Empire Building With Infinite Warehouse-Chapter 53: We Meet Again

"Stop him!" Chris yelled, scrambling to his feet, ignoring the screaming pain in his ribs and his pierced arm.

He ran after him, his heavy boots pounding the concrete.

But he was too slow.

The possessed Julien moved like a phantom, effortlessly clearing the factory gates and bursting out into the ruined, apocalyptic street.

The sky outside was bleeding a bright red just a few blocks down, the massive, swirling vortex of the newly formed Red Gate brimmed with chaotic energy.

Julien locked onto the target.

The concrete cracked under his feet as he leapt into the air, aiming to launch his hijacked body directly toward the open dimensional rift.

He was twenty feet in the air, soaring toward the gate.

Then, a sharp, whistling sound sliced through the wind.

SNAP.

A thick, heavily enchanted rope suddenly coiled tightly around Julien’s neck like a hangman’s noose.

The heavy runes etched into the fibres flared with blinding silver light, burning into the shadowy aura protecting his skin.

Before Julien could reach his hand up to sever it, the rope was yanked backwards with terrifying, overwhelming physical force.

Julien’s forward momentum was killed.

He was pulled straight out of the sky and slammed brutally into the ruined road of the street below.

The impact cratered the road, sending chunks of pieces flying in every direction.

The Beast snarled, the shadows instantly grouping around Julien’s body as he pushed himself up from the rubble, his yellow eyes locking onto the figure standing at the end of the rope.

The dust slowly cleared.

Standing amidst the wreckage, casually wrapping the slack of the enchanted rope around her wrist, was Maya.

Her combat gear was slightly damaged, but her posture was relaxed, exuding confidence.

She looked at Julien, her eyes dropping down to the blood-soaked clothes, the glowing yellow irises, and the terrifying aura of dark mana leaking from his skin.

A smirk tugged at the corner of her lips.

"Somehow, you look even worse than last time," Maya said, her voice easily cutting through the tension of the ruined street.

She tightened her grip on the rope, digging her heels into the concrete.

"How are you, partner?"

[Time Remaining: 01:00]

The Beast did not appreciate the disrespect. The entity inside Julien ignored the glowing silver rope burning against its neck while its glowing yellow eyes narrowed, and a weird sound vibrated from Julien’s throat.

"Vok thar’ul... xel’kor... shur-na."

Maya tilted her head, her smirk widening.

"Is that a proposal? Because we have yet to go on a proper date." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

The shadows reacted.

A massive eruption of pitch-black exploded from beneath Julien’s boots, completely swallowing his physical body.

The blood-soaked dress changed, replaced by a solidified silhouette of pure, light-devouring darkness.

He didn’t even look human anymore, more like a walking void, leaving only those two massive, piercing yellow eyes burning through the dark.

Maya didn’t back down.

Instead, she let out a slow breath.

Her own transformation began.

The deep black colour of her hair rapidly bleached out, turning into a glowing white from the roots to the tips.

Her normal pupils dissolved into a blinding, liquid silver. A terrifying, oppressive wave of pale energy began to aggressively leak from her body, distorting the very air around her like heat off a desert highway.

Then, both of them simply disappeared.

BOOM!

A shockwave shattered every remaining glass window on the street. They had merely moved at a speed the human eye failed to track.

Both of them clashed in the dead centre of the ruined intersection. There was no hesitation, no sizing each other up, and no holding back.

They began exchanging blows at an impossible speed.

The road exploded beneath their feet with every single step.

Maya moved like a ghost entirely unbound by the laws of physics. No matter how many times the Shadow Beast broke through her guard with its terrifying, heavy strikes, Julien’s possessed fists hit nothing but empty air.

Maya shifted, ducked, and weaved flawlessly with perfection. At the same time, she landed dozens of clear, devastating counter-hits, driving her knees into Julien’s ribs and her silver-coated fists directly into his jaw.

But the Beast was an absolute powerhouse. It tanked every single one of her strikes without taking a single ounce of visible damage, its dense shadow armor effortlessly absorbing the impact.

Frustrated by its inability to crush the silver-eyed human, the Beast changed tactics.

Julien threw a massive, sweeping punch aimed directly at the right side of Maya’s face.

As expected, she leaned back, smoothly dodging the fist by a mere inch.

But it was a trap.

From the blind spot of Julien’s hip, a razor-sharp shadow tentacle whipped outward with the speed of a snake.

Maya’s silver eyes widened slightly as she contorted her body backwards, twisting away from the deadly spike, but she was a fraction of a second too late.

Slice.

The very tip of the shadowy blade grazed her cheek.

Maya immediately backflipped twice, creating thirty feet of distance between them as she landed smoothly on the hood of a crushed car.

She reached up with her thumb, wiping a thin line of red blood from her cheek.

She looked back up.

The shadows on Julien’s back were writhing and dancing where four massive, thick tentacles of darkness erupted from his spine, thrashing wildly in the air behind him like demonic tails.

The Beast let out a vibrating, triumphant snarl, the four tails tearing huge chunks out of the surrounding asphalt as it prepared to rush her again.

Maya just laughed.

"Alright. Playtime is over."

She calmly raised her right hand, her palm facing the monster.

Julien pushed off the ground, the concrete shattering as he launched himself forward with the intent to impale her on all four tails simultaneously.

He never made it.

The very next second, the entire world flipped upside down for the Beast.

SLAM!

An invisible weight crashed down on the possessed merchant. The force of it quickly arrested his forward momentum and violently slammed him back into the road upside down, hovering three inches off the crushed road, unable to move a single muscle.

This was Maya’s true power:

Control.

It was an powerful, high-tier domain technique that dealt with the raw manipulation of gravity within a strict 100-meter radius.

Inside this zone, gravity wasn’t a law of nature.

The four shadow tails thrashed desperately, trying to find a hook to push off the ground, but the gravity acting upon them was shifting in ten different directions at once, rendering every single attack useless.

Maya hopped off the crushed car and slowly walked into the centre of her domain, her silver eyes glowing brightly in the dim light of the Red Gate.

She stopped right in front of the immobilised, upside-down Beast and leaned in , looking directly into those burning yellow eyes.

"Wake up," she ordered.

Far away from the physical world, deep within the pitch-black void of the mindscape, Julien sat perfectly still in the endless ocean of darkness.

He had felt the Beast’s raw panic as its physical authority was stripped away by the silver-eyed woman outside.

"System," Julien said, his voice completely calm in the empty void.

"The time is up."

Multiple golden notifications popped up in front of him.