The heavy silence that followed the defeat of the silver-haired mercenary leader was deafening.
The remaining four Aether-Corp operatives stood paralyzed, their pearl-white combat rigs humming with erratic, stuttering energy fields.
Their eyes darted from the smoking crater where their squad leader had crashed through the armored carrier to the slim, composed figure of Deku Kwanoh standing calmly in the center of the plaza.
Despite the tattered remnants of his Shinseong High uniform still caked in the foul sludge of the slums, Deku looked like an absolute monarch surveying a conquered courtyard.
His breathing was steady, unhurried.
The Tier 2 spatial distortion humming beneath his skin radiated a faint, terrifying pressure that made the very air around him ripple like heated pavement.
”Wh-What is he?” one of the remaining operatives stammered, his fingers trembling as he tried to stabilize the frequency of his rifle.
“Is he a high-tier mutant from the upper rings? An unregistered experimental subject?”
”It doesn’t matter what he is,” another hissed, his face twisting with a mixture of fear and adrenaline.
“If we don’t suppress him, our security clearance will be revoked, and in this sector, that’s a death sentence. Fire! Erase his coordinates from the grid!”
Instantly, all four operatives raised their weapons, their spatial manipulation abilities igniting in tandem.
Instead of firing standard plasma projectiles, they warped the space directly around Deku, creating a convergent sphere of compressive gravity meant to crush him from every angle simultaneously.
For a split second, Deku was engulfed in a swirling vortex of distorted light and snapping air pressure.
From inside the collapsing sphere, Deku didn’t panic.
His dark eyes narrowed, a cold, clinical grin spreading across his face.
In his old life, pressure had always been a tool used by authority figures to keep students in line.
But here, pressure was just another variable to be broken, mastered, and redirected.
Let’s see how much your space can bend before it snaps, Deku thought.
He channeled his inner mutation core, fusing his physical muscle density with the spatial resistance humming in his blood.
With a guttural, explosive breath, Deku threw his arms wide apart.
BOOM!
The convergent gravity sphere didn’t crush him—it shattered outward like a blown glass bubble.
The shockwave of his released energy rippled across the plaza with deafening force, sending shockwaves through the armored carriers and blowing the four elite operatives off their feet.
They slammed hard against the pavement, their high-tech rigs sparking violently as their spatial circuits short-circuited from the feedback.
He adjusted his neatly knotted tie, his posture immaculate.
He approached the closest operative, who was coughing up a mouthful of metallic-tasting air while trying to drag himself away.
Deku stopped, planting the heel of his shoe firmly onto the man’s chest plate, pinning him to the ground.
”You mentioned a security clearance,” Deku said, his voice smooth, low, and terrifyingly calm.
“Tell me everything about the corporate harvesting schedules for the Divine Tree, or I’ll show you what a real spatial collapse feels like.”
The operative looked up into Deku’s dead, unblinking eyes and saw a bottomless abyss.
Realizing that defiance meant immediate erasure, the man choked out a frantic, trembling stream of intelligence regarding the corporate extraction teams, guard rotations, and the exact coordinates where the Divine Tree’s fruit was scheduled to drop.
As Deku listened, filing every detail away in his razor-sharp mind, the system hummed softly in the background, reinforcing his growth.
He wasn’t just surviving in this dystopian future anymore.
He was rewriting its hierarchy, one lesson at a time.