Chaos

The Hong Alliance and the Free Business Alliance were attacked by nuclear weapons at the same time. Although they detonated outside the atmosphere, the electromagnetic radiation still caused enormous losses. Financial centers and communication networks came to a standstill, and the futures markets of some European countries were directly cut off from the network. Tens of millions of traders fell into chaos.

The Commercial Alliance fell into an even more extreme state of disorder. Government officials and financial tycoons rushed to repair the destroyed AI management systems. They believed this was an attack by the Hong Alliance, that the other side had already prepared for Total Nuclear War.

Paralyzed transportation trapped vast numbers of civilians. Many extremist religious groups that had long been suppressed took to the streets, claiming this was a sign of the apocalypse. Filthy humanity was about to be cleansed, and the world would return to its original peace and tranquility.

When social order was thrown into disarray and the ordered world returned to its primordial chaos, those in charge lost their usual authority. The hearts that had been suppressed began to unleash their natural instincts.

Although air raid sirens sounded, there were no surveillance systems, no Omnipresence patrol drones. The police were busy repairing the intelligent systems they relied on. The streets were filled with confused and helpless crowds; without electronic navigation, they could not even find their own homes.

The chaos continued to ferment. Emotions clashed violently between people until, at last, the volcano erupted.

In a small city in western North America, a bald man anxiously tried to shove aside the crowd blocking his way. He carried asthma medicine for his daughter in his arms. His daughter was waiting for him at home, yet he was trapped here, forced to endure the endless insults and complaints of these idiots who did not even know the way home.

Unable to endure it any longer, he punched the person blocking his path. The attacked man naturally turned around and fought back. They grappled and rolled across the ground, and another careless punch struck a bystander watching the spectacle. Thus, a fight between two became a three-man brawl.

Violence ignited the emotions in people's hearts like falling dominoes. Everyone had seen the blazing fireballs in the sky and the anti-missile rockets shooting upward. The shadow of nuclear war loomed over every heart, and a fierce fight—violence inflicted upon others—could vent the fear within them.

The chaotic brawl grew more and more intense. The keepers of order had lost their strength, and a fight among a few people quickly became a fight among hundreds. People wildly swung their fists at everyone around them, blood streaming from their bodies and leaving scarlet marks across the ground.

Several people fell to the ground, then lost their lives beneath the trampling tide of the crowd. The rest continued to step over their corpses, desperately swinging their fists at the next person. The crowd pressed and trampled onward, leaving behind a road paved with flesh.

The bald man who had struck first could no longer tell which way was which. The man who had traded blows with him had already been knocked to the ground and become another corpse paving the road. Now he only wanted to leave. His worry for his daughter hurt him more than the fists and kicks raining down around him.

Love, what a great word. A father's love for his daughter supported him as he pushed outward step by step. He clutched that small box of life-saving medicine tightly against his chest, as if it were more precious than his own life.

Then, Superhumans were born.

The violent thoughts and emotions of humanity acted like catalysts, allowing the Symbiote larvae to grow rapidly. Its cells began merging with the man's brain, flesh, and internal organs. Without realizing it, he gained greater strength, faster thought processes, and more intense emotional sensations.

The Symbiotes had been designed for Lin Li. He had been born without human emotions, and in order to let him experience ordinary people's feelings, these Symbiotes would amplify human emotions. Humans without Lin Li's talent, however, would become monsters of emotion under the ceaseless assault of every feeling.

Social order and morality, governed by reason, would lose their ability to suppress the emotions in human hearts. The chaotic crowd around them was the best catalyst for those emotions. When love could not be fulfilled, it transformed into anger.

With one punch, he broke the ribs of the person blocking his path. Shattered bone pierced the man's heart, and the blood spraying from his mouth splashed across the father's face. He did not care about the warm, bloody sensation. His love for his daughter had completely consumed his mind, and everyone blocking his way would be mercilessly destroyed.

A Superhuman fused with a Symbiote possessed crushing strength. Even though he was only a newly fused newborn, his power had increased severalfold in a short time. The rapid regenerative ability of his cells also made him unafraid of any injuries from fists or kicks.

This father tore through the people blocking his path... Blood dyed his white shirt dark red. Now he looked like a demon crawling out of hell. Those who had vented their inner fear through violence were finally destroyed by something even more violent.

"I have to go back. My daughter is waiting for me."

The father repeated those words over and over. The power granted by the Symbiote finally gave him the strength to push through the crowd. After tearing apart dozens of bodies, no one dared stand in his way again.

He finally returned home, three streets away. But when he pushed open his daughter's bedroom door, his daughter, only five years old, had already died from the torment of asthma. Her face still bore the pained expression of someone struggling to breathe.

The father, whose heart was filled with love, could not bear such a blow. In agony, he threw the medicine he had protected so desperately from his arms onto the ground. The tiny box had now been stained red with blood, leaving a bloody mark where it struck.

All love crumbled into ruin. Confusion and pain destroyed his rational self. This newly born father, fused with a Symbiote, completely denied the meaning of his own existence.

For ordinary people, love and hate were only small parts of the whole self. Time always had the power to gradually smooth out intense emotions.

But for these monsters of emotion, their minds were occupied by their strongest feelings. And when those feelings were suddenly destroyed, it meant that their sense of self was destroyed as well.

Thus, humans became monsters.

He was no longer a father. He changed from a man into a beast. His body began to swell, sharp teeth grew from his mouth, and he became a wild creature ruled by hunger. He needed to find more food to fill the starving cells throughout his body.

This was only a small example. From the Hong Alliance to the Commercial Alliance, such monsters whose self-awareness had collapsed appeared in nearly every city. They abandoned their human forms and hunted every living thing in the cities for nothing but hunger.

On a street in Tokyo's Shinjuku District, a woman's father had died earlier that day. Heartbroken, she was hurrying back to the countryside when the nuclear explosions suddenly destroyed the networks and communications. Smart cars could no longer be used. With no other choice, she hid beneath a roadside building and waited for order to return.

Two young men with dyed blond hair walked past. Their game had been interrupted by the severed network connection, and they were on their way home. By chance, they began talking about their fathers.

One of them quietly cursed his old man as an idiot obsessed with idols. It was that idol's birthday event today, but the network had suddenly gone down. He was probably at home on the sofa right now, hugging an expensive merchandise pillow and crying out the idol's name.

The woman who had lost her father suddenly became agitated. She ran before them and loudly berated them for not knowing how to respect their fathers. The two young men naturally cursed back, and one of them mocked her. "Don't tell me you're screwing your old man, hahaha."

Then anger Devoured reason. Her love for her father and the pain of losing him turned into rage. Sharp claws extended from her hands, slashing open the throats of the two men before her.

Bathed in the spurting blood, the fact that she had killed someone brought her slightly back to her senses. A middle school student with a backpack saw the scene from afar and ran away in terror. Fear of being caught for her crime made her rush over without thinking and rip open the student's stomach.

Warm blood, the grief of losing her father, the fear of crime—violent emotions finally destroyed her rational self. Another predator had appeared in the city.

Hong Alliance, Southern Region. This was densely populated and one of the areas where the most Symbiotes had been deployed. Of the more than one hundred million Symbiotes, several million had landed here and fused with humans.

Among several million people, some were bound to be in intensely emotional states. The severed networks and temporarily uncontrolled order became the best soil for those emotions to grow.

In the central district of a certain city, a young man was arguing fiercely with a woman. They had gone from high school to university together, and even years of long-distance separation had not torn them apart. He had believed that the woman before him would spend the rest of her life with him. They had been the model couple their friends envied.

Yet now they stood on the brink of breaking up. The woman wanted to leave him for a contract that would launch her into the entertainment industry. More than their relationship, she desired the feeling of standing beneath the spotlight and being watched by everyone.

Bright red blood sprayed out. By the time the enraged man came to his senses, his hands, covered in black veins, had already killed the woman before him. The face of his former lover still held an expression of pain and incomprehension.

"Ah, ah..."

The violently conflicting emotions annihilated his sense of self, and the flesh on his body began to expand chaotically.

In the dormitory building of a certain middle school, students who heard the air raid siren were preparing to gather on the athletic field. A boy who had once again been pushed around by his roommates and made to carry their belongings suddenly had eyes that turned bright red. Screams echoed through the entire dormitory building.

The Symbiotes amplified human emotions. When those emotions overwhelmed them, humans became monsters controlled by emotion.

This was destined to be an unforgettable day. After the nuclear explosions filled the sky, what followed was not an orderly evacuation. Electromagnetic radiation temporarily destroyed the existing order, and enemies became familiar coworkers and friends from the past.

No one knew what others truly thought inside. A polite social elite might hide endless brutality within, and an ordinary sentence could provoke the anger in someone else's heart.

It was not like the imagined scenario where ordinary people hid in air raid shelters and waited for soldiers at the front to fight the enemy, needing only to shout a few cheers so strangers would fight for them. Everyone had been dragged into this war. No one could remain uninvolved.

Symbiotes had been deployed among ten billion people based on population numbers. A full one hundred million Superhumans had blended into humanity. A single sentence could become the fuse, and suspicion and distrust would be amplified without end.

The chaos continued. Monsters formed after their self-awareness collapsed were searching for food across the entire Earth. The true war, filled with blood and fire, had begun.