The worthless Ex-Convict returns to rule the world.

CHAPTER 8: THE SKY AFTER THREE YEARS

They climbed together out of the Omega sector, moving quickly through the lower levels as the facility’s alarms continued to blare.

At Level One, they bypassed the frantic inmates and headed directly for the primary command suite. Guard Captain Toller was already slumped against the wall, his shock-baton crumpled on the deck.

"Stop right there!" a voice barked through the haze.

Guard Captain Toller stood twenty paces away, his heavy combat respirator hissing with every draw. He held a high-voltage shock-baton raised, its tip crackling with fifty thousand volts of anti-cultivator current.

Toller’s eyes widened as he took in the figure emerging from the toxic mist. The prisoner’s rags hung off him in shreds, his dark hair was matted past his shoulders, but beneath his brow, two eyes burned with a blinding, golden aura.

"You're supposed to be dead," Toller stammered, his grip slipping on the baton's rubber grip. "Sub-Level Zero was completely flushed!"

The words echoed down the corridor, swallowed almost immediately by the thick gray haze of the lingering purge. 

Toller stood at the far end of the passage, shock-baton raised, his respirator hissing with each breath. He'd come down expecting a containment breach, maybe a riot, maybe a few surviving inmates who'd somehow crawled out of the gas. 

However, He hadn't expected a man standing in the middle of the corridor, breathing the poison like it was fresh air.

Eren Strong turned. 

"I've heard that so many times today" Eren said, his voice low and raspy. "It's getting repetitive."

Toller took a step back. "Stay where you are." 

"Or what?" 

"I'll drop you where you stand." 

Eren looked at the baton. Then at Toller. Then at the baton again. 

"You could try," he said.

Toller lunged forward with a desperate, two-handed strike, bringing the baton down toward Eren's collarbone.

The weapon connected with a deafening arc of blue electricity. Fifty thousand volts dumped straight into Eren’s shoulder.

Eren didn't even sway.

The electrical discharge crawled across his chest, turning into golden threads that disappeared directly into his skin. The core in his chest hummed pleasantly, absorbing the voltage like a minor snack.

Slowly, Eren reached up and wrapped his bare hand around the crackling steel shaft of the baton.

"Is this the best the Iron Abyss has to offer?" Eren asked softly.

He closed his fingers.

The reinforced, cultivator-grade alloy shrieked under his grip, crumpling like dry parchment. Sparks showered over the catwalk as the weapon's internal battery exploded, its kinetic shockwave absorbed directly into Eren's palm.

Toller let go of the ruined handle, taking two hurried steps backward, his face drained of all color. "What... what are you?"

Eren stepped forward, his hand clamping down on Toller's shoulder. The grip was absolute—not crushing yet, but heavy enough to pin the captain to the deck.

"I am the man who survived your prison," Eren said. "Now, you're going to open the Warden's command deck."

"The blast doors are sealed from the inside!" Toller choked out, terror overriding his discipline. "Warden Vane locked the primary command suite the second the purge cycle ended! Nobody gets in!"

"He's inside?" Eren asked.

"Yes! He's monitoring the lockdown from the main console!"

"Good," Eren said. He released Toller's shoulder, shoving him aside. "Then I won't have to go looking for him."

Eren walked down the central corridor toward the heavy obsidian doors of the Warden's Command Suite. Two automated defense turrets mounted on the ceiling spun toward him, their heavy rotary barrels whining as they spooled up.

"Open the door," Eren said. 

The guards exchanged a look. 

"Or don't," he continued. "I can go through either way. But if I have to go through, I won't be gentle." 

Above the massive obsidian door, two automated defense turrets spooled up, firing high-caliber armor-piercing rounds down the corridor.

Eren stepped in front of Serena. The heavy rounds slammed into his chest, flattening into lead discs and dropping uselessly to the floor as his core devoured the kinetic force.

Without stopping, Eren placed both hands against the command suite's reinforced doors and shoved. The four-ton hydraulic locks sheared off with a deafening screech, and the doors crashed inward.

Inside the circular control room, Warden Gideon Vane backed away from his primary console, a heavy sidearm shaking in his grip.

The control room was a wide, circular chamber filled with monitors and consoles, every screen showing a different part of the facility. Most showed chaos. Death. Inmates running wild through corridors that should have been sealed. 

Vane stood in the center of the room, a pistol in his hand. "Eren Strong," he whispered, his voice trembling despite his rigid posture.

"Warden, you ordered the purge early," Eren said, stepping over the ruined door frame. "The Tyrell Clan must have paid you a fortune to ensure I never saw another morning."

"You should be dead." 

"I've heard that again and again." Eren stepped through the empty doorway. "From the guards. From the inmates. From the poison gas itself. And yet here I am." 

Vane's hand tightened on the pistol. "What do you want?" 

"I want to leave this place." 

"Impossible. The Iron Abyss is sealed. No one leaves without my authorization." 

Eren tilted his head. "You're still thinking like a man with power." 

Serena stepped into the command room behind him, her sharp gaze sweeping the perimeter before freezing directly on the warden's face.

Her steps halted. The room's temperature dropped as her warlord pressure spiked.

"Gideon?" Serena’s voice was lethal, quiet as a falling blade.

Warden Gideon Vane’s eyes widened. The pistol shook violently in his grip as all color drained from his skin.

"S-Serena...?" Gideon stammered, stumbling backward against the central terminal. "That's impossible... Level Omega was sealed... the necrosis was supposed to—"

"Supposed to kill me?" Serena took a slow, agonizing step forward, her eyes narrowing to icy slits. "My own cousin. Three years ago, when the syndicate splintered, you told the High Council I was dead. You buried me in the deep vaults beneath the sea so you could steal my fleet and take the Warden's throne."

"Serena, wait!" Gideon pleaded, clutching his chest. "The High Council forced my hand! The Tyrells offered our house a seat on the Imperial Board, but only if you were gone! I didn't kill you—I put you in stasis to preserve your life!"

"You didn't preserve my life," Serena whispered coldly. "You left me to rot."

Vane fired.

The bullet hit Eren square in the chest—armor-piercing, high-caliber, designed to kill cultivators. It flattened against his skin, the kinetic energy dispersing through his body in a wave of warmth. The golden core pulsed. The minor damage healed instantly.

Eren looked down at the flattened bullet.

Then he looked at Vane.

"Thanks," he said. "That was splendid."

Vane fired three more shots in rapid succession.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The heavy rounds struck Eren's chest, flattening instantly and falling to the tile. Eren didn't even glance down. He closed the distance in a fraction of a second, his hand wrapping around the warm barrel of the pistol and twisting.

The hardened steel twisted like wet clay. Eren dropped the ruined firearm onto the floor.

"Please," the Warden whispered. "I was just following orders. The Tyrells, they paid me, they told me to keep you here—"

"I know." Eren crouched down, bringing his face level with Vane's. "I know the Tyrells paid you well enough to ensure that I rot down here. I know they told you to run the purge early, to make sure I don't survive the night." He paused. "What they didn't tell you was what would happen if I did survive."

He reached out and took the pistol from Vane's trembling hand. 

Vane fell back against the primary control console, his face pale as chalk. "I was following legal mandates signed by the High Council!" Vane stammered, falling back against the main console. "The Tyrells hold seats now! If you kill me—"

Eren leaned in close, his golden eyes reflecting in the warden's terrified pupils.

"I'm not going to kill you, Vane," Eren said softly. "A dead warden can't carry a message."

Eren reached out, pressing his thumb into the center of Vane's chest. A fine needle of golden energy shot through the warden's sternum, instantly severing his cultivation pathways. Vane gasped, collapsing to his knees as his internal energy vanished.

"I've crippled your core," Eren whispered. "When the Capital sends their  reinforcements, tell them exactly what happened here. Tell Lyra Tyrell and the rest of the Tyrells that I'm coming to take back my marrow—and that the worthless excon they failed to kill three years ago is coming to take back everything their family stole."

Serena stepped up beside Eren and hit the override switch on the central console, opening the private surface express lift behind the desk.

"Let's go," she said. "Before their reinforcement arrives.”

Eren then turned and walked toward the elevator shaft.

They stepped into the glass elevator, and the doors sealed. The lift engaged, shooting upward through two miles of solid ocean rock. The bitter smell of gas and iron dissolved, replaced by cool, rushing air.

PING.

The lift came to a smooth halt at the top of the Iron Abyss surface spire. The doors slid open.

Cold, salt-laden sea wind hit them instantly. Above them stretched a dark sky filled with brilliant, unfiltered stars, resting over the midnight expanse of the open ocean.

Eren took his first deep breath of real air in three years. His Sovereign Core hummed with a quiet, devastating power.

Serena walked to the edge of the landing platform and raised her hand, releasing a sharp flare of warlord aura into the night sky.

Within moments, the clouds parted above. The massive steel hulls of the Vane Syndicate's flagship dreadnoughts descended through the mist, their searchlights cutting through the dark.

Eren looked toward the eastern horizon, where the distant lights of the Imperial Capital burned against the clouds.

"Three years," Eren murmured into the sea wind. "Finally, I'm back."

Serena looked over at him, a cold smile on her face as the dreadnought ramp lowered before them. "Ready to burn the realm down?"

"Let's go," Eren said.