Apocalypse: becoming the hidden Ruler[English]

BOOM.

A violent shockwave tore through the area. Several half-open metal containers exploded outward, shattering into flying shards. Amid the chaos, six jet-black metal figures unfolded themselves and rose to their feet.

They were faceless. Cold. Inhuman.

“What the hell are those things?!” Nigel shouted, a chill running down his spine as a suffocating pressure radiated from them.

“Everyone, get back!” Ignacio roared, his face draining of color.

The moment he saw the puppets activate, he knew it was over. The two idiots must have forgotten to shut them down after calibration.

And now—all of them were live.

Before his warning even finished, one puppet soldier stepped forward and threw a punch at the two nearest engineers.

They were only Level Two Awakeners.

A direct hit would kill them.

Whoosh!

Axel and Terrence vanished at the same time.

In the next instant, they appeared in front of the engineers, both fists raised.

BANG!

The collision cracked the ground like shattered glass.

“Why are you still standing there?! Run!” Lilith screamed.

The engineers snapped out of it and fled in blind panic.

“Notify Mr. Isidore! Now!” Ignacio shouted, his voice shaking.

His heart was pounding. These kids weren’t ordinary guests—every single one of them had terrifying backing. If even one of them died here…

He’d be finished.

BOOM!

Another deafening impact rang out as Axel clashed head-on with two charging puppet soldiers.

His face flushed crimson.

It felt like getting hit by a runaway train.

Axel was launched backward, skidding across the ground before slamming into the dirt.

“Those things are insanely strong!” he shouted, forcing himself upright.

Thanks to his physique, his injuries were minor—but his blood and qi churned violently, leaving his chest tight and nauseous.

“Doesn’t matter what they are—subdue them first!” Terrence barked.

He barely finished speaking—

BOOM!

Terrence was blasted away as well, hurled hundreds of meters across the testing ground, carving a deep trench into the soil.

“What the fuck is that thing?!” Nigel’s eyes went wide in terror.

“Transform!”

He aborted his charge and spun around. With each step, his body swelled. His clothes shredded apart as stone-like skin spread across him.

In seconds, he became a towering granite giant—over five meters tall.

Even so, one puppet soldier closed in and punched him square in the waist.

BANG!

Nigel screamed as he was sent rolling several meters away. He staggered back to his feet—

And kept running.

Swish!

A flurry of razor-sharp impacts rang out as Lilith’s Spatial Killing Blades tore through the air and slammed into one of the puppet soldiers.

These were attacks that could cut Axel open—and yet, against the puppet, they only carved shallow grooves across its pitch-black surface. The metal barely deformed. Its movements didn’t slow in the slightest.

Lilith’s pupils shrank.

In that instant of hesitation, another puppet soldier appeared behind her and smashed its fist down onto her shoulder.

“Ghk—!”

Blood sprayed from Lilith’s mouth as her body was hurled downward like a meteor.

She crashed straight into a massive crater—five or six meters wide, its depth impossible to see. A split second later, the puppet soldier followed her in, plunging into the darkness after her.

“This—!” Axel’s expression changed instantly.

The craftsman wasn’t even here yet. Whatever this was, it had gone completely out of control.

Now wasn’t the time to hold back.

If this kept up, Lilith would be the first to die.

“Lilith, hang on—I’m coming!” Axel shouted, already preparing to move.

Before he could take a step, her furious voice roared up from the depths of the pit.

“Don’t you dare! I’ll tear this thing apart with my own hands!”

Her voice echoed from nearly a hundred meters below.

Axel’s jaw tightened. He was worried—but he didn’t have the luxury to help.

Terrence was already wounded and furious. Flames erupted around him as Burning in Flames activated again, and he charged one of the puppet soldiers head-on.

Nigel was getting beaten like a drum, but his transformation time had extended long enough for his stone giant form to stabilize. He was being chased, screaming like hell, but at least his life wasn’t in immediate danger.

Sergio and Kenneth weren’t so lucky.

Sergio’s Wind Spirit talent excelled at suppression and interference, not raw destruction. His attacks couldn’t even scratch the puppet soldier’s surface.

Kenneth’s mechanical army had fully deployed—but against something tougher than Axel himself, their firepower was laughably ineffective.

Both of them were already injured, coughing up mouthfuls of blood.

“Fuck it—kill them!” Axel’s Force surged.

The Cloud-Chasing Boots activated, and he vanished in a blur. In the next instant, he grabbed Sergio with one hand and Kenneth with the other, yanking them behind him.

Return to Origin—activate.

“Mr. Craftsman wouldn’t deliberately kill us,” Sergio said, wiping blood from his mouth as he summoned turbulent winds to interfere with a puppet soldier’s movements. “He hasn’t shown himself yet. These might be replicas—test units based on the Puppet Formation.”

“That makes sense,” Axel replied, eyes locked on the three puppet soldiers advancing again. “Their defenses are absurd. You and Kenneth can’t break through them head-on.”

He paused briefly.

“Lilith should be safe for now.”

“This round, we need Terrence,” Axel said firmly. “I’ve got a plan—but I need you two to cooperate.”

“Each of you hold one down. Don’t try to kill it—just stall.”

“The rest is on Terrence and me.”

Before they could respond, Axel stomped the ground and launched himself forward like a cannonball, crashing straight into the three puppet soldiers.

The Soul Devouring Blade slid into his hand.

The moment it was fully exposed, a dense, vicious aura exploded outward. Without the animal hide concealing it, the blade’s true form radiated malice. Crimson veins pulsed along the white metal like living blood.

Sergio’s pupils contracted.

“What a tyrannical weapon…”

Bang!

Three fists struck Axel simultaneously.

The first shattered the protective layer formed by Return to Origin. Axel blocked the other two head-on, boots grinding into the earth as he held his ground.

“Now!” he barked.

Sergio reacted instantly. Incantations poured from his lips as compressed whirlwinds converged, forming a violent funnel that lifted the leftmost puppet soldier off the ground and hurled it skyward.

At the same time, Kenneth’s mechanical army surged forward like a metal tide, swarming the puppet soldier on the right.

One punch crushed a dozen machines at once—oil, gears, and fragments exploding everywhere—but the onslaught slowed it down.

“Terrence!” Axel shouted. “Let it hit you! You’re not crippled yet!”

Terrence froze for half a second—then golden flames erupted around his body once more.

“Axel, if I die, I’m haunting you!” he roared.

Activating Burning in Flames twice pushed him into a terrifying state—stronger, faster, but one mistake away from death.

“Just do it!” Axel snapped.

He swung the Soul Devouring Blade in a brutal arc. Force surged, a fire spirit’s power flooding the weapon, wrapping it in a violent white-and-crimson glow.

Swoosh!

The blade slammed down on the puppet soldier in front of him.

The sheer weight of the weapon, combined with the explosive Force behind it, smashed the puppet into the ground.

Metal screamed.

A gash more than ten centimeters long split open across the puppet’s head.

“Is that Axel?”

From a distance, Master Craftsman Isidore stood beside Kason, both of them watching the chaotic battlefield unfold.

“He really is something,” Isidore muttered.

He had intended to stop the fight the moment things went out of control. But after seeing Axel pull Sergio and Kenneth out of danger without hesitation, Isidore changed his mind.

He couldn’t design a machine capable of countering Puppet Formation at a lower cost. His only remaining hope lay with the Awakened—especially the challenge team composed of aristocratic scions like Sergio.

Mr. Instrument King had made one rule very clear: each person was allowed only one official challenge.

This wasn’t a formal challenge. It was an accident.

But accidents could still teach valuable lessons.