Free Web NovelChapter 106: The Storm Part 11
Next on his agenda was checking the armor the masked agent had used. To his surprise, he quickly realized that nearly half of it was biological in nature.
Meaning—
He could integrate with it.
And repair it.
So, he did.
The damaged armor immediately began fusing with his flesh as black tendrils spread across the broken sections like living roots repairing dead bark.
[Energy -150]
The process drained an absurd amount of energy in a single go.
Normally, Francis would have hesitated to waste so much at once.
But after reaching Category Five, he had gained a new ability that practically solved his energy problem entirely.
[Consumption: Each liver restores 1 Energy]
A grin slowly spread across his face.
In a battlefield like this, finding over a hundred corpses was ridiculously easy.
The armor continued shifting around his body.
Cracked plating sealed itself shut while damaged sections regenerated layer by layer under the parasite’s control.
When the process finally finished, the appearance of the armor had changed completely.
It became darker.
Less metallic.
The surface now looked almost root-like, as though blackened tree roots had wrapped themselves around his body and hardened into armor.
This was extremely good news.
Francis clearly remembered how the masked agent had endured even Aris’s lightning attacks while wearing this armor.
That alone proved just how absurdly durable it was.
More importantly—
Because the armor was partially biological, it could merge directly with his own transformation instead of functioning as separate equipment.
Just like Nathan’s gauntlet.
Or Aris’s scythe.
The dark armor slowly shifted across his body in response to his thoughts, tightening and loosening like living muscle beneath the surface.
A grin spread across Francis’s face.
Equipment like this was far more valuable than ordinary weapons.
It could evolve together with him.
With that done, Francis transformed back into his beast form and began moving deeper into the capitol.
His massive claws crushed broken concrete beneath each step while the newly evolved armor shifted naturally across his body, merging perfectly with the transformation.
Along the way, he casually stopped beside corpses scattered throughout the ruined halls.
Then he fed.
One liver after another disappeared into the parasite mass beneath his armor, rapidly restoring the energy he had spent earlier.
[Energy: 34/120]
[Energy: 51/120]
[Energy: 79/120]
The new ability made recovery absurdly easy in a battlefield filled with bodies.
Eventually, Francis stopped beside a particular corpse.
The moment he consumed its liver; a new notification suddenly appeared.
[Additional Energy Capacity Available]
Francis narrowed his eyes slightly.
Without much hesitation, he accepted immediately.
[Energy Capacity: 170 → 180]
A grin slowly spread across his face.
’So, he’s one of those clan people too... nice.’
Another notification suddenly rang inside his mind.
[Innate Talent Acquired]
Francis barely even looked at it.
At this point, new talents appeared so frequently that keeping track of every single one had become annoying.
Most of them simply made him stronger anyway.
Fortunately, the system automatically merged redundant talents together before upgrading them into higher-tier versions, preventing his abilities from becoming an unmanageable mess.
Otherwise, he would have drowned in list long ago.
After he finished restoring his energy, Francis continued deeper into the capitol, collecting more livers along the way.
He only stopped after reaching what used to be the capitol’s main office.
The massive room was heavily damaged.
Half the walls had collapsed inward while scorch marks and melted steel covered nearly every surface.
At the center of the destruction sat Aris in her human form.
Her transformation had already ended.
Most of her clothing had been destroyed during the battle, leaving only a black blazer taken from a nearby corpse draped loosely around her body to cover herself.
Her long legs remained completely exposed beneath it.
"What are you looking at?" she asked coldly, narrowing her eyes at him.
Francis simply sighed before morphing back into his human form.
The dark armor receded slightly beneath his skin while the monstrous features disappeared one after another.
"So," he asked calmly, "are we done here?"
Aris blinked in surprise.
Her eyes quickly landed on the dark armor covering his body.
"You repaired that Legendary-tier armor?"
"Yeah." Francis shrugged lightly. "I have my ways."
His answer was intentionally vague.
For a moment, Aris looked like she wanted to ask more.
But in the end, she stayed silent.
People like them all carried secrets.
Some were simply better left untouched.
"Are you going to join the Covenant?" she asked suddenly.
Francis leaned lightly against a cracked desk while glancing around.
"Well, that depends," he replied calmly. "Tell me your plan first."
Aris stayed silent for a few seconds.
Outside, distant explosions still echoed faintly across the city, but compared to earlier, the battle had already died down significantly.
"The Federation is finished," she said at last. "Maybe not officially yet, but after today, everyone will know they’re weak in this city."
Her eyes turned toward the shattered windows overlooking the burning capitol.
"That’s hard to believe," Francis spoke flatly. "We barely won here even with me helping you deal with that guy."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"So, what exactly does the Covenant want to do?"
Aris remained silent.
Francis continued calmly.
"Because from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like you’re fighting for some noble cause."
He glanced toward the corpses scattered throughout the ruined office.
"And honestly? The way you act makes it pretty obvious you don’t care much about ordinary humans either."
The atmosphere grew heavier.
"So, what are you then?" Francis asked. "Just a bunch of villains?"
For a moment, Aris simply stared at him.
Then—
She sighed.
"We might be evil from a human perspective, but for us—"
Aris suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
RRRRMMMMBLLL...
A distant rumble echoed across the night sky.
Both of them immediately looked upward.
Another flash followed.
But this lightning was different.
Unlike Aris’s earlier storm that only covered the capital district, this one spread across the entire city.
The sky itself turned white for a split second.
Then came another flash.
And another.
Countless bolts of blue lightning crawled across the clouds like living veins, illuminating the ruined streets below in an endless storm of light.
The atmosphere instantly became suffocating.
Even Francis felt the hairs on his arms rise.
The amount of energy contained within the storm was absurd.
No—
Terrifying.
Aris slowly stood up from her seat.
For the first time since meeting her, genuine panic appeared on her face.
"How...?" she whispered.
Another deafening explosion shook the city.
BOOOOOOM!
The windows shattered instantly.
Violent wind surged through the ruined office while distant screams echoed from outside.
Aris stared at the sky with widened eyes. freēwēbnovel.com
"Why is it here" she gasped.
"What is here?" Francis quickly asked.
She slowly turned toward Francis and swallowed hard.
"One of the Kings of the Beasts," she said quietly. "Rynik."
The moment she finished speaking—
The clouds above the city suddenly shifted.
No—
Something moved behind them.
Francis narrowed his eyes.
A gigantic head slowly emerged from within the storm.
His entire body froze for a brief moment.
It was enormous.
So large that even from this distance, he could clearly make out its features against the sky.
It resembled a bird—
But only vaguely.
Its beak looked more like sharpened black metal than bone, while countless arcs of blue lightning danced violently across its surface.
Every movement of the creature caused thunder to erupt across the heavens.
The clouds themselves seemed too small to contain it.
Then one massive eye slowly opened.
Even from miles away, Francis felt an overwhelming pressure crash into the city.
Buildings trembled.
Glass shattered endlessly.
Far below, countless people began screaming in terror.
The creature had not even attacked yet.
It merely existed—
And the entire city already felt like hell.
The giant creature hovered above the clouds for a moment longer.
Its single eye slowly scanned the city below—calm, almost curious.
Then its massive beak began to open.
At first, there was no sound.
Only light.
A deep, unnatural glow built up inside its throat, like an entire storm being compressed into a single point.
Francis’s eyes widened slightly.
"...That’s not an attack," he muttered.
"It’s a judgment," Aris whispered beside him.
The light inside the creature’s mouth turned pure white.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
A pillar of lightning descended.
It did not strike like normal lightning.
It erased.
The beam pierced straight through the city’s center, carving a glowing scar into the earth itself. Entire buildings, highways, and districts vanished the moment the light touched them—no explosion, no debris, just instant deletion.
Silence followed for half a second.
Then the shockwave arrived.
CRRAAAASH!!!
The surrounding city blocks were ripped apart as if reality itself had been peeled back. Glass, steel, and concrete disintegrated into glowing dust.
Francis instinctively stepped back.
His armor flared, reacting on its own.
Above them, the creature slowly turned its head to the left and released a pillar of lightning. A massive tower, hundreds of meters tall, vanished mid-fall as if it had never been built at all.
Every motion was casual.
Effortless.
Like it was sweeping dust off a table.
Back at the capitol.
Aris’s voice trembled.
"This is why I told them the Net is a bad idea," she said through clenched teeth.
"Now the real rulers of this world are finally making their move.
Francis glanced at her.
"Real rulers?"
Another beam of lightning tore across the city in the distance.
BOOOOM!
Entire districts vanished again, leaving behind a glowing emptiness where structures and lives had once existed.
Aris’s expression tightened.
"The Federation always thought they were in control," she continued.. "They’re not. They were just tolerated."
