Without checking where it would go, Ethan stabbed the needle in.

Xavier felt the cold metal against his hot skin, piercing through.

Everything happened so quickly.

At first, he felt the cold substance that was injected inside him running through his veins.

He fell silent as he tried to process what had happened. But when he finally did, he couldn’t anymore.

The pain that followed was not just any kind of pain; it was cold, but then he felt the static, electrifying him from the inside out.

Every nerve ending on his body began to pulse in rejection.

He tried to scream, but no voice could be heard.

He tried to open his eyes, but his vision was turning white.

He tried to breathe, but he felt like he was forgetting how to breathe.

What was going on?

His body began to tremble out of control.

He couldn’t think anymore.

That was why he didn’t feel Ethan withdrawing the needle, nor did he see a figure come out of nowhere.

Baron Geron Gringer covered the distance between the tree line and Ethan in under three seconds.

Although he was a retired soldier and up in age, he managed to close the gap between them.

His palm heel aimed at the base of Ethan’s skull.

Ethan moved, barely dodging the attack, making him slightly stumble on the side.

Geron quickly put a distance between them and grabbed a gun to fire at him.

But when Ethan turned around, he smiled, unfazed, before a gun that was pointed at him.

"Good evening, Baron Gringer," Ethan said, and executed a small, correct bow according to the Imperial etiquette.

Geron did not return the greeting; he glanced at Xavier on the side. He quickly came over to check on him without lowering the gun.

Xavier was lying in the dirt with his eyes open and seeing nothing. His body was stiff and trembling.

"What did you do to him?" Geron said, snarling.

Ethan didn’t answer him immediately. Instead, he looked past Geron, surveying the clearing with a frown.

Captain Wen lay face down in the moss, the back of his skull caved in.

Lieutenant Park was on his side a few meters away, and limbs were scattered around the body.

Around them were other Imperial soldiers who came with Geron as reinforcements. They were methodically putting down the remaining Insectoids with controlled bursts of pulse-fire.

"You really brought a lot of people with you," Ethan observed, sounding faintly impressed.

Geron didn’t answer.

Before he came here, he was planning on going to the Seaside Estate, where he got the news that Lilianna was there.

But along the way, his hovercar banked around the entrance of the huge forestry before the seaside.

Geron had noticed the soldiers waiting.

There were six men in Imperial combat armor, and their hoverbikes were arranged in a loose chevron that blocked the access road.

Nothing was unusual about a military patrol in this sector; Sometimes the military would run exercises in the area like this for weeks.

What was unusual was their expression; they looked bored.

Some were leaning against their bikes, helmets off. One of them was even openly scrolling through something on his light brain.

The body language of men who had been told to stand somewhere and wait, and had been waiting for much longer than they had expected.

Geron had lived long enough to know that bored soldiers guarding at the entrance of a dark forest in the middle of the night was never good news.

He had discreetly landed the hovercar behind a hill and killed the running lights. He approached the soldier’s position on foot.

When he had gotten close enough, he heard one of the soldiers complaining to another.

"Four hours. Four bloody hours standing here, doing nothing. How long does it take to—"

But he was never able to finish the sentence.

The soldier standing closest to him, with a name tag that read SONG, opened his eyes, and they were bloody red.

What followed was brief and ugly.

Corporal Song drew his sidearm and put two rounds into the complaining soldier’s chest before anyone processed what was happening.

A second red-eyed soldier appeared from behind one of the hoverbikes.

Then a third stepped out from the tree line as if he had been standing there the whole time, waiting for a signal.

As soon as they appeared, Geron didn’t hide anymore and killed all three in under a minute

The surviving soldiers were both badly shaken. After all, those red-eyed men were once their comrades. It would’ve been better if it were a monster, but they knew those people.

This confirmed what Geron and the Marshal had long suspected.

He could only pray that his thoughts were wrong because he didn’t want to dirty his hands with his daughter’s blood.

When he asked everyone why they were here, they said that General Hunter had entered the forest four hours ago with a twelve-man platoon.

It seemed that they were after a wanted Beta civilian scientist surnamed Goelet. They had not returned, and no further instructions had come through the communication badge.

Just as he feared, the situation inside must be worse than here.

Geron decisively called for backup in the closest garrison. However, it would take forty minutes out at emergency speed.

Too long, he couldn’t wait anymore.

He thought he would have gone alone if it had taken much longer. But the first batch of reinforcements arrived twelve minutes later, faster than estimated.

Geron had directed them through the forest, scouting their trail as they went.

Soon, they had arrived just in time to see Ethan about to stab a needle in Xavier Hunter’s neck.

Or so Geron had thought.

Just in time? More like, it’s far too late.

Xavier’s body began to shake uncontrollably.

"What did you inject into him?" he asked again.

His voice had dropped another register, into the range that made lesser alphas instinctively lower their eyes.

Unexpectedly, despite using his dominant pheromones, Ethan just lightly shrugged.

This was so unusual for a reported beta.

Geron restrained himself from firing because dead men couldn’t answer questions. Now, he desperately needed answers.

"Sir, you really are straightforward, aren’t you?"