Chapter 258: Chapter 258: Four Minutes
Chapter 258: Four Minutes
Bastion One glowed like a fallen star against the dark southern horizon.
General Hadrian Kest stood in the center of Elder Isolde Renwick’s private study. The door was closed. He had walked into the room expecting a classified briefing regarding Senator Vast.
Instead, he stopped dead on the thick carpet.
His eyes glazed over. His expression went terrifyingly blank. The Cult parasite resting at the base of his skull recognized the lethal intent radiating from the shadows of the bookshelves.
Kest’s right hand moved smoothly toward the heavy runic alarm dial on his Vanguard belt.
He did not know why he was reaching for it. The parasite was violently piloting the reflex, overriding the General’s conscious mind to protect its host.
Before Draven Mordis could issue a command, the shadows behind Kest fractured.
Nyx Vespera emerged from the two-dimensional plane in a fraction of a second. She did not aim her void-steel daggers at Kest’s throat. She did not attempt to restrain him. She aimed for the heavy leather strap of his belt.
SLICE.
The thick Vanguard leather severed cleanly.
The runic alarm dial clattered to the floor before Kest’s fingers could brush the activation seal.
Draven stood perfectly still in the dark alcove.
’She read the room faster than I did,’ Draven analyzed, a cold weight settling in his chest. ’She did not wait for my mark. She did not even look at me for confirmation.’
The seventeen-year-old assassin was operating on her own brutal instincts. The weeks of isolation in Bastion One had stripped away her reliance on a commander. She had seen the threat, and she had neutralized it without asking for permission.
The heavy thump of the falling belt broke the parasite’s spell.
General Kest blinked rapidly. The Vanguard veteran recognized the immediate, lethal danger in the room. He was not a Level 200 Valor. He possessed no devastating magical aura.
He was a mortal man with sixty years of hardened Hawk military training. And his nervous system was currently flooded with desperate, hyper-accelerated adrenaline provided by the terrified parasite.
Kest spun away from Nyx. He dropped into a flawless combat stance.
He did not lunge for the fallen alarm. He reached inside his heavy coat and drew a short, vicious Vanguard trench knife.
Nyx struck forward. Kest parried her void-steel dagger with a rigid, punishing block. He used her forward momentum against her, stepping inside her guard and throwing a heavy elbow directly into her ribs.
THUD.
Nyx stumbled backward, gasping for air.
Kest did not press the attack to finish her. He calculated his survival odds instantly. He needed the door. He turned and sprinted for the heavy wooden exit of the study. He moved incredibly fast. The parasite pushed his aging muscles far past their natural limits.
Elder Isolde Renwick stood between him and the hallway.
The seventy-one-year-old politician did not step aside. She stepped forward. She barred the heavy oak door with her own frail body, raising her silver-tipped cane like a sword.
Kest raised his knife, preparing to shove the old woman aside.
Draven activated [Microscopic Perception].
He crossed the study in a blur. He had to stop a fighting Vanguard general. He could not use raw kinetic vectors to smash the man into a wall.
He could not risk a single heavy impact near Kest’s spine. If the vertebrae shifted even a fraction of an inch, the parasite would rupture the spinal cord and kill the host instantly.
Draven caught Kest’s wrist mid-strike.
Kest twisted violently. He drove his knee upward toward Draven’s stomach.
Draven shifted his weight. He did not block the knee. He guided the kinetic energy smoothly to the side, letting Kest overextend his own strike. Draven stepped deep into the general’s guard. He mapped the exact pressure points on Kest’s neck using his enhanced vision.
Precision was agonizingly slow.
’I have not had to be this careful with a human opponent in months,’ Draven realized as he dodged a second desperate knife thrust. ’I usually just break them.’
Draven found the carotid artery. He applied a flawless, localized gravitational pressure to the blood flow, pinching the vein shut for exactly three seconds.
Kest’s eyes rolled back in his head. The heavy Vanguard knife slipped from his fingers.
Draven caught the unconscious General before he hit the floor, lowering him gently to the thick rug.
The study fell dead silent.
General Kest lay face-down on the Senator’s floor.
"Four minutes," Draven ordered quietly, pulling his white porcelain mask off his face and tossing it onto a nearby chair. "If he is unconscious any longer without a stable mana flow, his organs will begin to fail."
Isolde locked the heavy wooden door. She stood back, gripping her silver cane tightly. Nyx melted back into the shadows near the balcony, watching the perimeter for Capital patrols.
Draven knelt over the unconscious general.
He looked at the base of Kest’s neck. The glowing red signature of the Treachery-Fiend flared under his enhanced vision. The Cult parasite knew exactly what was coming. It was preparing to dig in.
Draven drew his iron combat knife. He triggered [Cellular Suture].
He made a single, precise vertical incision down the back of Kest’s neck.
The surgery was genuinely horrific. Draven parted the skin and muscle. He looked deep into the biological architecture of the general’s nervous system. The smell of copper and ozone filled the small room.
The Treachery-Fiend was not a simple leech resting on the bone. It was woven directly into the sixty-year-old nerve tissue.
The parasite’s tendrils were thinner than human hair. They wrapped tightly around the spinal column, mimicking the natural biological pathways of the host.
Draven reached in with his bare, glowing fingers.
The second his mana touched the parasite, the creature reacted. It burrowed deeper. The tiny, gray tendrils dug frantically into Kest’s spinal cord, trying to fuse permanently with the bone marrow.
Blood welled up in the incision. Kest’s unconscious body convulsed violently.
"Hold him still!" Draven snapped.
Isolde rushed forward. The elderly Senator dropped to her knees. She pressed her heavy hands against Kest’s shoulders, using all her meager strength to pin the convulsing general to the floor.
Draven watched the microscopic tendrils shredding the nervous system.
He reached the halfway point of the extraction. The grim mathematics became terrifyingly clear.
Pulling the parasite out cleanly required unraveling hundreds of microscopic knots. It was delicate, flawless work. It would take at least ten minutes. Kest’s heart would stop in two.
If Draven took it slow, the general would die on the Senator’s floor. If Draven ripped it out fast, the parasite would tear a massive cluster of vital nerves with it.
Isolde had asked for Kest to be saved. She had demanded he survive the operation.
Draven had six seconds to make the decision.
He looked at the frantic, burrowing entity. He looked at the aging General who had tried to do the right thing while a monster piloted his mind.
Draven made the choice alone. He chose to break the man to keep him breathing.
Draven gripped the core of the Treachery-Fiend.
He did not unravel the tendrils. He pulled hard.
SNAP.
A wet, sickening tearing sound echoed from the open incision. Kest let out a raw, hollow gasp in his sleep.
Draven ripped the parasite free. He immediately forced the healing light of [Cellular Suture] into the wound, desperately knitting the primary spinal column back together before the biological shock could stop Kest’s heart. He saved the legs. He saved the lungs. He saved the brain.
But the thick nerve cluster running down Kest’s right arm was gone.
The parasite had taken the pathways with it. Kest’s right hand was permanently destroyed. The General would never hold a sword again. He would never grip an iron pen to sign a launch order.
Draven closed the skin, leaving a jagged, silver scar.
He sat back on his heels. He looked at his own bloody palm.
The Treachery-Fiend died instantly in the open air. It was a small, gray, pathetic-looking slug. It possessed no grand aura. It had no fangs. It made no sound as it expired.
This tiny, unimpressive lump of gray flesh was the mechanism that had nearly steered a continent into a holocaust.
Draven had read about things like this, in another life, in a story he had assumed was fiction. They were never important. They were tools that higher things used and discarded, mentioned in passing and never named.
The sheer scale of the horror felt painfully small in his hands.
Draven stood up. He wiped the gray sludge from his fingers using a cloth from Isolde’s desk.
Two minutes later, General Hadrian Kest opened his eyes.
The Vanguard veteran did not panic. He did not thrash wildly. He slowly pushed himself up from the thick rug using his left arm. His right arm hung dead and useless at his side.
Kest looked around the dimly lit study.
He saw Elder Isolde Renwick sitting in her chair, wiping sweat from her brow. He saw a seventeen-year-old girl with void-steel daggers standing in the corner. He saw a young man holding a white porcelain mask.
Three enemies standing over him in the heart of Bastion One.
Kest did not threaten them. He did not call for the Capital guards.
He sat on the floor. He remembered standing in the grand corridor weeks ago. He remembered confronting Senator Aurelio Vast with the falsified deployment rosters.
He remembered the sudden, crushing exhaustion, and the profound, unnatural desire to just file the treason charges tomorrow.
The fog in his mind was gone. The cold, horrifying clarity returned.
Kest looked down at his dead right hand. He understood exactly what had been done to him, and he understood exactly why it had been necessary.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter