Chapter 49: Dominance Unlocked
Marcus rolled his shoulders, the joints cracking slightly as his muscles responded with slow-burning heat. His body was far from perfect—but it had clawed its way back to the bare minimum condition to fight again. Beneath him, his feet ignited with renewed vitality, the familiar flare of flaming jets roaring to life with a surge of confidence.
"Let's do this, Marcus!"
He shouted into the echoing halls, voice carrying a sharp edge of excitement. With a burst of fire, he glided forward like a missile, tracing the blackened paths he'd scorched into the corridor's bones earlier—his own destruction now repurposed as a runway.
Then he saw them—two figures emerging from the mist of the corridor, and like twisted echoes from a past life, both were unmistakably familiar. Assassins. People he had once known, once feared. Now standing in front of him again like death's reflection in the glass.
"I'm not gonna waste my time this time..."
His words came low, quiet and cutting as he immediately activated his triple rune combination, mana surging like a wildfire through his core. The improvements from his recent evolution pulsed within him—his new mana regeneration like a tide that refused to recede. He could afford to cast recklessly now—and he would.
The two figures, perhaps recognizing the aura of death he now wore like a cloak, reacted instantly. One sprinted forward with a dark spear, its blade shadowy dark like the daggers of the previous one.
The other ducked low, dual pistols pulsing with dark as well and already opening fire, bullets howling through the air like snapping bones.
"If you two were the ones who fought me first, I would've lost—but too bad that isn't the case!"
He roared, arms spreading wide as he shot forward on jets of fire, flames trailing behind him like wings torn from a comet. Bullets screamed toward him—but some never made it. The jets curled and lashed, mini-flares intercepting the projectiles mid-air, incinerating them in mid-flight.
One shot scorched past his cheek, leaving a sizzling line across his jaw. Close. Too close. But that was all they got.