Chapter 228
UH
The man was trembling horribly. His hands, still slightly raised from the recoil, shook like leaves. His breathing came in short, rapid bursts, and his mouth hung open as he began to realize what he had just done.
All around him, chaos had collapsed into horror. The others who were still alive were either sobbing uncontrollably or screaming without words, gripped by the raw aftermath of violence. Panic had given way to grief, and grief was quickly drowning in guilt.
The gun slipped from his grasp, falling limply into his lap with a soft, metallic thud. His fingers curled slightly as if trying to hold on—but it was already too late. His eyes, wide and unfocused, traced the bodies slumped in the front seat. The driver, slouched forward, blood still dripping from his ruined throat. The girl beside him, half-turned, her face frozen mid-expression, her lifeless eyes staring at nothing.
Heavy tears began to well, and then fall, trailing down his face in uneven streams. They soaked into his shirt, dripping from his chin, but he didn't move to wipe them away. Instead, he clutched at his chest, grabbing his own shirt as if trying to physically stop the pain rising from inside him.
His head shook violently, over and over, his lips muttering the beginning of words he couldn't finish. Denial came first. Then shame. Then the slow, sickening understanding.
And then—he remembered.
His eyes darted up and his body involuntarily stiffened.
He had remembered the reason this had happened—the reason he had pulled the trigger in the first place—Thor.
As his gaze rose, he found the figure still standing outside the warped metal of the car. Thor hadn't moved. His clothes were untouched. His expression hadn't changed. There wasn't a single scratch on him. Not even a tear in his shirt.
It was like the bullets hadn't even come close.
...They hadn't.
The man's pupils shrunk to pinpoints as the full truth slammed into him all at once. He hadn't hurt Thor. He hadn't stopped anything. He had just… panicked. And killed two of his friends. For nothing.
A garbled, broken sound began to escape his throat—half sob and half whimper. He didn't seem to realize what he was saying. Words blurred together into unintelligible noise, slipping from his mouth like water from a cracked bottle. He twisted his body and tried to crawl across the seat, reaching for the mangled door handle with clumsy, blood-slicked fingers.
He pulled, shoved and slammed a shoulder against the side of the door, hoping it would somehow give way.
It didn't.
The metal didn't budge. The warping from Thor's earlier touch had turned the car into a steel trap. There was no way out.
His movements became more frantic, more pitiful as his feet kept slipping against the bloodstained floor mats as he tried to squeeze through any space he could find.
From the outside, Thor watched.
...
"Uhhh..." Thor scratched the back of his head, his posture was relaxed, almost sheepish. "Well, this is awkward... I didn't want anyone to die." He glanced casually at the car, at the bodies slumped in the car. "Well... it's too late now. At least the rest are alive."
He said it like he was commenting on spilt milk.
The gruesome death of the two passengers didn't seem to affect him in the slightest. There was not a flicker of remorse that crossed his face. He looked on, unaffected, as if death were just a part of the backdrop—just another smear on a window, another thing to wipe off and keep moving.
And the truth was... it didn't affect him.
He was used to this. He had seen far worse—things that could shatter minds, that could make grown men scream for their mothers and women claw at their own faces to forget what they saw. He had lived through literal nightmares.
He sighed, long and deep, and shook his head slowly.
"Even when I don't use strong Path methods... shit like this still happens." His voice dropped to a mutter, almost like he was talking to himself. "We really are parasites to the normal folk."
His words lingered in the air.
Then, in the distance, the sound of engines.
Three police cars pulled into view—standard issue cruisers, low-built and with matte black plating. Blue lightbars blinked steadily atop their roofs, casting flashing reflections off the blood-slick windows of the ruined car. The windshields were tinted, the front grilles shaped into slight chevrons, giving the cars a more aggressive, wedge-like profile.
The vehicles slowed and came to a stop about thirty meters away. Their doors opened in sync, and several officers stepped out cautiously.
They didn't approach.
They had seen what happened—at least enough to know the man standing casually near a warped vehicle wasn't ordinary. He had been identified as an Ascender. That alone had been enough for them to break off from the wider chase and come here instead, maintaining a perimeter.
The real problem was they didn't have any Ascender personnel on site. So if Thor decided he didn't feel like cooperating...They were basically cooked.
So they were cautious and as calm as they could possibly manage under the circumstances.
One of the officers—a sergeant by the look of his stripes—stepped forward and pulled out a compact speakerphone. He raised it to his mouth, keeping his other hand deliberately away from his holster.
A faint crackle of static filled the air before his voice rang out.
"Please stand down and state your intentions. This is an active response zone. We request that you remain in place and maintain a safe distance from civilians. We do not wish to escalate the situation."
The words were careful and polite but firm.
They didn't know who Thor was. They didn't know which side he stood on—if he stood on any side at all. But they knew one thing for certain:
He was dangerous. And they weren't equipped to deal with him if things went wrong.
So they watched him closely
And hoped they wouldn't have to find out just how strong he really was.
Thor sighed heavily, the kind of sigh that came not from exhaustion, but from sheer annoyance at how unnecessarily complicated things had become. Then, without saying a word, he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket.
Immediately, the tension in the air spiked.
All the officers reacted at once. Their hands hovered near their weapons, as they shifted into defensive stances, and the air buzzed with barely restrained panic—but every one of them was a half-second away from pulling the trigger.
Then he threw something.
A small object flicked through the air in a clean arc, and before anyone could properly react, one of the younger officers caught it purely on instinct.
He immediately regretted it.
The object hit his palm with a soft slap, and for a split second, his arms trembled like he'd just caught a live grenade. He blinked, then slowly, cautiously, looked down at what he was holding.
It was... an ID.
At first, his mind didn't quite register it. But as his eyes scanned the name and the embedded clear-panel image, realization struck like a hammer to the chest.
His mouth fell open.
"Th… Thor!?" he stammered, his voice jumping an octave, halfway between awe and disbelief.
Another officer leaned over, trying to peek. "What? No way—"
"Give me that!" the sergeant barked, snatching the ID out of his subordinate's hand. His tone was impatient, dismissive—but even as he spoke, doubt was already creeping into his voice. "It can't possibly be that Thor. Right? No wa—"
His sentence stopped dead.
He stared at the ID, his eyes scanning the seal, the clearance level, the verification glyph in the corner, and—most damning of all—the name printed in clear, bold letters.
He whispered it.
"Oh shit. It's Thor."
The realization rippled outward like a shockwave. Every officer standing near the cruisers straightened slightly, their eyes wide. One of them let out an involuntary breathless laugh. Another mumbled, "No way..." under his breath, like he was trying to convince himself it wasn't real.
For a moment, no one quite knew what to do.
They had come expecting a rogue Ascender, maybe even a threat. What they got was someone much better.
Thor.
The Thor.
As all eyes turned to him again, Thor raised both hands lazily into the air, his palms open like a man caught trying to steal from a convenience store.
He grinned, tired but amused, and tilted his head slightly.
"Surprise," he said, like someone caught red handed.