2025-12-31 18:14:09The digital clock on the bedside table read 2:00 A.M.
Sarah finally fell asleep, though her breathing was light and rhythmic, her eyebrows still furrowed as if having a bad dream. Watching her for a moment, I held a mask over my face.
Then I felt it.
An air disturbance. An intention to kill. It felt crude and unrefined, like a colony of angry wasps buzzing around the gates.
I rose silently. I made no noise on the wooden floor. I tucked the duvet around Sarah's shoulders and walked out of the bedroom.
Viper was already out in the hallway, holding a silenced pistol in a grim face.
"Lord," Viper whispered. "Perimeter sensors activated. Three vans. Probably fifty men inside. Armed with machetes and steel pipes. Those are the Black Tiger Gang."
"Fifty? "I puffed my cuffs, "David really is desperate."
"Shall I deploy the squad? Viper asked, flicking the safety off his gun. "We can turn them into swiss cheese before they reach the front door."
"No," I said, walking past him toward the main entrance. "Don't wake Sarah. Guns are too loud."
Viper hesitated. "Lord, you mean to... "
"I've been in a cell for five years," I cracked my neck. Pop, pop. "My joints are stiff. I need a warm-up."
Outside the Sky Garden Villa Gates.
The night air was charged with the perfume of cheap tobacco and engine exhaust. Three battered vans blocked the driveway.
In the floodlit area, fifty thugs stood like a patchwork of scarred, tattooed gangsters bearing baseball bats, machetes, and chains.
At the front stood a giant of a man. He was at least 6'5", shirtless, with a massive tiger tattoo roaring across his chest. This was "Iron Tiger," the leader of the Black Tiger Gang. He was famous in River City for crushing a man's skull with his bare hands.
"Come out, Ethan Wright!" Iron Tiger shouted, slamming the steel bat against the iron gate. CLANG! "We know you're in there! Come out and accept your beating, and maybe we'll spare this pretty house!"
The thugs laughed. "Come out, little turtle!"
The heavy iron gates swung open slowly.
But no army came out. No police. No security guards.
Just one man.
I walked outside calmly with my hands in the pockets of my trousers. The wind tossed about my short hair. I surveyed the fifty armed men as a human surveys the view with an ant colony.
"You're loud." I wasn't shouting, but the wind carried my voice clear. "My wife is sleeping. Lower your voice."
Iron Tiger blinked. He looked around for an ambush. There was no one else, and that cracked him up.
"You? You are the guy David Miller is scared off?" Iron Tiger spat at the ground. "You're skinny as a beanpole! I thought you were some kind of monster."
He pointed the bat at me.
"Listen, kid. David paid us five million to break every bone in your body. But I'm a generous man. Kneel down, let us break your legs, and we'll leave your wife alone. Deal?"
"I have three seconds to go," I whispered.
"What?"
"One."
"Are you deaf?" Iron Tiger signaled his men. "Boys, get him! First one to hit him gets a bonus!"
"Two."
"Kill him!"
They all charged toward me. Fifty men screamed like banshees while scrambling toward me. Each stomp made the ground shake.
"Three."
I took my hands out of my pockets.
System: Combat Mode Engaged. [Sovereign Martial Body: Active]
The first thug reached me—a skinny guy with a machete. He swung the blade at my neck.
To him, it was a fast swing. To me, it was moving in slow motion.
I didn't try to avoid it. I simply raised two fingers and caught the machete blade.
Clang.
The thug's eyes bugged. He pulled, but the blade wouldn't move. It was clamped between my finger, like it was welled there.
"'Steel is too good for you," I whispered.
Snap.
I twisted my wrist. The steel machete shattered into shards, and I kicked him in the chest. He flew backward like a cannonball, knocking down five men behind him.
"What the..." Iron Tiger's jaw dropped.
I didn't stop. I blurred with the swift moves.
I was a wolf among sheep.
I stepped into the crowd. A baseball bat swung at my head. I didn't block. I let it hit my shoulder.
CRACK.
The baseball bat snapped in half. My shoulder didn't even bruise. My body had been tempered in medicinal baths for five years; my skin was as tough as iron.
I grabbed the attacker by the face and slammed him into the pavement.
"Monster!" someone shrieked.
"Attack together! Pile on him!"
Ten men jumped at me at once, trying to bury me under their weight.
I crouched low, gathering Qi in my dantian (lower abdomen).
"Scram."
I released an omnidirectional shockwave of Qi.
BOOM!
The ten men were blasted away as if a grenade went up in the center of the pile. They flew through the air, crashing into the vans, the walls, and the bushes.
Bones snapped. Screams filled the night.
In sixty seconds, forty men were on the ground, groaning in agony. None went dead; I didn't want to stain the driveway with too much blood; none would walk for months.
Only Iron Tiger and his elite lieutenants remained standing. Their hands were trembling as they held the weapons.
I stood centrally among the carnage while adjusting cuffs. I hadn't even broken a sweat, not even a spot of dust on my clothes.
"You-" Iron Tiger took a step backward, pale-faced, "you...you are a Cultivator? A Martial Master?"
In the underbelly, there were rumors of men who alone could take on an army. Legends. Myths.
"I am your nightmare." I walked closer to him then.
"Step back!" Iron Tiger roared, as defiance outweighed fear. "I am Iron Tiger! I have been practicing Iron Shirt Kung Fu for twenty years! My body is impenetrable!"
He ripped off his shirt completely and flexed his muscles. His skin turned a dark, metallic shade as he channeled his energy.
"Die!"
Iron Tiger charged like a rhino, throwing a huge punch aimed at my head.
I watched the fist coming.
"Iron Shirt?" I laughed sarcastically. "Paper."
"Understood, Dragon King."
I walked back into the silent house. The fight had taken less than three minutes. My blood was barely pumping.
I returned to the bedroom. Sarah was still asleep, breathing softly.
I sat back down in the chair by the window, watching the city lights below. Somewhere down there, David Miller was waiting for good news. He was about to get a very nasty surprise.
Sleep tight, River City, I thought. The Dragon is just getting started.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The First Algorithm (Series Finale)
Deep Space, the absolute center . Time, the end of the journey.That slipspace tunnel didn’t exactly go out with some dramatic spatial ripper, you know. It didn’t throw them into a freezing void, nor did it dump them into a chaotic plasma storm.No, it just kinda faded. quietly, like somebody dimmed a lamp.On the bridge of the hijacked Praetorian dreadnought, the loud alarms started to shut themselves off, one after another, as if they were embarrassed to keep screaming. The heavy, thrumming vibration from the dark matter drives eased down into this deep, total stillness, like the ship had forgot how to move.Ethan pushed himself up, slow , from the pristine white deck. He used the command console for support because his knees felt… not right. Krax came up beside him, his massive dark matter broadsword resting across his shoulder, that yellow cybernetic eye widening in a way Ethan almost never saw, pure uncut awe.“Twig,” Krax said, low , like a prayer, “where are the stars ?”Ethan
The Hijack
Deep Space. The Sanctuary Cluster Perimeter. Time: 4 Months, 2 Days Post-Architect defeat.Out there, the vacuum just… did what it always does, no friction no sound no warning, like the universe was being polite. Ethan’s drop-pod cleared the three-kilometer span between the dying Archivist and the enormous Praetorian dreadnought, in a few seconds flat, too fast for anyone to even blink.Through that small, reinforced viewing slit, in the dark matter capsule, the pristine white porcelain hull of the enemy flagship kept swelling, until it basically ate his whole field of vision.“Brace for impact twig!” Krax’s voice cracked through the local comms, loud enough to make his teeth feel loose.CRASH.The drop-pod’s heavy modified nose slammed right into the dreadnought’s primary forward viewport. The kinetic velocity was basically violence on rails. It shattered the flawless Progenitor glass. Ethan’s pod punched straight through the bridge deflector screens and skidded hard across the g
The Broken Math
Deep Space. The Sanctuary Cluster Perimeter Time: 4 Months, 2 Days Post-Architect DefeatOut there, the void beyond The Archivist kind of lit up, not with that clean, disciplined beamwork of absolute zero plasma, but more like a messy… frenzied firestorm, erratic and uncaring. The Harvester remnants, now stripped of their flawless logic, were throwing themselves forward like zealots who forgot why they started.“Assimilate the Glitch. Format for the new absolute,” the broken chorus of millions of drones chanted, over the open comms channel, like it was normal.“Kill the broadcast!” Ethan yelled, over the shriek of tearing metal, as a plasma beam just grazed the forward viewport, once. “I don’t need a choir!”Elena slammed her fist down on the comms console, severing the external audio feed , like she could cut the chaos by pressure alone. “They aren’t aiming for the bridge or the engines! They’re targeting the hangar bays and the airlocks! They’re trying to board us!”“Let them tr
The Supernova's Wake
Deep Space. The Sanctuary Cluster Perimeter. Time: 4 Months, 2 Days Post-Architect Defeat .Slipspace was supposed to be frictionless , a harmonic tunnel through the fabric of dimensions, you know, smooth and calm like nothing ever resists. But riding the absolute kinetic fury of a dying star? yeah, that “corridor” became a tearing washing machine of cosmic energy , violent, inconsistent, and way too eager to rip at the walls of reality.Ethan clung to the exterior dark matter hull of The Archivist. Under Jarek’s massive ironwood-and-steel chassis he flattened himself, like if he stayed small enough, the dimension shear might pass around him. His hybrid Titan frame had driven what was left of his biological roots deep into the ship’s armor plating, an odd, stubborn anchor, shielding him from that lethal dimensional tug.“Hold your breath, kid!” Jarek’s synthesized voice roared over the local comms, static violently chewing up the words into fragments. “We are dropping out of the s
The Heart of the Lotus
Deep Space. The Perseus Arm. The Cradle.Time: 4 Months, 1 Day Post-Architect Defeat.The central spire of the Cradle was, without exaggeration, a First Epoch engineering marvel. A towering needle of woven bio-steel and glowing crystal that literally speared the sky and kept reaching toward the suspended blue-white dwarf star.Now it was a slow, decaying staircase into hell.Ethan sprinted up the massive spiraling crystalline steps. His lungs burned, drawing in that thinning ozone-heavy air, like it had teeth. Without the limitless push-and-breathe stamina of his Dissonance Core, the moment had teeth too, he could feel the human cost stacking up past exhaustion.Above, the massive containment rings holding the dying star in stasis hummed with a low, unstable frequency, wrong somehow. Like the structure itself was trying to remember how to quit."Intruder detected. Entropy required," a chorus of grinding metallic voices hissed from the landing above, all at once, too close.Ethan skidd
The Rotting Stars
Deep Space. The Perseus Arm. The Cradle.Time: 4 Months, 1 Day Post-Architect Defeat.The sky above the crystalline city did not just break; it decayed.A massive, jagged fissure tore through the glowing bio-steel canopy of the Cradle’s petal .The protective atmospheric shielding flickered and then died, replaced by this awful pouring rain of purple light, like it wanted to seep into every thought."They’re through the roof!" Warlord Krax screamed, tracking the breach with his cybernetic eye, no pause, no breath.Hundreds of rusted, jagged shapes dropped from the gap . They were the Purge’s foot soldiers. In a vague, horrifying way they reminded you of the Praetorian drones used by the Harvesters, except there was no clean geometry here, no pristine order. Their chassis were asymmetrical and made from corroded dark metal that flaked away , then re-formed again and again in this constant state of entropic flux. They didn’t glide. They fell with jerky, wrong spasms, optical sensors bur
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