From Titan Corporation to the Empire of Man

Chapter 666 "Found you."

Inside the sealed room, screams echoed one after another.

The old man, possessed by a demon, or rather, the body that once belonged to the old man, was slowly raising his twisted and deformed arm.

A ghostly blue flame flowed from its fingertips, coiling around the bodies of the nearest nobles as if they were alive.

The flames had no real temperature, yet they caused the victims to scream in agony. Their skin rapidly dried and carbonized in the blue flames, eventually turning into grayish-white dust that drifted away.

The survivors who were not touched by the flames, however, experienced a different kind of extreme pain.

The temperature inside the sealed room plummeted below freezing, their breath condensed into frost in the air, and their skin was quickly covered with a thin layer of ice.

An obese nobleman watched in horror as his fingers began to turn blue and necrotize, the joints cracking softly from the freezing.

"Window! Window!"

The young nobleman, who had long been turned by the investigation department and abandoned the darkness for the light, suddenly shouted.

His gaze was fixed on the narrow stained-glass window above the secret room, which seemed to be the only exit from the room and the only way out at this moment.

Without the slightest hesitation, he grabbed a heavy statue beside him and threw it with all his might toward the window.

With a sharp "crash," shards of colored glass rained down.

Climbing the rickety steps of the display shelf, the young nobleman scrambled towards the gap using both hands and feet.

His palms were cut and bleeding from the shards of glass, but he felt no pain. Extreme fear had pushed his body to the limit of its survival instinct.

When he scrambled out of the window and tumbled onto the lawn of the manor, the sight before him made him feel as if he had fallen into an ice cave.

The entire manor has become a living hell.

The servants twisted their bodies in bizarre postures; some crawled with their limbs reversed, while others had their heads rotated a full circle but were still moving.

Disgusting pustules appeared on their skin, bursting and oozing foul-smelling black blood.

Even more terrifying were the bodyguards, most of whom had turned into half-human, half-bird monsters, with thick saliva dripping from their beak-like mouths.

"Young Master!"

Several bodyguards who had not yet mutated suddenly rushed out of the bushes.

Their faces were deathly pale, their eyes filled with terror, but at least they still retained their human form.

Upon seeing the young nobleman, they swarmed around him as if grasping at a straw.

“Those things…suddenly…” a bodyguard stammered, pointing behind him.

Before the words were finished, a bird-headed, human-bodied monster pounced out of the shadows.

Its wings were still adorned with tattered pieces of its uniform, and its sharp claws ripped open the throat of a bodyguard. Blood splattered onto the young nobleman's face, and the warm touch instantly brought him to his senses.

"Shoot! Shoot quickly!"

The remaining bodyguards pulled out their weapons and opened fire wildly.

The bullet pierced the monster's body, but only made it stagger slightly. Moreover, what flowed from the bullet hole was not blood, but wriggling black maggots.

"It's no use running! Run!"

The young nobleman turned and rushed toward the helipad.

His lungs burned with pain, but his legs felt as heavy as lead. Behind him, he heard the screams of his bodyguards and the sound of bones breaking, but he dared not look back and could only run forward desperately.

On the helipad, several hovercraft were quietly moored.

The young noblemen rushed into their hovercraft, their fingers trembling as they entered the activation code.

"Hurry up! Hurry up!"

He turned back in despair and found the three surviving bodyguards fighting and retreating.

One of them was suddenly grabbed by the ankle by a black tentacle that emerged from the ground and dragged underground, while the other two took the opportunity to jump onto the hovercraft.

Just then, a ghostly blue light suddenly illuminated the boundary of the entire manor.

The light, like a living thing, slowly contracted inward, causing vegetation to wither and buildings to decay wherever it passed.

A servant who couldn't escape was swept by the light screen and instantly turned into a dried-up corpse. He then mysteriously "resurrected" and joined the ranks of monsters.

"Start it!"

The young nobleman slammed his fist on the control panel.

The hovercraft's engine finally roared to life, and all its devices began to operate. When the blue light screen was less than ten meters away from them, the hovercraft suddenly took off.

The light curtain suddenly accelerated as if it were consciously trying to catch up with the stern of the boat.

Just when things were at their most critical, the hovercraft's thrusters reached maximum power, and it narrowly escaped the encirclement of the light curtain.

Looking back through the "car window," the young nobleman saw that the entire manor was already enveloped in a huge blue cocoon of light.

The surface of the cocoon kept bulging and sinking, as if something was being nurtured inside.

Even more terrifying, he vaguely saw a huge human face emerge from the cocoon of light—the face still vaguely resembled the outline of an old man, but it was distorted beyond recognition.

The hovercraft rocked violently as it hurtled toward the city of Augustegrad.

The young nobleman slumped in his chair, only then realizing that his clothes were soaked with cold sweat. He trembled as he reached for his chest, and the surveillance camera provided by the Imperial Investigation Department became his lifeline.

"Call for help," his voice was hoarse beyond recognition, "Call for help immediately."

Behind them, the blue cocoon of light began to pulsate rhythmically, like the heart of some enormous creature.

With each jump, the area of ​​the light cocoon expands outward a little.
However, the man-eating shark raiders were already on high alert in the streets surrounding the manor.

Their gray power armor was coated with a special light-absorbing coating, making them almost blend into the surrounding shadows in the night.

The visor of the tactical helmet flickered with a dim red light, and the built-in detectors were alarming wildly, with readings constantly fluctuating in the "high-risk" zone.

The lead soldier knelt behind a tree, his thick fingers gently tapping the safety catch on his explosive rifle.

Not far away, the warriors of the Flame Lizards occupied the high ground.

Their dark green power armor was covered with camouflage netting, and the flame emblems on their shoulder armor were faintly visible in the moonlight.

The heavy weapons team had already set up the plasma incineration cannon; the slightly glowing energy storage ring at the muzzle indicated that the weapon had been charged to a critical state.

A technical sergeant was using a robotic arm to adjust a large scope, locking the pulsating blue cocoon of light in the center of the manor onto the crosshairs.

"Civilian evacuation complete." A metallic voice came through the communication channel. "The area within a three-kilometer radius is now clear."

Long before nightfall, the man-eating sharks and fire lizards, having been notified by the investigation department, secretly evacuated the civilians around the manor.

Even if those nobles who were bewitched by chaos performed some kind of sacrificial ritual, they could minimize civilian casualties.

One of the captains of the Man-Eating Shark, a veteran whose left eye had been replaced with a prosthetic, nodded slightly after hearing the report transmitted via the communication system.

Beneath the helmet, the prosthetic eye of this veteran shark-like man-eating soldier glowed red, allowing him to directly perceive psionic fluctuations.

At this moment, in his field of vision, the entire manor was enveloped by some kind of viscous subspace energy, which writhed like living things, occasionally protruding into the shapes of painful human faces.

"Stay alert." His voice carried through the channel to every soldier and comrade. "Wait for Lady Athena to arrive—"

Crack—crash—!

Before the words were finished, a sharp sound like shattering glass suddenly came from the center of the manor.

Countless fine cracks appeared on the surface of the blue cocoon, and a dazzling, eerie light burst forth from the cracks.

Immediately afterwards, the entire cocoon of light seemed to be torn apart and exploded by an invisible hand, turning into a shower of blue fire rain that filled the sky.

The original location of the manor has been transformed into a distorted portal with a diameter of nearly 100 meters.

The edges of the portal writhed irregularly, the frame covered with pulsating, blood vessel-like tissue, and a swirling chaotic vortex at its center. "Disgusting heretics," a young man-eating shark muttered under his breath.

The next second, the nightmare began.

Countless bird-headed, human-bodied demons swarmed out of the portal.

Their bodies were a sickly grayish-blue, their beaks dripped with corrosive mucus, and their wings were covered not with feathers but with wriggling tentacles.

What's most terrifying are their eyes; they have no pupils, only constantly shifting chaotic symbols.

"For the Emperor!"

Captain Shark roared and was the first to rush out of cover.

Clang—clang—clang—!
His explosive gun spat out scorching flames, and the first volley blasted the heads of three demons into pieces.

The other warriors followed closely behind, their gray figures surging towards the demon horde like a tide.

Buzz—~Sizzle—Sizzle—!

The roar of the power sword, chainsaw sword, and power claws instantly drowned out the demon's screams.

The fire lizards maintained a calm firing formation.

Ri~咻——! !

The plasma incineration cannon roared deafeningly, and azure energy spheres ripped through the night sky, exploding into deadly plasma clouds among the demon horde.

The technical sergeants even built a heavy-duty automatic bolt-action turret, with an automatic target acquisition system that ensured every bullet accurately hit the demon's vitals.

In the air, the young nobleman and his two bodyguards inside the hovercraft were completely stunned.

Through the car window, they saw the shark warriors moving across the battlefield at superhuman speed.

A warrior was surrounded by five demons at the same time, but he just sneered and swept his power claws across, cutting the demons in half.

Another warrior even grabbed the charging demon with his bare hands and twisted its bird head off its neck. Black blood splattered onto his power armor, which was immediately vaporized by the armor's energy shield, making a hissing sound.

"What...what are those?"

A bodyguard stammered, the submachine gun in his hand nowhere to be seen.

"."

The young nobleman did not answer.

His gaze was drawn to the figure in the center of the battlefield.

That was Captain Shark, with a prosthetic eye, his power armor covered in trophies made of teeth. After emptying the first magazine of his bolter, he freed his hands to wield a massive power axe.

What's most striking is his fighting style; its violence makes him seem even more "demon-like" than a demon himself.

Furthermore, whenever the axe blade strikes a demon, the axe blade's plasma field lights up with golden light, and the struck demon melts like a wax figure.

"Sacred. For the Emperor," the young nobleman murmured, then suddenly understood. "They are using their faith to fight those monsters."

Just then, the portal suddenly contracted violently, and then spewed out even denser subspace energy.

A dozen monsters, three times the size of ordinary demons, strode out, wielding greatswords that burned with blue flames, leaving corrosive footprints on the ground with each step.

Captain Shark immediately changed tactics, and the soldiers quickly formed a wedge formation.

"Flaming Lizard!" he roared into the comms, "Saturation attack!"

Ri~Whoosh—Whoosh—!
Dozens of plasma cannonballs struck the giant demons simultaneously, the explosions illuminating the night sky as if it were daytime.

However, when the smoke cleared, the demons only staggered slightly before their melted bodies quickly regenerated.

"Damn it!" the captain spat, just about to order melee combat—

A golden light suddenly descended from the sky.

Athena appeared in the center of the battlefield, and her appearance caused the surrounding air to tremble.

Without a word, the Goddess of War raised her spear, and the holy light emanating from its tip pierced the portal like a sharp sword. The vascular tissue on the portal frame immediately withered and fell off, and the vortex inside the portal began to twist and distort erratically.

"Now!" Her clear, cold voice echoed throughout the battlefield, "Purify them!"

With this command given, hundreds of golden rays streaked across the night sky like meteors—

More than a hundred Greek demigods descended upon the battlefield. These warriors, clad in classical armor, each exuded a suffocating aura. Their weapons were engraved with Chinese characters for attacking Chaos, and each swing caused the surrounding warp energy to emit painful screams.

The lesser gods at the front raised round shields covered with inscriptions, forming an insurmountable wall of light.

The demons' claws struck the shield and instantly melted away like ice and snow meeting fire.

The lesser gods in the back row hurled spears crackling with lightning, each strike piercing the bodies of several demons and pinning them to the burning earth.

The dozen or so giant demons roared deafeningly and charged towards the demigod formation, brandishing their blue-flame greatswords.

But Athena merely glanced at her coldly and lightly tapped the air with her spear.

boom----! !

A pure golden psionic energy swept across like a tsunami, and the giant demons caught in the blast were reduced to scattered black ash before they could even scream.

Then, Athena suddenly transformed into a golden light and rushed into the densest part of the demon horde.

Her left hand shot out like lightning, precisely grabbing a retreating figure—

It was the body of the old man possessed by a demon.

At this moment, the body was twisted beyond recognition, its skin covered with wriggling tumors, and arthropod-like appendages extending from its spine, but the face still vaguely retained the outline of an old man.

“I’ve found you.” Athena’s voice was icy.

With a flick of her right hand, a stone box engraved with runes appeared from the void.

The moment the box was opened, the wails of millions of sinful souls echoed from within.

Roar--! ! !
The possessed old man struggled frantically, but could only watch helplessly as he was stuffed into this specially made cage.

"Dare to target my child?" Athena sealed the box, lightly tapping the surface with her fingertip. "Then you will experience what despair truly is."

Countless golden chains lit up inside the stone box, each one piercing the prisoner's spirit.

This body possessed by the demon will not be destroyed immediately, but will be taken back to the main universe and personally cast into the deepest realm of hell by the Emperor.

There, time has no meaning, and suffering is endless.

Not far away, Nova, Stone, and the others who had just arrived at the battlefield stood frozen in place.

Data streams swept across Nova's nanotech combat suit visor like a torrential downpour.

As she watched the Greek minor gods purify dozens of demons with a wave of their hands, and witnessed Athena's power to incinerate a giant demon with a single glance, she suddenly realized how superficial her previous understanding of "psychic energy" had been.

"This is," Nova's voice was a little dry, "the real war of the gods?"

Her words were interrupted by the sudden sound of a bugle.

In the center of the battlefield, Athena raised her spear high, and all the Greek minor gods stopped moving at the same time.

The goddess's gaze fell upon the collapsing portal, and a miniature sun-like sphere of light condensed at the tip of her spear.

The next moment, the ball of light roared out, engulfing the remaining portal and all the demons.

There was no explosion, no shockwave, only pure light washing over everything.

When the light faded, the entire manor had returned to its original state.

It was as if the nightmare had never happened; only the stone box beside Athena emitted a faint, cold light, proving the reality of this divine punishment.
(End of this chapter)