"I wasn't planning to thank you either..."
Logan frowned. Just as he was about to get up and help Fenris, a powerful magnetic force suddenly enveloped him and pulled him backward against his will.
"Magneto, what are you doing?"
Logan struggled with everything he had, but he could not budge the magnetic restraint in the slightest.
Magneto's suppression was even more terrifying than the Sentinel's.
"You stay out of Fenris's fight. Come with me."
Magneto's voice allowed no argument as he dragged Logan swiftly toward the command center, where nearly a hundred people were gathered.
"Fenris, I'm leaving this to you."
Watching the two of them disappear into the distance, Fenris whipped around, his eyes turning icy as he looked toward the nearby laboratory.
After crashing through the lab, the Sentinel quickly climbed back to its feet.
Amid the nonstop crash of shattering glass, its massive body rampaged through the laboratory. The damage Fenris had just torn into it was already healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Crack!
When the Sentinel smashed through the wall and appeared before Fenris again, it was already completely restored. At the same time, its body had transformed into something like molten rock, radiating waves of heat and looking even heavier and more solid than before.
Looking at Fenris, who still stood half a head taller than it, the Sentinel did not hesitate for even a moment before charging straight at him.
Fenris's eyes sharpened. Wrapping himself in immense momentum, he met it head-on.
Bang!
The two slammed into each other. A violent shockwave burst outward from the impact, and in an instant, every pane of glass in the surrounding labs exploded, scattering broken shards across the floor.
"Hm?"
Fenris lowered his head and met the Sentinel's utterly emotionless gaze.
At the same time, the material covering its body shifted again. Its lava-like shell churned, and in the blink of an eye, it transformed into something eerily similar to Fenris's own skin.
Fenris's eyes narrowed at once. He could feel the force coming through its hands suddenly increase by nearly thirty percent.
But the Sentinel's frame also began to tremble slightly, turning unstable in an instant.
"You're copying me?"
A nameless fury surged up in Fenris's chest. With a low roar, he snapped both claws shut. His crushing grip exploded outward and literally caved in the Sentinel robot's hands.
Roar!
Fenris stepped back like lightning, twisted his body, and hurled the Sentinel violently into the air.
The next moment, the thick, powerful tail behind him lashed out. Its tip ripped through the air with a shrill crack before smashing heavily into the airborne Sentinel.
Boom!
The tremendous force surged into the Sentinel's body. Before it could even finish flying upward, it was hammered back down at the waist by a second, opposing impact.
Caught between those two completely opposite extremes of force, the Sentinel's heavy frame immediately let out a series of tortured groans. Then it crashed hard onto the floor of the main hall with a dull, thunderous slam.
Its body had apparently suffered irreversible damage. The Sentinel struggled on the ground for several seconds, yet still failed to rise.
"A fake is still a fake. No matter what it does, it'll never become the real thing. Trying to imitate a Titan? That's just asking to be destroyed."
Fenris strode toward it with heavy steps, reached out with his right claw, seized it by the throat, and lifted it into the air.
Seeing that it could no longer stand, the Sentinel's material shifted yet again, reverting to its original, scale-covered form.
Amid a series of crisp clicks from its armor plates, its faceplate began opening layer by layer, and a blinding red light slowly started to glow from within.
Fenris lifted his eyes. The blue light along his dorsal spines brightened one point at a time as well, and the low hum building inside him rose steadily into a sharp whine.
Boom!
Fenris held the Sentinel by the throat and unleashed a massive blast of breath straight into its opened faceplate. Before the Sentinel's laser could fire, he completely suppressed it.
The red glow beneath the faceplate was swallowed whole by the surging breath attack, dimming bit by bit until it vanished completely.
Crack!
Only a few seconds later, a crisp snapping sound rang out. The Sentinel robot's neck was severed cleanly by the violent blast. After letting out one final mechanical wail, its huge body crashed to the floor.
"That's all?"
Fenris snorted, a stream of hot air blasting from his nostrils. Then he casually tossed the Sentinel's head onto the ground.
The next moment, his body shrank once more. He opened a dimensional portal with a flick of his hand, then kicked the giant machine back to the school.
"This is the latest version of the Sentinel robot. One of a kind. Keep it safe."
After giving Hank and Jean Grey one more reminder, Fenris did not dare waste any time. He turned and rushed straight for the command center.
"How is it?"
"Did you find anything useful?"
The instant he entered the command center, Fenris's pupils contracted sharply.
The entire room had an extremely simple layout. A giant screen more than twenty meters tall hung on the wall, while nearly a hundred complex control stations spread out in a wide arc across the platform below.
Almost everyone in the base was slumped over one of those consoles, but not a single one of them was moving anymore. Every last one of them was dead.
"We got here too late. They were never planning to wait for us and die with us. That Sentinel was already their last card."
Magneto shook his head with visible frustration. "The moment we wiped out all the Sentinels above, they'd already decided to die."
"They were guarding against Professor X..."
Fenris swept his gaze around the room and immediately understood what they had been thinking.
"And not just that. They destroyed everything that could expose their identities."
Logan walked over and flipped one of the bodies over.
The man's face was already mangled beyond recognition. When Logan pried open his mouth, even his teeth had been corroded into ruin by some kind of chemical.
"Ruthless. They're this ruthless even with their own people. No wonder the Sentinel program managed to stay hidden for so many years without leaving behind even the slightest clue."
Magneto let out a heavy sigh. "We underestimated Bolivar Trask..."
In all his decades of life, he had never seen researchers willing to go this far for a plan that might not even succeed.
"What about the other data?"
Fenris turned his head. "They really didn't leave behind anything at all?"
"No. It was all destroyed. Every scrap of data was physically ground into powder. There's no way to restore it."
"We already searched the other areas. There was nothing of value anywhere."
Magneto raised a hand, and a nearby machine rumbled loudly. A heap of metallic dust slowly floated out and hung motionless in the air.
"To wipe out mutants, these people really went to extraordinary lengths."
Magneto let out a cold snort and flicked his hand, about to throw the dust away for good.
"Wait!"
Fenris hurriedly stopped him.
"What is it?"
Magneto paused.
"Give that to me. Maybe I can restore it."
Fenris thought for a moment.
"I can find someone to try."
(End of Chapter)
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