The concrete floor of the drainage zone was still trembling.
The Proto Tyrant Leon had launched away slowly climbed out of the filthy water.
The mass of uncontrolled growth in its chest kept writhing.
Excess T-Virus ran rampant through its body, driving it into a berserk state.
It released an inhuman roar and locked crimson eyes on the black tin can ahead.
Both thick legs drove down.
Reaction force blasted wastewater all the way to the ceiling.
The giant body leapt into the air, mutated right arm raised high.
Its sharp bone blade tore the air as it came down toward Leon’s head like a collapsing mountain.
Leon did not retreat from the airborne strike.
He spread his feet, iron boots nailed to the wet concrete, and closed both hands around the Doorstop’s rough grip.
The heavy black-steel body snapped upward and leveled horizontally before him.
The monster, accelerated by gravity, crashed directly into the armored madman.
CLAAANG—!
The deafening metal detonation exploded through the drainage channel.
The Tyrant’s sharp bone blade struck the broad spine of the greatsword.
Brilliant sparks poured along the steel.
Every muscle in Leon’s body swelled, and a deep harsh breath sounded beneath the helmet.
The overwhelming pressure forced his boots backward.
Iron heels plowed two trenches almost five centimeters deep through the concrete.
The Tyrant landed and immediately swept its left claw sideways.
Leon dropped his weight and took the strike directly on the high-carbon-steel armor over his left arm.
CLANG!
A dull impact rang out.
His body rocked.
For the first time, the heavy armor groaned under deformation, and a deep claw mark appeared across the black surface.
Rebecca watched from behind with the shotgun raised.
“Leon!
Open the distance!
Those claws can cut steel!” She searched for a firing angle, but the two giants were fighting too quickly for her to risk a shot.
Leon exhaled heavily through the mask, reversed force through both hands, and used the sword spine to knock the Tyrant’s combination half a meter away.
“Cut steel?” He snorted.
“This defective Umbrella product only knows haymakers.
Doesn’t even understand basic leverage.
Their product manager has to be an amateur.” The Tyrant raged and advanced like an out-of-control meat grinder, bone blade slashing wildly.
Just before the weapon struck Leon’s armor again, the huge body suddenly locked rigid.
The overload of T-Virus had pushed its nervous system beyond control.
Its neck twisted unnaturally to one side and the entire body convulsed violently for several horrifying seconds.
Leon caught the fleeting weakness at once.
Rather than block another strike, he dropped one shoulder and drove the heavy armor into an extreme low slide.
His boots threw two walls of water as he narrowly passed beneath the wild sweep following the spasm.
Leon came around the Tyrant’s side and shouted, “Medic!
Call the target!
Ugly’s having a seizure—give me the fatal points!” He planted the sword and rose one-handed, eyes sweeping the broad skinless back where thick sections of vertebrae were exposed.
Rebecca leaned from behind a support column and rapidly assessed the convulsing body.
Her medical training took over.
She pointed and shouted at high speed.
“Low intelligence, extreme neuromuscular contraction!
The heart is exposed on the right side of the chest.
From behind, the cervical spine and spinal column under what skin remains are absolute weak points!” “Copy.
Expert opinion.” Leon answered shortly.
The spasm ended and the Tyrant turned, swinging its bone blade to cut apart the armored human who kept dodging like a flea.
Leon was ready.
He stepped sideways and drove one broad iron shoulder into the arm as it missed, knocking the creature off balance by a step.
In that instant, he moved around its broad back like a shadow.
Both hands reverse-gripped the rough greatsword hilt.
The iron helmet reflected cold red light.
Every muscle tightened and Leon jumped.
The descending-strike posture was brutally extravagant.
“On your knees!” He roared in midair.
The Doorstop traced a perfect half-moon.
Its broad blunt point came down with crushing force directly onto the Tyrant’s exposed spinal column.
CRACK—SPLAT!
The sound of breaking bone rolled over the drainage channel.
This was not a cut.
It was a sledgehammer impact.
The Tyrant’s mutated skeleton, one of its greatest advantages, was pulverized beneath the blow.
Purple-red spinal fluid and fragments of vertebrae sprayed outward in a fan.
The Tyrant released a long, shrill scream.
Its central nervous system had suffered catastrophic damage.
The thick lower body went instantly paralyzed.
Without support, the mountain of flesh dropped onto both knees with a BOOM, fracturing the concrete into spiderwebs.
The heart exposed in its right chest cavity was now completely open to Leon.
Leon landed on one foot and tossed the black-steel greatsword beside himself with a heavy clang.
He stepped in and stamped one iron boot onto the joint of the Tyrant’s right bone claw as it tried to struggle.
Another crack sounded.
Leon broke the terrifying blade completely beneath his heel and looked down at the twitching monster.
“Thin rear armor.
Unstable base.
Defense full of holes.” Leon took Rebecca’s Remington and chambered it one-handed.
“If I were a shareholder, their product manager would be fired tomorrow.” He kicked aside the creature’s struggling left arm and dropped one knee heavily onto its chest.
The high-carbon-steel plate crushed distorted flesh beneath him.
Leon adopted a standard C.A.R.
(Center Axis Relock) shooting stance, held the shotgun in both hands, and pressed the muzzle almost directly into the basketball-sized heart still pounding wildly.
“Rest in peace, big guy.” Leon pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The blasts echoed repeatedly through the drainage channel.
Propellant gases detonated inside the creature at near-contact range.
Heavy buckshot tore through the chest cavity in every direction.
One shot.
Two.
Three.
Under the repeated blasts, the grotesque heart became a pool of shredded meat.
Filthy blood and tissue splashed across Leon’s iron faceplate.
He did not stop until the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber.
He had emptied the entire tube without mercy.
The supposedly immortal Proto Tyrant twitched once more under the repeated finishing shots and finally collapsed into dead flesh.
The fight ended.
Only the exhaust fans and flowing wastewater remained audible.
Rebecca slowly lowered her weapon.
She stared at the brutal tableau, the streak of blood on her cheek already washed thin by sweat.
She had begun to go numb to the completely inhuman level of violence this man could produce.
“Is it…
really dead?” She stepped closer, stared at the wreckage, and swallowed dryly.
Leon stood and casually kicked a broken piece of vertebra.
“Unless it can sculpt itself a new heart out of mud.” He picked the heavy Doorstop off the floor, shook droplets from his mask, and settled it on his shoulder.
“Good work, medic.
Looks like you didn’t skip anatomy class.” Rebecca opened her mouth to reply.
A piercing alarm suddenly cut through the drainage area’s thick concrete walls and echoed across the underground factory.
The red lights along the passage began flashing faster.
A cold mechanical female voice sounded from every speaker: “Warning.
Self-destruct sequence for the Executive Training School has been initiated.
Thirty minutes until total destruction.
All nonessential personnel evacuate immediately.
Repeating: self-destruct sequence initiated…” Both of them looked up.
The cold countdown pulled nerves tight again just as the end of the battle had begun to ease them.