The underground facility was a subterranean fortress, crawling with heavy infantry and automated sentry bots. Standard military doctrine suggested that clearing such a hive would require three full companies of the Leone Vanguard. The sheer density of laser arrays and sonic emitters was designed to contain high-level specimens—to turn escape a mathematical impossibility.
Yet, the high-tech defences were failing against an eight-year-old boy taking a casual stroll.
Amon moved through the chaos as if he were walking through a park on a Sunday afternoon. There were no flashy acrobatics, no desperate dives for cover. There was only the rhythmic, thunderous crack of his dual Desert Eagles. Each shot was a masterpiece of mechanical precision—terrifyingly accurate, as if he were running a localised reality-glitch. It was the result of a mind rebuilt to learn at a god-like pace.
Every squeeze of the trigger resulted in a kill. His accuracy was so clinical, so machine-like, that it looked like a glitch in reality. This wasn't a gift of providence, but the result of a mind honed to a razor's edge since his reincarnation.
His skill, [No Longer Human], possessed a passive trait that permanently boosted his intelligence, magium refinement, and capacity with every activation. While the skill's description labelled these increments as "slight," those metrics were calibrated for an SS-Rank skill—a tier just below SSS-Rank. By normal standards, these gains were catastrophic. Within a single week, Amon's magium capacity and refinement had surged to A-Rank.
His amplified intelligence meant his cognitive processing was overclocked. He could analyse ballistic trajectories, recoil patterns, and enemy movement in slow motion. He had practised his marksmanship with the intensity of a man possessed, and thanks to his elevated state, he could now treat a pistol's iron sights like a sniper's scope, placing every round with terrifying, pinpoint lethality.
"How are we losing to a child?!" an Aimus loyalist screamed. She scrambled toward a defensive choke point, her voice cracking with the onset of hysteria.
"Don't ask me!" her partner yelled back, her grip slick with sweat as she nearly fumbled her plasma rifle.
The two loyalists rounded the corner to reinforce the point, but they stopped dead. The hallway was a graveyard. No alarms, no shouting—just a silent, orderly row of corpses, each one bearing a single, blackened hole where their life had been.
Before the two loyalists could even raise their rifles, a pair of synchronised cracks echoed through the hall. Two bullets tore through their foreheads with surgical symmetry, dropping them into the growing pile of dead. Amon was already past them; he had fired the shots over his shoulder without breaking his stride.
"I would've cleared this facility in two minutes if I weren't so nerfed right now," he thought, a short sigh escaping his lips. He didn't look back to confirm the kills. In his mind, they were already statistics. "I know this looks like a scene from a generic isekai anime. I can't even deny it."
"Never thought I'd see the day I became the generic OP protagonist," he muttered, a flicker of genuine disappointment crossing his face.
Three minutes of systematic slaughter followed. He bypassed automated turrets and high-tech security grids with the bored efficiency of a man filing paperwork. Finally, he reached Cell 77.
The door was a masterpiece of containment, designed for high-priority threats. It was locked behind a dual-layer system: a biometric ID scan for high-ranking personnel and an eight-digit rolling encryption code.
Amon pulled a blood-stained ID card from his pocket—harvested from a captain three floors above—and swiped it. The scanner chirped in green. He paused before the keypad, his deep-red eyes scanning the interface. His mind processed the possibilities. In a heartbeat, the complex sequence of the day's code lay bare in his mind. He punched in the eight digits with mechanical speed.
The heavy locks disengaged with a series of deep, metallic thuds.
"Infinite knowledge is actually useful," he conceded, nodding in approval as he stepped into the gloom of the cell to retrieve Costoria.
"How are you even here?" Costoria stared at him, her voice trembling with a mix of shock and disbelief. "More importantly, Amon... why do you look so exhausted?"
"It's a long story," Amon replied, his voice raspy. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed one of the enchanted Desert Eagles toward her. "Catch. Use this to defend yourself."
He didn't wait for her to respond. He smiled, a ghost of a grin, and tilted his head a fraction of an inch. A heel whistled past his ear, the displaced air ruffling his white hair. In that microsecond, his mind mapped the trajectory of the strike. Before the leg could even retract, he fired a blind shot.
The assailant's foot slammed into the floor beside Costoria, missing her by a hair's breadth, just as Amon's bullet tore through the attacker's thigh.
"You're not half-bad, Crown," the assailant whistled. She stepped into the light, watching with amusement as the ragged hole in her leg knit itself back together in a blur of regenerating tissue. It was the Mimic Commander, the same woman who had orchestrated their abduction.
Costoria scrambled away, taking her place at Amon's side, her breath coming in short, jagged hitches.
"I know," Amon chuckled, his gun levelled at the Commander's heart. "When you took us, you saw through my trap."
"Correct~" the Commander purred, her voice a sultry, honeyed lure. "Your trap was exquisite. I'll give you that much credit."
Amon pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked, but the Commander was already a shadow, reappearing instantly behind him.
"You knew the facility's trashy security couldn't touch me," Amon remarked, leaping backwards and fanning the hammer to send a leaden hail toward her. "So you played your ace, and that was summoning the King to deal with me."
"Of course~" She danced through the gunfire, her movements fluid and unnatural, before manifesting directly in front of his face. "A boy your age creating a complicated protective ward for his friend? I knew instantly you were an anomaly. 'Special' problems require 'special' solutions~"
She threw a lightning-fast jab aimed at his jaw. Amon wrenched his head back, the knuckles grazing his skin, and answered with a point-blank volley from the Desert Eagle.
"Aw, why aren't you using your little magic?~" She mocked, her voice a sultry needle. She parried each shot with the back of her hand, the enchanted lead bouncing off her skin like pebbles. "Did something dampen it?~"
"This is why you had to settle for animals instead of men," Amon snapped, a vein throbbing in his temple as he scrambled backwards. "Your personality is as revolting as your face."
The Commander's smirk didn't falter, but the tentacles on her back began to pulse with livid energy. "I'm barely hanging on," Amon thought. He had forced [No Longer Human] into active mode the second his eyes opened in his cell, which allowed him to progress this far, despite his catastrophic condition.
Suddenly, a slick, brown tentacle erupted from the Commander's back. It whipped through the air with a wet crack, catching Amon squarely in the solar plexus. The impact was like being hit by a freight train; he was launched across the room, his back slamming into the reinforced steel wall with a bone-jarring thud.
He slumped to the floor, his vision swimming in a sea of red and static, the Desert Eagle slipping from his numb fingers.
"Oh? Did that hurt?~" she asked, the tentacle retreating to her back. "I'm just getting started, little Crown."
Amon's laughter bubbled up, a jagged, manic sound that echoed off the cold steel walls. It wasn't the scream of a broken mind, but the cackle of a predator who had finally seen the punchline.
"Did that hit rattle your brain?" the Commander asked, her brow furrowing. For the first time, a flicker of genuine confusion crossed her face.
"Oh, no, no, no," Amon gasped, leaning his head back against the wall as he struggled to catch his breath. He sat up slowly, wiping a stray tear of amusement from his eye. "I'm just enjoying the view. You really are remarkably gullible."
The Commander's expression soured. She exhaled a sharp, irritated sigh and began to stalk toward him, her shadow elongating under the bright lights of Costoria's cell. "It seems the King did his job after all. I had hoped for a more coherent plaything, but I suppose this is the end."
"During this entire fight," Amon said, his voice dropping to a low, chilling whisper that stopped her in her tracks, "did you really not notice anything... off?"
He looked up at her, a wide, manic grin splitting his face—a look so deranged that even the Commander felt a prickle of unease.
The realisation didn't hit her all at once; it rippled through the room. Costoria, watching from the corner, finally understood the nagging doubt in her mind. The bullets Amon had fired during the skirmish had lacked the thunderous, ground-shaking impact of the rounds he'd used to breach the facility.
The commander had assumed the enchantments were fading—exhausted by his waning magium. She was wrong.
"It was all an illusion..." the Commander breathed, her eyes widening in sudden, paralysing horror.
She looked down at Amon, but he was already gone. The boy leaning against the wall shimmered like heat haze and vanished into thin air.
CRACK.
A dark-magic-infused bullet, fired from the real Amon standing silently by the door, tore through the back of the Commander's skull and exited through her forehead. The commander didn't regenerate this time. The dark magic rotted her cells instantly, and she slumped to the floor, dead before her nerves could register the betrayal of her senses.
"That... took a lot out... of me..." Amon groaned, his knees buckling. He doubled over, coughing thick, metallic-tasting blood onto the sterile floor.
Costoria was at his side in an instant, her hands steadying his shoulders. "Amon! Are you alright?!" Her voice was high with panic, her eyes darting over his pale features.
"I... am fine..." He managed a weak, lopsided smile. He forced himself back up, bracing against the wall as he wiped the crimson stain from his lips with the back of his hand.
"Forcing my magium circuits to bypass the dampeners just to deploy an S-Rank Illusion was a suicidal gamble in my current condition," he thought, his vision swimming with static. "But it was the only way to kill that low-life."
"Stay close," he instructed, his voice raspy. He reached out and took her hand, his grip firm despite his exhaustion.
Costoria stiffened for a heartbeat, a faint flush creeping into her cheeks, but she didn't pull away. The warmth of his hand was a lifeline, pulling her out of the suffocating trauma of the cell.
. . .
Inside the sterile, hushed observation room of the Eclipse Hospital, Silvia Sanguine—the Empire's most renowned physician—moved with clinical intensity. Surrounding Amon's bed, a team of specialists monitored a dozen flickering holographic displays, their faces grim as they analysed the catastrophic damage to the boy's body.
Outside in the corridor, the air was thick with a suffocating tension. Arnold, Emilia, Zach, Sophia, Costoria, and Alexia stood in a loose circle, their eyes anchored to the "In Progress" light above the heavy doors.
"Mom, is Amon going to be alright?" Sophia's voice was small, her hands trembling as she clutched at her mother's dress.
"He will be," Emilia replied. She offered a fragile smile and stroked her daughter's hair, but the gesture was hollow. Silvia's initial assessment had been blunt: Amon's condition was critical. For the first time in her life, the indomitable Grand Duchess felt the cold, paralysing weight of maternal helplessness.
"Crown."
Alexia stepped forward. The playful, flirtatious spark that usually defined the Leone matriarch had vanished, replaced by a sombre, iron-clad dignity.
"My daughter has relayed everything that happened in that facility," Alexia said, her voice resonant in the quiet hallway. She stopped before Emilia and inclined her head in a deep, formal bow—a gesture of submission rarely seen between the great houses. "I owe your son a debt that can never be fully repaid. As a token of my gratitude, the Leone Family formally acknowledges the superiority of the Crown. From this moment forward, we are your sworn allies, bound to your house until the world ends."
The declaration struck the hallway like a thunderclap. Zach and Arnold exchanged stunned glances; such a shift in the geopolitical landscape of the Riversong Empire was historic. But Emilia barely blinked. To her, the allegiance of a Grand Duchy meant nothing if it couldn't buy back the health of her son.
The doors to the observation room hissed open, and Silvia Sanguine stepped out, peeling off her surgical gloves. Her expression was unreadable.
"How is he, Silvia?" Emilia's voice was a frantic edge, her composure finally splintering as she closed the distance.
"I am... at a loss," Silvia admitted, her gaze heavy as she looked at the parents. "His internal organs are a slaughterhouse. It's as if his vitals were fed through a grinder and stitched back together by nothing but sheer spite. Physically, he is a ruin."
She paused, the weight of her next words hanging like a shroud. "But his mind is worse. His psyche is frayed to a single, glowing thread. Logically, he shouldn't be breathing. It is a biological miracle that his heart continues to beat."
Emilia's face drained of colour, her knees nearly buckling.
"Can he... be repaired?" Arnold asked. His voice was forced into a hollow, artificial calm, but internally, it felt like his world had been hit with an extinction meteor.
"I can rebuild the vessel," Silvia replied, her tone professional yet grim. "I can mend the flesh and stabilise the magium flow. But for the soul? For the mental wreckage he's carrying? I have reached my limit. If you want him to truly return, you must seek the Head Priestess of the Holy Empire's Grand Cathedral. Only a miracle of that magnitude can patch a mind that has seen what he has."
Afterwards, Silvia walked away, her departure leaving a vacuum of silence that was quickly filled by the sound of a father breaking.
The artificial calm Arnold had maintained since the rescue disintegrated. He didn't just weep; he shattered. Thick, heavy tears tracked down his face as he let out a jagged, hitching sob. Zach moved in immediately, anchoring him with a firm, steady hug.
"It's going to be alright, Arnold," Zach murmured, though his own voice was thick with emotion. Arnold collapsed against his shoulder, his body shaking with the force of his grief, the weight of nearly losing his son finally crushing his composure.
"Crown, your son is a resilient kid," Alexia said softly, stepping toward Emilia. She placed a steadying hand on her shoulder, trying to find a spark of her usual light-heartedness to pierce the gloom. "Besides, we have access to the best resources. It's not like he's gone."
Emilia remained a statue of ice and horror. She didn't feel the hand on her shoulder; she only felt the cold phantom of Amon's blood-slicked hand in hers.
Behind them, the two girls were undergoing a quieter, more dangerous transformation. Sophia stared at the ground, her heartbreak hardening into a cold, mad resolve. "I will do everything," she promised herself, her small hands curling into white-knuckled fists. "Whatever it takes, I will remove anything that stands in his way."
Costoria's gaze remained fixed on the "In Progress" light of the OR. Guilt burned in her chest like lye. He had been her guardian, a ghost in the dark who had walked through hell just to pull her out of a cage.
"He protected me, and I couldn't even do anything to assist him," she thought. "Never again."
The hallway was no longer just a waiting room; it had become a crucible. The bond between the Crown and Leone families had been forged in blood, but the children were forging a promise of protection that'd make things much more interesting in the future.