The conversation between director and Veyor was over , surgeon continued his work.
Iron Surgeon stood beside Veyor’s suspended body.
The metal floor beneath them was slick with old blood, half-dried and blackened by heat from the furnace vents. Tubes crawled along the walls like veins, pulsing faintly with light. The air smelled of oil, iron, and something far worse—burnt flesh.
Veyor’s head hung forward, chin pressed to his chest. The cuffs around his wrists bit into bone. Every breath scraped his ribs.
“What are you looking at?” the Director said casually, turning to Iron Surgeon.
“Implant his parasite into me. He had that… interesting energy blast ability.”
Iron Surgeon’s head tilted. Thin mechanical arms unfolded from his back and latched onto Veyor’s spine. Needles slid in with surgical precision.
A moment passed.
Then a harsh, metallic voice spoke.
“Extraction failed.”
The Director’s smile faltered.
“What do you mean, extraction failed?”
Iron Surgeon’s fingers twitched again, adjusting pressure.
“Host resistance detected. Parasite unable to detach.”
The Director’s eyes narrowed.
“His body is refusing to let it go?”
“Yes.”
For the first time, irritation crept into the Director’s voice.
“Then kill him. Then extract it.”
Iron Surgeon paused.
“Negative. Parasite will perish with host.”
The Director stared at Veyor for a long moment.
Blood dripped from the corner of Veyor’s mouth. He was barely conscious, barely aware of the words.
“Troublesome,” the Director muttered.
He exhaled slowly, regaining his calm.
“Whatever. Proceed with the next one. Figure him out later.”
Iron Surgeon withdrew the needles.
The Director relaxed, hands behind his back, watching as another unconscious soldier was dragged onto the operating slab.
“Well,” he whispered to himself, almost amused,
“at least he was talking with me.”
He turned his head slightly toward Iron Surgeon.
“Hey, clanker,” he said lightly.
“Do you think there will be someone strong enough to face me?”
Iron Surgeon did not answer.
At the Checkpoint
Morning light crept over the ruined horizon.
The smoke above the industrial lands thinned just enough for the sun to bleed through in pale orange streaks.
Inside the makeshift medical tent, Luken’s eyes fluttered open.
Pain hit him first.
Then confusion.
Then awareness.
He tried to sit up—and froze.
Standing near the entrance, framed by the rising sun, was a tall figure in a long military coat.
Broad shoulders. Silver hair. Calm, unmovable posture.
General Noris.
For a second, Luken thought he was hallucinating.
Then Noris turned his head.
Reality crashed in.
Luken’s dizziness vanished instantly.
He forced himself upright despite the pain, snapped to attention, and saluted.
“General.”
Noris raised a hand gently.
“At ease,” he said.
“I am very sorry to disappoint you, General—” Luken began, voice tight.
“They told me everything,” Noris interrupted calmly.
“Rest now.”
The words were simple.
But they carried authority so absolute that Luken obeyed without thinking.
Outside, Noris’s team moved with quiet efficiency.
Large speakers were being assembled along the ridge.
Voss watched them nervously.
“I don’t doubt you, General,” Luken said from the stretcher,
“but their numbers… they’re massive.”
Noris didn’t look at him.
“Did I interfere with your task, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
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“Then do not interfere with mine.”
Firm. Final.
“Understood, sir.”
The speakers were activated.
A low frequency pulsed through the ground.
Far away, from deep within the industrial ruins, a response came.
A scream.
Then another.
Then thousands.
The earth began to shake.
Lostbonds poured from alleys, warehouses, broken corridors—
a living tide of twisted flesh and metal.
The swarm grew.
And grew.
And grew.
They came so densely packed that the outer factory walls began to crack under the pressure of their bodies.
A wall collapsed.
Then another.
The wave surged forward.
The screaming was unbearable.
Even hardened soldiers covered their ears.
Some fell to their knees.
Voss stumbled back in panic.
“Maybe… maybe we should run—”
A soldier from Noris’s team caught his arm.
“Just watch,” the man said quietly.
“You won’t get another chance like this.”
The wave drew closer and closer, devouring the ground with every step.
But Noris did not move.
He stood there patiently, as if the approaching nightmare were nothing more than a passing wind.
Around him, his team did not flinch.
Not because they were fearless—
but because they had seen him fight before.
They knew exactly what kind of presence stood among them.
Not a commander.
Not a general.
A catastrophe, wearing the shape of a man.
The radio frequency cut deeper into the swarm.
For one single moment—
Everything stopped.
No screams.
No movement.
No wind.
Silence.
Then—
A soft pop.
Light erupted.
Thousands of Lostbonds ignited at once.
Not burned.
Not torn.
They simply… vanished.
Ash drifted down like snow.
An entire army erased in a single second.
Mira and Voss could only stare in horror.
Luken had heard stories about General Noris, had known of his reputation.
But never had ever truly seen it.
And now that they had, the sight left them wordless.
For Noris’s team, however, there was no reaction at all.
They stood as they always did—calm, steady, unmoved—
as if what had just happened were nothing more than another ordinary day at work.
“…Did he just convert radio waves into gamma?” mira whispered.
Her eyes snapped back to where Noris had been standing.
He was gone.
The air inside the furnace complex trembled.
Heat rolled through the corridors in heavy waves, carrying the scent of molten steel and blood. The walls glowed faintly red from the massive blast furnaces still burning somewhere deep within the structure.
The alarms wailed—and then, within seconds, every scream from the Lostbonds vanished.
Not faded.
Not distant.
Gone.
The sudden silence fell like a blade across the factory.
For the first time, the Director felt something crawl up his spine.
Unsettled.
The Director sat on the operating platform.
No.
He was no longer sitting.
He was mounted inside his creation.
Nearly a hundred kilos of implants were fused into his body.
Metal plates covered his shoulders, chest, and spine like overlapping scales. Thick pistons reinforced his legs. Cables ran from his ribs into his arms, pulsing faintly with energy. His right arm had been replaced entirely—no longer flesh, but a mass of layered steel, hydraulic joints, and living parasite tissue that writhed just beneath the surface.
He looked less like a man now. More like a war engine that had learned to speak.
Iron Surgeon stood nearby, adjusting final connections.
A voice answered him from behind.
“You need someone strong enough to face you?”
Calm.
Slow.
Unhurried.
The Director froze.
He turned.
Standing at the far end of the chamber, framed by flickering furnace light, was General Noris.
No weapon in his hands.
No armor.
No visible implants.
Just a man.
The Director laughed once, short and sharp.
“Oh… just a single man,” the Director said lightly.
“For a moment, I thought an entire army had crept up on me.”
Noris took one slow step forward.
“Are you lost, buddy?” the Director added, a crooked smile twisting his face as he tried to provoke him.
Noris eyes flicked briefly toward the unconscious soldiers hanging along the walls.
Noris took another step.
The temperature in the room shifted.
Not heat.
Pressure.
The Director felt it then.
Not fear.
Something worse.
Perspective.
He could see it.
The distance between himself and Noris.
Not physical distance.
Power.
Milo’s parasite had not yet been extracted.
Even without the x-ray implant, even without enhanced vision, the gap was unmistakable.
It was blinding.
His smile faltered.
But pride pulled him back.
“It’s not possible ,No one is stronger than me.”
He moved first.
He vanished, The floor shattered.
Using that stealth implanted parasite, he sneaked back on Noris. A half-ton machine out of nowhere appeared behind Noris back.
Noris still dodged it.
The Director’s punch tore forward with enough force to collapse an entire section of the factory wall behind Noris. Steel beams bent like wire. Concrete vaporized into dust.
A shockwave ripped through the chamber.
For an instant, Noris vanished behind the cloud.
The Director grinned.
Untouched.
Not even his coat had moved.
The Director’s breath caught in his throat.
For a moment, the weight of what stood before him pressed harder than the implants fused into his body. He forced himself to inhale deeply, metal plates along his chest rising and falling with the effort.
Noris moved.
Not toward him—but away.
In a blink, Noris vanished from the Director’s sight. The air rippled where he had been standing, dust lifting from the ground a fraction too late to follow him. Before the Director could react, Noris reappeared near the captives suspended around the factory floor.
One by one, then in quick succession, Noris relocated them—placing them at random positions throughout the vast industrial hall. High platforms. Behind broken machinery. Near collapsed walls. Spread far enough apart that no single attack could reach them all at once.
The Director roared and swung.
A blind punch tore through the space Noris had just vacated, pulverizing steel supports and sending chunks of concrete crashing to the floor. The factory groaned under the impact.
Noris was already gone.
Then the pattern changed.
Two people at a time.
Noris appeared beside them, laid a hand on their restraints—and vanished again. In the same breath, he reappeared at the checkpoint far beyond the factory walls, depositing them safely before returning instantly to the battlefield.
Each return placed him, for a split second, directly in front of the Director.
Close enough to touch.
Close enough to kill.
Each time, the Director reacted on instinct alone.
He threw punch after punch—wild, furious, blind swings powered by brute strength and panic. Every blow carried enough force to level machinery built to endure decades of industrial strain. The shockwaves churned the ground into dust, flinging debris into the air until the entire chamber became a storm of rubble and smoke.
In less than half a minute, thirty people were rescued.
Fifteen times, Noris made 15 trips to checkpoint.
Fifteen consecutive punches tore through him and the space around him by director.
The factory floor was no longer recognizable—metal twisted, walls collapsed, and the air hung thick with dust and grit with the roof wide open.
The Director staggered, breathing heavily now, chest plates scraping as he struggled to draw air.
Then the dust settled.
Noris stood exactly where he had been at the beginning.
Unmoved. Untouched.
“Impossible…” the Director whispered.
The word barely escaped his mouth before Noris stepped forward.
There was no sound.
No warning.
No buildup.
One step.
That was all.
Suddenly, Noris was there—directly in front of him.
He raised his hand and placed his palm flat against the Director’s chest.
Gently.
As if touching a patient rather than an enemy.
The Director tried to move.
He couldn’t.
Every implant embedded in his body screamed in response. Parasites writhed beneath metal plating as if recoiling from something they could not comprehend. Hydraulic joints locked. Cables strained against themselves.
Noris closed his eyes.
And channeled.
The energy did not explode outward.
It did not burn or tear.
It flowed inward.
Focused.
Controlled.
Precise.
Metal softened.
Joints failed.
Cables snapped.
Then came the release.
A contained blast rippled through the Director’s body as every implant detached at once—not torn free, but melted away, slipping from flesh and crashing to the floor in molten fragments that hissed and steamed as they cooled.
The armor around his chest collapsed inward.
His reinforced legs failed him.
He fell to his knees.
The weight was gone.
The power was gone.
He was human again.
Weak.
Small.
And the dream he had built—layer by layer, parasite by parasite—shattered completely.
His voice trembled.
“…No…”
Noris looked down at him. And left.
