Chapter 1339
They began fighting disjointedly, every monster for itself.
Some continued lunging blindly at Serena, driven by lingering instinct.
Others, completely derailed by the scent of their brethren’s blood and their own toxic chemical overdrive, began attacking anything in sight.
The lethal dynamic inside the sealed pod had seamlessly, flawlessly reversed.
And Serena stood perfectly poised in the center of the slaughterhouse, the grandmaster directing the chaos.
Move by move, she dismantled the biological stability of the Augments exactly according to her design.
Up in the VIP Box.
At first, Special Envoy Mordecai had leaned back in his leather chair, laughing.
It was a dark, arrogant laugh, the laugh of a man watching a guaranteed execution
play out for his amusement.
But as the minutes ticked by.
The sinister smirk slowly froze on his face.
Because he finally realized that the execution had gone horribly wrong.
By all logical metrics, fighting five Apex variants simultaneously should have drained Serena’s stamina until she was physically torn limb from limb.
But now, despite the blood on her lips and the obvious trauma to her arms from the initial kinetic clashes.
Her combat rhythm hadn’t degraded a single fraction.
If anything, she was moving with even more lethal precision.
Meanwhile, his five flawless super-soldiers were spiraling into total systemic failure.
The pod was an absolute massacre of friendly fire.
When the first tactical error occurred, Mordecai assumed it was a fluke.
But after the second, and the third p>
He finally grasped the horrifying reality.
It wasn’t a fluke!
Serena Lancaster was actively, systematically breaking their minds.
Mordecai’s face drained of color.
His venomous gaze locked onto the slender girl on the screen, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth audibly ground together.
In a matter of minutes, Serena had completely reverse-engineered the biological weakness of the Apex Augments!
That bitch p>
The Severian Syndicate Council members beside him were also starting to realize something was catastrophically wrong.
Panic began to set in.
They didn’t understand the complex biology of the Augments.
But even they could tell that the bloodbath unfolding on the monitors was entirely off-script.
Their faces turned ashen as they exchanged terrified, frantic glances.
Just then.
A voice crackled through the microscopic earpiece buried in Mordecai’s ear.
The audio had been heavily modulated.
It was cold, spectral, and dripped with a suffocating, murderous
intent. “I told you before. Neveel
underestimate Serena Lancaster.
“I don’t care what methods you have to use. But if Serena Lancaster doesn’t die in
that pod today p>
“Then you will die in her place p>
“O-Overlord Mordecai’s breath hitched, a violent shudder ripping down his spine.
His face turned paper-white.
He knew exactly what kind of monster The Overlord was.
And he knew exactly what agonizing fate awaited him if he botched this assassination.
Mordecai’s fingers trembled.
Staring at the security feed, his expression twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated malice.
He still had a trump card.
Whatever it took, he was absolutely not going to let Serena Lancaster walk out of Pod 10 alive.
He slammed his hand down, violently punching the second override button on the console.
Inside Apex Simulation Pod 10.
Hiss p>
A row of concealed ventilation vents along the ceiling violently hissed open.
A dense, sickly green gas began pouring out from all directions.
The chemical vapor spread at
g speed. Within sect
entire pod was swallowed by a toxic, nightmarish emerald hazten
Visibility plummeted to near zero.
The air was instantly choked by a violently corrosive, metallic stench.
Mordecai stared obsessively at the feed, his features warped by sheer psychotic glee. “That’s an experimental nerve agent engineered strictly by The Obsidiant Core p>