Hunter could recover, Alex was already inside his guard. Slash. Alex’s combat knife, held in a reverse grip, sliced upward. It severed the Flail Hunter’s wrist tendons, forcing him to drop the weapon. Then, with a fluid motion, Alex drove the blade into the man's armpit—a weak point directly to the heart. The man collapsed without a sound. [Target Eliminated.] [Plunder Successful: Strength +1, Agility +1] The rush of power was instantaneous. Alex felt lighter, faster. "You bastard!" The third Hunter—the one with the twin Sickles—lunged from the side. He was faster than the others, his blades aiming for Alex’s neck. Alex had no time to dodge. He raised his left arm to block. Clang! The sickle struck Alex’s forearm. But instead of slicing through flesh and bone, it made a sound like metal hitting hard leather. [Passive Skill: Iron Skin triggered.] [Damage reduced by 30%.] The blade cut the skin, but it got stuck in the dense muscle fibers. It didn't reach the bone. The Sickle Hunter froze, staring at Alex’s arm in horror. "What are you?!" Alex looked at him, his eyes glowing faintly in the twilight. "I'm the Hunter." Alex dropped his knife, grabbed the Hunter’s wrist with his terrifyingly strong right hand, and squeezed. CRACK. The sound of wrist bones shattering echoed in the clearing. The Hunter screamed, dropping the sickle. Alex caught the falling weapon in mid-air and swung it in a brutal arc. The Sickle Hunter’s head was separated from his shoulders. [Target Eliminated.] [Plunder Successful!] [Obtained Skill: Dual Wielding Mastery (Basic)] [Obtained Item: Night Vision Goggles (Damaged)] Two down. One to go. Alex turned slowly to face the Crossbow Hunter. The man was trembling. He was fumbling with his crossbow, trying desperately to load a second bolt. His hands were shaking so hard he dropped the ammo. "Stay back!" the Crossbow Hunter shrieked, backing away. "I... I'll split the money with you! Five million! Just let me go!" Alex walked towards him, stepping over the headless corpse. His boots squelched in the blood-soaked mud. "You tried to kill me for money," Alex said, his voice void of emotion. "Now you want to pay me with money?" "Please! I have a family!" "So did I," Alex said softly. "I had a life. You people took it." The Hunter turned to run, but Alex threw the sickle he was holding. It spun through the air and buried itself in the Hunter’s back. The man fell face-first into the dirt, twitching once before going still. [Target Eliminated.] [Plunder Successful!] [Obtained Skill: Basic Marksmanship (Crossbow/Bow)] [Obtained Attribute: Perception +2] Silence returned to the jungle. Alex stood amidst the carnage. Three bodies. Three kills. Less than two minutes. He took a deep breath, feeling the burning pain in his left arm. The adrenaline was fading, and the wound from the sickle was throbbing. But he felt strong. Stronger than he had ever been in his entire life. "Sarah," Alex called out, not turning around. "You can open your eyes." Sarah peeked out from the cave entrance. She saw the bodies. She saw the blood dripping from Alex’s fingers. She gagged, covering her mouth to stop herself from vomiting. It was a massacre. And Alex was the monster standing in the middle of it. "Grab the crossbow," Alex ordered, pointing at the dead man. "And the bolts. We need everything." He bent down and picked up the Night Vision Goggles from the headless body. One lens was cracked, but the other still worked. He strapped them onto his head and flipped the switch. Hum. The dark, terrifying jungle instantly turned into a bright, green world. He could see everything. The heat signature of a rat scurrying in the bushes. The footprints on the ground. "Are you... okay?" Sarah asked timidly, walking over to him. She avoided looking at the severed head. Alex looked at her through the green lens of the goggles. "We have weapons. We have eyes in the dark," Alex said, picking up his combat knife and wiping it clean on the dead man's shirt. "We're not hiding anymore, Sarah." He looked towards the center of the island, where the Skull symbol was marked on the map. "The hunt is coming to us. So we're going to kill our way to the center." [System Notification] [Kill Count: 4 / 100] [Current Rank: 1st among Pigs] [Warning: Elite Hunter "The Butcher" is moving towards your location.] Alex smirked. "Let him come."
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Chapter 189: The All-Seeing Eye
[Location: Galactic Core - Sagittarius A]*[Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact]The fleet exited jump.Forty-eight dreadnoughts dropped out of the white void and stabilized their thrusters at the edge of the galactic center.The stars were gone.The core was dark.A massive ring of white cubes, numbering in the millions, surrounded the supermassive black hole and blocked all light from the galaxy.They formed a shell."The Format is active," Ares said.The AI analyzed the space between the cubes and measured the disintegration of matter as the Architects erased the surrounding star systems."The galaxy is being deleted."Alex stood at the helm.He looked at the black hole in the center of the ring, where the event horizon shimmered with red mathematical code.The Voidbreaker Arm pulsed.The casing grew hot.The white light inside the metal veins vibrated at a frequency that matched the gravity of the central singularity.Alex felt the data surge."Echo, maintain a stable orbit,
Chapter 188: The Architect Signal
[Location: Deep Space - Dyson Sphere Interior][Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact]The pod ascended.It exited the cooling shaft of the planet-sized node and accelerated through the hollow space toward the Terran fleet.The engine flared blue.Alex sat inside.He watched the internal sensors of the pod and verified the atmospheric pressure remained stable during the rapid ascent.The docking clamps locked.The pod entered the UNS Hammer.Alex stepped out of the craft, removed his helmet, and walked through the hangar bay toward the bridge.The crew stood aside.He reached the command deck.He stood at the tactical table and looked at the hologram of the dead Prime Processing Core below.The light was gone."Status report," Alex said."The Harvester Archangels are drifting in the stellar corona and their internal systems have ceased all mechanical function," Ares said."The threat is neutralized."The Dyson Sphere groaned.Without the Prime Node to regulate the magnetic tethers
Chapter 187: The Core Override
[Location: Deep Space - The Dyson Sphere Interior] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The dreadnoughts descended. They fired their forward retro-thrusters to counteract the gravitational pull of the hypergiant star below their position. The iron hulls vibrated. Echo monitored the telemetry. She pushed the thruster output to seventy percent and adjusted the downward pitch of the forty-nine ships. The fleet held formation. The ambient temperature rose. The external sensors registered ten thousand degrees Celsius as the ships entered the upper stellar corona layer. The iron turned orange. Ares managed the cooling. The AI pumped thousands of gallons of liquid nitrogen through the capillary tubes within the exterior hull plating. The nitrogen boiled instantly. Vance watched the tactical table. He tracked the descent vector and measured the remaining distance to the Prime processing core node. "Forty million miles," Vance said. Solar flares erupted upward. A colum
Chapter 186: The Star Engine
[Location: Deep Space - The Dyson Sphere] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The red lasers swept across the hull. They tracked the movement of the forty-nine Terran dreadnoughts and locked onto the Belter iron plating. "Incoming fire," Ares said. Thousands of automated cannons deployed. They emerged from the exterior surface of the Dyson Sphere and their mechanical bases rotated on heavy gears. The metal ground together. Their barrels elevated. The cannons discharged their internal capacitors and pushed plasma bolts out of their magnetic chambers. The bolts crossed the vacuum. They hit the Terran fleet. The UNS Hammer shook violently under the physical impact of the concentrated energy weapons. Vance grabbed the command rail. Alex stood his ground. "Armor integrity holding," Echo reported from the helm as she typed a sequence of commands into the primary navigation console. Her fingers hit the keys. She rerouted electrical power. She pulled energy from the
Chapter 185: The Source Code
[Location: Deep Space - Sector Sirius] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The forty-nine dreadnoughts held their position. They hovered three hundred miles above the seam of the newly formed planet and aimed their railguns at the biological mass trapped between the tectonic plates. Alex walked to the airlock. He opened the storage locker. He removed an environmental suit from the rack, unzipped the front seal, and stepped his right leg inside. He pushed his boot through the gasket. He stepped his left leg inside. He pulled the suit up over his waist, slid his biological arm into the right sleeve, and pushed his mechanical arm into the left sleeve. He zipped the front seal. He reached for the helmet. He placed the helmet over his head, aligned the locking rings with the neck collar, and twisted the helmet clockwise until the mechanisms clicked. He pushed the oxygen valve. Air hissed into the suit. He checked the pressure gauge on his wrist console, verified the
Chapter 184: The Leviathan
[Location: Deep Space - Sector Sirius] [Time: T-Plus 6 Months since First Contact] The eye stared at the fleet. It filled the forward viewport, a continent of yellow bioluminescence set against the black void of the dead sector. The pupil contracted. "Scale," Alex said. "Diameter is three thousand miles," Ares reported. "The entity possesses a dense exo-shell, internal thermal regulation, and a massive centralized nervous system." Vance raised his railgun. "It is a living ship," Vance said. The shadow surrounding the eye shifted, and the void displaced as the massive biological structure moved forward. Tendrils uncoiled from the central mass. They were the size of Harvester command carriers. The tendrils whipped through the vacuum toward the Terran defensive sphere at extreme velocity. "Evasive maneuvers," Alex ordered. Echo pushed the throttle. The UNS Hammer fired its lateral thrusters, shifting fifty miles to the starboard side. A massive tentacle lashed through th
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