That was Marcus’s doing.
His own lieutenant.
The traitor had waited until Adrian was exhausted from slaughtering a Tier-3 Bone-Plated Mutant, then buried a vibro-blade laced with a synthesized neurotoxin straight into his ribs.
Marcus had babbled something about "survival of the fittest" and "the new world order" before kicking Adrian down the ventilation shaft into the darkness of this abandoned garage.
Now, the neurotoxin was engaged in a brutal turf war with the zombie virus Marcus’s blade had also carried, both of them fighting over the right to consume Adrian’s cellular structure.
And beneath all of that, a third force was raging, a chaotic, uncontained storm of raw, crackling electrical energy.
The trauma had triggered a spontaneous elemental awakening. An S-Rank Lightning Core was forming in his heart, but without the physical stamina to contain it, the lightning was simply frying him from the inside out.
Blue sparks arced weakly from his blood-soaked fingertips, singeing the dust on the floor.
’So, this is it,’ Adrian thought, his consciousness fracturing into fuzzy, static-filled pieces. His eyelids felt like they were made of depleted uranium.
He couldn’t open them or move his limbs.
The world was fading into a dull, echoing numbness.
No glorious last stand.
No taking the traitor with me.
Just bleeding out in a puddle of motor oil and my own failure.
His finely tuned, battle-hardened instincts, honed over countless missions in the apocalypse, were slowly dulling.
But they weren’t dead yet.
Through the haze of impending death, he felt it.
A vibration.
Footsteps.
His internal alarms wailed, a deeply ingrained response to the horrors of the ruined world.
Enemies? Had Marcus sent a clean-up crew to ensure the job was done?
Or worse, had the scent of his blood drawn down a pack of Rot-Hounds?
Maybe a lurker-type zombie, crawling along the ceiling, waiting to drop and feast on his intestines?
Adrian desperately tried to rally his waning strength, trying to command his hand to reach for the sidearm that was no longer at his hip.
He needed to fight. He needed to die standing.
But his muscles were completely unresponsive, paralyzed by the toxin and cooked by the rogue electricity.
He lay there, a paralyzed spectator to his own execution, focusing all his remaining sensory power on the approaching sound.
Squish.
Squeak.
Squish.
Squeak.
Adrian’s hyper-vigilant mind ground to a screeching halt.
What the hell is that sound?
It wasn’t the heavy thud of military boots or the wet, dragging slither of a mutant appendage.
It sounded like... rubber.
Small, slapping rubber soles stepping directly into puddles of blood and questionable fluids with absolute disregard for stealth.
Squish.
Squeak.
The rhythm was incredibly short.
The stride length was completely wrong for an adult human.
And the weight behind it was negligible.
Arthur’s exhausted brain tried to process this anomaly.
A new type of mutant?
A dwarf-sized assassin?
A hyper-evolved spider-creature wearing... sneakers?
But the most jarring detail wasn’t the sound. It was the total absence of bloodlust.
In the apocalypse, everything had an aura. Survivors reeked of fear and desperation.
Traitors emitted a cold, calculated malice.
Mutants and zombies radiated a suffocating wave of hunger.
This approaching radiated... nothing.
Or rather, it radiated a chilling indifference, accompanied by something that felt strangely like a faint, bubbly humming. It was as if the creature approaching him didn’t view him as prey, an enemy, or even a living being, but rather as an oddly shaped rock blocking its path.
Squish.
Squeak.
Squish.
Stop.
The footsteps halted right next to his head. Adrian braced himself for the killing blow. The jaws ripping into his throat, or the bullet in his skull.
He surrendered to the void, embracing the final, cold embrace of death.
Instead, he felt something cold, wet, and smelling strongly of chemical aloe vera aggressively slap him directly across his cheek.
***
Ten minutes earlier.
Dia stood at the bottom of the vehicular ramp, allowing her pupils to adjust to the dim, flickering emergency lighting of the underground garage. The air quality here was abysmal.
Particulate matter, mold spores, and a concerning amount of iron-rich blood scent assaulted her small olfactory sensors.
[Target located! Dead ahead, Host! Oh my goodness, he is in terribly bad shape! His HP is at 1%! If this was a video game, his health bar would be flashing red and making that stressful beeping noise!]
The System’s holographic screen hovered at Dia’s shoulder, projecting a massive, blinking golden arrow that pointed toward a mangled heap of flesh and tactical gear pinned beneath a collapsed pillar.
Dia walked toward the heap, her oversized sneakers making squelching noises as she stepped through puddles of congealed fluids.
She didn’t bother avoiding them; the structural integrity of the host body’s footwear was already compromised, and navigating around the puddles would expend 0.4% more energy than simply walking through them in a straight line.
She arrived at the target and stopped, tilting her small head to the side as she conducted a thorough visual inspection.
The man was massive.
Even crumpled on the floor, his broad shoulders and muscular build indicated a prime specimen of human physical development.
However, his current state was, to use a scientific term, a complete biological disaster.
His vest was shredded.
A grotesque laceration exposed muscle and cracked ribs.
Blue electricity was randomly popping across his skin, singeing his dark hair and causing his limbs to twitch violently. The veins in his neck were pulsing with a sickly, blackish-purple hue, indicating a severe systemic infection.
"System," Dia said, her voice a flat monotone that sounded bizarre coming from a six-year-old with chubby cheeks. "You classified this unit as a ’Guardian.’ This unit is currently experiencing multi-organ failure, severe neurotoxicity, and an unstable bio-electric feedback loop. Its structural integrity is less than zero. It is leaking fluids everywhere. It is a biological write-off."
[Do not underestimate Uncle Adrian He is an S-Tier Ultra-Legendary Mega-Boss-level human! He just needs a little TLC! (Tender Loving Care!)]