The chapter begins from a different perspective—the violent confrontation between the Alliance and Cipher.
The entire space surrounding Cipher was blanketed in a suffocating wall of dark smoke, concealing everything within. Seeing zero movement inside, the Alliance finally ceased their relentless, continuous firing.
Breathing heavily, Arisa lowered her trembling weapon.
VOLUME 3RD - CHAPTER 27 BEGINS...!
Arisa: "Did... did he go down? Saito?"
Saito: "I don't know... but he must be heavily weakened by now—"
BOOM!
Before Saito could even finish his sentence, a devastating, full-force punch struck him directly in the stomach! The violent shockwave rattled his entire skeleton, sending him flying across the pavement and crashing hard into the reinforced concrete wall of the nearby building.
The one standing there, emerging from the dispersing smoke, was none other than Cipher.
A wide, deranged grin spread across Cipher's face, his eyes wide and manic. A few high-caliber bullets had pierced his flesh and blood trickled down his forehead, but the damage was nowhere near enough to bring this monster down.
Cipher: "Impressive tactic... To think ordinary, frail humans could actually inflict this much damage on me. That in itself is quite an achievement."
Saito coughed violently, spitting a mouthful of fresh blood onto the gravel.
Tch!
'Now I truly understand...' Saito gritted his teeth, his vision blurring. 'Taking even a single direct blow from these monsters is nearly impossible to survive. Without this reinforced suit, that punch would have ended my life on the spot.'
Hollow rushed over immediately, supporting Saito and helping him back onto his feet.
Standing nearby, both Arisa and Elena were visibly shaken, terror gripping their chests as they witnessed Cipher's unnatural resilience firsthand.
Arisa: "What do we do now...?"
Hollow stepped forward, his expression dead calm and resolute.
Hollow: "I will handle him. Stay back and do not interfere anymore. Even if I fail to defeat him, I won't let him take a single step past me."
Elena: "Hollow, no! He's far too dangerous! Fighting him alone is absolute suicide!"
"Hahahahaha!"
Cipher burst into mocking laughter.
Cipher: "Talking big, aren't we, Hollow?"
In a fraction of a second—
SWOOSH!
Cipher closed the distance instantly, appearing inches away from Hollow's face!
Cipher: "Don't flatter yourself... You were never on my level to begin with—"
Cipher extended his hand to crush Hollow's throat, but—
SWOOSH!
Surprisingly, Cipher's lethal grab missed entirely!
STAB!
Before Cipher could even register the slip, Hollow twisted his posture and drove his twin Death Blades straight into Cipher's abdomen! Due to Cipher's inhumanly dense muscle mass, the steel couldn't penetrate too deep, but the strike connected cleanly.
Cipher's eyes widened in genuine disbelief.
Cipher: "Hollow... how the hell did you pull that off? I couldn't even read that counter..."
A dark, exhilarated smirk slowly carved itself back onto Cipher's bloodied face. He turned his head toward Hollow, laughing softly under his breath.
Cipher: "You've certainly gotten stronger, Hollow... But are you stronger than me? Finding that out is going to be so much fun!"
Without wasting a single second, Cipher unleashed a brutal front kick straight into Hollow's chest, launching him backward across the broken asphalt.
Seizing the opening from behind, Arisa and Elena immediately opened fire, unloading everything their weapons had left. They pushed their firing output to the absolute limit, desperate to create space.
Yet it was utterly futile. Not a single high-velocity round grazed Cipher—he wove through the bullet stream with effortless, fluid evasion.
Kicking up a violent cloud of dust, Cipher vanished and reappeared directly before Elena and Arisa in a fraction of a second.
Elena's breath caught in her throat.
Elena: "How...?"
GRAB!
With terrifying precision, Cipher raised both hands, clamping his fingers around Elena and Arisa's throats and lifting them entirely off the ground.
His gaze darkened into an abyss.
Cipher: "Death Stare."
He released his grip, letting both of them collapse limp onto the dirt. The sight was horrifying—neither of them looked alive anymore. Thin streams of fresh blood dripped down from their blank, unblinking eyes as their nervous systems completely shut down.
Seeing them fall, Hollow and Saito screamed from across the courtyard in raw fury:
Hollow & Saito: "YOU BASTARD! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO THEM?!"
Cipher dusted off his hands, letting out a relaxed sigh.
Cipher: "What did I do? Just a brief showcase of my innate ability, nothing more. That stare forcibly pulls out a person's deepest primal terror, paralyzing their nervous system so they can't even twitch a muscle. Not that I'm going to explain any more of it—I'm not some generic, stupid movie villain who blabs about his own technique only to get killed right after."
Enraged, Hollow dashed straight at Cipher, while Saito dropped low into an aggressive firing stance.
Hollow crashed head-on into Cipher, engaging in a savage, point-blank brawl. Kicks, punches, elbows, and driving knee strikes collided at supersonic speeds. Yet with every passing second, the gap in raw endurance showed—Hollow was slowly being pushed back, while Cipher casually deflected Saito's incoming support fire mid-combat.
'No, no, no! This isn't working!' Saito gritted his teeth, his mind racing in panic. 'At this rate, he's going to slaughter all of us! What do I do? Do we call Kye for backup? No... we promised we wouldn't drag him back into this. Then what else is left? Wait... maybe THAT could work!'
Saito cupped his hands and yelled over the deafening combat:
Saito: "Hollow! Hold him off just a little longer, no matter what!"
Locked in the lethal trade of blows, Hollow heard every word clearly, though he lacked the breath to respond.
CRACK!
Cipher drove a heavy right hook directly into Hollow's jaw. Hollow refused to yield—ignoring the blinding pain, he whipped his own fist straight back into Cipher's face!
The direct hit only widened Cipher's manic grin.
Cipher: "It has been far too long since I had this much fun in a fight! Let's take this up another notch, shall we?"
With a sickening sound of shifting tissue, Cipher's muscle mass expanded drastically, bulging beneath his skin like an unnatural bio-enhancement!
Hollow crossed his twin death blades tightly against his chest, locking into a full defensive guard, preparing for the impending slaughter.
Cipher threw punch after punch without a single moment of rest, each blow carrying devastating, inhuman kinetic force. Hollow couldn't even manage a counterattack. The sheer shockwaves radiating from the impacts caused the entire surrounding environment to tremble violently.
And suddenly—
SHATTER!
Under the crushing weight of Cipher's unrelenting barrage, Hollow's twin Death Blades shattered into metallic fragments, unable to withstand the overwhelming impact any longer.
BOOM!
A direct, vicious punch slammed straight into Hollow's chest, caving in the armor plate and sending him hurtling through the air across the pavement!
Hollow's vision began to blur as his eyelids grew heavy, hovering right on the edge of unconsciousness.
'Forgive me... Kye, Master Null, Saito, Elena, Arisa...' Hollow thought desperately, blood pooling in his throat. 'I always lose. I can never defeat anyone when it truly matters. Because of me, everyone is going to die today. I couldn't save a single person...'
Through his fading vision, Hollow caught sight of a figure sprinting forward with maximum output—it was Saito, charging in with his combat suit's enhanced thruster boosters fully engaged.
'What are you doing... Saito?' Hollow fought with every fiber of his being to keep from blacking out.
Saito charged straight into the fray, relying on his reinforced tech suit. But against an apex biological monster like Cipher, human limits were brutally apparent. After enduring a rapid flurry of devastating punches and kicks that fractured his defenses, Saito was brought to a grinding halt right before him.
Suddenly, with the last ounce of his movement, Saito placed both hands firmly on Cipher's broad shoulders.
Cipher burst into arrogant laughter.
Cipher: "Have you lost your damn mind before dying? Though, I have to praise your guts. You're just frail, ordinary humans, but you actually gave me a decent warm-up. I was getting sick and tired of boring missions anyway! Well then... the time has come to end all of your lives—"
Cipher's words caught in his throat as his eyes widened in sudden realization.
Cipher: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU BASTARD?!"
Saito had instantly decoupled his own pressurized combat suit—and within a split-second, the high-tech chassis recalibrated, expanding to match Cipher's immense muscular frame and clamping around his body like a tight, suffocating mechanical vice!
Saito: "HOLLOW! NOW!"
Gathering every lingering scrap of his remaining strength, Hollow lunged forward, grabbed Saito, and leaped desperately across the clearing!
In the very next second—
BLAAASSTTT!
A catastrophic explosion detonated! The magnitude of the blast was massive enough to level multiple city blocks in an instant.
Even after leaping as far as they could, the sheer force of the kinetic shockwave sent the entire Alliance flying through the air. The blast radius didn't just fill the area with heavy smoke—a dense cloud of toxic green gas and rapidly hardening, ultra-sticky chemical compounds erupted outward, completely immobilizing Cipher and pinning him to the ground!
Before the smoke could even clear, Saito and Hollow—struggling on their knees—raised their weapons and opened full-auto fire directly into the impact zone. Saito went all out, firing his grenade launcher continuously, turning the entire area into a non-stop chain of violent, fiery explosions.
As the smoke finally drifted away, the devastating aftermath was revealed.
The spot where Cipher had been standing was now replaced by a colossal crater, deep and wide enough to bury tons of people with ease.
Standing right in the center of the pit with shredded clothes, his entire body drenched in deep crimson blood, was Cipher. His eyes had turned entirely bloodshot, burning with unhinged fury.
Cipher: "You insolent little brats... You completely ruined my damn mood by showing your pathetic, cowardly tricks! My entire body aches. That suit was a walking self-detonating bomb packed with neurotoxins and chemical glue to pin me down..."
Crawling out of the crater, Cipher locked his dead, murderous gaze onto Saito and Hollow. He was in pure, unfiltered bloodlust mode—intent on nothing less than tearing them apart limb from limb.
Neither Hollow nor Saito looked capable of even standing anymore. Hollow forced his battered legs up through sheer spite, but their magazines were completely dry.
Cipher: "What now? Can you pull off any more cheap parlor tricks? You're completely out of options, aren't you? You kids put up a decent effort—you actually made me feel pain. Too bad it still wasn't enough to win."
In a blur of motion, Cipher grabbed Saito and Hollow by their throats and hurled them violently across the pavement, crashing them into the side of a nearby concrete structure.
Cipher: "Prepare yourselves... because both of you are going to die like dogs today."
Suddenly, a deafening engine roared through the desolate street.
VROOOM! VROOOM!
Cipher's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. Speeding straight toward him at maximum acceleration was none other than the Alliance's armored transport vehicle—with Elena and Arisa inside!
Just moments before the vehicle slammed into him, both Elena and Arisa leaped out through the side doors, tumbling onto the gravel.
CRASH!
The speeding car hit Cipher head-on with devastating kinetic force.
Cipher: "Do you honestly think a petty car crash can kill me—WAIT, WHAT?! AGAIN?! YOU MOTHERFUCKERS, KNOW YOUR DAMN PLACE—"
BOOOOM!
Another catastrophic blast tore through the night sky! Elena and Arisa had primed both of their tactical suits to self-overload and left them armed right inside the cabin! The secondary thermal explosion launched Cipher through the air like a ragdoll.
Cipher was now critically wounded; the non-stop, layered detonations had given his biological healing factor zero time to regenerate his shattered tissues.
Cipher: "This much trouble... I've only ever faced this against Master Null! Then WHY?! Why the hell am I being pushed around by mere insects like you?!"
His fractured ego was consuming him alive from the inside. Consumed by pure madness, he dragged his broken, bloodied frame back up onto his feet.
Seeing that monster stand once again, every ounce of lingering hope in the Alliance shattered.
Slowly, step by agonizing step, Cipher began limping straight toward them.
From the violent impact of the vehicle collision and their desperate jump, both Arisa and Elena had fallen completely unconscious onto the gravel. Between Saito and Hollow, Saito wasn't in any condition to even lift his torso, let alone stand. Hollow managed to drag himself upright through pure stubborn will, but his body was trembling violently.
Cipher's murderous gaze was locked entirely onto the unconscious figures of Arisa and Elena, dragging his blood-soaked frame closer and closer toward them.
Consuming with uncontrollable fury, Cipher looked no different from an ancient demon crawling out of mythology.
Cipher: "I will swallow all four of you alive... Not a single one of you walks away from here today!"
Before the impending massacre could unfold, the scene cut away violently toward Kye!
The aftermath of their off-screen battle looked like an absolute junkyard—reinforced concrete walls were reduced to rubble, massive trees were ripped from their roots, and the cracked ground was caved in with multiple impact craters.
Yet, standing amidst the ruins, both Kye and Grimm wore faint, chilling smiles, as if none of the devastation had phased them in the slightest.
Kye: "You bastard... you certainly pack some real power. After wiping out those four executives, I assumed taking down a single guy wouldn't be much of a challenge. But looking at you now... you're stronger than all four of those clowns combined."
Grimm: "Naturally. Whenever my brother and I operate in sync, there is no force that can stand in our way. The bloodline and history we carry are simply built differently."
Without another word, both Kye and Grimm propelled themselves forward at blinding speeds, colliding head-on in an earth-shattering clash!
And just as both life-or-death battles reached their absolute peak... the chapter came to a close!
[ CHAPTE 27 ENDS ]