The artillery barrage had turned the scorched valley into a jagged landscape of black glass, but the towering, Level 18 anomaly refused to burn.
Ren marched directly up the steep, five-mile incline leading to the massive military bunker. He was completely stripped to the waist, the intense heat of the 155mm shells having vaporized the upper half of his clothing. Thick, toxic white steam curled aggressively off his broad, hyper-muscular back. The heavy, segmented grey plates of his Chitin Shell locked together perfectly beneath the pale, cast-iron sheen of his hardened skin. The sapphire veins pulsing across his neck and forearms glowed with a furious, blinding intensity in the freezing overcast light. His angular, striking facial features remained entirely impassive, completely untouched by the blast, his violet eyes locked in a dead stare on the massive concrete walls ahead.
