Despite the group of enemies already been subdued, somehow deep inside, they knew that it's still too early to lower the guard and move on.
Smoke drifted in thin, sickly ribbons from the burst CC corpses, acid hissing across broken asphalt. Every breath tasted like burnt cartilage and rot. Kaodin wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, but his stomach clenched anyway.
He'd tried to hide the gag at first —
tried to swallow it, keep his face straight.
He wanted to look mature, steadier, reliable, for a young boy such as Kaodin, it's extremely abnormal to be among several attractive and elder opposite sex.
However, the situation for the young boy was extremely unfortunate
This is bad, the smell, the bile was already up on my throat, I have to....
He quietly bent away and let out acidic bile through his mouth near a broken wall.
Nyla, still catching her breath from the earlier skirmish, notice the boy's unusual sight, yet didn't mock him. She only set a hand on his back and giving him a soft patting as though she knew exactly how he feel, while leaving her other hand on her other .357 Magnum.
Wawa pressed against Kaodin's ankle.
A wordless pulse, as if to cheer up its master
A dragging gnarl rolled from the alley behind them —
wet, low, vibrating through rib and stone.
Wawa snapped upward instantly, floating in taut circles around Nyla, ears flattened, fur quivering with instinct. He tried to push her aside with his head — insisting.
But Nyla misread it.
"That low?" she muttered. "Big one. Slow. Not a priority."
She was wrong.
Han-Xiao's visor lit in a glitching stutter.
"Motion! Fast—no heat signature! It's—!"
Arika raised her blade-whip, teeth clenched.
"It's playing with us."
Ken added, "Like a predator testing distance before it chooses."
Shadows flickered across collapsed windows.
Another silhouette blinked behind a barricade.
Then nothing.
The air thickened.
And suddenly—
It was standing there.
No sound.
No warning.
No heat.
Just there, towering over Kaodin and Nyla.
A Colos Variant.
Twenty milliseconds.
A reflex older than thought.
Wawa shot forward first, his spectral body bursting with a flash of harsh white light.
It didn't harm the tendrils — but it forced a stagger, just long enough for Nyla to act.
She moved like a trigger snapping.
"Nyla—!" Kaodin shouted, but she was already there.
Her right hand dropped to her right thigh, drawing the .338 Lapua Magnum in a single practiced arc.
The heavy sidearm was up and locked before the tendril fully reoriented.
She fired point-blank.
THUD—!!
The tendril slammed into her left forearm, the one she'd instinctively thrown up to shield Kaodin.
The impact crushed bone instantly, ripping through muscle like wet cloth.
Before she could recover, the second tendril lashed across her left shoulder —
a diagonal, tearing strike that shredded everything from scapula to the clavicle.
The force launched her backward.
She hit the barricade hard — the kind of impact that ends careers.
Blood sprayed across the broken stone in a wide arc.
"Nyla—!"
Kaodin's ears rang, vision tunneling.
Arika's command voice cut over everything:
"Han-Xiao! On her now! Ken — TXA, MOVE!"
Ken snapped open the vial.
Han-Xiao dropped beside her, already clamping pressure to her ruined left shoulder.
Nyla didn't scream.
Her jaw clenched, breath shaking, but she reached — with her right hand, the dominant one — still aiming to fight, to draw again, to protect her squad.
Her left arm lay twisted, mangled beyond saving.
And even bleeding out, she refused to fall still.
Still being Nyla.
Kaodin's ears rang.
His breath locked tight in his throat.
Arika shouted orders somewhere behind him —
Ken tearing open a TXA vial, Han-Xiao dropping beside Nyla, pressure on the wound —
but none of it reached Kaodin clearly.
His vision tunneled.
He'd let someone close.
And they were hurt because of him again.
Wawa crawled back toward him, dragging one limp foreleg, but pressing himself into Kaodin's chin with stubborn, trembling force.
That pulse —
that tiny weight —
hit Kaodin harder than the roar of the monster.
Something inside him cracked open.
A memory flooded in:
Humidity.
Mountain hike trip with the dojo.
Dry leaves whispering.
His father's voice behind him:
"Din… see the tiger?"
A low rumble. A striped silhouette crouches nearby the Sambar Dear.
"It doesn't waste breath."
The tiger moved only when the prey weakened.
"Not night, not day.
Dusk… and Dawn."
His father's hand squeezed his shoulder.
"That's when a tiger strikes."
The world shifted.
Kaodin inhaled.
And DUSK answered.
His stance lowered naturally, instinctively.
Breath syncing with Wawa's trembling pulse.
The boy's center of gravity sharpened, the world focusing like a camera lens sliding into perfect clarity.
Wawa didn't vanish —
but his presence wove into Kaodin's nerves,
into breath,
into timing.
Two instincts.
One rhythm.
Arika's visor flared.
"Commander—his heat signature—!"
"Don't interfere," Arika said quietly.
Her voice held a tremor she didn't let settle into fear.
The Colos Variant lunged.
The ground exploded beneath its weight.
Acid spit tore through the air like a burning fog.
Kaodin leapt toward the monster. His raging fiery aura ignited across his entire body—radiating so intensely that anyone watching, without knowing what he was, would assume he was a full-body augmented cyborg.
He cut diagonally across the monster's reach, leaving behind a heat-Qi afterimage that scorched the creature's hide. The flicker of pain only sharpened its curiosity—driving its hunger past reason—while Kaodin slipped through its attack like water sliding past stone, studying every pattern, planning meticulously.
His forearms swept upward at an angle—
catching a tendril near its joint, redirecting its weight into the ground.
The tendril smashed the concrete instead, carving a deep, smoking ravine through the rubble.
Kaodin kept moving—unstoppable—
barraging the giant with Qi-infused palm-edge cuts against incoming swings and Qi-charged punches into every brief opening he found while weaving through the massive frame of animosity.
A second tendril blurred toward him.
Kaodin pivoted sharply, catching it with an outward slip—
letting its momentum graze past his ear—
then burned a line across its tendon with the edge of his Qi-hot palm.
Dark ichor sprayed.
He darted beneath the next strike, cutting at the exposed joint-tissue, then brought his palm-edge down in another Qi-infused chop at the tendril's root.
Kaodin's senses sharpened—
every vibration, every twitch of parasite flesh, every micro-shift in weight.
He suppressed his rage, savoring it like a sweet treat he refused to rush, and realized something:
He was perfectly in-sync with Wawa—
so deeply connected that his body moved with an ability he'd never known existed.
That was 'Dusk'—the first entranced state of the perfect-sync between himself and Wawa, and that's how he would finally created his own original ability with the trusting bond he created with his weaving-Qi manifested spectral buddy—a tiger cub—Wawa.
The evening rain fell soft and steady—gentle, almost cleansing.
Yet something in it felt off—
as if the sky itself was exhaling something it never wanted to hold.
Arika watched, awe nearly overtaking duty.
She had forgotten—for a moment—to request support from HQ.
She snapped out of it, signaling her knights to gather close.
Her whisper cut cold and sharp:
"The fight of the boy… you will not speak a word of it to anyone—not friends, not family, not even inside SAI—unless the King acknowledges him. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," they answered, unified and loyal.
Kaodin moved across the battlefield as if tapping only the thinnest sliver of ground—
one moment barely touching rubble, the next already shot himself within the Colos Variant's range.
Instantly Kaodin accelerating his breathes while he phrasing through multiple spurring tendons' strong and relentless attack, yet unfazed..
The raging Qi emanating around him—
Weaved the entire body a light protection and simultaneously brewing a ferocious storm inside, abruptly within a split second, his outline blurred, heat warping the air around him
Then as he sees a small opening from the monster's attack, his Qi—under 'Dusk' state, acknowledging its master's next anticipated action, promptly shifting the raging Qi aura to weave around Kaodin's legs for Kaodin using hop towards the giant monstrosity and exhibiting another ferocious attack across the parasite-plated ribs.
A True-Qi Strike 'Jarake-Fad-Hang'—
the crocodile's killing tail.
As the ferocious Qi-infused heel inflicting a Impact detonated.
A blast-wave of red Qi ripped outward from the point of contact, scattering pebbles, dust, broken glass—even the rain of that area got swept away as the impact recoil.
The monster was knocked half a step sideways—its massive form shuddering under the force, rib-plates denting inward as if punched by a collapsing furnace.
The recoil slammed back into Kaodin too, jolting through his leg and up his spine, a hot shock that made his teeth clack together.
Two shallow grooves tore through the soaked concrete where his feet had been.
But he didn't fall.
Steam hissed off the Colos Variant's ribs where his Qi had burned into the core beneath the crystal. The plates rippled desperately, cracks spidering, then trying to flex back into shape.
The creature screamed — not in pure pain,
but in a twisted excitement,
as if the hurt only made it want him more. The parasite plates on the Colos Valiant rippled—
cracks spidering before flexing desperately to seal.
Steam hissed off its ribs where Kaodin's Qi had burned into the core.
It hissed—
low, thrilled, hungry—
like the pain only made it wants to have a taste of Kaodin more.
Kaodin noticed, a muffled crack.
A real one.
But the plate bent, then flexed back—
its surface rippling like molten crystal remembering its shape.
The monster screamed a screeching sound back, to the boy with extreme heightened senses, the screeching sound became extremely irritated to the boy so much so that he had to quickly jumped back and quickly hold his ears tightly in an instant.
"Its tenacity…" Arika muttered. "Even the boy's devastating strikes barely scratch it."
She narrowed her eyes.
"I might be able to help him."
She turned sharply.
"Han-Xiao—status of the pink-haired lady?"
Han-Xiao placed two fingers on Nyla's wrist while her visor scanned vitals.
A heartbeat later:
"She's stable—for now. As long as we reach SAI in time, she'll survive, ma'am."
"Good. You and Yuri—move quietly along the side. Get close. Scan for a heat signature. It will be small and hidden inside a parasite node. The parasite is controlling the host—its weak point must be there. Once you find it, signal the boy immediately. We help him, or he'll run out of strength."
"Yes, ma'am."
The two slipped through fallen corridors and barricades, sticking to shadows. Quick. Silent. Focused.
Suddenly, Han-Xiao gasped.
"It's… its bone structure is absorbing kinetic force like gel!"
At that exact moment, the CC whipped its talons in a tight arc.
They crashed into Kaodin's ribs.
White pain exploded through him.
He staggered.
A molten ache boiled under his sternum.
His breath deepened.
He tasted copper.
But the rage inside him was not quenched.
It was still there—burning slow, coiling, waiting.
I can do more.
I have to do more.
Before my strength burns out.
He grits his teeth—
and drove forward.