Luck Stat Broken: Rise of the Khan-Chapter 60 - 56: Asset Depreciation

​The Stalker launched itself off the barricade, its jagged claws extended toward Kael’s chest.

​Mara’s partner executed his role flawlessly. Unburdened by the Trojan fever, the spy stepped directly into the beast’s path, ripping a scavenged, rusted P.A.C.I.F.I.C. sidearm from his belt.

​Mara watched him closely. It was a masterclass in anti-muscle memory. Kael was a Platinum-tier killer; a clumsy misfire went against every instinct drilled into him. To pull it off, she saw him deliberately limp-wrist the grip and panic-pull the trigger.

​The gun barked once, the shot going wide, before the slide jammed spectacularly. Kael stared at the locked weapon in perfect, helpless horror.

​The Stalker lunged, pinning Kael to the floor. Its jaws snapped inches from his face, acidic saliva dripping onto his collar. Mara knew Kael could have crushed the beast’s windpipe with two fingers. Instead, he just screamed louder, playing the bait.

​Mara lunged forward, gripping her rusted combat knife. She threw her weight forward, deliberately stumbling as she drove the rusted blade upward in a desperate arc.

​The blade caught the Stalker under the jaw. The beast thrashed wildly, its claws tearing a shallow gash across Mara’s oversized coat before the crude dissolved into a bubbling puddle of foul-smelling liquid. Mara collapsed onto her knees, panting heavily, selling the sheer exhaustion of a terrified survivor.

​To her right, the flow of combat shifted as a rogue Stalker bypassed the earthen wall entirely, lunging directly at Will.

​The Warlord didn’t retreat.

​Operating on the fluid, aggressive motions of Wind-Runner Bow-Fu, Will pivoted sharply. Instead of trying to fire, he used the reinforced carbon-fiber limb of his heavy-draw bow to brutally parry the beast’s snapping jaws. He knocked its head aside with a sickening crunch. Without losing a fraction of a second, his Close-Quarters Marksmanship engaged, anchoring an arrow point-blank against the bowstring to fire it straight down the Stalker’s throat.

​Mara watched him execute the lethal maneuver with ruthless mechanical efficiency.

​His grip on the weapon was fluid, the bones and tendons working flawlessly. Whatever anomalous recovery mechanics this base possessed—healing baths or localized restorative magic—had repaired the structural damage from his recent battles.

​But deep-tissue bruising remained, painting the skin around his wrists and knuckles in harsh, purplish-black hues.

​She had been there when Vane and Kross were taken out. She had witnessed the sheer violence of that fight before slipping fully into her scavenger cover, never returning to the command bunker to be officially debriefed. She knew this seemingly unremarkable kid had beaten two of P.A.C.I.F.I.C.’s most lethal, augmented Platinum Assets to death.

​But seeing Will fight now—watching him seamlessly blend impossible combat arts with the raw, crushing gravity of his Warlord aura—a new emotion flared beneath Mara’s fevered skin.

​Pure, unadulterated anger at Arthur Vance.

​The Director had sent her into the dark without properly detailing the sheer scale of the Warlord’s capabilities. Vance hadn’t briefed her that the target could defy the laws of kinetic friction. He hadn’t warned her that his Vanguard operated with a flawless telepathic symbiosis that put billion-credit corporate wetware to shame. He hadn’t even mentioned that the Vanguard’s Earth Manipulator shared his exact magical signature.

​For the first time in her pristine, highly calculated life, Mara felt unprepared. She wasn’t an operative executing a mission. She was a disposable asset trapped in a meat grinder.

​Will drew another arrow back, tracking a shadow in the sludge, but suddenly froze.

​The blinding violet-gold aura around his shoulders flared aggressively. He stared down into the empty tar, his jaw clenching as his expression tightened into a scowl. He looked like he was listening to someone arguing with him.

​"They aren’t worth the stamina," Will muttered aloud to absolutely no one.

​He rolled his eyes in profound annoyance, lowered the bow, and turned his back on the hazard zone. Mara shivered. Between the raw power, the telepathic combat, and the casual hallucination of arguing with invisible ghosts, the boy leading this Faction was an unknown variable.

​The localized aggro of the first floor broke. The sputtering ultraviolet streetlamps stopped flickering, settling into a steady, toxic pink glare.

​The Sovereign Network disengaged.

​The sudden return of verbal noise was jarring.

​"Don, your spacing is trash," Tyson rumbled immediately, his Goliath gauntlet hissing as it vented steam into the chill air. "You left your right flank open for a full three seconds. If Allison hadn’t pulled that wall, you’d be a puddle."

​"I had an angle on the big one!" Don argued, lowering his crossbow and wiping sweat from his forehead. "I needed the elevation!"

​"You needed to check your corners," Maddie interrupted. She aggressively wiped a thick smear of corrosive black ink off the visor of her helmet. "Next time you tunnel-vision, I’m letting them chew on your leg for a minute so you learn a lesson."

​Will cracked his stiff neck. A localized System prompt chimed in the air above the dissolved puddles.

​[Area Cleared: Level 1 Perimeter Secured.]

​[Items Acquired: 4x Corrosive Ink-Glands (Level 1), 2x Shattered Tar Cores (Low-Grade).]

​"Bag the glands, ignore the cores," Will ordered, his voice raspy. "They aren’t worth the inventory weight. We hold this terrace. Nobody pushes past the light posts."

​Ash landed on the shattered concrete nearby. The Solar-Avian ignored the loot, strutting directly toward Mara and Kael. The bird ruffled its radiant feathers, letting out a low, vibrating hiss that sounded like water hitting a hot forge. Its intensely intelligent eyes locked onto Mara’s neck, its primal senses agitated by the artificial payload ticking away in her bloodstream. It snapped its golden beak, a sharp sound like a hammer striking an anvil, and lowered its wings to isolate her.

​"Ash, down," Will called out without even turning around. He was casually wiping a splatter of black sludge off his boots with a rusted rag. "They’re just scavengers. Stop bullying the guests."

​The terrifying Mythic-tier bird immediately deflated. It gave a soft, indignant trill that sounded like a whistling kettle, then hopped obediently onto a nearby light post to preen its glowing feathers.

​Mara kept her head down, pulling Kael up from the floor. Her mind was spinning. The Warlord treated a localized solar anomaly like a misbehaving house cat.

​"You did good," Allison said softly, stepping between them and the light post.

​The Earth Manipulator offered a warm, genuinely sympathetic smile. It was a jarring contrast to the brutal tectonic violence she had just unleashed. "It’s terrifying the first time you drop into a hazard zone without a proper Vanguard. But you’re safe here. I promise."

​Mara forced a shaky, grateful nod. "Thank you. We just... we aren’t used to fighting like that."

​"Nobody is," Will said, walking past them toward the edge of the sinkhole. He peered down into the impenetrable black sludge. "But you get used to the dark eventually."

​Mara retreated to the rusted wall of the transport, sliding down the iron hull until she was sitting on the concrete. Her fever was a constant, distracting hum beneath her skin.

​She pulled up her corporate interface one last time, running the numbers on the skirmish they had just survived. By every single metric programmed into P.A.C.I.F.I.C.’s billion-credit tactical wetware, the Faction should have suffered a complete loss of capital in that opening wave alone. The spacing was wrong, the aggression was too high, and the lack of a dedicated healer was a statistical death sentence.

​Instead, they were standing near the tar, arguing about spacing and bagging loot, unharmed.

​Arthur Vance was a genius, but his math was obsolete. He was calculating the trajectory of a bullet, and he was trying to apply it to a hurricane.

​They were out of their depth.

​Miles away, buried deep within the heavily reinforced concrete of the P.A.C.I.F.I.C. bunker, Arthur Vance stood in his sterile, climate-controlled office.

​He casually gestured with his left hand, summoning a discreet, gold-trimmed System interface in the air before him. He wasn’t tracking the Global Depopulation Index today. He was looking at the localized telemetry of the Trojan payload. Two tiny, pulsing dots blinked on the projection, moving steadily downward into the unmapped dark.

​"Sir," his aide said smoothly, stepping into the room. "The telemetry indicates the Trojan nanotech in Asset M is registering severe environmental agitation. She is currently being exposed to a massive, anomalous mana signature."

​Vance took a slow sip from a glass of water. "The Warlord."

​"Should we adjust the payload to compensate for the radiation, sir?" the aide asked, his posture rigid. "Or initiate an early extraction? The asset’s biological metrics suggest the fever will become debilitating within forty-eight hours."

​Vance didn’t answer immediately. He stared at the two blinking dots, watching them burn inside the Warlord’s territory. He didn’t see human lives; he saw coordinates.

​"No. Let the assets burn if they have to," Vance murmured, swiping the notification away into a digital trash bin without a second glance. "If they die, the next squad will know what thermal thresholds to avoid. Just so long as they illuminate the anomaly."