The Psychokinetic Feral Boss stood up from the shattered ground, its hollow purple eyes burning with intense malice.
The heavy impact from One had cracked its tattered black cloth, but its pale, gaunt skin showed no visible damage.
Its enlarged skull pulsed with throbbing black veins, sending out a visible shockwave of energy that cleared the surrounding dust.
One merely glanced at Ella before letting out a deep, gravelly roar, charging forward with heavy steps that cracked the concrete beneath his feet.
He brought down all four of his massive, muscular arms in a downward hammer strike aimed directly at the floating creature.
BOOM!
The purple barrier flared violently, stopping One’s four massive fists an inch above the creature’s head. The sheer kinetic pressure spread outward, creating a crater in the street beneath them.
The Feral Boss did not even flinch. It casually raised its gaunt hand, making a quick upward flick with its long, black claws.
An invisible wave of gravitational force blasted upward, striking One squarely in the chest. The nine-foot giant was lifted off his feet and launched backward through the air, crashing hard against the asphalt.
Before One could roll over to recover, the Feral Boss pressed its palms together.
An immense pressure descended from above, slamming One flat onto his stomach. The ground beneath his dark torso caved in, and the sound of cracking bone echoed across the intersection.
One roared in frustration, pushing all four of his heavy arms against the road, but the invisible weight held him down like a mountain.
[He cannot kill it alone. His raw physical strength is high after evolution. But that thing is a Peak Peak-level Feral. Its telekinesis will tear him apart piece by piece.]
Summer tightened her fists inside her gauntlets, her crimson eyes narrowing. "Then we help him."
She activated her full agility, blurring into motion across the bloody street. "Ella! Ilas! Jacob! On me!"
Ella did not hesitate. She dashed forward, her glowing bat swinging in a sharp arc to divert a feral zombie that tried to intercept Summer.
Ilas raised both her hands, launching two large fireballs directly at the Feral Boss’s face to obscure its vision.
Jacob sprinted along the left side, his face rigid with determination as he brought his energy-infused bat down toward the creature’s exposed flank.
Even Captain Robin and his three surviving soldiers joined the assault, forming a tight semicircle as they poured heavy automatic rifle fire into the shimmering purple shield.
They all understood their survival depended on the death of this zombie.
"Focus all fire on the brain!" Robin barked, his voice hoarse as he reloaded his rifle on the move.
The soldiers obeyed, but their minds were filled with utter confusion. They glanced back and forth between the floating monster, the four-armed giant, and the pale, crimson-eyed girl leading the charge.
"Captain!" one of the soldiers shouted over the gunfire. "Why are those civvies fighting alongside a mutant zombie?! Is that little girl even human?!"
"Shut your mouth and keep shooting!" Robin roared back, wiping sweat and blood from his forehead. "If that floating bastard survives, none of us are leaving this city block alive! Kill it first, ask questions later!"
Despite the combined assault, the situation quickly turned grim.
The Feral Boss’s purple barrier absorbed the bullets, fireballs, and physical strikes with ease.
The creature swiped its hand sideways, releasing a repulsive shockwave that sent Jacob and the soldiers flying backward across the pavement.
Ella barely managed to block the kinetic blast with her bat, but the force pushed her back several meters, her boots leaving long black skid marks on the road.
One managed to stand back up, roaring as he charged again, but the Feral Boss simply snapped its fingers.
An invisible blade of pressurized air slashed across One’s torso, tearing deep ghoulish gashes into his thick, charcoal-colored hide.
Dark blood poured onto the asphalt.
The creature was simply gaining the upper hand too quickly. Its intelligence stat was far too high for their current attack patterns.
[Summer, it cannot continue like this. You have to evolve into an Elite. Only then could you kill it.]
Summer gritted her teeth, wiping dark red blood from her lips once more. "Oh."
[You need thirty more feral cores. There are plenty of ferals hiding in the surrounding alleyways, watching the fight. Kill them, swallow their cores, and hit Level 10 now!]
Summer paused, looking back at her companions. One was currently taking the brunt of the kinetic pressure, his four arms trembling under the weight of the invisible force.
Ella, Ilas, and Jacob were bleeding, standing in front of the soldiers to form a fragile vanguard.
"Hold on for a few minutes," Summer said, her raspy voice firm as she looked at Jacob and Ella.
Ella blinked, wiping sweat from her brow. "Summer? Where are you going?"
"I need to kill the small ones," Summer replied simply. "I need their cores to grow stronger. Trust me."
Jacob looked into her crimson eyes, seeing no hesitation or deceit. He took a deep breath, tightening his grip on his glowing bat. "Go. We will draw its attention and keep One alive. Take as long as you need, but hurry!"
Robin and his soldiers looked at them in complete shock and disbelief.
"Are you insane?!" the squad commander yelled at Jacob. "You are letting the little girl run away in the middle of a Boss fight?!"
"She is not running away!" Ella shouted back, her dark eyes flashing with absolute trust as she stepped beside One. "She said she will be back, so she will be back! Now shut up and cover us!"
The soldiers swallowed hard, exchanging uncertain glances.
But seeing the unwavering conviction in the eyes of the family, and looking at the four-armed giant still roaring and shielding them from the debris, they gritted their teeth and maintained their firing lines.
Summer did not waste another second.
She turned away from the main battlefield, her body blurring into a high-speed streak of white and dark gray.
She ignored the floating Feral Boss completely, driving her speed to its absolute limit as she plunged into the dark, ruined alleys surrounding the intersection.
The lower-tier ferals had retreated into the shadows of broken storefronts and abandoned alleyways, hiding quietly while their Boss fought the dangerous prey.
They believed they were safe in the dark, watching the heavy battle from the margins.
They were wrong.
Summer materialized at the entrance of a narrow side alley, her pale skin illuminated by the distant flames of Ilas’s fire.
Her crimson eyes glowed with an icy, predatory gleam in the pitch-black darkness.
In her hands, her Iron Brawler Gauntlets hummed with lethal intent.
A cluster of five feral zombies crouched behind a pile of overturned trash cans, their dark eyes widening in sudden terror as they realized the pale girl had found them.
They bared their fangs, letting out low, warning snarls, but Summer did not offer them a single second to react.
A menacing smirk spread across Summer’s pale face.
She was so angry after getting bullied by that zombie. Now she had become the bully. Summer found being the bully was far better than being the bullied.
So with a vicious grin, she lunged forward...