Pham Tuan, still pinned down by suppressing fire, risked a glance over his cover. His jaw dropped. He saw Lin Ming standing calmly over the two perfectly bisected halves of the Madakaros warrior.
The cloth wrapping lay at his feet, and in his hand was an ancient sword that seemed to drink the dim light of the warehouse.
"What... what the hell?" Pham Tuan stammered, forgetting about the enemy shooting at him. A red energy beam sizzled past his head, snapping him back to reality.
The remaining Madakaros warrior saw its comrade fall and let out a furious roar. It abandoned its fight with Pham Tuan and charged at Lin Ming, firing its energy pistol wildly.
Lin Ming moved like a phantom. He sidestepped the first two shots, the beams of energy punching smoking holes in the concrete floor where he had just been standing.
He didn't even seem to be hurrying, yet the alien couldn't land a single shot. With his Qi-enhanced senses, he could almost see the path of the beams before they were even fired.
"Scrawny, on your left!" Quynh Nhu's voice crackled in his ear, a redundant warning.
As the alien closed the distance, it threw aside its pistol and drew its own blade, intending to engage in close combat. A fatal mistake.
Lin Ming met the charge. He didn't use any fancy sword techniques from ancient manuals. He used the simple, brutally efficient combat drills from his past life as a soldier, now amplified by his cultivation and the peerless sharpness of Thuan Thien.
Parry, step, thrust.
It was one clean, economical movement. He deflected the alien's wild swing, creating an opening. Thuan Thien shot forward like a serpent's tongue, piercing straight through the warrior's throat.
The legendary sword sliced through alien bone and tissue as if it were air.
Lin Ming pulled the blade back. The Madakaros warrior clutched at its neck, its three eyes wide with shock, before collapsing into a lifeless heap.
[Madakaros Kill x2 Combo!]
[Your swordsmanship is clean. Thuan Thien appreciates the lack of flailing.]
[+850 Battle Will Points.]
Two elite alien warriors, eliminated in less than thirty seconds.
The entire warehouse fell silent, except for the frantic clicking of the tech specialist at its console. The techie, seeing its guards dispatched with such terrifying efficiency, let out a high-pitched scream and abandoned its keyboard, turning to run.
"He's getting away!" Pham Tuan shouted, finally emerging from behind his crate.
"No, he's not," Lin Ming replied calmly. He wasn't a speed-focused cultivator, and the techie was surprisingly fast. Running after it was inefficient. Instead, he bent down, picked up a fist-sized metal gear from the floor, and infused it with a sliver of his Qi.
He spun and threw it like a baseball pitcher.
The gear whistled through the air and struck the fleeing Madakaros square in the back of its knee. There was a sickening CRACK. The alien tumbled to the ground, howling in pain, its leg broken.
Now, only one target remained. The brain of the operation.
As Lin Ming and Pham Tuan cautiously approached the incapacitated techie and its console, Quynh Nhu's voice came through their comms, sharp and urgent.
"Hold your position! My thermals are showing a massive energy spike from that console! He triggered something!"
The holographic console began to flicker violently, the alien script turning a dangerous shade of red. A shrill, oscillating tone filled the air.
"It's a data-purge," Pham Tuan said, his face pale. "He's trying to overload the system to wipe all the data and probably take out the whole block!"
In her hidden room filled with monitors, Minh Thu's systems blared with alarms.
WARNING: HOSTILE SYSTEM DETECTED // SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED // ESTIMATED DETONATION: 60 SECONDS
"Oh, you did not just try to blow yourself up on my network," Minh Thu muttered, her placid demeanor vanishing. A competitive fire ignited in her eyes. Her fingers became a blur on the keyboard. "You wanna play? Let's play."
She dove into the Madakaros's chaotic, self-destructing code. It was like trying to disarm a bomb in the middle of a hurricane. Firewalls popped up like weeds, and logic bombs were hidden everywhere. But for Minh Thu, this was home turf.
"Rerouting power core feedback loop... isolating detonator command string... nice try with that recursive encryption, but it's sloppy..." she narrated to herself in a low monotone.
Back in the warehouse, the countdown on the alien console was visible: 45... 44...
"We have to get out of here!" Pham Tuan yelled, already backing away.
Lin Ming stood his ground, his eyes fixed on the console. He looked at Thuan Thien. Could it cut through energy? He didn't know, and this was not the time for experiments. He needed to trust his team. "Quynh Nhu, is there a physical power source?"
"Scanning... Yes! Below the console! A conduit running into the floor. If you can sever it—"
Lin Ming didn't need to be told twice. He raised Thuan Thien.
20... 19...
Just as he was about to strike, the shrill alarm tone on the console suddenly stopped. The red letters flickered, glitched, and then turned a peaceful, solid green. A new line of text appeared on the screen, not in the alien script, but in perfect, standard Vietnamese:
Hệ thống đã được vô hiệu hóa. Có một ngày tốt lành nhé. (System disabled. Have a nice day.)
Underneath the text was a small, crudely drawn ASCII art smiley face. :)
10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
SYSTEM SELF-DESTRUCT... CANCELLED.
The energy surge vanished. The warehouse fell into a profound silence.
Lin Ming, Pham Tuan, and Quynh Nhu (watching through her scope) stared at the screen in stunned disbelief.
[Mission Objective Complete: Hostile Unit Neutralized.]
[Bonus Objective Complete: Alien Technology Secured.]
[Co-op Mission Bonus: +500 Battle Will Points for... well, not dying.]
[System Analysis: It appears your team has a ghost. An efficient, polite, and slightly cheeky ghost.]
Lin Ming stared at the smiling ASCII face. He had heard whispers in his past life of a legendary allied hacker codenamed "Minerva" who could dismantle Madakaros systems with ease. He never knew who she was. He never expected she'd save his life with a smiley face.
Pham Tuan let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He looked at Lin Ming, at the two dead aliens, and at the disarmed bomb. His expression was a complex mixture of fear, respect, and deep-seated confusion. The slum rat he had looked down on wasn't just tough; he was a walking calamity for their enemies. His own Awakened powers felt like a child's toy in comparison to what he had just witnessed.
Quynh Nhu's voice came over the comms again, all traces of her usual sarcasm gone, replaced by genuine shock.
"...Report, team."
Lin Ming calmly re-wrapped Thuan Thien in its cloth, making it look like an ordinary object again. He keyed his comms.
"Targets eliminated. Technology secured. The bomb... uh... got a polite request to stop."