The rain has begun to slow.
The green lightning surrounding Kevin no longer raged uncontrolled—it had settled, condensed around Kevin's form like a second skin. He stood within the crater, no longer twitching with instability.
The moment of stillness shattered.
Kevin moved—not like a warrior, not like a soldier—but like something beyond comprehension. His body, now fused with the storm itself, reacted purely on instinct, its monstrous frame driven by nothing but destruction.
"Use emergency mode; don't let him leave the carter alive." Solren ordered by sending a text through his lens's virtual keyboard.
The helicopters fired.
Trained professionals, unfazed by fear, executed their orders with precision. Guided missiles locked onto their target, their trajectories calculated for maximum impact. High-caliber rounds rained down, each bullet designed to tear through reinforced armor.
Yet, none reached him.
The lightning surrounding Kevin surged outward, wrapping itself around the incoming projectiles. It didn't deflect them—it consumed them, dissolving metal, warping energy, and rendering the assault meaningless.
Solren's gaze narrowed.
Kevin wasn't avoiding the attacks; instead, he was advancing.
His body lunged, hurling straight into the sky. The altitude was nothing—the thunder burst beneath his legs, propelling him upward with unnatural force.
The pilots adjusted—tracking his ascent.
"Adjust elevation—maintain fire—" A pilot tried to warn.
Yet before further commands could be issued, Kevin struck.
His claws tore through the underbelly of the nearest aircraft, lightning rampaging into its systems. The engine overloaded; its parts began to melt.
It fell.
Another pilot took the chance, firing a missile straight at him.
Kevin turned mid-air; he used the falling helicopter as a foothold, his movement unnatural, no grace, only brutality. He caught the missile before impact, his clawed fingers wrapping around its body, electricity surging through it like venom.
He redirected it.
Straight toward another helicopter.
Boom.
Another helicopter fell—yet Kevin did not slow down.
His form twisted, his body barely obeying the physics constraining him, his limbs flailing before adjusting with pure primal instinct.
Solren keeps observing with an indifferent expression.
He was neither surprised nor impressed because he himself can do something similar with much grace and silence.
Two helicopters still hovered above, maintaining their altitude, their pilots unshaken by the devastation unfolding below. They had witnessed their comrades fall and seen their missiles turned to dust, but they didn't flinch.
They were trained for war.
Kevin didn't care; he couldn't.
The helicopters adjusted immediately, their rotors whirring as they distanced themselves from the direct threat. The targeting systems recalibrated, tracking Kevin's movement.
Kevin ascended.
But the pilot was much faster than him, elevating the helicopter even higher to go beyond his reach.
But Kevin wasn't done.
Before he could fall, the dark green thunder got concentrated on his legs, and then.
Explode
His legs exploded, ascending him further and faster, but despite the loss, his expressions remained raged.
His claws reached the helicopter body, repeating the process of internal failure.
A moment later—
It began to plummet.
The pilot pressed the self-destruction mode, signalling the last pilot, who did not hesitate to take the chance.
Missiles fired.
A direct hit.
Both the helicopter and the missile exploded at the same time.
Kevin vanished in the explosion, his form engulfed by fire, the force hurling his body back toward the crater below.
Silence.
Smoke curled from the wreckage. The final helicopter remained steady, awaiting confirmation of elimination.
Solren stood motionless, observing the destruction without reaction.
Then—
The green lightning flickered.
It did not vanish.
It grew.
The smoke parted, revealing Kevin—still standing. His body was barely intact, skin and muscle shredded by the blast, yet regenerating despite the devastation.
Even his legs began to regrow at a much faster rate than seemed possible.
He wasn't finished. His head snapped upward, locking onto the last target.
The last helicopter hovered, its rotors slicing through the thickened air, maintaining altitude with unwavering precision.
Inside, the pilots remained steady, executing trained maneuvers, watching, and waiting.
Within seconds, the regeneration completed.
Kevin stood in the crater, his monstrous frame barely holding together. His body twitched—muscles trembling with raw energy, veins pulsing with unstable power. His breathing was uneven, heavy, and broken.
Yet he did not fall.
He crouched at the rim of the crater, poised to leap toward the airborne target.
But before he could launch, a vicious fist cut the air and connected squarely with his face, hurling him from the crater in the opposite direction.
"I have to use that one to return home, you beast," Solren said coolly, his tone flat yet edged with determination as he cracked his muscles.
Kevin adjusted in the middle of the air, forcing his descent on all four limbs like a beast.
For the first time, Kevin's instincts screamed danger at him, but his rage and madness overwhelmed it.
They both attacked each other with brutal intensity.
Solren's movements were as precise and measured as ever, his strikes the product of years of military training and hard-fought experience.
Kevin, consumed by raw instinct and an ever-strengthening regenerative surge, responded with flurries of clawed attacks that grew deadlier with each passing moment.
Every blow Solren delivered was absorbed almost instantaneously by Kevin's mending tissues, fueling his rapid evolution.
At one point, as Solren unfurled a calculated kick aimed at intercepting Kevin's charged advance, the impact sent the creature soaring upward.
In that critical heartbeat, fate intervened: the explosive force of Solren's kick disoriented Kevin just enough to cause a wild convergence. Their bodies, locked in a desperate struggle for dominance, were inadvertently propelled toward the underside of the hovering helicopter.
Time slowed as Kevin's outstretched hand grasped at Solren's midsection—not in a deliberate maneuver, but as a natural reflex born of instinct.
The combined momentum of their collision drove them toward the aircraft. All that remained in that crushing moment was chaos: muscle against metal, instinct against design.
With a resonant crunch, Solren's body slammed into the reinforced skin of the helicopter's wing. A metallic groan rippled upward as crucial sensors and structural stabilizers were jarred out of calibration.
In the cockpit, the professional pilots fought desperately to regain control.
Yet the sudden, traumatic impact had pushed the delicate balance beyond repair. Warning alarms blared as the helicopter's system cascaded into failure, and the once steady craft began a doomed, uncontrolled descent.
On the ground, the reverberation of the collision mingled with the clamor of their duel.
Solren gets momentarily stunned by the turn of events.
"F#CK," he murmured, frustration mingling with a dawning horror.
"First Isla and now this... I will definitely kill this son of a bi#ch." Solren cursed internally at the sudden change of events and its main culprit.
As the metallic leviathan succumbed to gravity and shattered into a twisted array of wreckage among the dunes, the battle below surged into a new, unforgiving phase.
Kevin, his body pulsing with newfound ferocity, absorbed the shock of the collision and the ensuing burst of regenerative energy. His every fiber responded with an instinctual vengeance.
The green lightning that once crackled erratically now shimmered with a controlled intensity, each flash a testament to his evolving capabilities.
Solren fought on, though it was evident that the tide was shifting. Every strike he delivered was met with a counter that grew ever more ruthless. His movements, precise as they had been seconds before, began to falter under the sheer, unyielding force of Kevin's evolution.
With each clash, the raw, animalistic power pulsing through Kevin's veins translated into a sharper, more dangerous combat style.
"He is changing... becoming something beyond control," Solren hissed internally between labored breaths.
His eyes, once steely with resolve, flickered with the grim fear that he might not live long enough to see the end of this monstrosity.
The duel reached its apex in a chaotic flurry of limbs and lightning. As Solren attempted a final, desperate counterattack, fatigue and shock rendered his movements sluggish.
In that decisive moment, Kevin's claw, driven by instinct and honed by the near-constant regeneration of his shattered body, found its mark with unerring speed.
The blow landed with the force of relentless thunder, slashing a deep claw mark at the center of his chest.
Solren staggered backward, his strength faltering as pain and fatigue overwhelmed his seasoned body.
The expression on his face shifted—from determined defiance to the dawning recognition of imminent defeat. He sank to his knees on the scorched earth, the taste of dust mingling with his fading resolve.
"Sorry, Father, this useless son of yours is leaving before you."
Just when Solren thought that death would claim him today, in the center of this desert.
The atmosphere changed, the rainstorm grew more intense, lightning began to crackle in the sky.
Before Kevin's claws could even reach Solren's neck.
Rumble
Bang
A thunderbolt fell from the sky straight on Kevin, tearing the cover of dark green thunder enveloping him.
His movement paused for a second before he shrugged it off.
The moment he tried to keep moving.
Another thunderbolt fell.
Then
Another.
Solren rubbed his eyes, even pinched himself to make sure that he was not dreaming.
"SH#T."
"NO"
"HOLY SH#T." Solren screamed at the top of his lungs.
Looking at the unconscious Kevin, who has turned normal, lying in front of him.
He cannot believe that thunder can fall on the same person several times naturally in such a short time.