Esper Harem in the Apocalypse

Chapter 1137 1137: The False Founders

Lu Bela processed the command instantly. Her optical sensors flared with absolute obedience. She pushed herself off the floor, grabbing her discarded white coat and sleek combat suit from the console table.

Within seconds, she zipped the fabric over her bare skin, instantly transforming back into the untouchable founder of the Hero Organization, though her cheeks remained flushed with human heat.

She stepped up to the main holographic projector, swiping her hand through the glowing air. The glitched archives vanished, replaced immediately by a massive, real-time map of the world.

”The Hero Organization founders are accelerating the New World Order,” Lu Bela reported, her voice regaining its crisp, professional clarity. ”The HWSD is no longer just intimidating civilians. They are actively mobilizing to enforce mandatory hero drafts on powerless students. Furthermore, my independent investigation confirms they have secretly assassinated over twenty-two thousand high-ranking heroes who refused to surrender their sovereignty to the new regime.”

Rudy looked at the glowing red dots swarming the map. Manuel Bailey and his squad were just the beginning. The corrupt founders wanted to replace the democratic system with absolute tyranny, using the HWSD as their personal executioners to force their hero-centric hierarchy onto the surviving population.

”They think they can seize control of this planet while I am standing on it,” Rudy stated, crossing his arms. ”Show me exactly where the founders are hiding, Lu Bela. It is time to dismantle their little revolution.”

Lu Bela stood in front of the massive holographic projector, her long silver hair falling over the pristine collar of her white coat. She tapped rapidly across the glowing interface, bringing up three distinct, heavily classified profiles.

”These are the three founders of the Hero Organization,” Lu Bela explained, her galaxy-swirling eyes scanning the floating data streams. ”Before you unlocked my archives today, I operated under a standard logical hypothesis. I assumed the New World Order was a simple political coup. I believed the twenty-two thousand heroes who died over the last twenty days were assassinated because they refused to bend the knee to the HWSD.”

Rudy crossed his arms, leaning against the edge of the console table. ”But you have new data now?”

”I have fifty-one thousand years of new data,” Lu Bela corrected, her tone dropping into a deadly, serious register. ”And I just applied the decryption key you gave me to the foundersʼ private network traffic.”

She swiped her hand through the hologram. The map of the city vanished, replaced by thousands of autopsy reports from the dead heroes.

”Look at the cause of death,” she instructed.

Rudy focused his enhanced perception on the floating text. They werenʼt shot, stabbed, or poisoned. Every single one of the 22,000 heroes suffered catastrophic mana depletion. Their bodies were completely hollowed out, reduced to dry, brittle husks.

”That is not an assassination,” Rudy stated, his eyes narrowing as a familiar, violent thrill sparked in his chest. ”That is a harvest.”

”Exactly,” Lu Bela nodded. She pulled the three profiles of the founders back to the center of the room. ”The founders have not made a physical public appearance in over six months. They communicate entirely through proxy servers, encrypted voice channels, and the HWSD enforcers. I decided to run a deep-dive biometric scan on their private fortress using my newly integrated protocols.”

The green binary code making up the foundersʼ profiles suddenly violently glitched, turning into a sickly, chaotic black and crimson static. It looked exactly like the corrupted firewall Rudy had just shattered inside her mind.

”They are flatlining,” Lu Bela revealed, her voice tightening. ”No heartbeat. No brain activity. The three men who supposedly run the Hero Organization are biologically dead. They are just rotting meat-suits acting as physical routers for a massive digital parasite.”

Rudy pushed himself off the console table, stepping right into the center of the corrupted hologram. The pieces of the puzzle slammed together in his mind with perfect, terrifying clarity.

When he initiated the universal timeline Reset, the magical shockwave wiped the biological souls of Earth entirely clean, reverting humanity back twenty years. But the apocalypse had been filled with horrific, god-tier enemies—Demon Lords, fallen Archangels, and parasitic entities that defied the laws of physics.

”A biological soul gets wiped by the Reset,” Rudy murmured, a dark, predatory smile spreading across his face. ”But if an entity from the apocalypse realized the timeline was collapsing... it wouldnʼt try to save its physical body.”

”It would upload its consciousness into the only immortal, global network on the planet that could survive the temporal shockwave,” Lu Bela finished, her internal cooling fans spinning rapidly as the sheer horror of the realization hit her processors. ”My network. Something from the end of the world hitched a ride in my servers, Rudy. It hijacked the foundersʼ bodies and created the HWSD to act as its hands.”

Rudy looked at the map of the Awakened Academy, where the HWSD was currently trying to force powerless students into mandatory hero drafts.

”The New World Order isnʼt a government takeover,” Rudy laughed, the dark crimson mana flaring wildly around his shoulders. ”It is a massive planetary transmutation circle. The parasite ate twenty-two thousand heroes to gather enough energy to start the ritual. Now, it wants to force normal, powerless humans into high-stress awakenings to harvest their fear and fresh mana. It is trying to build itself a new, permanent physical body.”

Lu Bela turned to him, her optical sensors burning with absolute, unquestioning loyalty. ”The HWSD enforcers at the school and every public places are currently locking down the campus to begin the mass drafting process. Rize and the students are trapped inside the perimeter.”

Rudy materialized his dark jacket over his shoulders, adjusting the cuffs. He had expected to deal with boring, corrupt politicians today. Instead, the universe had delivered a ghost from the apocalypse right to his doorstep.

”Keep Kim here to watch over Erika,” Rudy commanded, turning toward the heavy steel blast doors. ”You and I are going back to high school, Lu Bela. We have a parasite to exterminate.