Under the night, fire and blood interwove, the air thick with scorched cordite and the stench of rot.
At the instant that heavy, metallic voice rolled through the ruins and flames, the entire battlefield seemed clamped under an invisible pressure.
Even the Blood Cross, howling in madness, held their breath for a heartbeat, all eyes snapping toward a colossal shadow.
At the broken subway entrance, the SWAT captain, on the verge of fainting, forced his eyelids up. His blurred vision barely focused ahead.
Not far away, a giant had somehow "appeared."
What he saw wasn't an ordinary soldier, but a war machine forged from steel and the will to wage war.
A terrifying figure over nine feet tall, encased in immensely heavy Terminator armor.
Its plates were painted in blood-red and gold, patterns like interlaced flame and molten metal—the emblem of the Wailers Battalion.
The surface of the armor was etched with complex crests and brands, every mark like a tale of honor hammered out of blood and fire.
Mounted to his left forearm was a 1.0-caliber twin-linked explosive-bolt gun, so heavy a normal man couldn't even lift it—yet on this giant's arm it seemed a natural limb.
With each subtle tremor of the muzzle, the suit gave off a suppressed roar, as if ready at any moment to vomit a steel storm that could tear a building apart.
His right arm bore a long, razor-edged lightning claw. Its cold gleam slid through the crosslight of night and fire; arcs snapped and hissed—Death's adjudicator in hand.
There was no need to guess—this was a Terminator veteran of the Wailers Battalion.
And just by standing there, the veteran's presence congealed the air, jamming the Blood Cross jeers in their throats.
Silence lasted only an instant.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
"Take down that tin can!!"
"Hahaha! Rip him apart! Fuck him up!!"
Beast instinct quickly drowned their flash of fear. Their crazed howls pealed across the night as they charged with scrap iron, guns, and bows—a pack of rabid curs hurling themselves at the Terminator veteran.
On the ruins flanking the street, torches and crude spotlights snapped on. Countless Blood Cross forms writhed in the shadows.
They clawed up walls and leapt off rooftops, eyes burning with sick scarlet light, as if to drown this solitary giant.
But among them, the two-meter-plus musclebound brute didn't join the chorus at once.
Its eyes narrowed; its brow furrowed. Instinct screamed danger—
This "tin can" wasn't like any enemy they'd faced.
In the next heartbeat, the field erupted.
THOOM—THOOM—THOOM—!
The explosive-bolt gun bellowed like thunder cleaving the sky.
Incandescent tracer paths, each bearing a shattering warhead, carved searing lines and shredded the front ranks into chunks of meat and char.
Every squeeze of the trigger came with a compact blast. Pillars cracked; the street shuddered.
Boom! Boom!! BOOM!!
Flesh and limbs fountained with the fire, wails and mad laughter tangling into a symphony of death.
Pffft—pffft—!
The lightning claw, sheathed in crackling arcs, lashed and hewed like a scourge of storm, rending Blood Cross bodies with ease; even the walls behind them scored into charred rifts.
Arrows and bullets stormed in, but before they could truly strike the Terminator armor, they glanced off a faint deflection field—unable to harm the suit in the least. The armor's systems didn't even deem it necessary to bring up the energy shield; the deflection field alone could shrug off Earth-19 human conventional weapons.
The disparity on this field wasn't man against man—it was gods grinding beasts to paste.
At the edge of it all, the SWAT captain bled in a spreading pool. His mind was fading, yet through the blur he witnessed a scene that would etch itself into his soul.
A giant, in red and gold, standing alone against a host of demonlike foes.
His last flicker of consciousness formed a notion absurd yet unshakable—
Perhaps this was a savior sent by the heavens?
The next moment, darkness swallowed him.
The Blood Cross still hurled themselves at the lone Wailers veteran, like a mindless tide trying to stack bodies into victory.
But before a true giant of war, such frenzy was laughable.
THOOM THOOM THOOM!
The 1.0-caliber explosive-bolt gun roared anew.
Boom—splorch—!!
Each bolt left the muzzle on a staccato concussion and burst amid the packs, blowing fragile flesh and bone into jagged shards.
Bodies tore and popped; severed limbs arced through the heat-hazed air and slapped wall and ground.
The blood-stink, already thick as syrup, congealed with powder and burn, enough to choke a normal man.
A few Blood Cross slipped through the bombardment to within a few yards—but couldn't threaten the veteran in the slightest.
The lightning claw carved charged trails, each swing riding a low, vicious crackle, reaping lives by the handful.
Some were split clean in two; others smashed to paste.
Those that grappled were swatted aside by a lazy sweep of a heavy-plated forearm, limbs popping, bones cracking in a chorus that raised gooseflesh.
Corpses piled; blood ran in channels.
In barely ten seconds the entire block became a hellscape.
Meanwhile, the hulking, broad-shouldered infected—
Clearly the rabble's leader—had already turned, face grim.
Unlike its kind, its reason and patience outstripped the common infected.
It knew the foe before it couldn't be drowned in numbers. That red-and-gold behemoth was a walking tank; only heavy ordnance could truly threaten him.
So it chose to withdraw, without hesitation.
Those drowning in the thrill of slaughter and lust could serve as its cover.
It would preserve itself, wait for a better moment—or for stronger weapons.
Reason said only that would keep it in control.
It had barely turned when the earth gave a heavy, shocking shudder—
Thud, thud!
Steps like mountains falling. Each one made the ground tremble, as if a steel colossus was bearing down, unstoppable.
A cold fist clamped the brute's heart; sweat broke out at once; every hair stood on end. What reason remained shrieked alarms.
It tried to look back, but even its speed was a beat too slow.
Pffft—pffft—!
A flash of cold light, laced with lightning, flicked in the dark.
So fast the air itself seemed scorched.
A wave of pain crushed it. The Blood Cross leader dropped its gaze to see its own mighty legs severed in the glare—its twin arms, those "stone-splitting" fists, falling in the same instant.
"Aaaargh!!!"
Its scream knifed through the block.
A beast's howl—desperate, disbelieving, deafening.
Blood fountained like a spring, soaking the street. Steam rose, mingled with the iron reek, spreading wide.
?!!
The other Blood Cross paused mid-howl and hack, stunned by the sight.
The leader they deemed invincible was maimed in a single exchange—limbs hacked away, reduced to a dying stump.
Thud, thud!
In their horrified eyes, the Wailers veteran advanced, a towering silhouette. Red and gold burned in the torchglow like a god of flame; arcs still danced on the lightning claw—death's echo.
The brute writhed in the gore but couldn't budge.
Reason returned to whisper: this was an unbeatable foe, a "tin can" that could destroy everything.
Now there was no retreat—only the shadow of death rolling down.
In that moment, the whole street lay crushed under the veteran's sovereign might.
Then—
Boom. Boom.
The ground trembled; dust plumed between wrecked buildings, as if an apocalyptic quake was devouring Toronto.
It wasn't a quake. It was a sky-blotting ironclad—
A Valiant-class super-heavy cruiser had arrived without anyone noticing, hanging five thousand meters up.
Two kilometers from prow to stern, the leviathan was a fortress of steel in the heavens. Its bulk blanked the night, an iron canopy that pressed the city to breathlessness.
Swish—swish—!
Hundreds upon hundreds of high-power searchlights flared along her flanks.
A searing white flood poured down, rendering every ruin in Toronto in needle-sharp relief.
It wasn't a gentle light, but one with a cold sanctity and majesty. To Earth-19 humans it felt less like human tech than a salvific glow cast from heaven.
The beams knifed through dust and smoke, cloaking the wreckage in a near-unearthly, hallowed sheen, and the field snapped into a staggering contrast—
Chaos, blood, and debased hell set against a descending, merciless light of order.
From above, one could have seen it clearly—
A dozen Terminator veterans of the Wailers Battalion, like boulders dropped into flood, had manifested in Blood Cross concentrations and at the last-ditch survivor strongpoints.
Clad in heavy plate, wielding mortal instruments, gods of war in steel and light, they were carving new front lines out of pockets of fire and despair.
Then the Valiant-class's belly bays thundered open.
Transports, gunships, and air gunboats poured out in waves, tails of fire scoring the night.
They streaked like a meteor shower, flaring into separate vectors toward Toronto's districts.
Air quivered under their thrusters; the roar rolled over the ruins. Hearts rattled under that iron-blooded might.
One Luna III transport dropped to a low dive, then braked hard and settled onto a street strewn with corpses and flame.
This was the very street where the SWAT captain had blacked out.
Hiss—!
Hydraulics vented as the heavy ramp lowered.
Step, step.
A volley of synchronized footfalls burst forth.
A squad of clone soldiers in trench-coat combat gear swept out, hard-light rifles in hand, a tide of precision.
Taktaktak!
Cold, mechanical fire filled the street. Hard-light beams tore the night like long, thin lashes of red and white, punching through Blood Cross skulls and hearts with surgical aim.
Those used to brawls and blades had no answer to the hard-light barrage. They dropped one after another, bodies cauterized and bursting blood-black mist, tossed to the pavement like cast-off rags.
In mere breaths, the Blood Cross wave at the corner was crushed, replaced by the clone soldiers' cold, metronomic weave of killing light.
And this was only the beginning.
Next out of the bay, auxiliaries of the Wailers Battalion in powered suits marched down.
Their steps were solid and heavy, power packs humming. Unlike the clone line, these were a fusion of heavy infantry and tactical support. Their target wasn't mere extermination—it was the man sprawled in blood at the subway mouth.
Two medics broke off at a sprint, modular packs of advanced gear on their backs, heading straight for the figure at the entrance.
The SWAT captain lay limp, blood seeping from the severed arm, the stones beneath him soaked through.
But for the faint pulse and breath, he was no different from the dead around him.
The medics didn't hesitate.
They popped a single-face energy shield to screen against ambush, then set to work.
A high-energy hemostatic spray filmed the wound. Nano-injectors slid into a vein; micro-machines began their run through his blood to repair.
A portable med-pod unfolded in moments. They lifted him in; the hatch sealed; a red medical status light snapped on within.
While they worked, the fight across the street stayed white-hot.
The hard-light web shredded the infected; bodies fell in strings; bursts of light etched a corridor of death in the dark.
Farther off, the Terminator veteran kept reaping.
His massive armor glinted under the beams, a true god of war—and his presence turned this block into a stage under Imperial control.
At last, hellish Toronto was, in the long night, bathed in the iron-blooded radiance of order.
______
(≧◡≦) ♡ Support me and read 20 chapters ahead – patreon.com/Mutter
For every 50 Power Stones, one extra chapter will be released on Saturday.