When he heard the radio, the first thing he checked was his status.

[Energy: 39/70]

’I really need to find a way to increase my energy. I fought for just a couple of minutes and I’m already down by almost 50%.’

As expected, his energy would someday become his undoing.

Lost in thought, he suddenly heard a whooshing sound cut through the air.

Four figures dropped from an incoming helicopter.

They hit the side of a building mid-fall and ran along the wall like it was solid ground, using it as a launch path toward him.

The blade user arrived first. His speed was no joke, easily reaching 200 kilometers per hour.

CRACK!

He froze. He was certain that he was faster than his target. He closed the distance cleanly, committed fully, and angled the blade exactly where it needed to go.

So why was he now staring at the thing’s monstrous back instead of completing his follow-through?

Weakly, he looked down and saw that a large portion of his abdomen was missing.

Not cut. Not punctured. Gone — like a shredder had torn through him at such speed that the wound could not even register before the damage was already done.

"H... How?"

Blood poured out in streams before he could even get an answer to his question. Regret and sorrow flashed in his eyes.

He had a bright future ahead of him as a high-ranking agent with a powerful talent, yet he never even got the chance to use it.

"NOOOOOO!" a female agent’s cry broke the silence.

She drew two pistols mid-air and fired.

Francis sensed the danger the instant the bullets left the barrel and jumped back.

The impact left glowing orange cracks in the road surface, like the material had been burned from the inside.

"Die! Die! Die!" she kept firing.

What was shocking was that despite the deafening shots, there was no recoil in her hands at all. She remained fixed to the wall as if she had been embedded into it.

Francis continued dodging and threw a metal sheet toward her, but she avoided it.

"Let’s kill that thing!" she commanded.

Unlike the blade user, who had been taken out by surprise, the remaining three became more careful and attacked with proper coordination.

The whip user stayed at mid-range. She never tried to close in fully.

Every snap of her weapon carved the environment apart.

Concrete broke before it was even touched. Metal railings split clean like paper.

She was not aiming to hit him directly. She was forcing him to move where she wanted.

The gauntlet user took the opposite role—he rushed in without fear.

Francis tried to finish him quickly, but the girl with the gun timed her shots perfectly.

Each burst forced him to pause at the worst possible moment, breaking his pace just long enough for the opening to vanish.

Then the gauntlet user finally landed a clean hit. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

It didn’t hurt.

That threw Francis off for a fraction of a second.

Before he could process it, a sharp clicking sound came from the gauntlet.

BOOOM!

It detonated like a grenade, blasting him upward.

Mid-air, the whip user moved in. Her weapon snapped around his legs, yanking him down hard.

He hit the ground and was dragged across it, then slammed into a wall so fast the stone cracked.

Gunfire followed immediately. The female shooter didn’t miss the window—bullets tore into his shoulder, legs, and chest.

Flesh twisted and regenerated around the wounds almost instantly, but the burning energy inside the bullets slowed the process enough for him to feel every second of it.

Francis grabbed the whip wrapped around him and yanked hard, pulling the enemy.

She reacted instantly. He felt the resistance shift from dead weight to braced opposition in under a half-second.

But her strength was not enough. The gauntlet user helped, and he too was pulled forward. Only when the shooter landed and entered the fray did the balance finally shift.

Pulling her felt like pulling a small mountain.

He changed his approach instantly, unwinding from the whip rather than fighting it, and launched forward.

The three of them read the incoming charge and spread to dodge.

Clean. Confident. The kind of movement that came from having seen fast opponents and living through it.

He accelerated past it.

Three hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.

Two of them cleared it barely.

The whip user did not.

CRUNCH!

The contact was brief and total. He did not slow through her. She folded around the force and quickly died.

Francis stopped thirty meters past them and turned.

The shooter and the gauntlet user stood on opposite sides of the street, watching him.

Neither moved immediately.

He rolled his shoulder once, feeling the burned tissue in his chest still working against the regeneration trying to close it.

[Energy: 28/70]

Seeing his points rapidly draining, he decided to finish this once and for all before more agents arrived and turned the fight into a battle of stamina—a scenario he simply could not afford.

Francis moved first.

SWOOOSH!

The street beneath him exploded apart as he lunged forward.

This time, the remaining two agents did not even think about engaging him head-on.

The gauntlet user immediately retreated sideways, creating distance while keeping his eyes alert.

At the same time, the female shooter fired continuously while backing away.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Orange rounds streaked through the air, forcing Francis to weave around them instead of charging in a straight line.

The shooter leapt toward the nearest building and planted her feet against the wall.

She began running across the vertical surface while continuing to fire downward.

Unlike before, she kept widening the gap between them.

She had already understood one thing clearly.

Getting close to him meant death.

Francis twisted his body and avoided another barrage.

One bullet grazed his arm and exploded against the pavement behind him, showering the street with burning debris.

The female agent narrowed her eyes.

’He’s slowing down.’