Savin looked down at the man curled at his feet with indifference, as if watching an insect with a broken spine.
Stark's head of security? Nothing special. He adjusted his collar, which had been wrinkled by Happy, and prepared to retrieve the briefcase and dispose of this troublesome nuisance.
The surrounding screams and chaos were merely insignificant background noise to him.
However, right at the edge of this chaos, a figure ignored by everyone was taking a desperate action.
Jack Taggart lay on the ground, staring at the overturned silver briefcase and the shimmering syringes scattered across the floor like life-saving nectar; his eyes erupted with a desperate greed.
The fight between Savin and Happy didn't matter to him. He cared even less about whether that so-called head of security lived or died.
He only knew that the "hole" in his body was consuming him; the coldness and weakness seeping from his bone marrow made him wish for death. And the cure was right before his eyes.
He scrambled toward it, grabbed a syringe, and without even looking, plunged it deep into his thigh.
A warm current surged in, and the instantaneous comfort made him let out a satisfied moan. But it wasn't enough—far from it.
Like a mad dog that had been starving for centuries, he grabbed a second, then a third—not caring where he jammed them: arm, neck, abdomen—he just frantically pushed the glowing liquid into his body.
Savin sensed something amiss. He turned his head just in time to see Taggart plunge the last syringe into his chest. For the first time, shock appeared on Savin's perpetually icy face.
"Idiot!"
Savin cursed. He decisively abandoned the briefcase and turned to run without hesitation. This was no longer a person; it was a bomb.
He took a step. Just one step.
Snap!
His body slammed face-first into the concrete, as if hit by a truck.
This wasn't a trip. The feeling was as if the gravity of the entire Earth had magnified tenfold in an instant, focusing entirely on him alone.
Dust exploded beside his face.
He tried to push himself up, his strong muscles tensing, veins bulging on his neck and forehead.
It was useless.
His limbs were pinned down, his bones groaning under the unbearable weight.
Panic began to spread throughout his body.
He was trapped, unable to move.
Taggart's body began to emit an unnatural red light, and the veins under his skin stood out clearly like red-hot branding irons.
Scorching steam vented from his pores, forming a layer of distorted air around him. The concrete beneath his feet began to melt and crack, emitting a hissing sound.
"Ah—so hot! So burning!"
Taggart let out a scream that didn't sound human. He felt like an iron block tossed into a blast furnace, melting from the inside out.
Because of the severe overdose, the Extremis inside him had completely lost control, turning him into a highly unstable biological nuke.
The surrounding tourists finally realized that this glowing man wasn't some street art, but a powder keg about to explode.
Panic escalated into a desperate scramble; people shoved and trampled each other, their cries echoing through the night sky.
On the theater steps, Happy coughed up blood, his vision beginning to blur.
He saw Taggart, who had turned into a human torch, felt the scorching wave of heat, and saw the concrete beneath Taggart's feet begin to crack and melt.
He also saw Savin, flattened against the ground, struggling like a beetle being stepped on.
The end of the World was playing out right here, at the entrance of the Chinese Theater.
Just as Taggart's body reached the critical point, the moment a scorching core ready to detonate at any second was about to form, he stopped glowing.
No, not stopped. The light was still there, but his body was lifting off the ground.
He rose slowly at first, then faster and faster, like a reluctant Rocket being launched into the night sky.
The crowd's terrified screams caught in their throats, turning into a collective, incredulous gasp.
They tilted their heads back, watching the human firework, an orange trail of light cutting through the dark canvas, rising higher and higher.
Two hundred meters.
A silent, dazzling flash illuminated Hollywood, instantly brighter than any searchlight.
A few seconds later, the sound arrived—a deafening roar that made teeth ache and buildings shake.
The Impact spread outward in a circle.
The massive glass curtain walls of surrounding buildings, the windshields of every car—they all shattered inward or outward in an instant, turning into a glittering yet deadly rain.
However, the anticipated tragedy of glass falling like raindrops, cutting the crowd below into a bloody mess, did not occur.
It was as if time had been pressed on pause at this moment.
All the shattered glass, regardless of size, was frozen in mid-air. They hovered there, refracting bizarre colors under the city's neon lights, composing a picture that was both magnificent and terrifying.
The people around the theater were still immersed in immense panic, fleeing in all directions, but they were stunned into stopping by this surreal scene before them.
They had no idea what had happened, only staring blankly at the frozen "starry sky of glass" above their heads.
Just then, a brand new sound cut into the clamor.
"Clack."
A clear, rhythmic tapping sound rang out abruptly.
"Clack."
Another one.
The sound wasn't loud, but it struck everyone's heart like a heavy hammer with precision. The chaotic screaming and fleeing miraculously subsided.
It was the sound of wood tapping on concrete, steady and rhythmic. This sound was so out of place, so calm, that it seemed all the more conspicuous.
People seemed to have been cast with a freezing spell, unable to help but stop and look towards the source of the sound.
In the panicked crowd, a path seemed to have been cleared by an invisible hand. A man was walking toward the center of the storm.
He was extremely tall, at least two heads taller than those around him, his physique like a stone monument.
He wore a simple purple kimono and wooden sandals, but draped over his shoulders was a white Marine coat, with the characters "Justice" printed in bold black calligraphy on the back.
His face was as resolute as a sculpture, with short hair and a circle of beard. But what was most striking were his eyes—or rather, those non-existent eyes.
They were tightly closed, a huge cross-shaped scar crossing his entire face, running over his eyes.
He was a blind man.
He leaned on a simple wooden cane sword with one hand, the tip of the cane tapping lightly on the ground with every step, guiding him through the wreckage.
Incredibly, the sound of his cane tapping seemed to grow louder; the sound didn't echo in their ears, but resonated within the chests of everyone present.
The remaining panic vanished, replaced by a heavy, suffocating sense of awe.
The air became thick, filled with an unspoken authority.
The blind man walked past the dumbstruck tourists, his expression unchanged. He passed Happy, who was struggling to sit up against the steps, without even batting an eyelid.
He finally stopped, his tall figure completely shrouding Eric Savin.
Savin was still pinned to the ground by that crushing gravity; he turned his head with difficulty, his eyes filled with a brand new, deeper fear.
What he saw was an existence even more incomprehensible than a human who could explode.
The blind man stood still for a moment, as if listening to this World. He heard the sirens in the distance, the whimpering of civilians, and Savin's heart, which was pounding frantically against the ground.
"Oh my, oh my—this really is—"
A low and calm voice sounded, sounding more like weariness than surprise.
"Treating human lives as chips on a gambling table, and then losing the bet. Truly the worst kind of gambler. This old man does not allow the lives of civilians to be toyed with by you like this~~"
He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to a sound only he could hear.
The tip of his cane sword rested quietly on the ground, becoming the only point of stillness in this World that had just been torn apart.