The Descent of Red Eyes
A rift torn open in the encirclement by those crimson eyes. It wasn't the hunt of a mere serpent—it was the rampage of a weapon sweeping through the battlefield. The mercenaries weren't just cannon fodder. Their mechanical eyes flashed red in unison, linking into a tactical network.
"Erase the blind spots! Predict its trajectory!"
The net tightened like a web. But my vision opened first. Inside my vertically slit pupils, the Dongshu pattern spun rapidly.
"Fire! Shred it to—gah?!"
The lead bastard pulling his trigger froze like stone. Like prey locking eyes with a predator, even his artificial joints seized up for an instant.
In that fleeting gap, I closed the distance with Shrinking Earth, burrowing in. My jaws, reinforced with Yokai Force, tore into the unarmored seam at the back of his neck. One went down like a felled log, without even a scream.
"You fucking monster freak! Scatter and shoot!"
The panicking bastards unleashed hell from all sides. Plasma rifles and compact particle cannons spat azure fire.
I didn't dodge. Dongshu extended, seizing and twisting the flows of space.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
Dozens of energy rounds hurtling straight at my scales veered off at the last second, sliding against an invisible wall. The deflected superheated projectiles didn't hit the ground.
"Gaaah!"
"Where the hell are you shooting?! Fuck!"
Their trajectories tangled, slamming plasma into allied armor.
"Sorry, the paths are going haywire—urk!"
Formations crumbled into a slaughterhouse of friendly fire. I slipped leisurely through the chaos at its heart, whipping my tail to shatter legs, stomping collapsing bodies to launch at the next throat, severing it clean.
Reason and instinct overlapped perfectly. I felt the blood coating my scales cooling to a chill. Yokai Force was raw, barbaric power craving destruction—but the Dao Force etched in my mind honed it into the most efficient killing paths.
The savagery of a beast, cloaked in rational control. This massive, grotesque reptilian body moved like a masterfully forged weapon. The pinnacle sensations from my daoist peak fused with this aberrant yokai energy, unleashing overwhelming synergy.
The surviving mercenaries had lost all will to fight. Drenched in comrades' blood, their weapon hands trembled as they backed away.
Time to finish it.
The instant I coiled to spring—
A deafening roar from above. Something crashed down.
Boom!
The ground shattered, dust clouds billowing.
"Ngh..."
A bloodied old face. The one-eyed geezer with the mechanical implant who'd fled earlier had plummeted meteor-like into the battlefield's center, vomiting blood. Sparks spat erratically from the wrecked optic; from his half-torn robe protruded grotesquely twisted artificial joints.
My gaze naturally lifted skyward. Through the ashen sky's massive rift, someone descended. Not falling—but stepping leisurely down invisible stairs, with arrogant poise. Eyes blazing red.
A being I'd never encountered, yet the colossal, alien aura made instinct scream first. Breath caught in my throat. Having regained power and my old rational senses only made the gap stab deeper.
Each step he took cracked the air around him. The acrid dust clouds rising were crushed by the pressure radiating from his feet, sinking heavily to the ground.
The world's axis twisting forcibly toward that man—an eerie pressure. I can't oppose that. Not now. Touch it, and I'm erased.
I flattened to the ground, stifling even my breath. The one treading air halted, scanning the floor. The bloodied one-eye, the butchered mercenaries, and me coiled at the center.
His gaze locked. Those perfectly controlled red eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
"...This."
A low, chilling voice dropped into the void. His face hardened faintly.
Breaking that heavy silence was a desperate shout from a surviving mercenary behind me.
"Fuck... Tyler! Wake up, you bastard!"
The one clutching his half-charred comrade's corpse trembled violently. Rage, shock, and visceral terror mixed in his bloodshot glare fixed on me.
"The rounds... bent. Froze the instant our eyes met... Fuck, that's a contaminant? We... we were the ones hunted. From the start."
The mercenaries' wails over their dead fixed not on the red eyes from the sky, but wholly on me—the one who'd shredded their common sense.
But I felt no triumph. Any reckless move now to draw that overwhelming red gaze fully would end everything.
Not to fight from this sunk position—but ready to flee anytime, I quietly drew up Dao Force.
The red eyes shifted from me to the one-eye smashed into the dirt.
"What is that."
The one-eye's gaze flicked to me. A brief silence swept his blood-masked face. His mouth didn't open.
The red eyes sank slowly.
"You don't know."
His gaze swept me again.
"An Irregular? With a beast form?"
But the curiosity faded fast. He turned away, disinterested, with the arrogance unique to overwhelming power—treating me like an insect.
"Whatever. Doesn't matter."
Then, his finger twitched.
"Gaaaaah—!"
The one-eye's body folded. Limbs bent inward, slamming into the ground. Nothing visible crushed him—but the concrete spiderwebbed beneath him clear as day.
"Chased by mere metal drone trash into that state. Pathetic."
At the icy mockery, the one-eye spat blood, grinding his teeth. Humiliation twisted his face raw. Yet his eyes didn't break. Even crushed, his presence lingered heavy. From his wrecked form emanated the unyielding grain of one who'd never knelt to another.
The red eyes looked down disdainfully, lips curling.
"So. Where did you hide it."
His voice was low. It froze the air on contact.
"...Did you report to the Council, Executor sir."
The one-eye's lips twisted. A metallic laugh leaked through blood foam.
"As if. As if you could stomach your noble blood's shame rolling across the Council floor."
No reply from the red eyes.
"The Council's hunting dog of an Executor can't rein in one daughter, so you crawl down here alone. Can't trust anyone."
The red eyes' expression chilled blank. No denial, no affirmation. That was the answer.
In that instant, pain-racked one-eye's pupil gleamed.
"Hid it?"
A hollow chuckle escaped the foam. Then it swelled.
"Hid it... kek. Uhahahaha!"
Even as his body convulsed in agony, the laughter didn't stop. One reason for a smashed wreck to laugh: the red eyes' question itself was victory's herald.
"Thought you were atop the world as the Council's dog? Blind to the blade sharpening at your feet! All that pureblood, noble lineage bullshit!"
His enraged voice echoed through the ruins.
"So your own daughter stabs you in the back!"
The air froze solid.
The red eyes said nothing. Expression unchanged.
Yet that blankness differed from before. Indefinable, but changed. Undeniably.
The one-eye sensed it too. His remaining eye flashed as he screamed louder.
"Spend your life covering that precious lineage's shame, licking like a dog, you hypocrite fuck! Kek, urk... Uhahahaha—!"
Before the laugh ended—
Energy swelled inside the one-eye's body. Not normal mana use. Burning his own flesh as fuel.
Suicide bomb.
Detonates here, it's over.
Thought and action synced: I kicked off, maxing Dao Force. Midway to folding space with Shrinking Earth—
"Where."
A flat word. My stacked Dao Force shattered wholesale.
Boom!
My launching body slammed back to the dirt. No mere impact. Weight poured down. Not from all sides—from above. On me alone.
Organs crushed, veins bursting under the pressure engulfing me. Concrete spiderwebbed; scales dug into the cracks. No Shrinking Earth, no evasion—everything locked.
Bones screaming, breath impossible in the overwhelming gravity, I barely raised my eyes.
The red eyes didn't even glance my way—just pressed his hand downward.
"Kh, guh...!"
The one-eye's suicide-bloated body warped grotesquely. The madly expanding energy crumpled inward, fizzling without release.
Not even self-destruction allowed. Such was the power gap.
The red eyes gazed down coldly, amusedly pathetic.
His voice—chilling, absolute predator's tone freezing the ruin's air—crushed the void.
"My question."
He cruelly curled his lips.
"Isn't over yet."