I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 41: Alpha Squad (2)

The mass of red Eitra swelled in Inspector "Thorn’s" hand like a miniature sun, oozing the color of corrupted blood and radiating a heat that seared faces from meters away.

The air in Warehouse 42 was no longer just a gas to breathe; it had turned into blazing plasma, a viscous liquid boiling inside my lungs.

The corrugated metal walls surrounding us began to glow orange and groan under the immense pressure, and the raindrops leaking from the ceiling evaporated before they could touch the ground, leaving behind clouds of suffocating steam.

"I will crush you! I will burn this entire city and lay your ashes as a carpet for my masters!"

Thorn roared, his voice no longer human.

It sounded more like a jet engine tearing itself apart from within.

The black veins bulging across his body pulsed with madness, and his eyes had turned into pools of absolute darkness.

I lay in the mud, pressing my trembling hand against my chest, which had been torn open by Vargas’s acidic claws.

My flesh was slowly melting, white smoke rising from the wound, carrying the nauseating stench of roasted meat.

I was dying from the pain, my crimson eye watching the miniature apocalypse forming in that monster’s hand.

The shattered Alpha Squad stood facing inevitable death.

Damian, with his broken arm hanging uselessly, braced his heavy machine gun against his good knee, blood streaming from his nose and mixing with his tears.

"To the abyss with you, you monster!" Damian shouted in despair, unloading the rest of his ammunition into Thorn’s Eitra barrier with no effect.

Sia, bleeding from the poisoned shoulder wound, stood upright, gripping her only remaining dagger in a suicidal offensive stance.

And Eva... Eva did not flee the steel crane that was beginning to melt beneath her.

Instead, she steadied her sniper rifle and took a deep breath, waiting for the exact moment Thorn would release his attack to fire her final shot straight into his exposed eye.

Terrifying resolve. Blind wolves, with broken fangs, yet refusing to die on their knees.

Damn it... am I going to die with these idiots?! I thought, despair gnawing at me.

I tried to summon shadow Eitra to envelop my body, but Thorn’s overwhelming force was shredding any lower-rank magic in the area.

Then... Thorn brought his massive, destruction-filled hand down toward the concrete floor to unleash the explosion.

In that fraction of a moment between one heartbeat and the next, reality split apart.

There was no explosion.

There was no shockwave.

Instead, something happened that my mind refused to process.

The glowing red mass of Eitra—enough to erase an entire building from existence... went out.

Yes, it went out. Not like a candle being blown, but as if someone had dropped a tiny black hole into its core, swallowing every particle of energy and every photon of light in a millionth of a second.

The suffocating heat vanished instantly, replaced by an unbearable cold—a frost not of this world, but of the void of deep space.

Thorn froze, his hand still extended toward the ground, his black eyes blinking in utter confusion.

He looked at his empty palm, then at the air around him.

"W-What? Where is my power?!" Thorn stammered, the madness in his voice evaporating, replaced by primal fear.

Click... click...

The sound of calm, steady, confident footsteps echoed from the depths of the shadows behind Thorn.

From between the rusted containers, where nothing but darkness existed, a figure emerged.

A black-and-silver military coat fluttered lightly, short silver hair reflecting the faint lightning, and crimson eyes glowing with a cosmic cold that froze blood in veins.

"Burn my city?" Valisera spoke, her soft voice echoing like funeral bells.

"And using filthy Eitra borrowed from the Voliders’ insects to threaten my squad? What a rude... and pathetic guest."

She walked slowly, hands in her coat pockets, as if strolling through a park, utterly indifferent to the blood and corpses around her.

Thorn turned toward her.

His massive body trembled.

The aura emanating from Valisera was not crushing like Kaiser Dravion’s—it was an erasing aura.

It made anyone before her feel like their existence was a mistake she could wipe away with a simple gesture.

"V-Valisera?" Thorn staggered back, drool dripping from his slack jaw.

"You... how did you nullify my attack?! I carry the masters’ blood! I surpass Rank A!"

Valisera stopped five meters away.

She tilted her head slightly, looking at him with that familiar, sickening gaze—

the look of a scientist observing a cockroach that thinks itself an eagle.

"The masters’ blood?" Valisera chuckled softly, cold enough to raise goosebumps through my pain.

"You carry nothing but parasites in your veins, Thorn. Surpass Rank A? Perhaps in your diseased dreams. You’re just a pig fattened with stimulants before slaughter."

Thorn roared, pride and fear pushing him into his final mistake.

He lunged at her with his entire massive frame, both arms transformed into grotesque hammers of bone and blackened flesh.

"I’ll tear you apart, you arrogant bitch!"

Valisera did not remove her hands from her pockets.

She cast no spell.

She did not move even a millimeter.

When Thorn reached within two meters of her, at the peak of his assault—Valisera blinked. Just a slow blink.

KRAAAAAASH!

It wasn’t a single sound.

It was a symphony of bones shattering, flesh tearing, and blood vessels bursting.

The space around Thorn, within a three-meter radius, suddenly compressed inward with the crushing force of thousands of tons.

Gravity didn’t just pull him down—it squeezed him.

I saw Thorn’s massive body—flying just a second ago—halt midair as if hitting an invisible titanium wall.

Then it began to collapse inward. His ribcage caved with a sickening crack, his lungs burst, and a fountain of thick blood and liquefied organs erupted from his mouth and nose.

His long bones folded at impossible angles, piercing through his armored flesh like filthy white shards.

"AAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!"

His scream was not human. Not even animal.

It was the pure sound of hellish agony.

His deformed body—now a near-cubic mass of crushed flesh and bone—fell onto the concrete floor, which sank under its weight and the overwhelming gravity.

The entire warehouse trembled.

The silence that followed was more terrifying than the screams.

Thorn was still alive.

With unmatched sadistic precision, Valisera had left his brain intact and his heart barely beating, forcing him to experience every second of this absolute physical torment.

He lay in the crater, eyes bulging, staring at her in pleading horror, blood-frothed foam bubbling from his shattered mouth.

"Rank A?" Valisera whispered, looking down with disgust. "Just dust."

In the dark corner, Captain "Miller" had witnessed his leader’s fate.

The man who had been fighting Sia fiercely lost every ounce of courage.

He dropped his poisoned dagger and turned to run toward the warehouse’s rear exit at full speed.

Valisera slowly raised her gaze toward the fleeing Miller.

She pulled her right hand from her pocket, lifted her index finger, and drew a tiny horizontal line in the air.

Swoooosh!

A nearly invisible black line shot forward at light speed—a miniature spatial tear.

Miller ran... then suddenly stumbled.

His upper body fell forward, while his lower half continued running for two more steps before collapsing!

"Ghh—?!" Miller screamed, looking down to find his torso cleanly severed in half, the cut so precise it didn’t bleed immediately due to spatial friction heat.

He had been sliced like butter with a heated wire.

His upper half crawled in the mud, screaming and crying, trying to hold in his spilling entrails.

Valisera looked at the chaos and sighed in genuine annoyance.

"How I hate messes in my missions. You really should learn to clean up after yourselves."

With a circular motion of her hand, she opened two dark-purple spatial rifts:

one beneath what remained of Thorn, and another beneath Miller’s bisected halves.

"To the Void Cells," she said coldly. "Where we can speak calmly... without the annoyance of rain."

The bodies fell into the rifts, which closed instantly, leaving nothing behind but vast pools of blood.

She had crushed them, captured them, all in under thirty seconds—before a single interrogation question was asked.

Valisera turned toward Alpha Squad.

The scene was dramatic.

Damian sat on the ground, clutching his machine gun, crying silently from shock and adrenaline collapse.

Sia leaned against a container, breathing heavily, pressing her poisoned wound.

Eva descended slowly from the crane, her face pale as death, her black eyes filled with pure dread toward her commander.

"Oh, don’t cry like children," Valisera said with a sly smile, stepping carefully between the blood pools.

"You did well... for an incomplete squad fighting modified monsters. You held on... almost. I’m proud of you."

Her words carried praise laced with mockery, but in intelligence circles, Valisera’s acknowledgment was a true badge of honor.

Then... she stopped, and turned toward my hiding place.

I lay in the mud beside a torn barrel.

My shirt was shredded, my chest burning from the acid of Vargas’s claws.

Blood covered my face and body, and I struggled to breathe.

Valisera walked toward me and stood over me, looking down.

"Oh," she said, feigning surprise.

"The new recruit didn’t die? What a divine miracle. I thought Vargas had turned you into dog food."

I raised my trembling hand toward her, my crimson eye filled with tears of pain—this time completely real.

"M-Ma’am Commander..." I coughed, spitting real blood.

"Help... I’m dying... the acid is eating my flesh..."

Inside, I screamed: You sadistic bitch! Throw me a healing vial before my ribcage actually melts!

Valisera bent slightly, her beautiful face nearing my mud-covered one.

She looked directly into my eyes, and in that brief moment—when no one from Alpha Squad could see—

the subtle wink she had given me before turned into a small, cold, appreciative smile.

(Good job, hunting dog), her eyes clearly said.

She had seen how I crippled Vargas and hindered Miller in the shadows, and she knew I had saved her squad without exposing my abilities.

But she immediately straightened, returning to her cold commander persona.

"Damian!" she called out sharply.

"Stop crying and come drag this trash out. Give him a Rank C antidote dose and throw him into one of the FBI ambulances arriving in a minute. It seems we’ll have to keep him... his eavesdropping instincts were correct this time."

Damian stood with difficulty and limped toward me.

He looked at me, then at Vargas’s shattered corpse beside me.

He sighed and extended his good hand to help me up.

"Come on, kid..." Damian said in a tired voice, carrying—for the first time—something like respect or genuine pity.

"You survived a real hell today. Seems your luck rivals that of demons."

I leaned on his shoulder, groaning from both fake and real pain.

I looked at Eva tending to Sia’s wound, and at Valisera reporting to high command about the "successful mission and the traitors’ deaths while resisting arrest."

I smiled faintly as I dragged my feet through the mud.

The puppet show had succeeded perfectly.

Alpha Squad had accepted my presence—even if only as a miserable good-luck charm.

The traitors were captured and would be squeezed for every last drop of information.

And the Black Joker?

He had just gained full, unrestricted access to the deepest secrets of the magical intelligence agency...

under the protection of the most powerful—and most dangerous—demon in Elysium.