Apocalypse: I Raised the Ultimate Antagonist from Scratch

The low, rhythmic hum of the subterranean alarm system reverberated through the dense concrete walls of the lower level, vibrating the heavy steel bars of the holding rooms. Red emergency lights flickered in synchronized, crimson pulses across the damp corridor, casting long, twisting shadows into the dark corners of the holding bay.

Inside her room, Lu Ning sat curled up in a tight, shivering ball on the thin mattress of the narrow cot. Her long hair hung in dirty, matted strands around her hollow face. Her hands, scraped and stained with grease from the floor, clutched her arms tightly as she stared with wide, bloodshot eyes at the flashing warning lights on the ceiling.

Every pulse of red light hit her like a physical blow.

’The siren... the base is under attack,’ she thought, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.

A tiny, desperate spark of hope flared in her chest, suffocating the dark dread that had settled into her soul over the past few days. Her brother. Captain Lu Feng. He was the captain. When the general alarm sounded, he had to sweep the corridors. He had to come down here. He was her older brother—the man who had spent his entire life taking the fall for her, protecting her from every mistake, spoiling her since they were children back in the old world.

"He’s coming," Lu Ning whispered into the empty room, her voice rasping against her dry throat. "He didn’t mean those cold things he said. He was just angry... he was just stressed because of Han Zheng and Lin Qing. He won’t leave me down here to die if the base falls. He can’t."

Minutes ticked by. The low hum of the acoustic alarms continued to pulse through the bedrock, but the heavy door at the end of the corridor never opened. No familiar boots stepped down the hallway.

Through the narrow slit of the room’s reinforced viewing window, she could see only the two guards stationed at the block exit. They stood rigid, their hands clamped on the receivers of their rifles, their eyes glued to their comms units as updates from the upper ramparts filtered through their earpieces. They didn’t even look toward her room. No one was coming for her. Her brother had turned his back on her, permanently.

The realization settled deep into her chest, cold and heavy like lead.

"You abandoned me," she rasped, her lips trembling as tears cut clean streaks through the grime on her cheeks. "You really left me..."

A wave of intense, suffocating heat suddenly surged through her veins, clashing violently with the cold air of the unheated room. Lu Ning dropped to her knees on the cold floor, gasping as a blinding headache slammed into her temples. Her vision blurred, spinning out of control as a burning, feverish agony tore through her joints.

It was a violent, suffocating heat—the distinct, agonizing sensation of a fever.

She collapsed onto her side against the wall, her chest heaving, her skin glistening with a sudden, heavy sweat. Her mind felt unhinged, floating between delirious hallucinations and sharp, jagged rage.

Every memory of her past life burned away, leaving behind only a bitter, toxic resentment. She hated Han Zheng for never noticing her. She hated Lin Qing for taking everything she wanted. She hated that child, Han Ye. And above all, she hated her brother for giving up on her.

"Why..." she sobbed, pressing her forehead against the wall to cool the burning fever inside her skull. "Why do they get to have everything... while I die in the dark?"

In her feverish delirium, she pushed her trembling right hand flat against the wall, leaning her body weight into it for leverage.

Then, something impossible happened.

Her hand didn’t hit solid stone. Without a sound, her fingers, her palm, and her wrist sank straight into the multi-layered concrete wall as if it were nothing more than thick, lukewarm water.

Lu Ning froze, her gasping breath catching in her throat.

She stared down in stunned, disbelieving silence. Her hand had disappeared entirely into the six-inch-thick reinforced wall. Trembling, she pulled her arm backward. Her hand emerged cleanly from the stone, completely unharmed, leaving not a single crack or trace on the concrete surface.

"What..." she whispered, her eyes wide with feverish shock.

She extended her hand again. With a faint, shimmering distortion of the ambient light around her skin, her arm passed effortlessly back into the solid wall. She could feel the dense density of the steel rebar and stone, yet her physical mass slid right through the atomic space without resistance.

An awakening. Her body had unlocked a spatial phasing ability—an intangibility power that allowed her physical mass to pass through solid matter, striking a similarity to Ye Lin’s spatial movement.

The burning fever still throbbed behind her eyes, causing her body to tremble with exhaustion, but a hysterical, manic grin stretched across her pale face.

"They locked me up..." Lu Ning giggled, a low, unhinged sound that echoed against the small cell. "They thought this room could hold me."

She didn’t waste another second. Pushing through the agonizing body aches of her awakening fever, Lu Ning stood up on shaky legs. She took a step forward, closing her eyes, and walked straight through the heavy, locked door.

The door passed through her torso like a cold mist. She stepped out into the main hallway, completely invisible to physical restraints. The two guards at the end of the corridor remained focused on their radio comms, their backs turned to the cell blocks as they monitored the reports from the upper gorge.

Lu Ning didn’t bother engaging them. With her intangibility active, she slipped directly into the side wall, phasing through the concrete structural pillars and navigating the internal maintenance conduits. She knew the layout of the Research Center quite well by now; she had memorized every corridor during her time here, long before her she was locked up.

She passed through lower storage rooms, mechanical shafts, and secondary access corridors without making a single sound. The few guards stationed along the inner corridors were all positioned at key choke points, their attention directed toward the upper walls where the heavy artillery was firing.

Within ten minutes, Lu Ning emerged from a structural wall near the primary blast gates.

The main entrance hall was vast, dimly lit by red emergency strobes. Above, on the elevated catwalks, the ambient thundering roar of the external minefield detonations echoed down through the heavy stone ceiling. Standing near the central control console of the blast door was a single guard, his rifle slung over his shoulder, his hand pressed tightly against his ear as he listened to the frantic comms updates coming from Lieutenant Chen and Sun Hao.

Lu Ning hid within the shadows of a heavy concrete pillar, her chest heaving as the awakening fever continue to burn through her energy reserves. Her hands were sweating, her legs trembling from the physical exertion of maintaining her phase form.

She stared at the massive, multi-ton steel blast gate sealed shut at the end of the atrium. Outside that gate, the howling mountain wind and the terrifying, guttural roars of approaching mutated infected vibrated against the heavy metal plating.

’I can’t survive outside,’ Lu Ning thought, her mind twisting into dark, toxic calculations. ’Even with this power, if I go out there, the cold or the monsters will rip me apart in minutes. I have nowhere to go.’

She looked up toward the central command hub above, then toward the elevator shaft leading to the secondary residential suite.

’If I can’t leave... and I can’t stay...’

A cruel, psychotic smile spread across her face.

’Then none of you get to live either.’

Lu Ning stepped out from behind the pillar, dropping her phasing form as she sprinted straight toward the blast gate control terminal.

The guard near the console caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and snapped his head around. His eyes widened in absolute shock as he recognized the ragged, feverish figure running toward the primary console.

"You?! How did you—"

Before the guard could unslung his weapon, Lu Ning reached the main control deck.

The gate operation required a high-clearance command keycard to initiate a standard cycle—a card she did not possess. But she didn’t need to cycle it properly.

Grabbing a heavy, steel-headed emergency breach wrench mounted on the maintenance wall, Lu Ning raised it high with both hands and slammed it down with frantic, feverish strength directly into the glass face of the main hydraulic control junction box.

CRASH!

Sparks erupted violently from the console. Thick white smoke billowed out as the internal relays short-circuited under the mechanical impact. Warning klaxons inside the atrium shrieked in a high-pitched, piercing alarm.

WARNING: HYDRAULIC SYSTEM FAILURE. MANUAL OVERRIDE ENGAGED.

With a deafening, metallic grinding noise, the massive, multi-ton steel blast gate began to slide upward automatically as the lock pins retracted from the floor.

"NO! STOP!" the guard roared, dropping his rifle to sprint toward her, his face pale with horror as he screamed into his headset. "COMMAND HUB! CODE RED! BLAST GATE COMPROMISED! THE MAIN GATE IS OPENING!"

Lu Ning smashed the wrench into the electrical junction box three more times, shattering the primary breaker chips into smoking pieces.

The rising blast gate shuddered violence, grinding to a harsh, mechanical halt midway up the frame—stuck four feet off the ground, leaving a massive, gaping lower breach straight into the outer valley.

The cold mountain wind instantly rushed into the atrium, carrying with it the sickening stench of ozone, blood, and the terrifying, thunderous roar of a hundred fast-moving infected vanguard already charging down the outer slope!

Lu Ning threw the heavy wrench aside, a hysterical laugh escaping her lips as she activated her phasing ability once more, sinking backward into the concrete wall just as the guard reached the terminal.

"If I’m going to hell," she whispered into the darkness of the stone, her eyes gleefully tracking the first wave of mutated shadows rushing under the jammed gate, "I’m taking all of you with me."

---

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!