Then, dull thuds echo from below as sewer manhole covers blast skyward, releasing a surge of dark green toxic gas.
"We added a little something to the sewer system. If you want to live, stay right where you are," Count Crimson continues his arrogant speech on screen.
You don't have time for his nonsense. In the chaos, you bolt toward the building's core, the control center, passing wreckage and laser scorch marks the whole way.
You find a blind spot and rip off your clothes. Raw energy floods your body in an instant. Stealth, full activation, turning into an invisible ghost.
You slip silently into the break room beside the control center and crouch beneath a dark counter. You've just dropped your draining stealth state when two cold voices come from outside the door.
"Captain, the high radiation bombs are all set."
"Good. The military's top fighters will rush this room first to seize control. The moment they're inside, detonate. Turn them all to ash."
Hearing this, hidden in the shadows, you clench your fists, cursing them with brutal fury in your mind. These animals are setting a bomb trap to kill the rescue squad. Want to play with death? Fine. I'll bury every last one of you right here.
"Bombs are set. Get over here now." A barking voice rings down the hallway.
Crouched in the dark corner of the break room, you stop breathing entirely. You wanted to slip out invisible, but the place outside is sealed tight with elite fighters. Fire foam everywhere would give you away instantly. There's no path out.
Just then, a terrorist in black battle armor carrying a cylindrical high radiation bomb walks straight into the room you're hiding in. You're inches apart.
Without any hesitation, killing intent flares in your eyes. The instant he looks down, you drop stealth, snap both hands onto his head, and twist with brutal force. He doesn't even manage to scream. His body jerks once and goes still. A cold corpse.
Warship engineering plus eight.
A notification flashes through your mind, but you don't have time to process it. In seconds, you strip off his helmet and armor and put them on yourself. Then you activate camouflage mastery, reshaping your face into this blond foreigner's.
Taking a deep breath, you stride out casually. You blend straight into the column of lunatics.
You follow the main force to the central stage of the dome concert. Over a hundred thousand people sit in dead silence.
Count Crimson, decked out in flashy silver armor, stands center stage. Beneath his feet lie a dozen mangled bodies. Twenty heavy mechs surround the stage, their dark cannon barrels locked on the hundred thousand spectators in the stands.
"We've planted over six hundred high radiation bombs throughout this entire building." Count Crimson laughs maniacally, his voice booming across the venue. "With a single press of a button, every ordinary person here turns to dust. These ants are a waste of air just by breathing. They should rot into stinking dust. Fertilizer for our empire's rebirth."
The word ant sends blood rushing to your eyes behind the helmet. You curse him with everything you've got. I'm an ordinary citizen too. You arrogant lapdogs of privilege, coming onto my turf, acting like gods.
Just then, rubble in the underground passage explodes apart. An old man bursts forward in a blur, carrying terrifying pressure, charging straight at Count Crimson.
Count Crimson doesn't even bother dodging. He lets the strike land square on his chest. The silver armor flashes once, and the terrifying recoil sends the old man flying backward. A fallen practitioner of the old ways, reduced to a lapdog for the powerful.
Count Crimson's arrogance peaks. He raises his knight's long sword, pointing it at over a hundred thousand terrified faces in the crowd. "Ten seconds. Surrender, or I erase everyone."
Watching his vile expression, treating lives like trash, civilians like fertilizer, something snaps in your head. Forget playing it safe. Forget hiding your identity.
You happen to be standing right behind him.
You snap up the high-frequency laser rifle in your hand, pressing the barrel directly into the back of his skull. No words, no hesitation. You pull the trigger.
That head, mid-speech about divine judgment, vaporizes instantly in a beam of high energy light. Golden particles scattering everywhere.
Warship piloting plus sixteen.
The entire crowd, terrorists included, freezes in shock.
"Kill the traitor."
The black-armored knights snap back to reality, roaring, laser rifles snapping toward you. But you're faster. You crush the spatial button in your pocket.
A twenty-six-foot, 119-ton Blade mech slams down out of nowhere onto the center of the stage like an ancient beast. In a blink, you're sitting in the familiar cockpit. It feels like the steel giant has become your own hands and feet.
Mech damage warning. Explosions blare around you nonstop. The black knights' lasers slam into your armor.
You slam the throttle full and your rocket pack erupts in blinding flame. A 16-foot plasma blade snaps out, its edge crackling with electric blue light that promises to shred anything in its path.
At five times the speed of sound, you drive your 119-ton steel beast like a meteor straight into the crowd of black knights. Whatever fancy energy armor they're wearing, against pure tonnage and speed, it's a joke. Human bodies shatter like fragile eggs on impact, bursting into showers of light.
Meanwhile, the twenty enemy mechs blocking the exits panic, scrambling to redirect their cannons.
But this is exactly the moment you've been waiting for. Back when you cleaned this exhibit hall, your sonic scans already mapped every internal wiring system in these mechs. You know exactly where their weak points are.
You sidestep a cannon blast with a tactical slide and drive your blade straight through the strongest mech, a thirty-nine-foot blue giant, piercing the cockpit directly, destroying pilot and machine in one strike.
Warship engineering plus sixteen.
You spin the blade back, slashing across the silver mech's left leg joint with surgical precision. The hulking machine loses balance and crashes to its knees.