Chapter 309 | Villain Invasion

Chapter 309: 309 | Villain Invasion

Finally!

The two kills he had needed had come almost as soon as the real outbreak began. Under different circumstances, he might have laughed out loud.

With 1000x he would have even more rewards but now wasn’t the time.

Another scream suddenly cut across the courtyard. Dexter dismissed the display.

He turned toward the restaurant. "We can’t stay here."

Cole glanced at the broken wall. "No."

The structure had lost too much of its protection. Even if Gridlock sealed every opening, they would be forced to spend more and more mana defending a building that the monsters could surround from all sides.

Beyond the courtyard stood one of the smaller training halls, its reinforced entrance open, and several instructors had already established a defensive position there, directing survivors inside while ranged fighters attacked from the upper windows. Dexter pointed.

"Move them there."

Gridlock followed his gaze. "About seventy meters."

"Can you cover the first half?"

"Yes."

"Then we clear the rest."

Cole nodded immediately. "Blitz, tell the instructors we’re bringing civilians. Bulwark, front. Spear, watch the roofs."

No one argued as the squad moved.

Far above the fighting, a man stood beneath the blackened sky.

He did not stand on a rooftop—there was nothing beneath his polished shoes as he simply floated in mid air, looking down at the Titan Training Center with an expression so empty that the destruction below seemed to bore him.

He wore a long gray coat over dark clothing, his hair combed back neatly, and at a distance he might have been mistaken for a government official inspecting a construction site.

Then he turned his head. His left eye was entirely white. There was no visible pupil, no iris—only a pale, lifeless surface that seemed to reflect none of the fires burning below.

Dravok, 9th on the continent’s most-wanted list.

There were villains whose names inspired fear because they commanded armies, others feared for the cities they had destroyed or the powerful heroes they had killed.

Dravok’s reputation was more personal. He only referee the weak. He peeled the flesh from his victims and wore it like clothing.

That single fact had carried his name farther than any official wanted notice. The white left eye was the detail survivors remembered him by.

Below him, wolves crossed the courtyard, Wind-thorn Bats wheeled between the buildings, and Green Lizardmen advanced through passages already littered with bodies.

Dravok watched without expression. His followers believed they understood the purpose of the attack—destroy the Titan Training Center, kill its heroes, make the Hero Association spend the next several weeks explaining how one of Stargate City’s most prominent training facilities had been turned into a slaughterhouse.

Those were their general orders. The second set of instructions had been more selective. Heroes with exceptional talents were to be captured alive. The young and the gifted, they could either turn them or extract their talent and gift it to their most talented members.

That objective had excited his subordinates more than the destruction.

But neither order was the real reason Dravok had come. His gaze shifted toward the blood spreading between the paving stones, and a thread of red mist rose from it—almost invisible.

The thread disappeared into the darkness overhead. Another followed from a dying wolf, then another from a villain crushed beneath an instructor’s attack.

Dravok’s white eye moved. All of them counted. Human, Monsters, heroes or villains.

Ten thousand souls and that was the minimum needed to awaken the Blood River Resonance.

The formation would gather them and the slaughter would feed it. And the people fighting most desperately to survive would help fill it with every enemy they killed. A faint smile touched his lips.

"BOOOOM!!!"

Suddenly, the highest tower in the training center shook as a figure rose from its roof.

The man was old, but there was nothing frail about him. His close-cropped hair was silver, his shoulders remained broad beneath a dark athletic shirt, and the muscles of his bare forearms were hard and lean. He wore ordinary training trousers and shoes that looked as though he had interrupted a workout to come outside. He looked down once—at the monsters, at the shattered buildings, at the bodies—and his expression darkened.

"Actually daring to attack this place?" His voice was calm, yet it carried across the entire compound. "Seems the Villain Association has started taking us for nothing."

Heroes below lifted their heads. "Director Rourke!" "The director’s here!"

For a moment, hope passed through the trapped defenders. Then Rourke turned toward the man floating beneath the shadow dome. He saw the gray coat, the motionless face, the entirely white left eye, and his expression changed.

"Dravok."

The name spread through the courtyard faster than the earlier cries of alarm. Dravok looked at him, and Rourke’s jaw tightened. "Shouldn’t you be hiding in the deepest pit of hell? Aren’t you afraid of the Hero Association hunting you to death?"

A cold chuckle escaped Dravok. "The Hero Association?" He tilted his head. "Hmph. They will be dealt with soon enough." Then he smiled. "You should worry about yourself. With the Nine Hell Chain Formation in place, forget about anyone coming in or going out."

Rourke glanced upward. For one brief instant, nine immense shapes became visible within the darkness—chains stretching across the dome in different directions, their links large enough to encircle entire buildings. Black symbols moved over their surfaces before the chains sank out of sight again. Rourke’s eyes narrowed, then he sneered.

"That’s fine by me." His aura rose, and the windows of the tower below him trembled. "I was worried you might flee." A pale light gathered around his fists. "Now I can kill one of the continent’s top nine wanted villains."

He moved. The air exploded behind him. Dravok raised one hand. Their first clash produced a boom that struck the buildings below like a physical blow, every window still intact rattling as clouds of dust erupted from cracked walls. Two Half-Step Transcendents collided above the Titan Training Center, Rourke’s fists burning with white light while Dravok’s hands moved through drifting shadows. Each strike shook the sky.

And beneath them, the killing continued.

Dexter heard the name—Dravok—and looked up only long enough to see the first collision. Then a wolf leaped toward the survivors, and his attention returned to the ground.

"Let’s keep on moving!"

[A/N: Sorry about yesterday. Something came up. My discord link is on my profile if you have any idea, complaints or anything you need to discuss, let’s meet there. Thank you so much]