Violence / Raven Takes a Commission ...

When he carried his sister away with him, he suddenly understood. The sacred mountain he had protected was a beautiful fantasy, while the sacred mountain his sister had protected was him.

Only after leaving the sea of flames did he lay his sister's body against the steps. Chris sat on the steps, and his sister leaned against him.

He opened the farewell letter and listened to his sister's final voice.

"To my dearest little brother, I've already prepared your birthday present..."

Bang—!

A cold bullet shattered the phone along with Chris's hand.

"Reporting, officer. The suspect has been successfully hit. He appeared to be calling for accomplices and has now been restrained."

"Stay alert. The criminal is extremely dangerous. Do not let him leave the scene under any circumstances."

The officer from Oaxaca State put down his communicator. Looking at the flames soaring into the sky, he took a deep breath.

"To escape arrest, he even turned on his own family? What a cold-blooded bastard."

"But if she could walk out of such a fierce inferno, that so-called Schicksal Valkyrie must have defected long ago. How could an ordinary person possibly do something like that?"

Countless alarms rang throughout the entire district. To carry out this operation, Oaxaca State had deployed nearly half its police force. Although Schicksal repeatedly assured them that Valkyries would hold firm to their will, how could naturally suspicious humans possibly believe that so easily?

Only monsters could fight those massive Honkai beasts.

And if they were monsters, they were humanity's enemies. Even if they wore the appearance of human women, the Honkai rooted within them had long rewritten their genes. Who could guarantee that someone with a monster's power would not betray humanity?

That was what most ordinary people believed, and it was an idea Schicksal had failed to change even after five hundred years.

—The wolf was thrilled. The wolf was howling.

When Chris stood up from the steps with Corona in one arm, the fire-ravaged house finally collapsed completely. At the same time, that eerie voice echoed in his ears.

"Welcome to the Theater of Domination!"

Violence

"Welcome to the Theater of Domination."

Disordered, chaotic threads of domination intertwined into a massive spiderweb, tightly binding the puppet within.

This was the first time Su Jue had seen such a chaotic puppet. When he appeared in the Theater of Domination, this puppet shocked him. Normally, only after Su Jue personally experienced a host's life would he judge those struggling in despair and grant them the choice between wolf and sheep.

But this time was clearly different. This puppet had actually chosen the wolf spirit on its own initiative, and the countless threads wrapped around it represented an increasingly chaotic mind. In other words, it was an excellent puppet host.

Although Su Jue still did not know what the other party had experienced, since he had chosen to step into the abyss and offer his soul to domination, Su Jue would naturally fulfill his wish.

All three previous puppets had chosen the white sheep. Su Jue was also curious about what choosing the vicious wolf truly meant.

In the audience seats, every puppet, including Puppet Su Jue, had arrived. They sat neatly in their seats, bound by puppet threads.

This time, however, the threads were not controlling them. Instead, they continuously extracted the power from every puppet and poured it into this new puppet.

This was the Herrscher of a Thousand's core ability: sharing the attributes of all puppets, and when necessary, pouring all of them into a specific target.

As its power continued to rise, the sound of wolf howls grew clearer and clearer. Finally, amid a distant roar, the wolf swallowed Puppet Chris whole.

Time and space froze. Gears turned. The curtain of the Theater of Domination slowly rose.

Quiet. Peaceful.

The police officers, who had mobilized with such fanfare, looked at one another. The fierce gunfight and vicious criminal they had imagined never appeared. There was not even a single gunshot.

A house collapsed by fire, an exceptionally calm man, and a corpse whose life had long ceased.

It was like the calm before a storm, like the peace after the dust had settled.

Beep, beep, beep, beep—!!

In an instant, the Honkai Energy detector Schicksal had equipped for this operation began to blare wildly, its sound sharp and piercing.

The ordinary police officers who did not understand what was happening were still full of confusion, but those who knew the details immediately turned pale. Before an evacuation order could even be issued, the sky had already darkened beyond measure.

The thick smoke left behind by the fire mixed with dark clouds, dense as a pool of black ink that might spill from the sky at any moment. These clouds were so strange that even the most inexperienced officers could feel their oppressive weight. They looked up in bewilderment and saw, hidden within the clouds, the faintly visible wolf spirit.

Awoo!

A wolf howl rang out. The sky could no longer hold back those clouds, and they swiftly covered the entire district.

Bang—

Perhaps the atmosphere had become too tense. Some officers with weaker nerves fired at Chris first. In their eyes, whatever this sudden change was, it had to be connected to him. As long as they dealt with him first, everything would be fine. Bullets were truth. There was no Honkai that truth could not solve.

The bullet hit. This officer was an excellent shot. The bullet entered through Chris's forehead, its powerful spin tearing open his skull and blasting apart flesh, blood, and brain matter that splattered across the ground.

"It hit!" Every officer breathed a sigh of relief. Yet before the officer who fired could smile, a withered arm was already pressed against his face. The fingers squeezed with terrifying force, driving straight into his brain.

Then, like a ripe watermelon bursting apart, a clever head made the sound it was supposed to make.

"Monster!"

Someone finally screamed. A barrage of bullets flew toward that withered body. Like nails driven into wood, they sank in with a series of dull impacts and then made no further movement.

The figure turned around, its burned and twisted face looking toward them.

Bullets were no longer truth. Strength was.

There was nothing fancy about it, only the most ordinary, purest strength. After it effortlessly smashed through the heart protected by that man's ribs, no one would ever say bullets were truth again.

There were too few puppets in the Theater of Domination right now to provide those flashy abilities. But Chris did not need abilities. What he needed was simple violence.

The violence he hated most.

Only when that violence was enough to stand above everyone else could he have the peaceful days he longed for.

Blood gushed out, staining the entire street red. Within the mist, only the wolf could hunt.

"Damn it, run!" Someone started a police car and sped away along the road, but no matter how he drove, he always returned to the same place.

Boom—!

Chris grabbed a corpse beside him and hurled it straight at the police car.

The vehicle's steel frame bent and warped instantly. Bulletproof reinforced glass exploded into a shower of pellets, turning the person in the driver's seat into a sieve. As for the corpse he had thrown, it was no longer recognizable.

At this moment, Chris was like an invulnerable monster. Relying on absolute brute strength and speed, he turned the poor officers into officer paste bit by bit.

The officer in charge of the operation had trembling lips as he repeatedly dialed Schicksal's contact number. "A Honkai incident. This is definitely a high-level Honkai incident."

Unfortunately, no one answered on the other end. All signals seemed to be blocked by a thick curtain, unable to transmit even the slightest bit.

He did not know why there was no signal. He could only keep dialing with one hand while holding a pistol in the other.

After an unknown amount of time, the surroundings became quiet. The strange sounds of flesh splattering vanished. The officer swallowed and cautiously poked his head out.

Bang—

The attack he expected never came. Instead, his own gun accidentally went off from nervousness. After surveying his surroundings, he finally relaxed. "That monster seems to have gone somewhere else."

Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, the officer's taut nerves finally loosened somewhat. He wiped away the sweat again, but wasn't there a little too much of it?

The moment that question surfaced in his mind, he discovered that his sleeve had long been soaked through with blood. The man raised his head. A dislodged eyeball abruptly struck the tip of his nose, then bounced playfully twice across the concrete.

Bang—!

Blood and brain matter splashed across the car window. Reflected in the dark glass was a twisted human figure.

It suddenly turned its head toward him.

Raven Accepts a Commission

The excessive Honkai Energy from the Herrscher of Domination continuously overflowed from Puppet Chris's body. At the same time, the madness and chaos contained within that Honkai Energy eroded his mind every moment.

There was no longer a single living thing left on the entire street. Blood flowed along the ground, dyeing the earth crimson. If the black mist had not concealed the sky, satellites would have discovered it immediately.

But it was about time anyway. Even Su Jue found Puppet Chris's violence somewhat nauseating. Schicksal would definitely intervene in an atrocity of this scale. He was now like a vicious wolf about to break free of its leash. Su Jue had to sever his connection to him early, or there would be a risk of exposure.

"Help... help me... one last..." A broken voice came from the puppet. Su Jue, who had been preparing to give up, froze and quietly listened to Chris's final request.

"Bury me... with... my sister..."

The fragmented voice was already difficult to make out. Chris was using his last shred of reason to plead with Su Jue.

"..."

After a brief silence, the threads of domination began to move, taking complete control of Chris's puppet. Su Jue controlled the blood-covered puppet and returned step by step to the residence. There, the headless Chris and Corona, who had shot herself, lay leaning against each other.

Just like before, they depended on each other for survival and kept each other company.

Perhaps the heaviest regret was that Chris never cleared up his misunderstanding of his sister until the day he died, while Corona never managed to convey her birthday wishes to her little brother in the end.

Boom—

Puppet Chris smashed his fist into the ground. Rolling earth flew into the air, forming a massive pit. Su Jue controlled the puppet and carefully placed the two of them into the soil. Behind them lay their home, now completely reduced to ruins. And now, they had returned home.

"Than... ngh..." The last trace of consciousness came from Puppet Chris. Then, under the dual erosion of the vicious wolf and the Honkai, he completely became a monster. It would carry out the final resentment of his life, taking revenge on every gang until it was completely destroyed.

The puppet threads were severed, and the mist covering the sky gradually dissipated, leaving behind only a monster that would stain the entire city red bit by bit.

"Where is the Fanghe Society? They issued a commission but couldn't even send someone to meet me. These low-level gangs are always unreliable." A hooded woman stepped off the aircraft, her wide black-and-red cloak snapping in the helicopter's airflow.

Having accepted World Serpent's arrangements, Raven would soon be assigned to Sky City to handle security for Shencheng Pharmaceuticals. It was said that traces of the Herrscher of Void had been discovered in Sky City, and Schicksal had already sent people to investigate. To prevent them from discovering the Stigmata Awakening Project, Raven, one of the few executives with outstanding combat capabilities, was put in charge of this operation.

Before that, however, Raven would also accept commissions from underground forces as a mercenary.

World Serpent's income was not low, but it was still far from Raven's goal. She had originally saved enough money.

But—

"My villa island..."

An indescribable mixture of grief and anger filled Xiola's heart, leaving her especially irritable even about this commission.

She took out her phone and repeatedly dialed the Fanghe Society's contact number, but it remained busy. As for the Thousand Fists Society she needed to deal with this time, Raven had received the information, but she was ultimately not as familiar with the area as the locals were.

"Forget it. I'll just make a move directly. They wouldn't dare withhold the commission fee owed to a World Serpent executive." She made a gesture to the helicopter pilot assigned to this operation and chose to head for the target location alone.

Yet before she even arrived, a foul smell hit her head-on. The closer she got to the district, the more impossible it became to ignore the heavy stench of blood.

Raven frowned deeply, one hand already resting on the bow at her side. This small town was far too quiet, and it gave her an extremely ominous feeling.

Suddenly, a dark shadow flew toward her. Xiola's expression hardened. With speed too fast for the naked eye to follow, she drew her bow and fired, knocking the shadow down.

Only after it fell did Raven discern what it was. It was half a corpse, torn directly apart at the waist by overwhelming brute force. Its death was horrifyingly gruesome.

Xiola covered her nose and mouth and silently took a step back. Then she noticed that the tattoo on the upper body looked familiar. It seemed to be the emblem of the Fanghe Society that had sent her the commission.

"Could this be a gang war? But no matter how brutal the fight, it shouldn't turn into such a bloody scene." She had a terrible feeling, as though dark clouds weighed on her heart. She had not even begun her mission, yet the employer who was supposed to pay her seemed unable to hold on any longer.

While she was thinking, another shadow lunged toward her.

The bowstring hummed as a specially made arrow buried itself in the shadow's body. But this time, she had miscalculated. Though the arrow struck its target, it neither fell as easily as a corpse nor cried out like a living creature. Instead, it continued charging at her without slowing down.

Raven rolled across the ground and avoided the attack. The shadow smashed heavily into the ground, blasting a deep pit into the concrete.

It was a human figure, its entire body nearly dyed red with blood. Nauseating, filthy chunks of flesh were smeared all over it, a sight enough to chill anyone to the bone.

"Who are you?" Raven asked instinctively, but immediately realized that this thing was probably not human at all. Her arrow was still embedded in its body.

In the instant she paused, Chris, completely controlled by the Honkai, had no concern for who she was. His arm twisted one hundred and eighty degrees in a way no human could achieve before smashing down at her. Caught off guard, Raven only managed to block once with her bow before being sent flying.

As World Serpent's combat executive, Raven's strength could not be underestimated. However, she excelled at long-range combat. Chris not only possessed immense power and extreme speed, but more importantly, his body was a puppet. He felt no pain and would not lose control of his body because of muscle strain.

After several exchanges, Raven was actually suppressed by the current Chris. Though her life was not in danger, it was still unimaginable.

Based on Su Jue's current abilities, even if he poured all the puppets' power into Chris, he could at most raise him to the level of a B-rank Valkyrie. Yet Chris's present combat power was clearly A-rank. That was the effect of a puppet that had chosen pure violence.

Of course, the aftereffects were also extremely severe. But in the current situation, if A-rank Raven did not flee, Puppet Chris might truly have a chance to deal with her ahead of time.

The End

Just as Raven began to consider retreating, a long-prepared sniper bullet accurately struck the puppet's head, making him stagger. Then the trigger was pulled again, and another bullet hit his leg during the puppet's moment of stiffness.

This bought Raven precious time. After several consecutive rolls, she finally escaped Chris's entanglement. She swiftly drew her bow and nocked an arrow, coordinating with the sniper fire to restrain Chris's movements.

"Attack its joints. This monster can't feel pain. Only the joints are its weakness." A man's urgent voice rang out. Raven immediately understood and shifted her aim.

Thud, thud, thud.