Villain: Supreme Parasite System in Another World

The moment Samantha and John crossed beyond the city's outer roads, Francis watched them go.

In a way, she was the closest thing he had to a daughter in this world, which was likely why he protected her. Her inheriting his power also meant that part of his own DNA was inside her.

Of course, he would not admit this openly, nor was he truly conscious of his decision.

Francis turned his attention back to the city.

The second phase was already in motion.

In a collapsed grocery store in the southern district, a man who had died minutes earlier began to move.

A black strand pushed out and touched the body beside him.

Her fingers twitched.

Within seconds, both were part of the same structure. Within minutes, the building followed.

Walls cracked as tendrils forced through concrete. Floors sank. What had been shelter became a growing mass feeding on what remained.

This was only one site among thousands.

Across the city, the same transformation continued without pause.

Hospitals turned into dense nests. Subway stations collapsed into buried corridors. Residential blocks fell silent as they were rewritten from within.

People tried to name it.

Infection.Disaster.Calamity.

But those words no longer fit.

This was not destruction.

It was replacement.

A woman stood on an apartment rooftop, holding her child too tightly.

Below them, streets were already gone beneath black layers moving like slow water. Cars disappeared without sound. Metal bent and gave way under steady pressure.

Her daughter kept asking when help would come.

Each time, the answer came softer.

"It's coming.""It has to be coming."

A helicopter passed overhead. It tilted sharply, as if something had struck it without contact.

Black strands erupted from a building below and surged upward. The aircraft broke apart in the air.

The child stopped asking.

The silence that followed remained.

Inside an evacuation shelter sealed behind reinforced doors, people crowded together in darkness. The alarms that once guided them had gone quiet.

Someone tried the radio. Only static came back. Another insisted the military would still reach them.

No one argued.

They had all seen the same pattern.

No messages. No updates. No contact with anything outside.

The city had been sealed off completely.

Francis had ensured it.

Communication towers failed in the first wave. Networks broke apart not only through damage, but through interference woven into the spreading system itself. Signals collapsed before they could travel. Emergency channels looped into noise.

None of it was accidental.

Francis did not improvise. Once a path was chosen, everything had already been accounted for.

He had anticipated resistance from specialized units, coordinated strikes, even attempts to isolate the city entirely.

Each response had been treated as part of the structure, not an obstacle.

At first, he tracked what he was gaining.

Then the scale made tracking meaningless.

Thousands became tens of thousands.

Tens of thousands became something without clear measure.

Abilities no longer arrived as separate changes. They overlapped, merged, and reformed. Some reinforced others. Some broke apart and returned in altered forms. Boundaries between them disappeared.

Eventually, Francis stopped reading the data.

Not because he failed to understand it.

Because individual changes no longer mattered.

Only expansion mattered.

Above ground, the world finally reacted.

"Close… I'm close."

The thought surfaced briefly. The image of two children followed, unchanged, as if held still in time.

"I'll bring you back. Just wait."

In the command network, Lucien and the remaining officers focused on the next targets.

Orbital cannons, previously on standby, were repositioned across multiple regions. Systems aligned and locked.

"Fire."

Ignition sequences triggered across all platforms.

The cannons shifted through controlled arcs, each capable of leveling entire cities, each locking into final position.

The first beam struck the atmosphere like a falling star. Light compressed into a thin line before impact.

The rest followed.

They hit Verak at the center.

For a moment, seismic readings stabilized.

Then flattened.

"This time it's confirmed," someone said. "The King of the Beast is down."

No one celebrated.

Lucien leaned forward.

"Reposition. We intercept Glakor next."

On the screen, a massive ice formation advanced across the land, moving with unnatural certainty.

If it reached key zones, the temperature drop would trigger a chain reaction. Destroying it afterward would not undo the damage.

Before adjustments could complete, alarms triggered again.

"ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!"

The feed shifted.

Fire was rising from the surface.

Balls of flame moved upward against gravity, accelerating like launched strikes.

Orbital systems shifted to avoid impact, adjusting altitude under strain. The evasion held, but barely.

Lucien's grip tightened.

"Damn it."

Another presence had appeared.

King of Flames.

Enfero.

More fireballs continued to rise from the atmosphere, each one forcing the orbital cannons into constant adjustment.

Their targeting systems struggled to keep alignment as trajectories shifted mid-course.

When they zoomed in for confirmation, the situation became clearer—and worse. The flames were not coming from a single origin point. They were appearing across multiple vectors at once, scattered across vast distances.

"We can't lock onto it," someone said.

The feeds showed only fragments—bursts of heat breaking the surface, vanishing, then reappearing elsewhere. It didn't form a pattern they could follow. Every time a trajectory was calculated, it had already changed.

"Forget about Enfero. Focus on Glakor first."

Everyone nodded. The twelve sub-cannons shifted in unison, redirecting toward the coastline.

At this point, speed mattered more than precision. They needed to eliminate the Kings before they could fully break through humanity's remaining defenses.

Across secondary feeds, the situation on the continent continued to deteriorate.

Waves of monsters had already crossed inland borders, spreading through destroyed cities and fractured evacuation routes. Entire regions were slipping out of control.

No one in the command center spoke about it.

It was already understood.

The worst-case scenario was no longer approaching—it had arrived, and was now unfolding in real time across multiple fronts.

"Also call the capital. Tell them Operation ARK is in order. I want them in space within twenty-four hours."

"Yes, sir," they replied in unison.

For most of them, the order carried an unexpected relief. Every member of Epsilon held priority status for evacuation under Ark protocols.

Lucien's decision meant the plan had moved from contingency to execution. What had once been theoretical survival was now being put into motion.

Key personnel immediately began updating clearance lists and rerouting encrypted communications to the capital.

Backup channels activated across multiple layers of infrastructure, some of them never tested outside simulations.

On the displays, Glakor's approach along the coastline continued without pause, while fragmented readings of Enfero still distorted long-range tracking.

Despite that, the room's focus narrowed.

In the capital, preparations began without delay.

Government officials, scientists, engineers, and medical staff moved through secured corridors toward designated launch sites.

Orders were already signed, identities pre-cleared. There was little discussion now.

Rockets stood fueled on reinforced pads, their hulls marked for departure toward Omega, a space station designed to hold just over ten thousand people.

It was not enough for a nation. Not even close.

But it was enough for what had been defined as essential: the people needed to preserve knowledge, rebuild civilization, and restore what could still be recovered after the war against the beasts ended.

Inside the boarding zones, luggage was minimal. Most carried only sealed data drives, research archives, and emergency kits issued by protocol. Personal belongings were left behind or abandoned.

A few looked back at the city through the glass barriers. From here, the capital still looked intact, unaware of what was unfolding beyond it.

Most of the city had no idea it was being abandoned by its leaders. The media remained silent, all channels cut or looped into pre-recorded broadcasts meant to keep order a little longer.

Traffic still moved through the streets. Lights still changed at intersections. Life continued.

Inside the launch facility, no one corrected the illusion. There was no time for that, and no benefit in saying it aloud.

The first launch began without ceremony.

"Initiate launch sequence."

Fuel lines detached one by one. Support clamps unlocked with mechanical precision. The rocket stood alone for a brief moment, no longer connected to the ground.

Then ignition.

A deep vibration ran through the platform, growing fast, swallowing sound as engines forced against gravity. The air around the pad shimmered, distorting under heat and pressure.

The rocket lifted.

One by one, more rockets followed from other pads across the capital. Silent departures rising into the same sky, each carrying a portion of what remained of structured humanity.

When news broke of the multiple launches, panic spread through the capital.

At first it was confusion. Then denial. Then something closer to certainty that no one wanted to accept.

Rumors began to surface faster than official updates could silence them. Entire blocks of the city stopped what they were doing.

People gathered around dead screens, repeating what little information had leaked through private channels.

"Why are they launching so many?"

"Are they abandoning us?"

"Hey, I heard the president is one of the people who rode those rockets!"