Empire Building With Infinite Warehouse-Chapter 52: Friend or Foe

The distance between them vanished in a second.

Julien moved with a terrifying speed that completely defied his fragile E-Rank.

He blurred across the concrete, appearing directly inside Chris’s guard before he could even swing his silver sword.

Julien threw a straight right hook aimed directly at the centre of Chris’s face.

BANG.

The impact sounded like a shell detonating inside the enclosed factory.

A powerful shockwave of displaced air exploded outward, kicking up a massive amount of dust and blood from the floor.

But Chris didn’t move a single inch.

He stood his ground, his boots deep into the cracked concrete. Floating just a millimetre above his skin, a glowing structure of pure blue energy had formed directly in front of his face, absorbing the blow.

Over by the crumbled brick wall where Chris had been thrown just moments before, four empty glasses lay discarded in the dust.

They were Iron Skin potions, scavenged from their ruined apothecary shop. Chris had downed every single one of them the second he hit the rubble.

Through the glowing blue hexagons, Chris glared directly into the pupil-less yellow eyes of his possessed friend.

"My turn," Chris grunted.

Dropping his sword to free his hands, Chris threw a brutal left hook directly into Julien’s jaw. The punch landed flush, snapping the possessed Julien’s head to the side.

But Chris immediately felt the feedback in his knuckles. His physical attack power wasn’t high enough to bypass the dark mana currently reinforcing Julien’s muscles.

Julien didn’t even flinch.

Utilising the momentum of the punch, he pushed off the ground, attempting to jump backwards into the shadows to create distance for another attack.

"You aren’t going anywhere!" Chris shouted.

Before Julien could leave the ground, Chris’s hand shot out, his fingers gripping like an anchor around Julien’s ankle.

With a massive boost of adrenaline and blue aura, Chris pivoted his hips, hoisted the possessed body entirely off the ground, and forcefully slammed Julien straight down into the concrete floor.

The ground shattered upon impact, creating a small crater.

Julien made absolutely no sound.

The Shadow Beast felt no pain, and it refused to let its host vocalise any weakness. Instead, while pinned to the ground, a pool of pitch-black energy rapidly condensed in the palm of Julien’s free hand.

A sharp tentacle of solidified shadow shot upward like a spear.

It pierced directly through Chris’s forearm.

The overwhelming dark mana instantly corroded the remaining Iron Skin potion effects, shattering the glowing blue around Chris’s body into fading sparks.

Chris gritted his teeth, swallowing a scream of agony.

Refusing to let go, he gripped Julien’s leg even tighter, lifting the possessed body a second time to slam him to the opposite side.

But his injured arm gave out. The torn muscles in his forearm failed, his grip loosened, and Julien slipped free, flying backwards and landing smoothly on his feet ten yards away.

Julien’s yellow eyes locked onto Chris, raising his hand to finish the bleeding Viking. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He took a step forward.

Grab.

Julien stopped.

Something was tightly clutching his right leg. It was Viper.

The interrogator’s corpse, whose neck Julien had snapped just minutes ago, was sitting upright.

A sickly, glowing green energy pulsed through Viper’s dead veins, forcing the corpse’s muscles to lock around Julien’s leg with an unbreakable death grip.

Ten feet away, Alice stood near a broken metal pillar, panting heavily. She was sweating, her hands trembling as an antique ring on her finger emitted the same piercing green energy that coated the dead body.

Julien’s face remained a mask of cold indifference.

He simply raised his heavy boot and brought it down violently on Viper’s skull.

SQUELCH.

He crushed the dead man’s head into absolute mince, splattering the concrete with gore. But the grip didn’t fade, still clinging to his legs.

Annoyed, the yellow eyes turned toward Alice.

Julien casually raised his right hand. The shadows warped and flattened into a massive, deadly cleave.

He swung his arm, sending the crescent-shaped wave of dark energy tearing across the room, aiming to slice the pale ghost entirely in half.

Alice’s eyes widened, but before she could try to dodge, a massive figure stepped directly in front of her.

Ignis.

The high-ranking Awakened planted his boots, his own eyes burning with a furious, glowing orange light. He raised the snapped, broken half of his heavy broadsword.

"Don’t underestimate me", Ignis roared.

He swung the broken blade, unleashing a scorching orange cleave of his own. But this time, he poured every single ounce of his remaining mana into the strike.

The orange wave was twice the size of Julien’s shadow attack.

Both massive energies collided in the centre of the factory. The resulting explosion of fire and shadow ripped the remaining roof panels off the building and temporarily blinded the room.

Chris didn’t wait for the smoke to clear.

Ignoring his bleeding arm, he charged straight through the fiery fallout.

He tackled Julien at full speed, grabbing him by the collar of his ruined, bloody shirt and slamming him brutally into the floor before he could recover his balance.

"Alice! Now!" Chris shouted, using his entire body weight to pin Julien’s arms to the concrete.

Alice didn’t hesitate.

She abandoned her control over the corpse and sprinted toward the struggle. Dropping to her knees, she slammed both of her hands directly onto Julien’s forehead and chest.

’Soul Extraction.’

A blinding wave of pure, concentrated green mana flowed from her pale body directly into Julien.

Her feet lifted slightly off the ground, her white hair floating wildly in the air as the graveyard stench of the room clashed with her spiritual energy.

Beneath her hands, Julien’s body began to thrash.

His back arched off the floor as a horrifying, guttural shriek tore from his throat. The language was chaotic gibberish, which no one could understand.

For a brief second, Julien’s glowing yellow eyes flickered, turning to a bright, spiritual green.

In that exact moment, Alice’s consciousness was violently pulled into the void of Julien’s mind.

She found herself floating in an endless ocean of pitch-black.

And there, looming over her like a mountain, was the true form of the entity. It had no shape, no physical body, just an overwhelming, suffocating mass of absolute darkness.

High above, two massive, pupil-less yellow eyes slowly turned their gaze down upon her.

The sheer weight of the Beast’s stare hit her soul like a train.

Back in the physical world, Alice coughed up a spray of dark blood. She screamed in agony as she desperately tried to rip the thick, black smoke out of Julien’s chest, her green mana acting like a hook.

But the Tier 2 entity’s power was simply too massive and deeply anchored into Julien’s neural pathways.

The Beast pushed back.

A catastrophic shockwave of freezing shadow erupted from Julien’s core.

Chris, Alice, and Ignis were instantly thrown off him, sent flying across the factory and crashing into the surrounding ruins.

In the centre of the crater, Julien smoothly stood up.

The green light in his eyes was gone, entirely replaced by the burning yellow.

Beast had already calculated the situation. Fighting these humans was a waste of the System’s rapidly ticking timer. The entity needed to feed, and it needed to secure a permanent anchor.

Julien turned his back on the fallen party and began sprinting directly toward the blown-out exit of the factory to the red portal.