"Anna wants to destroy this place... wants to kill everyone... wants to destroy everything... destroy it all..." The small figure hid within a faint black mist, only a pair of dark-golden eyes faintly visible as they surveyed the surroundings.
Her voice was soft and delicate, like that of a kitten—adorable and fragile—but the black haze corroding everything around her lent the scene a disturbing eeriness.
It wasn't that no one had noticed her. Rather, those who did never had time to make a sound or pull the trigger before a tail-like appendage shot out from the mist, piercing their hearts and dragging them into the fog, where they were devoured completely.
In the narrow corridor of the aircraft carrier, no one could approach her. Anyone within three meters would be killed instantly—without exception.
Before long, at the end of Anna's path, several American soldiers had gathered.
They had been deployed after receiving reports from the monitoring room—to defend the carrier and drive off the intruder.
Perhaps none of them had imagined that even within the carrier, miles away from the battlefield, they could be attacked. And by something so silent, so eerily unnatural.
"That's not an enemy ordinary humans can handle. Use your firearms carefully—our superheroes will be dispatched shortly," came a voice over their earpieces. Though gentle, it couldn't dispel the dread in their hearts.
After all, they had already witnessed what had happened moments ago.
One soldier had barely stepped out from a cabin, realizing something was wrong. He opened the door—only to face the intruder directly.
A sharp, tail-like object immediately pierced through his heart, pulling him back before he could even scream. His body vanished into the mist, leaving only his uniform to fall limply to the floor.
Everything the mist touched turned black, and moments after she passed, those places would vanish completely—as if their lifespans had reached their end and they simply faded from existence.
"Anna wants more... Mommy's food is so tasty, but it's never enough. The more I eat, the more I want. This feeling... Anna hates it, but it feels so good..." Her soft voice drifted through the corridor—spoken in Mandarin, learned from Chu Lian's memories through Tírnas' automatic replication.
The American soldiers, however, couldn't understand a word. Few of them had studied the language of a nation across the Pacific—one their country viewed as a rival.
Even so, hearing her speak Chinese was enough. She had to be from Huaxia—or at least connected to it.
So they really were going to make a move, then? To send such a powerful being directly into the heart of the carrier... weren't they afraid of provoking a war?
Regardless of their speculation, Anna kept walking forward, step by step. She could sense the presence of "food" ahead—something that could fill her endless hunger. And she wanted to devour it all.
"Fire!" The command cut through the tension. The soldiers didn't have time to think—reflexively, they pulled their triggers, and bullets rained down like a storm toward Anna.
"Anna's so hungry... wants to eat..." But the starving girl paid no attention to the meaningless attack. The bullets did nothing to harm her. She continued walking forward, eyes shimmering with black runes that had now coalesced into an intricate pattern.
After thirty seconds of relentless gunfire, she had barely moved fifteen meters closer—and yet the soldiers were already terrified.
"It's useless! She's a monster—our weapons can't hurt her at all!" someone shouted, despair thick in his voice. That hopeless tone spread among them like a contagion.
They were human, after all—with fear, emotion, and weakness. Facing such a creature, fear was inevitable.
"Monster or not, as long as I'm here, you won't take another step forward." Just as their morale was about to collapse, a deep, rough voice echoed behind them. A towering man—easily over two meters tall—stepped forward from their ranks.
His arms were unnaturally thick—so thick that even the waist of a 1.8-meter-tall American soldier couldn't match their girth. Beyond that, his exposed skin was covered in fine scales, giving him an intimidating, almost monstrous appearance.
"What delicious food..." Anna ignored his words entirely, her dark-golden eyes lifting to look at him. The crazed hunger and desire within her gaze made even the towering man flinch.
"Bastard!" With a roar, the massive man charged without hesitation, unafraid of the strange phenomena swirling around Anna. Raising his enormous arms, he swung them down at her with crushing force.
He had absolute confidence in himself. After undergoing a full ancestral regression ritual in Africa, he had awakened the latent bloodline power hidden within him, granting him a trace of the might once belonging to a prehistoric great ape.
Though he was far from comparable to that ancient beast, possessing one of the strongest bloodlines among regressors still placed him at the top of his tier. Against slightly weaker Earth-tier Advanced opponents, he could still win—and the girl before him, whom he sensed to be only at Spirit-tier Advanced, seemed like no threat at all.
However, there existed beings who could not be measured by common sense. The black giant bore the bloodline of a prehistoric ape, but Anna's lineage was infinitely nobler.
For hers came from one of the apex beings of the cosmos—Tírnas, the Death God of Tyrael. As her direct daughter, Anna's power and mystery far surpassed even her mother's.
For ordinary people—even someone like Chu Lian, who possessed countless "plug-ins"—challenging an opponent a whole tier above was an impossibility. But for Anna, such a feat was laughably simple.
Thus, she didn't even glance at the giant's incoming fist. A black tail shot out in a blur, piercing through the thick-scaled armor that protected his heart. Instantly lifeless, the giant was dragged into the black mist.
Within seconds, the man was gone—his body completely dissolved by the fog, leaving behind only scattered scales and a set of oversized clothing to mark his existence.
"Anna's full now..." The black runes in her eyes shattered into fragments, fading completely. Her consciousness returned, freed from the strange hunger that had controlled her. Once more, she was just Anna.
"Since Anna's full... let's play a fun game, okay? Anna will chase from behind, and you'll run in front. The one who ends up last... gets killed by Anna." Lifting her head, her dark-golden eyes gleamed as she spoke in English. Her words shattered what little resolve the soldiers had left, sending them fleeing in terror.
Even in their panic, they didn't forget her warning. Each man pushed or tripped those beside him—friends, comrades, even lovers—trying to make themselves faster, to survive just a little longer.
"Human nature... compared to Mommy and her friends, you're nothing but garbage." Whether it was an illusion or not, the satiated Anna seemed more mature now. But the little devilish nature that Chu Lian had sealed away from the beginning was beginning to show.
"Die screaming, hahahaha..." She advanced slowly, killing the soldiers who fell behind one by one, ignoring their pleas for mercy. To her, they weren't humans—they were livestock.
"Hahaha... run, run! The more you run, the happier Anna becomes... Anna loves this game so much, hahaha..." Her laughter echoed down the corridor, spreading with her movements—becoming the nightmare of everyone aboard the carrier.
"It's so much fun watching people like this—such fun, such fun..." A soldier tried to ambush her from behind, but a serpentine tail lashed out, coiling around him. She slammed him into the ground, again and again, until his body was nothing but pulp.
She laughed—brightly, joyfully.
"It's over..." Colonel Harland had known from the moment Anna appeared that she was the intruder.
But he had never imagined that the carrier's strongest warrior would be slain so effortlessly, that such a being could end lives with a mere flick of her hand.
This kind of enemy was far beyond what they could handle. There was nothing left to do but await death.
"To think... the reinforcements from Command never even arrived before we were wiped out." Listening to the echoing laughter outside, Colonel Harland pulled open a drawer, took out his pistol, and pressed it to his temple.
He would rather die than be devoured by that eerie girl. "My greatest mistake in life was failing to cherish my wife and child... My greatest regret is not living to see the glory of America shine upon every nation in the world. Truly... a pity..."
Bang. The trigger was pulled. The bullet pierced through his skull. With a regretful sigh, Colonel Harland ended his own life.
"Ah... he actually killed himself. That's no fun, no fun at all..." Anna arrived at the conference room, glanced inside, and saw that the man had already lost all signs of life. Puffing her cheeks in annoyance, she turned away.
She no longer paid him any attention, instead heading deeper into the ship. Everywhere she went, all life was extinguished.
Now that she was full, Anna no longer had any interest in "eating" them. Instead, she began to play—killing each person she caught in a different, creative way, as if experimenting out of curiosity.
The cameras captured her every move and transmitted the feed throughout the ship, spreading despair among the remaining crew.
Anna—alone—had completely destroyed the aircraft carrier.
Huff... huff... After performing the final round of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Chu Lian began manual chest compressions herself. Her small hands pressed down firmly against the "youth's" chest, and as she'd already guessed, the sensation was soft. Still, she hesitated not for a moment, continuing the resuscitation until there was a response.
Just as she'd hoped, the white-clad youth—no, the white-clad girl—regained a faint spark of life as Chu Lian performed the final breath of revival.
The immense regenerative ability of an Earth-tier expert immediately grasped that spark, amplifying it until the heart slowly began to beat again.
Chu Lian's resuscitation merely hastened the process.
"Thank you..." After resting for a moment and regaining some strength, the white-clad girl opened her eyes and spoke. Her voice was no longer the cool, crystalline tone from before—it was now soft and melodious, like the song of an oriole, impossibly pleasant to hear.
"You saved my life too," Chu Lian replied with a gentle smile.
"The dragon... is it taken care of?" The girl avoided Chu Lian's gaze, her tone faint as she asked about the situation.
She didn't know how long she had been unconscious. In her weakened state, she couldn't even turn her head to look at the battlefield—she could only ask.
"Not yet. But soon. I'll end it myself." Chu Lian rose to her feet, her calm gaze fixed on the distance, where the last sounds of cannon fire echoed. Her voice was quiet but resolute.
"I see... good." The white-clad girl smiled faintly, her expression softening as she slowly closed her eyes and drifted back into sleep.
She was utterly exhausted.
"Rest well. Leave the rest to me..." Chu Lian whispered tenderly. Lifting the girl into her arms, she laid her down on a smooth, flat section of the ground, then stood once more.
Soft blue spiritual power began to flow from her body, forming into armor that shimmered faintly as it enveloped her completely.
With a powerful step, Chu Lian launched herself forward—toward the dragon. It would be slain by her own hand.