After the Gacha session, Lex, Sharon, and Donna ended up going on what was supposed to be a simple shopping trip for Donna’s necessities. It quickly spiraled far beyond that. What began with clothes, toiletries, and basic supplies turned into an hours-long spree through upscale stores and crowded malls as Sharon and Donna repeatedly insisted that Lex stop acting like a spectator and buy things for himself as well. By the end of it, they had accumulated enough bags to make it look as though they had emptied half the stores they visited.
They even bought Donna the newest and most advanced professional camera available, partly because she genuinely wanted it and partly because her current public identity as a freelance photographer demanded believable equipment. Donna had looked almost embarrassingly happy carrying it around afterward, already testing settings and taking random pictures of the city while Sharon rolled her eyes in amusement.
As night settled over the city, Raphael informed Lex that both the Brotherhood and the X-Men had already entered the farmhouse. After changing into an entirely different appearance and putting on a crude makeshift mask for additional insurance, Lex activated the teleportation staff and directly entered the basement of the farmhouse, bypassing every upper layer entirely.
The instant he arrived, Raphael flooded his mind with overlapping streams of information. Every hallway, every room, every movement inside the farmhouse unfolded simultaneously within his head as though he were watching dozens of screens at once. The deeper he processed what was happening, the more obvious it became that the people who had arrived intending to rescue the captives would likely need rescuing themselves.
So instead of getting involved immediately, Lex focused first on locating the girls.
Thanks to Raphael’s interference, the surveillance systems never even registered their presence. Every camera continued replaying old footage in a seamless loop while Lex, Sharon, and Donna moved through the underground facility completely unnoticed.
After conducting a thorough scan, Raphael informed him that aside from the two girls, there were forty-two additional mutants imprisoned within the basement. Worse, nearly all of them showed signs of severe psychological damage. Some had fractured personalities, others were trapped in artificial hallucinations, and a few had minds so unstable that Raphael described them as barely functional.
Lex found himself facing an uncomfortable choice.
He could use his saliva or blood to heal them immediately, which according to Raphael would likely cure most of their conditions outright. Or he could simply incapacitate them for now and rely on more conventional treatment later. Raphael strongly advised against using his powers too freely. Exposure was already a concern, but that was not the real issue.
The greater danger was what repeated use of such abilities could do to Lex himself.
If he kept healing everyone he encountered simply because he could, then eventually there would no longer be any real line separating what he should interfere with and what he should leave alone. The natural flow of suffering, consequences, life, and death would gradually become something he rewrote on impulse. And without fully understanding how powerful this universe truly was—or how the Essence system was perceived within it—recklessly violating that order could attract the attention of forces he did not yet comprehend.
Besides, most of the people imprisoned here were not entirely innocent either.
In the end, Lex decided to focus on the girls first. Once this was over, he could decide what to do about everyone else later… or leave that responsibility to someone more qualified.
“Sharon, there are guards nearby. I can hear them,” Donna said quietly as they moved through the basement corridors. “You deal with them. I’ll search the rest of this floor and see if there’s anything else down here.”
Lex approached the rows of containment tubes lining the chamber. Alison and Kitty were suspended inside cylinders much like the others around them, unconscious and motionless beneath dim artificial light. Cracks spread across the glass as he tore the tubes open with telekinesis before carefully pulling both girls free and laying them on the floor.
Afterward, he lightly licked his fingers and pressed them against their lips.
The moment the saliva touched them, it vanished into their bodies almost instantly.
Both girls woke with violent gasps.
“This is so disappointing…” Alison muttered while sitting upright, still looking dazed. “I was almost in the top ten singers in the world, and it all turns out to be fake?”
Thankfully, the healing seemed to stabilize their minds enough that neither of them questioned reality itself despite whatever illusions they had previously experienced.
Kitty, however, reacted differently.
The instant she regained consciousness, her body abruptly phased downward and vanished into the floor entirely.
Lex blinked.
“What happened to her?”
<Her mutation allows her to phase through solid matter.>Raphael answered immediately.
Lex exhaled slowly before extending his senses using the Force, one of the abilities he had acquired from the Darth Vader template. Raphael could utilize the power far more efficiently than he could, but because Raphael’s usage apparently did not count toward the template’s growth, Lex himself still lacked experience with it.
Even so, as he expanded his awareness outward, he eventually sensed someone beneath the ground.
Kitty had curled into herself several meters below the floor, trembling quietly while trying to hide.
And crying.
Lex immediately withdrew his senses.
He probably should not have looked that closely.
Deciding to give her some space, he turned toward Alison instead and extended a hand toward her.
“Do you need help?”
“No, I’m okay,” Alison replied, accepting his help anyway as she steadied herself. “You’re the one who rescued us, right?”
“Yes,” Lex answered. “But we’re not out yet, so I’ll need you to cooperate with us until we leave this place.”
However, before Lex could figure out how to coax Kitty back out of the ground, every containment tube in the chamber suddenly opened at once.
One after another, the imprisoned mutants awakened.
The atmosphere changed instantly.
Before Lex could fully react, one of the mutants lunged toward him at blinding speed. But with Raphael linked directly to his thoughts, surprise attacks had become almost meaningless. The moment the man moved, Raphael activated Thought Acceleration, and the charging mutant appeared to slow to a crawl within Lex’s perception.
One of the greatest advantages of the Darth Vader template was Vader’s mastery over the Force itself. Since the Force shared similarities with telekinesis, equipping the template had drastically enhanced Lex’s own control over telekinetic abilities as well.
Focusing on the charging mutant, Lex simply suspended him midair.
His control had already reached the point where he could immobilize entire bodies by forcefully locking them in place with telekinesis alone. Compared to everything else happening around him, stopping one mutant was effortless.
Unfortunately, it was not just one.
Every captive in the chamber had awakened, and many immediately rushed toward them in confusion, panic, or outright aggression.
Donna moved first.
Her fighting style was brutally straightforward—ignore incoming attacks, close distance, and put opponents down with overwhelming force before they could recover. One mutant slammed an energy blast directly into her shoulder only for Donna to continue charging through it without slowing down before driving her fist into his stomach hard enough to fold him over completely.
Another tried to restrain her with elongated limbs, only for Donna to grab the mutant by the arm and hurl him bodily into two others nearby.
Sharon fought very differently.
She advanced carefully behind her shield, intercepting attacks with controlled movements while using her spear with almost surgical precision. Rather than aiming to cripple people, she targeted joints, pressure points, and moments of imbalance, dropping opponents efficiently without causing unnecessary permanent damage.
The difference between their styles became obvious immediately.
Donna fought like a walking battering ram.
Sharon fought like someone dismantling problems one movement at a time.
And surprisingly, Alison quickly started helping as well.
Most of the captives were actually in terrible physical condition. Outside of their mutant abilities, many possessed weakened or malnourished bodies after prolonged captivity. Those without physical enhancement powers especially struggled to fight properly, allowing even Alison to take some of them down with improvised strikes and desperate swings using nearby equipment.
Just as Lex continued fighting, his perception sharpened further and further until the battlefield itself seemed to slow around him.
<Azazel is here. His power appears to be teleportation. He has appeared behind Sharon.>Raphael’s warning came instantly.
Lex reacted on instinct, telekinesis surging toward Azazel the moment the mutant appeared. Yet the second the force latched onto him, Azazel vanished in a burst of dark smoke before reappearing from another angle to strike Sharon again.
Sharon might not possess Lex’s monstrous perception or reaction speed, but she was far from inexperienced. Her shield snapped backward immediately, deflecting Azazel’s tail before it could properly pierce her.
But Azazel teleported again.
The next strike slipped past her defense and stabbed into her side.
Instead of retreating, Sharon grabbed the tail impaling her, trying to use the opening to restrain him. Yet before she could capitalize on it, Azazel disappeared once more and reappeared beside Donna, who was already handling two mutants at the same time.
Unlike Sharon, Donna had always been an absurdly powerful superhuman.
Her perception might not rival Lex while enhanced by Raphael, but her reactions certainly did. Every attack Azazel launched toward her was immediately met with a counterattack. Fists, elbows, and kicks moved with frightening speed as Donna forced Azazel to teleport repeatedly just to avoid being hit.
Meanwhile, Lex focused entirely on him.
With Raphael assisting him, he used the Force in an attempt to interfere with Azazel’s teleportation itself. Invisible pressure spread through the surrounding space every time Azazel vanished, trying to hold the teleportation pathway in place.
Yet if there was one thing Azazel was famous for, it was teleportation.
The Force could slow the process slightly, enough for Lex to feel the distortion of another dimension being used during the jumps, but not enough to stop him completely.
And the moment Azazel realized he could not properly fight Lex and Donna head-on, his strategy changed instantly.
Instead of targeting the strongest opponents, he targeted the weakest opening.
Because Lex’s attention had shifted toward Donna for a brief moment, he reacted just a little too slowly.
Azazel appeared behind Sharon once again.
This time, his tail pierced straight through her back.
“No!” Lex shouted as his emotions spiraled violently out of control.
“Hehehe…” Azazel laughed. “It’s always satisfying watching someone lose their loved ones right in front of them.”
Lex’s eyes locked onto him.
Then he activated the Eyes of Depth.
Azazel’s existence itself seemed to unravel beneath Lex’s perception. The distortions around his body, the spatial tears created by his teleportation, even the connection to the dimension he was using became visible.
At the same time, Lex used the Force to directly obstruct the teleportation point itself, targeting the dimension Azazel was passing through.
For the first time, Azazel’s movements slowed slightly.
Yet despite that, he still slipped past the blockade.
His connection to the Brimstone dimension was simply too strong for Lex’s current mastery over the Force to fully suppress.
And this time, Azazel did not return.
He simply vanished.
“How’s Sharon?” Lex asked immediately. He did not know whether the attack had actually killed her or not, but he knew it had definitely been fatal for an ordinary person.
<Sharon Rogers is currently regenerating. At the current rate, full recovery should occur within approximately three hours.>
Lex finally released a breath of relief.
Even knowing Sharon would likely return once the battle ended—or that he might even be capable of reviving her himself—did not make watching her fall any easier. And it was not as though he had ever actually tested resurrection before.
Actually, now that he thought about it, he definitely needed to test it eventually.
<It is not recommended to revive someone solely for testing purposes, as such actions may attract the attention of beings related to death, necromancy, and similar domains. Should I begin planning a controlled environment where such a test could safely be conducted?>
“Sure,” Lex replied absentmindedly.
By then, Sharon was already conscious again, though clearly injured. Azazel had specifically targeted a section not protected by armor, likely to avoid being blocked, but that also meant he had failed to strike anything immediately vital.
Lex crouched beside her, licked his finger, and pressed it against the wound. The healing accelerated almost instantly, the damaged flesh visibly recovering.
“Thanks,” Sharon said while sitting up slowly.
“I’m sorry,” Lex admitted quietly. “I should’ve listened to you when you said we weren’t prepared enough.”
“Don’t dwell on it,” Sharon replied. “Let’s just go upstairs and deal with Jason at least… unless Azazel teleported him away too?”
“No, he’s still here,” Lex answered while helping her back to her feet. “I can still see him.”
Together they walked toward Donna, who was already waiting beside the elevator.