The cosmic view coming through Max's visor and the Reed Specials perched atop his nose reflected back off Max's eyes as he gleefully took in the sight of the last remaining Shura vessels bursting into dazzling fireworks, brilliantly painting the already vibrant night sky over New Verona.
The celestial rings of the still Alliance-controlled world added to the mesmerizing panorama, a scene Max found breathtakingly beautiful.
Immersed in this surreal moment, he surrendered to the exhilarating sensation of freefall, plunging backwards with his arms outstretched, toward the besieged city miles below, where chaos and Shura-on-Human violence still raged.
"We own the sky, you and I
(We own the sky, you and I)
Take it tonight, fly for your life
(Fly for your life, fly for your life)
There's one thing I know for sure
You gotta fly for your life
You've got those dangerous eyes
You've got those dangerous-
A world I've never seen before
A silhouette into the sun
Are you ready to burn
Are you ready
We'll keep falling in love
We'll keep falling in love
Oh it's a miracle
I got spirit, I got wings
I got fire in my lungs
I don't know what you're fighting for
You better fly for your life
It's just another disguise
Do you ever think of me
Cause you're the ghost in my heart
You've got those dangerous eyes
You've got those dangerous-
We'll keep falling in love
We'll Keep falling in love..."
While Max fell, he rocked his head back and forth, vibing out hard to 'Fly for your life' by one of his favorite bands back on Earth, 'Gunship'. The little black box was still pumping out tunes on his back, this time swapping the more badass aggressive tunes and heavy metal of his previous battle tracks for a moody, neon-drenched synth melody that felt as deep and spacious as the void itself.
'Cinematic as it gets...' Max thought, falling gracefully away from the sea of stars above, more than happy all of the music he recognized and liked from his old life were also a present in this version of Humanity's distant past.
The burning friction of the troposphere began to heat his electromagnetic shield into a blazing cocoon of purple and pink plasma, but inside his micro-atmosphere, Max was completely relaxed.
"Oh it's a miracle! I got spirit, I got wings!" Max sang along with the song as he slowly rotated his body to face the ground, turning his attention to down below while picking up the pace, becoming a streak of electromagnetic light.
The city streets below were swelling rapidly in his vision, it had really taken a shit-kicking and was a chaotic grid of smoking buildings, rubble, and ongoing skirmishes. Max tracked the song's runtime in his head while observing and gathering info on the Shura forces down below, using the Reed Specials.
As the final electronic textures of the song faded into silence, his boots punched through the low-hanging cloud layer, still randomly splashed with some of the remaining neon lights of the city that had survived the initial moments of attack and ensuing battle that followed.
The pavement and concrete were now rushing to meet him at well past terminal velocity.
'993 again, yeah, who knows when I'm going to see roads to drive this thing on again?'
Max aimed towards a stretch of street, slowed and came to a stop before snapping his fingers and assuming a sitting position mid-air.
With a brilliant flash of golden light, the widebody Porsche materialized directly around his now falling body just fifty feet above the asphalt. Max melded into the driver's seat, gripping the steering wheel and turning the key in the ignition.
Max used [Electromagnetism] to polarize the metal chassis against the planet's magnetic field, instantly bleeding off the Porsche's downward momentum like a massive invisible cushion, softly lowering the Porsche down.
The racing slicks would have hit the ruined street softly—but Max already had his foot buried raw into the floorboards while the flat-six roared fully to life, engine bouncing off the limiter!
SCREEEEECH!
As the car released several different mechanical battle cries via its engine and tires, Max smirked and selected 'Big Dawgs' by 'Hanumankind' as his driving music.
The Porsche didn't land gently at all actually; it hit the ground peeling out, its tires screaming and sending a massive cloud of white smoke into the air as the car launched forward like a rocket.
"On today's episode of 'Get fucked, you Shura turds', we find out what happens when Magneto plays 'Twisted Metal'... Electromagnetic-Bash-Bar-Of-Doom!"
With a violent surge of energy, a thick, glowing wedge of high-frequency electromagnetic force erected itself over the front bumper and nose of the 993, extending outward like a futuristic snowplow.
Max shifted aggressively into third gear, throwing the car into a massive, tire-smoking, rolling-burnout down the already on-fire boulevard.
A squad of stealth Shura soldiers turned around just in time to see, but not avoid, the silver 1990s sports car suddenly coming into view, as it shot out of an extra thick pocket of the smoke obscuring the streets.
BOOM!
The electromagnetic-energy bash-bar didn't even flicker. It pulverized the first three Shura instantly and sent the rest flying over the hood and roof of the car.
'Ordinary Creature killed: Shura dickhead. 10 points. No Beast Soul gained. Consume meat.. eww no, gross!... Ordinary Creature killed: Shura dumb fuck...'
Max grinned as he pretended to be receiving creature kill messages in his mind, racking up the final points he needed in the little game of extreme road rage he was merrily playing. He kept his foot on the gas, using his magnetic field as a battering ram.
As the Porsche roared toward the teleportation and government administration district at blistering speeds, it flipped over over Alliance cars and personal aircraft, shattered fallen concrete pillars and other debris.
Even twisted steel beams were easily wrenched out of his path, effortlessly flying into the air and clearing a perfect racing line of destruction for the speeding 993.
Any Shura squad caught in his path faced a ruthless, high-speed impact. His vehicular Shura-slaughter count was definitely rising.
Max drifted through the final intersection he needed to turn at, one Twin Talon extended out the window and obliterated the tightly packed group of Shura that happened to be sprinting across the road, shattering them into pieces with a single impact on the central member of the group.
The car straightened out and got some grip again, and Max was happy at what he was now looking at though the front windshield. The glowing purple and pink shield protecting the teleportation station was finally in view directly ahead of the Porsche's front clip.
The station was completely untouched, thanks to the electromagnetic dome Max was still maintaining with his mind.
He wasn't home free yet, however.
Around 20 Shura stood around the dome-like barrier he had created, hoping for a chance to rush inside and wreck the place if the barrier fell.
"Good thing I protected the teleporters... End of the vacation I guess." Max muttered, happy as always with the god-like foresight he possessed.
Roar! Screeeeech!
Right as the Porsche crossed the threshold of the teleportation plaza, Max cut the wheel and pulled the handbrake for one final, dramatic entry, after skidding sideways for a few moments, he suddenly willed his Beast Souls away.
In a fraction of a second, the still roaring Porsche 993, the Flux Helmet, Twin Talons, Image Inducer and the speaker all dissolved into golden sparkles, vanishing into his sea of soul. Max's momentum carried his body forward and he straightened up from his sitting position, sliding on his feet while leaning back before transitioning into a smooth, casual stride, his sneakers chirping crisply on the concrete of the teleporter station's front entryway.
Max was left in just his ultra-comfortable Godly Sweats, the Reed Specials and a relaxed Beast Soul tee shirt.
He didn't look back at the burning sky and prepared to beat down the completely confused Shura soldiers staring at him as he strode towards them.
Max coated his body with a tight, electromagnetic force field, his hands and feet started to crackle with high-frequency electromagnetic energy, causing the Shura to raise their weapons and fire at him.
Plasma bolts and hyper-velocity lasers tore through the air, but Max didn't stress at all. Moving with the fluid grace afforded him by Heavenly Go, he bent his torso, slipping past the first volley of plasma with millimeters to spare. His footwork and movements looked almost dance-like and calm, yet he closed the remaining distance instantly, sliding in front of the closest Shura.
Max dropped down low, driving a devastating, electromagnetically charged palm strike straight into the center of the alien's alloy chest plate.
BOOM!
The electromagnetic palm didn't just dent the armor—it conducted straight through the metal, violently agitating the iron in the Shura's bloodstream and frying his internal nervous system instantly.
The soldier collapsed like a sad sack of bricks.
Without pausing, Max pivoted on one high-top, using his momentum to unleash a brutal, sweeping low roundhouse kick that shattered the knee joints of two accompanying Shura soldiers.
They both flipped head over heels, and as they spun, Max rose while still rotating and caught both of them with the same huge, muscular leg and whipped their now folded-over bodies into the force field covering the building.
The remaining seventeen invaders paused for a second and then swarmed him from all sides, their blasters, blades and alloy daggers swinging, stabbing and shooting in a desperate, panicked web of steel and light beams.
"Hahaha! You're all way too slow!"
Max smiled after mocking them, his fangs catching the glare of the burning city.
"This is a good place to test my current power without any equips... Let's go!"
Max threw both hands above his head in an X shape, then swiftly brought them down to his sides while uncrossing them, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Super Body!"
Twin Queens of Fate activated, and Max became even faster, a blur of pure kinetic violence.
He deflected a long knife with the back of his forearm, his magnetic aura sliding the metal weapon harmlessly away, before delivering a crisp, three-punch combination straight into the attacker's mask, collapsing the alloy into the skull beneath.
Max didn't really need weapons to deal with these guys at all, even less with his super body activated.
His bare hands, backed by his physique, his absolute control over electromagnetic force fields and his super body were more than any of these low-grade Shura warriors could deal with.
The aura around him had intensified in brightness and thickened, a few of the stray bolts of blue and pink electricity already dancing around turned a bright gold, and his pupils glowed red and gold on either side as well for a few moments before returning to normal.
It seemed that the upgraded version of his super body had come with a few cosmetic changes!
Every punch and kick delivered a mini railgun impact; blasting Shura's heads off and dismembering them as he went past, not going easy on them or playing around using other styles belonging to fictional characters he had emulated, something Max normally liked to do.
The thin electromagnetic barrier covering his skin totally made Max into an impenetrable tank too.
Through the 'Lady Providence' aspect of his super body, he watched the telegraphing of an intended flank attack play out in a microsecond, causing him to simply hold his arm out in the air sideways, making it look like the Shura that he just caught by the throat had been trying to end up there.
Max channeled a sudden surge of polarized energy through his glowing fingers, and violently threw the soldier into three others, knocking them into the electromagnetic force field surrounding the building, where they sizzled for a moment before sliding off and down to the ground.
In less than ten seconds from that point, the plaza fell dead silent.
Those twenty Shura soldiers lay completely dismantled across the concrete entryway—shattered armor, crushed weapons, and broken bodies were scattered around his high tops. Max hadn't even really broken much of a sweat and felt like he could maintain the super body form for a very long time if he needed to.
He closed down his opened gene locks, released his super body transformation and felt slightly winded for a moment or two before catching his breath.
"Was that really a test though? Even with a bit of my energy and concentration focused on the force field protecting this place, that was too easy. Well, I'm sure there will be more than enough chances to see how far I've come as soon as I step foot into the Third Sanctuary. Speaking of that... It's time to go I guess."
He casually brushed alien remains off himself, sending his Godly Sweats and matching shoes back to the sea of soul before resummoning the comfortable tracksuit and high tops all over again, all fresh and clean. His sneakers started chirping crisply once more as he continued his smooth, now uninterrupted stride past the carnage.
A hole briefly appeared in the forcefield surrounding the building, letting Max slip inside. He summoned his gourd, took a long drink, then dismissed it.
With [Blank], [Blending-in] and [I'm out] fully activated, he walked past the now relieved Alliance staff with zero resistance. The employees were just happy that the huge blue-haired man walking through didn't have a single horn on his head.
Max stepped directly into the center of the teleporter aisle. His chill-turned-high-octane vacation in the Alliance was officially over.
He chose the same booth and teleporter that he had arrived in and prepared to leave.
'Better see where I'm ending up, the extra time I took fighting today changed which shelter the teleporter is going to randomly dump me in... You know, I could go for a little bit more action, but not too much, regardless, it's time to get the hell out of the Alliance.'
Before he activated the machine and its spatial arrays fired up, his eyes flared with that deep, golden, cosmic luminescence as he used [Destiny] to run a rapid simulation of his upcoming arrival and destination in the Third God's Sanctuary.
A vision containing the first few hours of his upcoming experience flashed through his mind, and Max instantly let out a heavy groan.
"Are you kidding me? Fuck's sake...Wait, there's no humans there, this is good actually..." Max muttered.
Through his precognition, he saw a massive, ancient courtyard built from towering, monolithic stone blocks, absolutely swarming with high-tier creatures.
It wasn't a King-class shelter with an Emperor Spirit leading it or anything, but it was a heavily guarded Royal-class shelter with multiple Sacred-Blood level creatures and quite a few high-level spirits, with one King-class spirit owning the shelter.
There were no high-tech security grids or metal construction for Max to manipulate there—just the pure, oppressive fantasy might belonging to the sanctuaries.
Max saw elegant, powerful Royal Spirits draped in ancient silken robes and suits of fantastic armor, flanked by snarling Mutant and Sacred-Blood class creatures of all sizes, bristling with jagged claws, scales, and supernatural auras. The teleporter would be dropping him straight into a shelter that would be the end for any normal rookie Surpasser.
Max suddenly grew an evil smirk, laughing out loud at the new devious idea brewing in his mind.
"Hehehe so another shelter full of human-killing spirits and monsters and the head honcho ain't even at home right now... aight, bet. Lets see how those spirit pricks deal with operation Honey pot... Mwahahaha."
Right before activating the teleporter, he dismissed the God Dust supporting the electromagnetic force field outside the building, allowed the shield to dissipate and then summoned the image inducer back.
Max was now prepared to give the troublesome guys waiting for him in the Third God's Sanctuary a surprise.