2026-01-22 12:07:16Inside the cocoon, Max couldn’t hear them. Not clearly.
He drifted.
Memories flashed in fragments: his father’s voice, the weight of the first gauntlet on his arm, the mantis’s blades, the wasp’s piercing eyes, the banshee’s scream, the forest fire, the SUV, the lab’s skeletal doorway.
Past and present folded together.
Then everything went black.
When sight returned, he was standing in a strange space.
It looked like a cross between a gallery and a vault. The sky above was lined with massive safes, sealed tight and distant. Some of the floor platforms were empty. Others held items—faintly glowing, each with its own weight.
His gaze fell on the first one.
A familiar shape hovered there: a stinger attached to a bulbous core, like a mantis receptor.
His gauntlet.
The next platform held a formless, slowly flowing mass of sticky fluid.
Goo.
After that came something stranger. An item flickered between forms—a heavy hand cannon, a long sniper rifle, and a small, twisted horn. They shifted into one another in a slow, pulsing cycle.
Max stepped closer.
So this is the new slot… ammo, he realized.
He reached out mentally, focusing on the horn first. A faint, unpleasant pressure brushed against his mnd which he resisted. His hand brushed it, feeling it till he spotted a trigger, so it was a horn gun, but that changes nothing.
“Nope,” he muttered.
The horn shimmered, then hissed out of existence—dismissed, its potential sealed away.
Only the cannon and sniper remained.
Golden Ravine, he never thought he had seen the snipersoo soon or at all after his pouch divoured it, as for the cannon...he wasn't sure how it came up.
He studied both forms, weighing them thesame way he would weigh enemies on the field.
A sniper meant range. Silent kills. Taking down mid‑bosses before they even knew he was there.
A cannon meant raw impact. Loud, brutal, but devastating against huge, armored targets. The kind of thing that could tip future battles on its own.
He couldn’t decide.
If only I could have both.
The moment the thought formed, the space shuddered.
The platforms trembled. The sky of locked safes groaned. Cracks of white light raced along the floor.
“Uh—” Max started.
The entire realm began to collapse.
A massive pillar of shifting stone and light tore free from somewhere above, hurtling toward him.
Max didn’t have time to move.
The world snapped away.
Back outside, the cocoon of energy around his body pulsed once, then twice. Some of the soldiers flinched.
“We should cut him out,” someone muttered.
"That would be bad,” Garfield said sharply. “There could be complications, best we leave him to do it himself if lucky, he should be able to handle it....if not. Hiss face turned solemn. "We might need to take cover."
Everyone gulped in fear and prayed silently in their hearts, but a dangerous gleam in Marc's eyes said otherwise. But luckily.
The cocoon flared—then shattered.
Light blew outward in a short, controlled burst, then faded. Max staggered a step forward, smoke curling faintly from his clothes, a bitter taste burning at the back of his throat.
He let out a rough breath and grimaced.
“Damn… I was too greedy,” he muttered.
Jane misunderstood completely.
“You think?” she snapped. “You just swallowed enough enhancers to retire a mule! If that had gone wrong, I’d be writing your obituary instead of my report.”
Max only offered her a weak, crooked smile. He didn’t bother trying to explain. How was he supposed to tell them he’d almost been crushed by a metaphysical pillar inside his own power space?
Instead, he flexed his fingers.
His skin looked cleaner somehow, smoother, but not unnaturally armored. His bones felt denser. His muscles coiled with a quiet, controlled strength.
Garfield’s eyes widened.
“Punch that,” the professor said suddenly, pointing at a waist‑high boulder of fallen concrete.
Max raised an eyebrow, then shrugged.
He stepped up to the boulder and drove his fist forward.
Stone exploded.
Cracks raced across the rock before it shattered completely, crumbling into dust and chunks that skittered across the floor.
No goo. No wings. No gauntlet.
Just him.
Garfield sucked in a breath, excitement blazing behind his glasses.
“Rank D,” he whispered. “You’ve climbed to Rank D without mutation. Remarkable.”
Around them, the soldiers erupted into fresh murmurs. Another D‑rank on humanity’s side was no small thing. After everything they’d just fought, the tiny bump in hope felt like a miracle.
They barely had time to enjoy it.
As the squad relaxed for a heartbeat, Dr. Siri laughed lightly with the others, tension finally starting to bleed from her shoulders.
A shadow moved behind her.
From a crack in the far wall, a thin, glistening tentacle slithered out, silent as a breath. It slid across the floor, then whipped up and coiled around her waist and throat before she could even gasp.
Her smile froze.
The others hadn’t turned yet.
So she helped them........
Aghhhhhhhhhhh!!!
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