At the border of Main Avenue, a small plaza had turned into a madhouse of slaughter. A gigantic mutant centipede rammed its bulbous head straight into a forty-story tower, and with a deafening rumble, the whole building began to shake. As the monster burrowed through the floors, looping and spiraling inside, chunks of debris and construction materials rained down, smashing onto the ground below.
But that giant centipede wasn’t the only one laying siege to the building.
“ROOOOAAARRRR!!”
A dog-like creature with three heads and twelve legs howled as it clawed its way up the outer wall. Too massive to squeeze inside, it unleashed all twelve limbs and three heads in a frenzy, pounding the concrete as if it wanted to flatten the whole tower in minutes.
Above, below, and everywhere else, more monsters erupted into a wild, stabbing, slashing melee, chasing after the thickest concentration of miasma. Big and small flying creatures swarmed around the tower like a hurricane, dancing at breakneck speed. As the miasma pooled, static electricity gathered thick in the air, and with a thunderous crack, bolts of lightning whipped wildly in every direction.
In this pitch-black world, those lightning bolts—no longer blocked by lightning rods—were actually a sinister shade of crimson!
Monsters slaughtered each other, lives snuffed out in rapid, bloody waves. Fierce, savage-looking beasts would turn into corpses in an instant. From the remains, black mist billowed out, and soon all that was left was a pile of withered, ancient-looking husks.
Thunder crashed, lightning hammered the corpses, setting off great crimson fires. The flames spread, crimson and endless—this really was hell on earth. On the buildings around the plaza, human silhouettes appeared: the Chosen Ones. They were scattered all over the city, but regular humans were few and far between here. Animals always sense supernatural energy faster than people do, so only those who could harness miasma had rushed over.
No—more accurately, there were almost no "normal" humans here. Anyone who could respond to, absorb, or wield miasma didn’t count.
Dark streaks crawled across the faces of the Chosen Ones, stained by the Black Veil and glowing with a strange light that threatened to spread over their entire bodies. No matter how weak their powers had been before, as long as they absorbed enough miasma, they’d get stronger fast. Now their eyes gleamed viciously as they stared at the tower at the heart of the storm, itching to rush in.
The liquid miasma swirling in the air was pure, undiluted profit at this point. In this frenzy, only those in the front row could snatch the strongest power!
Power—if you have power, you have everything. To get power, you’d give up anything. So, kill! Kill!
“Ahahahahaha—!” Cackling madly, figures dove from the rooftops, charging for the tower. In this banquet of carnage, there were no comrades—just lone wolves. In those wild eyes, everything was a target. Kill everything, take it all—or get killed and lose it all!
“Holy crap…” Over at the corner by the main road, Oddball Bro stared dumbstruck at the scene, his cigarette dropping to the ground: “This—this—this kind of mess, I mean, honestly, I’m a little freaked out… What do you guys think?”
Wild Card squinted at the lightning chaos and spat out a mouthful of phlegm, muttering, “Boss… boss… boss-level… This is boss-tier…”
The spectacle was so overwhelming, even at this distance the shockwaves made it hard to stand steady. Lightning hammered the ground, making everyone’s feet tingle. You could see a few figures still laughing and fighting among the monsters, only to be torn to shreds by some unidentifiable beast the next second, or fried to a crisp by a stray bolt of lightning.
Compared to all that, our side was lucky. Sure, we’d run into a couple of wannabe Chosen Ones on the way, but honestly, none of them were quite up to snuff compared to those heavy-hitters over there.
“What do we do?” Chainsaw Girl fretted. “This mess is way out of my league!”
Rachel Luo was frantic too. They hadn’t come here by accident—they were chasing a specific target. But right now, should they go up? That sounded like suicide! Should they stay back? This was clearly the big event—miss it, and they might never get another shot! She gripped her sword and clenched her teeth. She was the leader here, but even she had no clue what to do next.
It wasn’t just Rachel Luo—everyone’s nerves were fried. At the back of the group, the foreign old-timer stared wide-eyed at the carnage, nobody knowing what he was thinking.