Gina’s words caught in her throat as she saw the massive shadow looming over Nicholas’s head, fear filling her eyes.

Nicholas frowned as he noticed her sudden silence. He turned almost immediately and met a massive fist coming straight at him, but he stood unfazed.

The air twisted violently as the hand was ripped to shreds by the spatial vacuum.

But something strange happened. The shredded hand began converging around the spatial vacuum like slick. Within seconds, it submerged the attack completely, swallowing it as though it had never existed.

Nicholas stared at Ronald, his face twisting in shock.

Seeing the grotesque figure before him, only one word echoed through Nicholas’s mind.

’Impure’

But it was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Ronald had completely changed.

"You weak, puny insect! Give me your abilities! If you won’t do the work, then I will do it myself!"

Ronald roared. Half his body was already covered in the strange black substance that seemed to be eating him alive from the inside.

He had grown to almost twice his size, and his eyes were completely white and empty, as though he’d lost all sanity.

A loud pulsing sound came from his chest, and with every pulse, the dark veins crawling across his body throbbed with power.

The hand drove down at him again, this time faster as though it seemed to tear through space.

Nicholas disappeared from where he stood, reappearing behind Ronald’s massive frame. But just before his hand could touch Ronald, several spatial tears ripped open around him.

Nicholas frowned in an instant, ’Vixens ability?’ he moved teleported once more appearing several meters away from the crazed Ronald.

Ronald turned, his eyes burning with insanity.

"I’ll kill you! I’ll devour you all!"

Spit dripped from his mouth as he snarled, more beast than man.

Several spatial tears ripped open at once.

One after another.

Slowly spreading through the entire office.

Nicholas paused, quickly sensing the danger.

’He’s trying to destroy everything.’

His gaze shifted toward Gina, who was still on the floor, staring at the scene with wide, horrified eyes.

Nicholas disappeared.

Reappearing beside Gina before she could react, he slipped one arm beneath her knees and lifted her effortlessly.

Then he burst straight through the floor-to-ceiling glass, shattering it with the force of his momentum.

Behind him, the entire office collapsed into a storm of spatial distortions.

A chaotic swarm of spatial tears consumed the room, ripping everything to shreds.

Walls.

Furniture.

Steel.

Everything disappeared into nothingness.

It didn’t stop there. The destruction continued through several floors of the building.

Glass exploded outward. The floors and walls of the room were ground into little more than dust.

It was as though a colossal grinder had chewed through the building.

Ronald watched them crash through the glass.

Then he jumped after them.

Nicholas glanced toward the street several stories below. An ordinary person wouldn’t survive a fall from this height, he was no different.

But that didn’t matter to him, this was exactly what he wanted.

Locking onto a spot below, Nicholas vanished. He reappeared on the street an instant later.

Above him, Ronald’s massive body came crashing down like a meteor.

Standing only a few metres away was Selena, "Is that Councillor Ronald?"

Nicholas didn’t answer.

His eyes remained fixed on the falling figure.

’...If I do that, then he should die on impact’

Ronald didn’t seem to care how far he had to fall, his ramble continued even while he fell.

"I’ll take everything! Everything is mine! It belongs to me! You work for me!" He yelled frantically unperturbed by the turbulence of the wind hitting him a he fell.

Nicholas didn’t have time to think. He activated his ability.

Ronald felt it instantly, the force dragging him downward multiplied.

Gravity seized him, accelerating his descent.

The earth surged upward to meet him and in merely a second.

BOOOM!

With an earth-shattering crash, Ronald slammed into the ground.

A massive crater erupted beneath him as his body disappeared into the earth.

A large cloud of dust rose into the air.

The surrounding crowd erupted into chaos.

Fingers pointed toward the crater as shocked voices rose from every direction..

Selena hurried to Nicholas’s side, "What’s going on?"

"I don’t know..." Nicholas never looked away from the dust cloud, "He used something on himself."

The cloud of dust slowly settled and as it did, Nicholas expression twisted into a frown, ’He’s still alive?’

He had increased the force of the fall to nearly ten times normal gravity. It should have killed Ronald on impact.

He hadn’t even needed that much force against Vixen.

He used it on a falling body and somehow whatever monster Ronald had become, was still alive and moving.

Still struggling, eyes white as he muttered words.. half his face had been crushed, his clothes torn and body drenched in his own blood.

Broken bones protruded through torn flesh while the black substance continued spreading across his body.

"I want it all... Everything... Mine..." Saliva dripped from what remained of his shattered jaw.

Nicholas looked at him, confused by the sudden transformation he had just witnessed. There was only one question left. He looked down at Gina who still seemed terrified, "What happened to him?"

"The plague X... It’s a condensed form of the plague, an experiment that the Association has been doing to create impures." Gina’s voice trembled. Her eyes wide with terror.

"What?! You guys did an experiment to create impures?!" Selena yelled out as she couldn’t believe her ears.

But Nicholas didn’t react, his gaze still fixated on Ronald, wondering how the creature didn’t die.

He didn’t have to wonder for long.

The black substance began to move. It crawled upward against the invisible force pinning Ronald down.

Like a living parasite, it spread across the gravity itself.

Then...

~Slurp~

It swallowed it whole.

Nicholas brows furrowed, ’He swallowed the ability....’

Nicholas immediately recalled the spatial tears.

Ronald had swallowed that ability too. Then used it with even greater power.

Everything seemed to come together in that instant.

’So that means....’

Nicholas’s eyes widened. Ronald slowly rose to his feet, his bones hung at impossible angles, his eyes burning with madness.

"You won’t work for me! You’ll all die!"

’He can replicate any ability that has been used on him!’

Nicholas’s expression changed.

Ronald raised his hand, Nicholas already knew what was coming.

"Everyone! Get back!" Nicholas yelled