Chapter 20: Genesis of the Apocalypse
961 Words
The initial Chrono-Suspension Zone offered three days. Extending it with Astral Shards? A losing game. One fist-sized shard bought a measly five seconds. A whole cubic foot might stretch it to eighty minutes—barely over an hour.
Victor Sterling groaned. Astral Shards fueled everything: cultivation, combat techs, weapon cores, the Cosmic Die, even time itself. His future looked bleak—and criminal. Piracy, maybe? A decent career path, perhaps.
He scanned the gray expanse. Three days. Too short for Stellar Palm, too long to waste. With no shards to absorb, only one option remained: Void-Splitter Palm.
The mass-produced upgrade to Ripple Palm, it demanded monstrous physique. Few Fusers could wield it. Perfect for Victor—no energy required, just raw muscle. His specialty. Unlike its predecessor, Void-Splitter packed a ranged punch. Exactly what Victor needed.
He’d never slacked on physical training. Thank the stars Ripple Palm was stamina-friendly, or he’d never have downed Astar back then. Cosmic energy saturated the universe, yet each planet’s ecosystem filtered it uniquely. That made body-dependent techniques like Ripple Palm rare gems. Most fools chased flashy energy blasts, blind to their impracticality.
As the chrono-digits bled toward zero, Victor hammered one-finger pull-ups, sweat pooling beneath him. Three days evaporated.
Reality snapped back into focus—the training chamber unchanged. Victor checked the clock. One second. He’d just sweat three days into a heartbeat.
——
Freshly showered and rested, Victor faced Glenna Blackwood again. Her gaze held wariness now. Fear, even.
“Know your duties?” he asked casually.
“Your shadow,” she muttered.
He smirked. “Move out. The Judicator should be waking.”
Zane Shaw had hovered near death. His wounds dwarfed Glenna’s. Without Victor’s intervention, Odon’s strike would’ve finished him—after Treyce Valmont’s earlier blow. Half a month of healing left Judah gaunt.
Outside the med-bay, Marcus Flint bolted upright. “Victor—no, Veiled Paragon! The Judicator’s awake!”
Victor stifled a grimace. Veiled Paragon. A glowing target for the next wave of trial students. But with all of Scarlet Citadel chanting it? No fighting the tide.
“Stand down. I’ll see him.” Victor brushed past Marcus, Glenna in tow.
Marcus’s eyes daggered Glenna. Outsider.
She ignored him. Her pride bowed only to Victor—and only because he wasn’t some backwater primitive.
Inside, Quinn shielded Zane Shaw’s bed, eyes narrowed.
“Just a chat,” Victor raised his palms. “Mind?”
Quinn hesitated.
“Stand aside, Quinn,” Zane Shaw’s voice rasped.
Reluctantly, she yielded.
Victor nodded at the door. “Alone.”
Quinn shot Zane a look. At his nod, she stalked out.
“Protective, that one,” Zane sighed, gesturing to a seat.
Victor perched on the bed’s edge. “She thinks I’ll finish the job.”
“You’d have done it already.” Zane coughed. “Heard you scrapped the Northern Front. Shoring up Scarlet Citadel and the West?”
Victor rose, gazing at the fractured city below. “Six months into the apocalypse. Zombies? Swarms, but weak. Mutabeasts?” He turned. “They scale with time. Stretch your Judicator Corps thin, and they’ll snap your lines.”
“Which is why we need unity now! Reclaim [Removed]—that’s why Zoya Rain risked coming here!”
Victor’s stare sharpened. “Daily casualty reports. How many miles of ‘safe’ road did you carve? I had Rowena Yun brief you. Hive Minds prowl those routes. Smart. Evolving. Eating who-knows-what to gain new tricks. Your Legion Commanders can’t touch them. Can you patrol the front? How far? What if a Sky-Sovereign Mutabeast crawls out?”
Zane fell silent. “I know the risks. But the Northern Bastion must be reached. We need answers... about the Genesis.”
“The Genesis?”
Zane leaned forward, voice grave. “When we retrieved that corpse from Neptune, we decrypted data. It made us the first of the Seven Paragons. But that body... The Tech Division detected Xenomatter in it. Cellular corruption vectors. I believe it caused the Fall.”
“Then?”
“The Xenomatter breached containment. Prime Directive One: move the corpse. Disperse us Seven Paragons as regional shields. They knew. But during transit—” Zane’s knuckles whitened. “—the detonation. Prime One. Tech teams. Thousands... gone. Just a smoldering crater. Even Zenith Zhang at the Northern Bastion never pieced it together.”
“The corpse?” Victor pressed. The Flesh Forging Essence. The fugitive.
“Gone. Vaporized in the blast. All that remained... was the End.”
Victor read Zane’s truth. Dead end. If even the Paragons lost the trail, answers lay only at the Northern Bastion.
“Rest up,” Victor turned to leave.
“You’re leaving Scarlet Citadel?” Zane’s voice strained.
“Want me gone?”
“Hell no! With you, this city stands. I felt your power—Terra-tier yet you wounded Odon. Now at Sky-Sovereign? You outclass me. Stay. The Judicator Corps is yours. I am yours.”
Victor arched a brow. “I leave, you keep your throne. Your glory.”
“Glory?” Zane laughed bitterly. “I hold Scarlet Citadel by Prime One’s last order. I’m a soldier. Glory’s dust. Three million lives hang here. Stay. Shield them.”
Their eyes locked—unyielding iron versus calculating ice.
Finally, Victor nodded. “For now.”
Zane sagged in relief. The battle two weeks back had shattered his pride. Judicator? A gnat before cosmic storms. Victor was the only lifeline for those millions.
The secrets he’d spilled? His bargaining chips.
Outside, Quinn rushed in. Victor gave Marcus a curt nod, Glenna falling into step behind him.
A soldier. The word hung heavy. Victor respected Zane’s burden. But carrying it? No. Survival left no room for deadweight.
- Writer
