The central monitor in Outpost Zero flickered with crimson static before switching automatically to an external long-range drone camera hovering half a mile outside the Starlight Bastion.
Up in the sulfurous sky, the gleaming steel flagship cruiser of Golden Star Academy was suddenly wrapped in flashing amber quarantine lights. Heavy blast shutters slammed down over every viewport along the upper medical deck, their hydraulic locks hissing loud enough to register on our directional microphones.
Inside the subterranean observation lounge, the silence was thick enough to cut with a blade.
Lina sat frozen beside me on the leather sofa. Her fingers, which had been resting lightly on my knee, curled tightly into the fabric of my trousers. Her amber eyes were wide, reflecting the cold glow of the tactical screens where Arthur Vance had just violently self-destructed in his grandfather's arms three seconds before the internal camera died.
"Arthur..." she whispered, her voice barely above a breath. "He... his chest just burst open. And the blood... it went straight into Grandmaster Vance's face."
Inside her silver pendant, the Sovereign Dragon Empress was no longer scoffing. Her ancient voice trembled with a mixture of nauseated disbelief and creeping horror as it echoed through Lina's sea of consciousness.
"That wasn't a curse, and it wasn't a poison pill," the Empress breathed, her spiritual projection pacing frantically within the core. "The boy turned that Vance brat's living body into a flesh-bomb! He waited until the old Grandmaster dropped his defensive qi barrier out of love for his grandson—and then used the boy's dying breath to spit that invisible abyss straight into the old man's face! What kind of demonic schemer calculates a grandfather's affection as a vector for slaughter?!"
Lina swallowed hard, turning her head slowly to look at me.
I was leaning back against the sofa cushions, my expression placid on the surface, though my brows were slightly drawn together in intense concentration.
To my primary consciousness, the room was peaceful.
To my secondary consciousness, five miles up in the sky, my swarm had just slammed headfirst into an impenetrable wall of living iron.
Plaintext
=====================================================
INFECTION ATTEMPT REPORT: FLAGSHIP MED-BAY
=====================================================
[Target 1]: Elder Vance (Stage 2 Martial Grandmaster)
[Injected Payload]: 30,000,000 Mutagen-Laced Phages
[Cellular Penetration]: 0.00% (COMPLETE FAILURE)
- Analysis: Target's living cells and resident flora are
saturated with liquefied Grandmaster Fire-Qi. Even
unshielded, the passive biological immunity and cellular
membrane density of a living Grandmaster instantly
incinerated 29,998,000 clones upon contact!
- Survivors: 2,000 Clones (Unable to pierce tissue. Forced
into inert crystallization inside the creases of his
outer armor collar—passive audio/location tracking only).
-----------------------------------------------------
[Target 2]: Vice Principal Rosette (Stage 9 Martial Master)
[Injected Payload]: 20,000,000 Mutagen-Laced Phages
[Cellular Penetration]: 0.02% (SEVERE RESISTANCE)
- Analysis: Stage 9 Martial Master white blood cells carry
high-grade elemental flame charges, destroying 99.8% of
invading phages on contact.
- Survivors: 4,200 Clones (Barely wedged inside dead
scar-tissue in her left sinus cavity. Replication blocked
by host immunity. Can only secrete trace irritants).
=====================================================
I let out a slow, quiet breath through my nose, opening my physical eyes as I digested the data.
In this world, martial arts wasn't just an external energy shield. Every time a practitioner broke through a major realm—from Adept to Warrior, Warrior to Master, and Master to Grandmaster—their martial qi washed through their bone marrow and rewrote their very biology.
A dead or dying creature like the Stage 4 Wyrm, whose spilled blood had already lost its active neural command and immune response, was easy prey for my phages to feast upon. And a low-realm Stage 3 Adept like Arthur had weak enough cellular defenses that my clones could quietly colonize his lungs over weeks.
But a living, peak-condition Stage 2 Martial Grandmaster?
Every single cell in Elder Vance's body was like a miniature nuclear furnace! Even when he dropped his external qi barrier in panic to catch Arthur, his passive cellular immunity—his white blood cells, his mucosal enzymes, the natural heat of his blood—acted like boiling magma. Thirty million of my mutated phages had splashed directly into his eyes and mouth, and his body's natural immune system had simply vaporized them on contact without him even having to try!
Even Vice Principal Rosette, a Stage 9 Martial Master, possessed cellular walls so dense and white blood cells so violent that twenty million phages had been wiped out in seconds, leaving only four thousand pathetic stragglers hiding inside a tiny patch of dead, unvascularized scar tissue in her nose, completely unable to infect her living cells or replicate!
So that is the true gap between realms, I thought, a cold, sobering clarity settling into my mind. My current Z-rank phages are only at Tier 2. Against a living Master or Grandmaster, their cellular immunity alone is an iron fortress.
"Amar..." Lina's soft voice pulled my attention back to the sofa.
She looked pale, her gaze searching my face carefully. "Did your power... infect Grandmaster Vance and Rosette too?"
"No," I answered honestly, setting my teacup down on the glass table. I never lied to her about the threats we faced. "Arthur is dead. His heart ruptured from the mutagen I triggered inside him. But Grandmaster Vance and Rosette weren't infected."
Lina blinked in surprise. "They weren't? But Arthur coughed that black blood right onto them while their guards were down!"
"A Grandmaster isn't a Stage 3 Adept, Lina," I explained calmly, leaning my elbows on my knees. "When someone reaches the Martial Master or Grandmaster realm, their cultivation doesn't just strengthen their skin and bones—it tempers every living cell and boosts their natural immune system to a monstrous degree. When my... microscopic seeds touched Grandmaster Vance's mouth, his blood cells burned thirty million of them to ash in a split second. They couldn't even pierce a single cell membrane."
Inside Lina's pendant, the Sovereign Dragon Empress let out a massive, audible breath of relief that echoed through Lina's mind.
"Thank the Nine Heavens!" the Empress gasped, her spiritual form slumping inside the core. "There is still some sanity left in the laws of this universe! If a Stage 5 Martial Adept's parasite could casually devour the living flesh of a Martial Grandmaster three major realms above him, the entire cultivation path would be a joke! A high-realm expert's vital blood is a furnace—germs and plagues cannot take root in living dragon-marrow or grandmaster flesh unless the caster's own realm and swarm evolution match their level!"
Lina listened to the Empress, then looked back at me with worried amber eyes.
"Then... if Grandmaster Vance wasn't hurt at all, won't he be even more furious now that Arthur died right in his arms?" she asked, her hand tightening on my sleeve.
"He is furious," I agreed smoothly, a faint, cold smirk returning to my lips. "And although my clones couldn't pierce his skin, two thousand of them crystallized into inert dust inside the metal seams of his armor collar, while a few thousand managed to hide in a patch of dead scar tissue inside Rosette's nose. I can't harm them or replicate inside them... but I have a permanent microscopic microphone sitting on their shoulders."
Lina's eyes widened slightly. "You can still track where they are?"
"Every step they take," I said softly, reaching up to brush a lock of pink hair from her cheek. "Which means Grandmaster Vance can never ambush us from the shadows, because I will always know which mile of sky he is standing in."
Just then, the heavy steel doors of the observation lounge slid open.
Commander Kael stepped in, his tactical helmet tucked under his arm, his scarred face carrying a mixture of grim satisfaction and urgency.
"Master Ryuk," Kael reported briskly. "The extraction team has finished harvesting the Stage 4 Wyrm's spinal column and beast core materials. They are packed in cryogenic crates on the mag-lev train. Also, the surface monitors show the Starlight Bastion has just aborted the tournament."
I raised an eyebrow. "Aborted?"
"Yes, Master," Kael said, tapping his wrist console to project the official academy broadcast onto the main screen. "Arthur Vance violently exploding inside the flagship med-bay killed the chief physician and terrified the War Ministry envoys. Because the doctors couldn't identify what made his organs rupture, the War Ministry envoys panicked—fearing Arthur contracted an unknown, lethal Stage 4 rift plague down in the gorge!"
Kael let out a harsh, dry laugh.
"Right now, the Imperial Bio-Hazard Division has locked down the entire Starlight Bastion! Grandmaster Vance and Vice Principal Rosette are both trapped inside a mandatory seven-day military quarantine cell on the ship so the capital's physicians can make sure they aren't carrying a contagious rift virus! And all surviving students in the Black Crag have been ordered to evacuate via the eastern shuttles immediately."
Lina stared at the screen, her mouth falling slightly open.
Even though my phages had failed to infect Vance and Rosette, the terrifying, gruesome spectacle of Arthur's death had scared the War Ministry bureaucrats so badly that they had locked Grandmaster Vance and Rosette in a quarantine cage for a week!
"Which means," I murmured, a slow, dark smile spreading across my face as I stood up and buttoned my field coat, "Rosette can't file a single asset-seizure paper, Grandmaster Vance can't leave that airship to hunt us for seven days, and by the time they get out of quarantine... we will already be back in Lock Night City with the Wyrm's marrow digested."
I turned to Kael. "Send the mag-lev train straight to the Western Sub-District lab. Seal Outpost Zero and put all personnel on deep-cover standby."
"Understood, Master!" Kael saluted sharply.
I looked down at Lina, offering her my hand.
In seven days, Grandmaster Vance would be released from that quarantine ship, and he would come for my head with everything the Vance clan had. Right now, at Stage 5 Martial Adept, my phages couldn't pierce his living cells.
Which meant over the next seven days, Lina and I had to grow strong enough—and evolve my swarm high enough—that even a Grandmaster's immunity would shatter before us.
"Come on, darling," I said softly, my fingers closing warmly around hers. "Let's go catch our shuttle home."