Chapter 004
1332 Words
The details of that battle were sealed under the highest classification level.
No full footage.
No comprehensive reports.
Every soldier who handled logistics or cleanup afterward signed a lifetime confidentiality contract.
The world only knew one thing—
The Evil Eight, the so-called apex predators of modern warfare, were annihilated.
All of them.
…
Three days after the battle, in an underground command center buried beneath reinforced concrete and radio-shielded walls—
A massive screen replayed the only surviving fragment of recorded data.
The image was so distorted it was nearly unrecognizable: a storm-shrouded ravine where sand and snow twisted upward like serpents, where energy flared and churned like thunderclouds tearing reality apart.
Every flash of light made the monitoring graphs spike violently.
Alarms shrieked, lights flickered, officers muttered curses they didn’t realize were leaving their mouths.
“What kind of energy is that?”
“It’s beyond every range our instruments can measure.”
“Are we even sure… that’s still Earth?”
Someone whispered the question like it tasted of dread.
And yet, at the center of that impossible storm, there was always a single figure—thin, motionless, rooted in the valley floor.
Like a blade hammered into the earth and left to stand against the end of the world.
…
Before dawn, the medical extraction team received orders and mobilized with top-grade equipment and specialists. They were allowed into only the outermost edge of the sealed zone.
The air carried the metallic scent of scorched earth.
Even the sand had melted into glass-like sheets, translucent and razor-edged, glittering eerily under the gray light.
There, upon a rare patch of even ground, the medics found them—
Eight bodies lined up in a disturbingly neat row.
Each corpse bore unmistakable traits:
One’s shoulders were still rimed with frost.
Another’s chest had been pierced clean through.
Another’s face was twisted beyond recognition, locked in a final expression of horror or rage.
But one truth bound them all—
They were dead.
Completely, irrevocably dead.
“So these are… the Evil Eight?” a young medic whispered, Adam’s apple bobbing. “They look… just like normal people.”
An older medic shook his head.
“They look like normal people because they’re dead.”
“When they were alive? They were nothing like this.”
…
Opposite the bodies, they found another figure.
He was half-kneeling, one hand gripping a pitch-black combat blade whose tip was driven inches into the ground.
The blade and his chest were crusted with dried blood.
His head hung low.
He looked like he could collapse at any second.
“Life signs—extremely weak!”
Machines beeped urgently.
“Start fluids! Stabilize bleeding! Prepare to lift him onto the stretcher—now!”
The medics surged forward.
The team captain bent down to confirm the patient’s identity—
and his pupils constricted.
“It’s Dragon-Head!”
“War God is alive!”
The atmosphere shifted instantly—from heavy dread to explosive, barely-contained relief.
Eyes reddened.
Hands trembled.
But every movement was careful, terrified of causing further harm.
They lifted Matthew Powell with surgical precision.
Just before being loaded onto the transport vehicle, his eyelids fluttered—then parted a sliver.
He saw the pale sky, the frantic medics around him—
And beyond them, the eight bodies, lying as silent witnesses.
His gaze lingered on them.
Then, barely a whisper escaping his cracked lips—
“Reporting to the commander… mission accomplished…”
And he slipped under again.
…
At the Military Central Hospital, in the highest-tier intensive care unit—
A ring of top specialists gathered around his bed.
Monitors hummed, displaying tangled waves of data that shifted with alarming irregularity.
A silver-haired professor stared at the projected scan with a deeply furrowed brow.
“The thoracic wounds… can be operated on.”
“The fractures… can be realigned.”
“The damaged organs… we can repair or replace.”
“But this—”
He pointed to a section of the scan—a strange gray mass entwined around the heart, nerve bundles, and bone marrow.
“What is it?”
No one answered.
It was an unknown energy concentration—something that behaved like radiation but wasn’t, something that resembled biochemical residue but wasn’t.
It didn’t move.
It didn’t dissipate.
But it eroded everything it touched.
“If we forcefully remove it, he might die on the table.”
“If we leave it alone… the fact he’s still alive now is already a miracle.”
The professor exhaled heavily.
“Our best option is containment. Slow it down. Limit the spread.”
The commander asked, voice like gravel, “Your conclusion?”
The professor hesitated—just a fraction.
“First conclusion: As long as he avoids combat of similar intensity, he can survive. He can still function. Live. Work.”
“Second conclusion: His peak state… is gone. He won’t return to the level of the War God he was.”
“If I must estimate—he will coexist with this anomaly for at least ten years.”
“Ten years?” the commander choked out.
“That is an optimistic projection,” the professor muttered. “If he pushes himself the way he did this time… he could die instantly.”
Silence crashed over the room.
Every person present understood what the name War God represented.
He was the backbone of their entire hidden-defense structure.
The unshakable pillar countless operatives trusted even without ever meeting him.
The blade they aimed at darkness.
And now—they were being told that blade had fractured.
The commander looked at the pale figure behind the glass, grief tightening his chest.
He had watched Matthew Powell rise from War Dog to the unbreakable spearhead of the shadows.
Now, he had to admit—
The War God needed to step off the battlefield.
“Then… what about the border?” someone finally asked.
The commander closed his eyes.
“The Divine Empire cannot depend on one man forever.”
“When he signed onto The Obsidian Circle, we all understood the day might come when we’d lose him.”
“No one expected it to come this soon.”
…
Late that night.
In the silent ICU, only the rhythmic beeps of the life-support machines moved through the darkness.
In his coma, Matthew Powell’s brow furrowed.
Shattered images tore through his mind—
The storm of the Dead Valley.
The last expressions of the Evil Eight.
The moment that pitch-black energy burrowed into his chest.
And then—
a red backdrop.
A woman with cold eyes holding a marriage certificate, her knuckles white from how tight she gripped it.
Her stare filled with resentment she swallowed down, humiliation she refused to show.
He remembered saying something the night he left.
I’m sorry.
But he had only spoken half the sentence.
The other half had stayed trapped in his chest for six years.
This time… he wanted to finish it.
…
He didn’t know how long passed before footsteps approached the room.
The commander entered quietly, dismissing the nurse on duty before stepping up to the bedside.
He gazed at Matthew’s face—pale, still sharp-edged, still unmistakably him—and his heart twisted.
“You reckless bastard,” he muttered under his breath.
“You really think you’re just a blade to be used until it breaks.”
With a sigh, he reached into his coat and unfolded a creased document.
A transfer order draft.
[Proposal: Reassign chief combat operative Matthew Powell from frontline deployment to an inland strategic advisor role, concurrently serving as provisional commander of The Obsidian Circle.]
The commander stared at the words for a long moment.
“This life of yours… was bought back by too many people to count.”
“You owe them. You owe yourself.”
“And maybe… it’s time for you to leave the battlefield.”
“Time to do something else.”
- Writer
