LOCATION: UNIFIED COUNCIL OF THE OLD ORDER – BLACKVAULT BASE, ANTARCTICA
In a frozen chamber buried beneath kilometers of ice, the last remaining high-ranking elites of the Old World stood before a flickering holo-map. Red zones were spreading like cancer cells across continents — and at the center of it all?
Ironshade.
A city that was thought impenetrable.
Now marked as "Fallen. Claimed by Hostile Entity: [SU CHEN]."
The silence in the war room was suffocating.
"Who the hell is this bastard?" one of the generals snarled.
"He's not a bastard. He's an anomaly," replied a hunched woman with silver eyes, the system tattoo on her wrist glowing faintly. "He's not in any databank. Not ours. Not even the Black Codex."
"How did he hijack the satellites?"
"He didn't." Her voice turned hollow. "He convinced them to turn."
GLOBAL SYSTEM ALERT
[System Sovereign Detected: Su Chen][Threat Level: Cataclysm][Immediate Termination Protocol Initiated]
Deploying: "Hounds of Eden" — Tier-Zero System AssassinsTarget: Su ChenAuthorization: Divine Wipe
BACK IN IRONSHADE
Su Chen sat on the edge of a once-pristine monument, now scarred and ash-stained.
He stared at the city — no, his city — rebuilding piece by piece. Fires were gone. Children walked streets again. His symbol, a black spiral with red edges, flew from the rooftops.
"You've done it," Li Wei said beside him. "Ironshade is yours."
"Ironshade was the lock," he said, eyes cold. "Now I have the key."
The system whispered.
[New Upgrade Available: Dominion Core Integration][Upload Urban Neural Intelligence into Core Brainstem?]
[Y/N]
Su Chen didn't hesitate.
Y.
A blast of information flooded his mind — population thoughts, infrastructure stress points, even heartbeat patterns across entire blocks. He didn't just own Ironshade now.
He was it.
"One city down," he whispered. "Hundreds to go."
THE FIRST STRIKE – DEATH FROM THE CLOUDS
A soft humming split the sky.
Su Chen's eyes narrowed.
Then—impact.
The rooftop behind him exploded, shattering metal and stone. A black mist scattered outward. Out of it stepped four assassins, cloaked in reactive armor, no heat signature, moving like shadows.
Tier-Zero killers. System-blessed.
Su Chen didn't move.
"You really sent Eden's Hounds?" he murmured, standing.
The tallest one drew twin serrated blades from its arms, which vibrated at an inhuman frequency.
"By order of the Unified Council," it rasped, voice metallic, dead, "your existence is revoked."
THE BATTLE: SYSTEM VS SYSTEM
[WARNING: You are outnumbered. Outleveled. Outgunned.][Calculating Probability of Survival: 0.02%]
[Activating Unlocked Subsystem: REAPER CORE][Rewriting Probability Algorithm…][New Chance of Victory: 63.4% — if you smile.]
Su Chen grinned.
"Let's cheat death again."
He moved like lightning—no, faster. The first assassin lunged; Su Chen side-stepped and ripped the system core from its spine mid-motion.
The second struck high. Su ducked low and triggered a localized EMP burst, disabling its cloaking module before driving a plasma shard through its chest.
Two down.
The third exploded in a burst of nanoclones — but Su Chen was already gone, using the rooftop's ruined structure to redirect the kinetic blast against the last.
VICTORY… FOR NOW
As the final assassin's corpse dissolved, the system chimed:
[Tier-Zero Eliminated. World Alert Level: Red.][Warning: Tier-ONE Hunter-Class Entities Have Been Notified.]
Su Chen stared at the smoking remains.
"Send more."
"Send all of them."
ENDING SCENE – THE HUNTERS STIR
In distant corners of the broken Earth, slumbering weapons opened blood-red eyes.
System Hunters.
Post-human. Half-AI. Half-hell.
They had one job.
Kill anomalies.
And Su Chen had just become the most powerful anomaly the world had ever seen.
End of Chapter 51