Alex stood there, frozen.
His vacant, bloody gaze remained fixed on the ceiling, where a dim chandelier hung like a dying star. Seconds passed, but he didn't blink, nor did he breathe.
A single tear slipped from his keen eyes and traced a slow path down his cheek. It wasn't pain that summoned it…
It was betrayal and loss.
The instinct-driven state that had ruled his body and mind was fading now, dissolving like mist beneath a rising sun. What remained was mostly him... Alex, dragging himself back into awareness through sheer force of will.
The faint echoes of a higher being that had stirred within him earlier were nearly extinguished, reduced to a dying spark struggling against the encroaching void.
The bullet wound at the center of his forehead began to knit together, but sluggishly. Agonizingly slow. Nothing like the instant regeneration that had followed his initial transformation.
His metabolism was no longer chemical… it was adaptive.
Anything that entered his body was analyzed, dismantled, and integrated... but now, even that process hesitated. His flesh lingered around the embedded bullet, uncertain, as if contemplating whether survival itself was still worth the effort.
He could feel his body urging him to stop, that he had already done enough.
It was only after long, torturous seconds that the integration began, his body submitting to Alex's stubbornness and refusal to give up.
Alex lowered his head at last. His gaze returned to the man seated across the room.
He opened his mouth to speak for the second time, but his thoughts refused to align. Words failed to form. Only scalding steam escaped his lips, as if his organs were burning from the inside out.
Yet one truth remained unshaken.
This man had to die.
Even if Alex fell here. Even if he sank into hell itself… he would crawl back out just to drag him along.
Alex began walking again.
Each step was forceful and deliberate... yet wrong. His body moved like a corpse animated by stubborn will alone. The bullet hole on his forehead remained open far too long, blood slipping down his face and staining his vision crimson.
The seated man frowned deeply. Persistence like this unsettled him.
He raised the pistol and fired twice in rapid succession, both shots aimed squarely at Alex's forehead.
The bullets struck the same spot.
His head snapped back violently as he staggered three steps backward, shoes scraping harshly against the floor. He stopped.
There was a two-second pause.
Before he moved again, faster this time, more stubborn.
"Just stay still, you zombie!" the Selflaw boss roared, frustration cracking through his voice as he emptied the remaining rounds.
The pistol clicked dry. Some shots missed. Some tore through flesh. Only a few struck anything vital.
Alex knew deep down that another clean hit to the right place would end him without question.
The boss hurled the empty pistol aside and spun on his heel.
"Fuck all this," he muttered while running. "You'll die later anyway."
Alex was just on the verge of breaking when he noticed something happening inside him… a dying pink lotus floating atop a nearly dried pond.
He didn't know why, but he reached a hand toward that dying lotus, as though trying to feel its touch again before it died and faded.
The moment he came into direct contact with the lotus, he voiced an absolute command upon reality…
"Knot…"
Alex raised his right hand.
The simple motion nearly broke him. Muscles screamed. Bones protested. Still, he clenched his fingers into a fist.
"…Still Field."
The words emerged warped and hoarse, forced through shredded vocal cords, but they carried finality.
Reality obeyed. The running man froze mid-step, motion completely ceased.
Color drained from the world, as though existence itself rejected movement. Sound dulled. Space stiffened. The man's eyes widened in horror as he realized his body no longer belonged to him.
Alex advanced. He moved like something half-alive, each step a labor, his strength bleeding away with every breath.
When the distance vanished, Alex raised his left hand, his right still clenched tight. Ignoring the agony tearing through him, he seized the man by the back of the neck.
The boss struggled uselessly in his mind.
Alex tightened his grip, then released what little energy still slumbered deep within him.
The man's body resisted for a moment. It swelled grotesquely, flesh warping and compressing against invisible pressure. Bones twisted. Muscles ballooned. Yet nothing burst outward.
Everything remained suspended… as if waiting, as if awaiting permission that would never come.
Alex's consciousness finally gave way. His right fist remained clenched, his left arm hung outstretched.
He died standing, and in that frozen stillness, with reality still knotted tightly around the corpse...
Alexander Frederick fell into darkness.
---
Gentle chaos reigned outside the building.
Sirens wailed relentlessly under the rainfall, dozens of police vehicles lining the long road leading to the mansion. Carefully trimmed flowers lined both sides of the road, water droplets falling from their leaves. Helicopter rotors thundered overhead, chopping through the night air and falling rain.
The smell of the flowers was subtle, but still apparent due to the rainfall. The scent of wet stone was also noticeable, but faint.
Yet there was no disorderliness, no gunfire… Every officer moved with trained precision, heads lowered under the rainfall.
A SWAT unit formed a tight column of ten men, marching into the building, their feet producing wet thuds as water parted beneath their steps. Each officer was clad in heavy helmets fitted with bright torches and armored vests boldly marked SWAT. The officer at the head carried a tall, transparent riot shield as they stormed the building in unison.
What they saw made them hesitate… two cinematic, unmoving figures.
The wanted Selflaw boss, Draco. And the son of the late Military General, Alexander Frederick.
Something was noticeably wrong with the space there. The lead officer raised a fist, signaling the men behind him to halt. He advanced cautiously.
At four meters, his shield stopped. Not against a wall, not against air… it just froze.
His breath caught as he pulled his arm back, watching in horror as the shield remained suspended... hanging in space, supported by nothing at all.
That Sunday night was remembered as the darkest in modern history.
By dawn, entire districts lay crippled... properties reduced to hollow shells, streets soaked in the aftermath of panic and blood.
The first deaths had come suddenly, without warning, at the very beginning of the beast's rampage, when the aura was thickest.
---
Alexander Frederick, who had died after exacting his bitter revenge, opened his eyes to nothingness… No body, no light, not even darkness was present.
Endless, faint orange fog shrouded everything. He saw the faint presence of stars and something resembling a massive, fading fox made of stardust. Something he dismissed as imaginary flickered at the edge of his vision. But even the space itself felt wrong in a peculiar way.
Though he still felt emotionally numb, he struggled to comprehend the state he was in when a voice echoed everywhere at once.
At first, he thought it was judgment. A sentence passed by God, but it was far too deep… far too vast to belong to a holy being like God.