"Pathetic," Vespera hissed from right behind him, her razor-sharp tail lashing the scorched air with lethal, impatient snaps.
"Let me off the leash, Kaelen. I will string their pretty little intestines from these ugly corporate towers and skip rope with them."
"Stand down, Vespera," Kael commanded, his voice cold, flat, and carrying the absolute weight of command.
He didn't have time to waste turning twenty-seven glorified mall cops into red mist.
High-tier reinforcements, A-Rank Vanguard hunters and heavy aerial gunships loaded with saturation payload missiles, would be dropping into the sector in less than two minutes.
If he got bogged down in a protracted firefight with Neo-Edo's military wing right now, he wouldn't just be outgunned; he'd be buried beneath a mountain of corporate red tape and high-velocity titanium.
He needed to vanish like smoke into the neon labyrinth of the lower slums.
But before he made his grand exit, he had one final, petty, soul-cleansing piece of business to attend to.
Kael calmly holstered the smoking heavy mana-pistol back into Warden Silas's spatial ring.
He slowly turned his head to the right, looking just past the ruined perimeter of the courtyard gates.
Standing there, smugly untouched by the orbital chaos, was a colossal, hundred-foot-tall monument carved from flawless, blindingly white marble.
It was a towering statue of Marcus Thorne.
The self-proclaimed Golden King was depicted standing triumphantly, his jeweled sword raised to the heavens, a look of benevolent, sickeningly arrogant pride chiseled permanently into his face.
The exact same face that billions of corporate slaves worshipped on every public screen across the globe.
The same man whose glorified name was permanently carved into human history.
The exact same coward who had locked the vault and left Kael to rot in the abyss.
At the base of the monument, a solid gold plaque gleamed under the neon lights: 'To the Savior of Neo-Edo. He who conquered the Dark.'
Kael stared at the statue.
A decade of rotting in pitch-black mud, chewing on twitching, mutated flesh, and breathing toxic abyssal gas swelled violently in his chest, hot and suffocating.
His jaw locked until his teeth ground together.
His silver eyes burned with a hatred so profound, so absolute, that the very air around him physically warped and distorted under the pressure.
He unslung 'Vengeance' from his battered shoulder.
He reached deep into his heavily modified quiver.
He had exactly one bolt left.
It wasn't a standard, clean bone-bolt.
It was a vile, throbbing masterpiece, the absolute last explosive acid-gland warhead he had meticulously harvested and crafted from a Rank-C Abyssal Crawler in the lower depths of the Rift.
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He slammed the thick, jagged, venom-dripping bolt into the heavy firing groove.
With a brutal heave of his scarred arms, he manually racked the massive lever, the ancient steel gears shrieking in agonizing protest under the sheer eighty-pound draw weight.
Click-clack.
"Sera," Kael grunted, his voice a low, gravelly rumble of pure intent.
Seraphina didn't question him for a single fraction of a second.
She shifted her stance, raising her heavy greatsword and stepping smoothly in front of Kael's flank.
Her corrupted, dark-gold Aegis shield flared to terrifying, pulsing life, locking into a hard-light barrier designed to absorb and deflect incoming ordinance.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
Desperate, stray plasma bolts from the scattered Enforcers hammered against her barrier, ricocheted harmlessly into the night sky, and dissolved into sizzling sparks of useless light.
Kael braced his weight, raising the massive, eighty-pound greatbow with effortless, terrifying strength.
He didn't waste his final, precious shot aiming at the smug, arrogant marble face of Marcus Thorne.
He was a professional. He aimed for the structural foundation. The absolute Achilles heel.
His laser-focused silver eyes locked onto the massive, weight-bearing marble ankle of the statue's right leg.
[User 'Zark': WAIT. IS HE ACTUALLY AIMING AT THE STATUE?! NO WAY HE'S ABOUT TO DO WHAT I THINK HE'S DOING 💀💀]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': PATCH 3.14: STATUE REMOVED LFG! BRO IS ABOUT TO COMMIT URBAN RENEWAL AT MACH SPEED 🔥🔥]
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44': Look at the load-bearing calculations on that right ankle! He's targeting the exact center of mass displacement. An engineering masterpiece of demolition!]
[User 'KAEL_CHOKE_ME': THAT'S MY HUSBANDO! DESTROY THAT FRAUD'S LEGACY WHILE I CHEW ON MY PHONE SCREEN 🥵🩸]
[User 'Velvet_Thighs_69': The sheer petty disrespect is giving me life. Ten years in the dark and his first public act of vandalism is a hundred-foot monument. Iconic behavior 💅✨]
[User 'Point_Gamble_God': 50,000 credits says the whole thing collapses straight onto the enforcers! Place your bets right now! 📉📈]
[User 'BloodGod': TEAR DOWN THE FALSE IDOL! YES! REDUCE THE GLORIFIED PEDESTAL TO ASH AND BONE! SHOW THEM TRUE CARNAGE!]
[User 'DragonBoredom': Exquisite. Why argue with a tyrant when you can simply turn his billion-credit ego into gravel?]
Kael exhaled slowly, a long wisp of freezing, deathly mist escaping his lips despite the blistering, superheated air of the chaotic courtyard.
He squeezed the iron trigger.
THWOOM!
The massive, heavily reinforced spider-sinew string snapped forward with a kinetic screech that literally shattered the local sound barrier, sending a visible shockwave rippling through the smoke.
The two-foot-long, jagged bone bolt, tipped with a volatile, highly pressurized biological sac of pure abyssal acid, rocketed across the courtyard like a streak of vengeance.
It completely bypassed the chaotic crossfire of the guards entirely.
It struck the massive, weight-bearing marble ankle of the Golden King dead center.
SHHHHHLLLLLLCK!
The impact didn't shatter the pristine stone with brute force.
It was far more terrifying than that.
The hardened spider-silk cap of the bolt ruptured with a wet, explosive pop, instantly injecting a full gallon of hyper-concentrated, neon-green Rank-C Abyssal acid straight into the microscopic stress fissures of the marble.
The chemical and magical reaction was instantaneous, violent, and utterly catastrophic.
HISSSSSSSSS!
A deafening, violent sizzle drowned out the frantic popping of the Vanguard rifles.
Thick, blinding, highly toxic yellow smoke billowed out in suffocating billows from the base of the collapsing monument.
The flawless, billionaire-funded white marble didn't just crack or shatter; it completely liquefied, melting into a boiling, bubbling cauldron of vicious acidic slag in a matter of seconds.
The entire structural integrity of the hundred-foot monument was utterly annihilated at the molecular level.
CRRRRRR-CRACK!
A tectonic sound like a localized earthquake ripped across the central commercial district of Neo-Edo, rattling apartment windows for miles.
The remaining Vanguard Enforcers abruptly stopped firing, their weapons slack in their hands, their jaws dropping in unadulterated, soul-crushing horror as they tilted their heads straight up.
The colossal statue of their untouchable Golden King groaned like a dying titan.
It slowly, agonizingly, began to pitch forward into the open night air.
"RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" one of the Enforcers shrieked, tossing his plasma rifle aside and sprinting blindly into the dark.
Gravity took the wheel.
The hundred-foot tower of solid white marble plummeted from the sky like a falling star.
It slammed into the center of the courtyard with the apocalyptic kinetic force of a direct meteor impact.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The reinforced ferro-concrete ground violently heaved upward like a living thing.
A massive, devastating shockwave of pulverized white marble dust, hyper-dense shrapnel, and roaring debris exploded outward in a colossal ring, instantly swallowing the entire courtyard in a blinding, apocalyptic white cloud.
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