A Little Blinding

"Nothing on Earth can stop a blade forged from Adamantium!"

Stryker couldn't believe his eyes.

But there was no blood, no viscera. Ron wasn't split in two.

He was completely unharmed.

Weapon 11's Adamantium blade hadn't even cut through his clothes.

"No matter how sharp a blade, it needs force behind it to cut anything."

Dressed in a silver-gray suit, Ron glanced at the sword resting on his shoulder.

"The worst damage this blade of yours can do to me is dirty my clothes."

He threw a punch. Savage kinetic energy erupted in an instant, a ring-shaped shockwave detonating against Weapon 11's chest.

Clang!

A sound like a hammer striking steel.

As if hit by a speeding heavy truck, Weapon 11 was sent flying sideways.

Like a skipping stone hurled with brutal force, he bounced and scraped across the ground several times, tumbling dozens of meters in a pathetic mess before finally stopping, his body plowing a long, deep trench.

"As expected from Adamantium. It's pretty tough."

Feeling the recoil feedback through his fist, Ron smiled.

Whoosh~

In an instant, he was standing over Weapon 11. Looking down, he stepped on him, glancing at the scarred, pitted face where the mouth should have been, and shook his head slightly.

"With a look like that, if I threw you into an Alien world, you'd be unstoppable. Too bad you can't go."

A Facehugger would have no way to deal with this guy—he didn't even have a mouth.

Weapon 11's chest had exploded into a bloody, gaping hole, his silver Adamantium sternum exposed.

Not blown open by explosives, but by the terrifying kinetic energy carried in Ron's fist, which had blasted the flesh apart.

"This skeleton is a good thing. It kept you from turning into a pile of meat paste."

He smiled.

Thinking about it, rooting out Stryker was still quite valuable.

He could get his hands on a lot of the X-Men universe's hardest metal, Adamantium, and also take over the genetic modification technology Stryker had been researching.

Sssss!

Lying on the ground, Weapon 11's eyes flared with a blinding red light, aimed directly at Ron's head, and fired.

Radiation rays carrying terrifying energy scorched the air!

"That's a bit dazzling."

Raising his hand, he casually blocked the rays—enough to easily cut through several meters of reinforced concrete—and merely sighed about them being a little bright, as if stopping a common red laser beam.

Effortlessly holding back the terrifying rays, he pressed his hand against Weapon 11's head. His fingers clenched like iron claws, and he grabbed Weapon 11 by the skull, hoisting his entire body up before slamming him hard into the ground!

Boom!

A crater several meters wide was smashed into the earth, and the stones on the nearby ground bounced violently.

Raven and Emma, standing far away, both felt the ground shake violently.

Fzzz!

The screen flickered with static for a moment. Fortunately, it was just a signal fluctuation, and it quickly returned to normal.

But peering through his fingers, looking up at Ron's seemingly colossal figure in the dust, Stryker's expression was stunned.

The Adamantium blade was useless. The laser rays couldn't cause him any damage either.

"Could it be that my meticulously crafted killing machine is inferior to a natural mutant?"

He clenched his fist, even starting to wonder if he had input the wrong program, setting it to subdue instead of kill.

"Wait, that helmet?!"

Stryker's pupils contracted as he noticed the peculiar helmet on Ron's head.

"A young man wearing a custom helmet... I think I've heard of this somewhere?"

The next second, he shot up from his chair in the control room. Even through the distant screen, he was terrified, his mind shaken.

"It's him! That person!"

Nearly half a year ago, on that stretch of sea, two of Earth's most powerful fleets had been completely annihilated with no survivors. But a CIA agent named Moira MacTaggert had witnessed and participated in that event, and had passed layers of lie-detector tests.

In her description, the truly terrifying mutant wasn't Magneto, who had destroyed the fleet, but a mutant called the Black King.

He possessed destructive power comparable to a small-yield nuclear bomb and had tried to spark World War III. He was stopped and killed by another young mutant named Ron.

That Ron, who had copied the Black King's abilities, had taken the Black King's helmet—which could block all psionic abilities—as a trophy and disappeared.

"No, no!"

Stryker, who had only vaguely heard of this classified project, panic flickered across his face.

He hastily altered the input commands, trying to order Weapon 11 to retreat.

No matter how confident he was in Weapon 11, he didn't believe it could contend with a walking nuclear bomb!

As Stryker struggled to recall.

Weapon 11 had launched multiple attacks against Ron, including teleportation combined with alloy blades and laser eye strikes, but couldn't even break through the fabric of Ron's clothes.

Its peculiar teleportation method—an Adamantium skeleton appearing first, followed by flesh and blood—flashed around Ron, launching assaults.

"I thought it might bring a little surprise."

Another slash struck his back, like a child's plaything. Ron shook his head.

"Turns out it's just the same old tricks with nothing new."

He'd hoped Weapon 11's abilities might have some variation, but it was still the same: super-speed nerves, rapid healing, laser eyes, and teleportation.

The other X-gene transplant technologies were probably still immature.

Losing interest in playing further, he casually waved his hand.

Weapon 11 was swatted away like a fly, crashing to the ground a dozen meters off. When it stood up, half the flesh on its face was shattered, revealing a silver skeleton that rapidly healed.

"A bit like the Terminator, just smaller."

Ron commented offhandedly.

Suddenly, Weapon 11 froze with cold mechanical precision, then teleported again—not toward Ron, but a hundred meters away, quickly blinking further into the distance.

Giving up the fight, trying to escape?

"Did I permit you to leave?"

He stared at Weapon 11, his gaze turning cold.

Weapon 11's teleportation ability came from a transplanted X-gene from Shadow of X-Force. His power allowed rapid teleportation, but had a fatal flaw: the skeleton would flash into view during the process.

If you caught that flashing skeleton, the target couldn't teleport again.

However, Ron didn't bother using mental transmission to chase it down and exploit that weakness.

No need.

"Let you taste my laser eyes too."

Standing still without moving, Ron kept his hands in his pockets as his eyes lit up with crimson light.

Hundreds of meters away, a plasma ray packed with terrifying energy pierced the sky, arriving in an instant!

Hum!

Weapon 11, attempting to teleport away again, took the hit in the back. Flesh shattered and vaporized, leaving only a red-hot steel skeleton crumpled to the ground.

The surrounding grass was scorched black.

One strike, and it was over.

On the other side, Stryker's screen went black. He slammed his fist on the desk in frustration.

"It's over. Eleven is gone!"

"No, I have to get out of here."

A strong sense of foreboding enveloped him. He felt certain something terrible would happen if he didn't leave, and immediately ordered the lab personnel to pack up and evacuate.

"Hurry, hurry, we're leaving!"

"Are you okay, Ron?"

Seeing the fight end, Raven ran up with Emma, concerned. From a distance, she'd watched Ron take several hits.

But up close, she noticed his clothes were completely intact.

"I'm fine. Let's go check on our 'Terminator.'"

Without losing a single hair, Ron led the two of them slowly over to Weapon 11.

On a patch of scorched black ground, a red-hot steel skeleton radiated heat, showing no signs of recovery for a long time.

"Is it dead, Ron?"

After a few glances, Emma looked up and asked in confusion.