I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 58: The Hunting Dogs (2)

The battle was brutal. Aiden was firing randomly, but his illusions were useful.

He created dozens of fake copies of us, causing the steel dogs to leap at empty air, crashing into walls or attacking each other stupidly, allowing Damian to harvest them.

As for Valisera... she stood in the middle.

Her hands in her pockets. She did not move.

She watched them fight as if she were evaluating students in a final exam.

She was pale, yes, but the aura surrounding her was enough to make the steel dogs instinctively avoid her, preferring to attack the weaker members of the squad.

It seemed like we were winning.

Alpha Squad was proving why it was the elite.

But... Elysium does not grant free victories.

Suddenly, the ground beneath our feet shook.

A violent tremor that made Zack fall onto his backside in the mud as he screamed.

From the end of the alley, from within the dense shadows and rain, something appeared that made the entire squad’s breath stop.

It was not a dog. It was an "Alpha."

An enlarged, enhanced, and indescribably terrifying version of the steel hunting dogs.

It was the size of a garbage truck.

Its body was covered in plates of black titanium, not exposed muscle.

Its limbs bore massive mechanical saws instead of blades.

And worst of all... it radiated a red ether aura that easily surpassed A+ rank!

"My God..." Eva whispered from atop the ladder, her rifle trembling for the first time.

"That... that’s an S- rank monster! They sent an extermination-class commander!"

The alpha dog let out a mechanical roar that unleashed a shockwave, shattering the windows of the surrounding buildings.

Then... it did not attack Damian. It did not attack Sia.

It did not attack Eva.

It ignored them completely and charged forward with speed that contradicted its massive size, smashing through trash containers and walls in its path... straight toward the back of the alley.

Straight toward... Zack, Aiden, and me!

"Aaaaaaaah!" Zack screamed in a hysterical, high-pitched voice as he crawled backward in the mud like a terrified crab, throwing his small ether shock device at the monster. It struck the titanium armor like a fly and fell uselessly.

Aiden froze in place. His submachine gun fell from his hand, and urine began to seep into his pants.

He realized his illusions would not work against the sensors of an S- rank monster.

The alpha dog raised its claw, fitted with a massive spinning saw, preparing to split Aiden and Zack in half with a single strike.

Damian was too far.

Eva was reloading her sniper rifle—she wouldn’t make it.

Sia was engaged with two smaller dogs.

Valisera stood watching, as if waiting to see whether we would survive or be crushed.

If Zack died, we would lose shelter, logistics, and the only one with the hospital map.

If Aiden died, we would lose our camouflage.

I had no choice.

I could not continue playing the coward recruit.

I was hiding behind the broken container beside them. Rain lashed against my cracked black mask.

I focused every ounce of concentration in my mind.

I opened my crimson eyes wide, my pupils shrinking to lock onto a single point.

The shadow of the massive alpha dog.

The monster stood under flashes of lightning and dim streetlights, casting a huge, black, stretched shadow across the wet asphalt... almost reaching my feet.

Shadow Rending... S- rank...

I whispered in my mind and summoned the "Forgotten Blade."

I did not fully draw it from the spacetime rift so they wouldn’t see the legendary sword—that would expose everything.

Instead, I manifested only its "phantom."

A blade of pure black ether extended from my right hand beneath my coat, hidden in the darkness.

As the alpha dog brought its saw down to tear Zack and Aiden apart...

I thrust my right hand forward and drove the black ether blade, with all my desperation, strength, and hatred... into the center of the monster’s shadow on the ground!

Swoooooosh!

A strange, unnatural sound—like the fabric of space itself tearing—echoed from the ground.

The moment I stabbed the shadow, the S- rank skill responded with overwhelming force.

"Grrrr... AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

The alpha dog, untouched by any physical weapon, armored in anti-magic titanium... froze mid-strike, its saw stopping just centimeters from Zack’s tearful face.

Its red sensors widened, blinking hysterically. Its massive body convulsed violently.

Then...

From the center of its armored chest, from the inside out... a deep, black fissure split open!

SPLOORT! KRAAAAAASH!

The massive, modified human organs inside the dog—protected by layers of steel—were literally torn in half! Black blood, green acid, and burning oil exploded from within its body like a hellish fountain, completely covering Zack and Aiden in a disgusting, viscous sludge!

The massive S- rank monster collapsed onto its metallic knees, its chest split open in two without a scratch on its outer armor, its shredded insides spilling onto the asphalt.

It died in a single second. In a single strike. In total silence, broken only by the thud of its enormous corpse hitting the mud.

I breathed heavily. I quickly withdrew the phantom of the Forgotten Blade back into the spacetime rift, pulling my hand under my coat, pretending to tremble and crawl backward as if in shock.

"W-what happened?" Aiden whispered, his eyes tightly shut, expecting to have been split in half.

He slowly opened them, staring at the massive corpse before him, its entrails covering him.

Zack was screaming hysterically, wiping black blood from his face, his left eye twitching at lightning speed.

"It’s dead! I swear it’s dead! How?! D-did you do this, Valisera?!"

Zack, Aiden, and Damian all looked toward Valisera.

Valisera still stood in the middle.

Her hands in her pockets.

But her crimson eyes... were not looking at the massive corpse.

They were looking... at me.

A piercing, terrifying, cold gaze filled with dreadful awareness.

She was the only one with senses reaching S- level. The only one who might have felt the faint spacetime ripple, the surge of black ether in that fleeting instant.

I swallowed my dry saliva.

Damn... did she expose me? Did she realize that the weak recruit possessed an S- rank assassination skill?

I maintained my role. I pretended to cry, hugging my knees to my chest as I stared at the corpse in feigned terror.

"Oh my God... I almost died... thank you, Commander! Thank you for crushing it for us!" I shouted in a shaky, pitiful voice.

Valisera blinked slowly.

She looked at Zack and Aiden, who believed she had killed the monster to save them.

Then she looked back at me. A faint, wicked smile barely appeared at the corner of her blood-stained lips.

"No need to thank me, recruit," Valisera said in a calm voice, dripping with a hint only I could understand.

"It’s my duty to protect... useful pets."

She didn’t expose me.

For some twisted reason—or some strategic calculation in her warped mind—she chose to play along with my act, taking the credit, keeping my secret as a tool for herself.

The remaining smaller steel dogs, upon seeing the alpha fall dead in a single second by an invisible strike, realized through their artificial instincts that the battle was lost.

"Retreat... target exceeds capabilities..." a mechanical voice emitted, and the remaining dogs (about four of them) turned, climbing the walls and fleeing into the darkness and rain.

The battle was over.

The alley resembled a mechanical and human slaughterhouse.

Shattered bodies, blood staining the black water, and the smell of burning and ozone filled the air.

Sia stood there, panting, covered in the dogs’ entrails, smiling bloodily.

Eva descended from the metal ladder, her rifle smoking. Damian leaned against the wall, his machine gun scorched from overuse.

"We survived..." Damian whispered in disbelief.

"We defeated an entire tracking unit from intelligence."

"That wasn’t a tracking team, Damian," Valisera said as she stepped over a pool of blood, looking at the corpse of the alpha dog I had killed. She bent down slowly and reached out to wipe some of the black blood off a small metal plate embedded in the monster’s neck beneath its armor.

"These aren’t from the FBI."

She spoke as she tore the metal plate free.

It did not bear the intelligence insignia—the eagle and sword—

It bore another symbol. One that made blood run cold.

"A white cross... coiled by a black serpent," Eva read the emblem in a trembling voice, her hands loosening from her rifle.

"That... that’s the emblem of Saint Ilarious Hospital!" Aiden shouted, tears mixing with the monster’s blood on his face.

"The hospital is sending abominations to assassinate us in the streets?! The hospital has a private army of high ranks?! How can this hospital be just a medical facility?!"

Valisera stood up and tossed the metal plate into the filthy water.

"Because it’s not a hospital," she said, raising her head toward Elysium’s gray sky, her crimson eyes burning with a promise of absolute destruction.

"It is the Fortress of the Voiders. And they know we’re coming. They sent their dogs to test us, to drain our ether before the grand massacre."

She turned to us—us, the battered squad, covered in mud, blood, and entrails.

The most wanted terrorists. The outcasts of the world.

"There is no turning back now," Valisera said, her tone carrying the rhythm of cosmic war.

"Either we storm that marble slaughterhouse and drag Saint Ilarious’s entrails into the light... or we die in these sewers like stray dogs. Prepare yourselves, Alpha Squad... we are going to slaughter angels."