Major Atherton

Outside the door of the daylight warehouse, the atmosphere was silent enough to hear a pin drop.

Dozens of soldiers held M16 Automatic Rifles, positioned throughout the area. Some used objects for cover, while others stood in the middle of the passage with shield-bearing teams. The space before the warehouse door was not an empty expanse, but a crisscrossing, orderly arrangement of small laboratory rooms made of glass or steel. The soldiers formed a tight guard around the door. This was the only entrance and exit.

Nothing had ever happened at the Underground Research Institute, but its armed security forces had never been reduced.

The oppressive atmosphere had left Major Atherton's forehead drenched in sweat. He did not dare wipe it away. He had gone through the Vietnam War alongside Colonel Slade.

Even during the Vietnam War, Colonel Slade had never given him an order with such grave detail, fear, and fury: kill him. If he did not die, everyone in the entire Underground Research Institute would die.

Slade could no longer afford to care that General Vick wanted Ba Di alive. If he lived, he would be a disaster.

The atmosphere grew stiller. Ever since they had heard Soldier Mason's screams, the shots from an M9 Pistol, and Doctor Jenny's faint, sorrowful voice, there had been no other sound.

Major Atherton did not dare wipe away his sweat. He gently steadied himself and regulated his heartbeat.

Within this silent, oppressive space.

The muffled heartbeats were like signposts, pointing out every person's location to Ba Di. His Super Hearing picked up the increasingly frantic beats each of them was trying to suppress.

Everyone's position formed clearly in his mind. Amid the oppressive atmosphere, the faint currents of moving air, the air currents striking objects, and all the different scents combined to construct a complete three-dimensional map in his mind.

At this moment, his Super Hearing, Super Smell, and Super Vision were the abilities serving him best. Under his control, all of them were manageable.

He was calm, and he was furious. Those two emotions did not conflict; they only made a person more unrestrained, more eager for Destruction.

Ba Di pulled the warehouse door open a crack.

Perhaps one of the soldiers had panicked, or perhaps his weapon had accidentally discharged. He fired directly, and the bullet struck the metal door in a burst of sparks.

Then, as if they had received an order, the other soldiers opened fire. Continuous gunfire rang out, blasting the metal door with sparks like those from an electric welder.

Behind the door, Ba Di's mind never stopped calculating. He silently counted the bullets, the number of people still able to fire, and their positions.

Though he was strong now, even bullets from firearms would probably only penetrate his muscles and would not go very deep.

But there was no need for him to take bullets head-on. Saving that strength for the well-equipped military forces on the surface was the sensible choice.

He would descend to the Negative Fourth Floor to slaughter, then return to the surface to face missiles and tanks before leaving this place. Therefore, he would not waste even a trace of strength.

"Stop!"

Major Atherton shouted as he commanded them to cover one another and reload.

When that round of firing ended, the metal door was already riddled with dents, while a large pile of flattened bullet heads lay scattered on the ground.

Suddenly, the barrel of an M16 emerged through the crack.

It appeared in the gap almost the instant Major Atherton shouted for them to stop.

The M16 barrel swung around and began spitting flames, startling the soldiers into instinctively preparing to return fire.

Then something shocking happened.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

Thirteen guns exploded in their hands. The soldiers who had not fired together earlier were so frightened that they flung away their M16s.

It was marksmanship like that of a god. From every direction, bullets had entered the muzzles of their rifles and caused them to explode.

Ba Di had been the most elite soldier on Krypton, and that elite status had not come from genes.

Rather, Ba Di remembered every person he had fought against: their psychology, speech, behavior, even their unconscious little habits, as well as every detail of the surrounding environment. Only through calculating all of that could Ba Di defeat warriors whose genes granted them greater natural gifts than others.

But genetic talent meant geniuses among geniuses. How could he possibly have won? Yet in the end, he had. It was easy to imagine how terrifying he had been.

Now that he had awakened Super Hearing, Super Vision, and Super Smell, they made him even more powerful than his increased strength did.

Suddenly, an eye filled with brutality, killing intent, and indifference appeared in the crack. Like a gaze that had abruptly risen from the abyss, it inspired suffocating terror.

Major Atherton happened to meet those eyes, and his heart seemed to suffocate so completely that it forgot to beat.

He had endured seas of blood in war. He had killed children and women, fired into pits where innocent people were buried. Nothing had ever frightened him, and he believed there was nothing in the world that could.

Yet at this moment, he felt an inexplicable terror toward that eye rising from the abyss.

When the eye disappeared, a chill rose from the depths of Major Atherton's heart and froze it. Only then did he realize that his hand had begun to tremble.

This was a monster!

The door suddenly opened, and Ba Di's tall, powerful body appeared before them. Within the dim warehouse, his merciless eyes swept over them as though they were insects, carrying an inexplicable intimidation that made Major Atherton's heart clench.

"Open fire!!"

He screamed, gripping his still-warm automatic rifle with a trembling hand full of fear. Flames burst from its muzzle.

But during the previous barrage, some had been reloading while others had been firing in rotation. Ba Di had shot thirteen rifles until they exploded, leaving only twenty-seven automatic rifles firing at him.

Therefore, Ba Di only needed to evade the fire of twenty-seven M16 Automatic Rifles.

Ba Di understood it all perfectly. He knew every direction the shots would come from, and he knew exactly what posture would let him avoid them.

The first wave of bullets came screaming toward him. Scorching bullet heads grazed Ba Di's skin, curling strands of body hair with their heat. He caught the faint scent of it, then deliberately dulled his sense of smell.

Ba Di suddenly drove off the ground. His body, which had not moved properly in a long time, surged as his heart pumped with blazing, roaring pulses.

Two small craters instantly appeared in the concrete beneath his feet, cracked into spiderweb patterns by the force of his stomp.

He began running to the right, where the nearest cover was a small laboratory built from steel.

Like a cheetah, he leaped forward, braced a hand against the ground, and rolled along his back. Before the soldiers' eyes, he somehow evaded the barrage from all twenty-seven automatic rifles.

It was utterly unbelievable.

The bullets tore through the air, leaving white trails in his vision before quickly fading away—trails ordinary people could not see.

In Ba Di's eyes, bullets moved only in straight lines. The instant they left the muzzle, their path and outcome were already decided.

The gunfire grew even more frenzied. Major Atherton and the soldiers felt their hearts leap into their throats as they kept pouring out bullets. Yet what chilled them was that none of the bullets meant to block his advance, none of the pursuing barrage, and none of the shots fired in anticipation of his movement could hit him.

The afterimages left by Ba Di's high-speed movement filled them with utter horror.

His blade-like eyes never stopped sweeping over them, making their throats feel as if knives were pressed against them at every moment. That terror only made them fire more frantically.

If he did not die.

They would die!

In that instant, Major Atherton understood what Colonel Slade had meant. He became even more terrified, as though a chill had risen up his spine and frozen his brain.

Bullets struck the metal walls with sharp clangs and bursts of sparks. From nearly fifty meters away, they poured out close to a thousand bullets, yet not one hit him.

The last few bullets struck the steel wall, scattering sparks before falling crisply to the ground.

Ba Di's figure had already vanished behind cover.

The scene fell utterly silent.

The soldiers stood frozen in terror, silently drawing sharp breaths.

The smell of gunpowder became intense in an instant. All around was dead silence, and cold seeped into every heart. What kind of monster were they fighting?

Nearly a thousand bullets, and not a single one had hit him. Was that still human?

Was that even a living creature? It was a monster from outer space!