Along the road ahead, Kapus loosened his muscles. The silver-armored mercenaries charged recklessly forward. To Kapus, the commander behind them—the refined-looking man, his foolish younger brother—had never truly taken control of the unit. The soldiers didn’t respect him.

The moment he showed himself, the entire force would fall apart. They’d scatter like loose sand.

Kapus estimated that the unit would split into four factions. One would follow him. One would follow his brother. The Magic Maiden would claim another. The last would be made up of those who wanted no part in the battle.

So Kapus climbed out of the trench without a care. The silver-armored mercenaries, who had been charging wildly moments before, came to a stop one after another.

Their eyes filled with disbelief.

Hadn’t their leader, Kapus, died fighting the Magic Maiden?

Why was he standing here, alive and well, right in front of them?

“Long time no see, my foolish little brother. When you joined forces with the Magic Maiden to set me up, did you ever consider the possibility that I might not die? Your work was sloppy. It let me crawl back from the grave.”

Every mercenary in silver armor widened their eyes. They stared hard, trying to determine whether the Kapus before them was real.

The dead coming back to life was too horrifying to believe.

But the Kapus before them was clearly real.

Kapus’s brother was lost in a daydream and didn’t hear his shout. Following behind the main force, he noticed that the troops had stopped for some reason. Impatient, he bellowed at them from the rear.

That only irritated most of the mercenaries.

“You’re all a bunch of useless idiots!”

Most of the mercenaries were still immersed in the joy of seeing Kapus “resurrected.” Then his mood-killing brother destroyed that happiness with a single sentence.

Kapus frowned deeply as well. He hadn’t expected his brother to become even more spoiled and arrogant after two months apart.

So this was the root of the mercenaries’ dissatisfaction.

In their eyes, Kapus was clearly the better choice.

He’d thought his foolish brother could win enough loyalty during his absence and take control of the mercenary organization he had built from the ground up.

Now, though, Kapus realized he shouldn’t have expected much from his brother.

He’d always been like this.

Weak… and spoiled.

He was content with his current state, yet yearned to possess everything. Almost no one was worthy of his attention. He believed himself chosen by fate, destined to stand at the peak of the world.

He didn’t realize that he was merely a frog at the bottom of a well. He understood nothing.

When no one moved, Kapus’s brother decided to go forward and see what had happened. He swung his Mechanical Arm and forced his way through the crowd.

At the very front, he saw a familiar face.

His brother.

Kapus.

“How are you still alive?!”

That was the first thought to burst into his mind. His brain hadn’t caught up yet, and the words escaped before he could stop them.

“Are you disappointed that I didn’t die…?”

Every mercenary’s gaze fell upon the two men at the center.

Without anyone noticing, the mercenaries had formed two lines. Most of those wearing silver armor stood behind Kapus. Only a handful remained beside his brother.

Those few mercenaries had chips implanted in their brains. They had no choice but to obey Kapus’s brother.

Kapus didn’t pity them.

People were greedy. Those mercenaries had merely “hired out” their entire lives to his foolish brother.

“Good. You’re… very good!”

Kapus’s brother was visibly furious. He raised a trembling finger and pointed at the silver-armored mercenaries before him. His face twisted with rage.

He spread his palm. Invisible particles gathered in the air and condensed above it.

He had clearly lost his temper. He wanted to leave not a single mercenary alive.

“As long as you all die here, I’ll still be the king of the mercenaries!”

The particles condensed into a colored sphere of light. Noticeable electric arcs danced across its surface.

The arcs propelled the sphere toward Kapus.

Kapus wasn’t afraid in the slightest. The sphere looked powerful, but it was far too slow. Dodging it would be easy.

Kapus and all the silver-armored mercenaries around him avoided the attack with ease.

However, the resulting explosion blasted apart the trench Kapus had worked so hard to dig.

“Old friends, take them down!”

At Kapus’s command, every silver-armored mercenary surged forward.

They were mercenaries, not detectives. They certainly weren’t garbage collectors. Their job was to kill and rob, not search through ruins for some so-called gate!

Kapus’s brother had joined forces with the Magic Maiden to murder Kapus. If Kapus hadn’t survived, these mercenaries might have remained in the dark for the rest of their lives.

Their anger erupted in an instant.

They gripped weapons of every color and charged like bloodthirsty beasts. They wanted to tear Kapus’s brother to pieces.

The mercenaries weren’t weak, but in the end, they were still ordinary people. Some of them had undergone modifications, but compared to the extent of Kapus’s brother’s enhancements, they were completely outmatched.

With a slight push of his legs, he landed more than ten meters away. Then he opened his palm.

The components gathered there unfolded outward.

The core light cannon was undeniably powerful, but it was somewhat slow. A barrage of light bullets was much more satisfying.

“Go to hell, all of you!”

Kapus’s brother could no longer suppress the madness in his heart. Bullets made entirely of energy shot toward the faces of the silver-armored mercenaries.

But when those bullets struck the mercenaries, they barely reacted.

Kapus had been waiting to admire the mercenaries’ miserable end. He paused slightly.

Why?

Why did they act as though nothing had happened after being hit?

They were clearly ordinary people!

“Is it that armor…?”

Kapus’s brother realized that the silver armor covering the mercenaries was made of mercury.

But it wasn’t ordinary mercury. It also contained the Magic Maiden’s Mana.

That was why his light bullets couldn’t kill those weak mercenaries.

“Damn Magic Maiden…”

The mercenaries soon realized that Kapus’s brother’s attacks were useless against them. They stopped holding back and charged forward with all their strength.

Several of them pounced on the silver-armored mercenaries beside Kapus’s brother. They pinned them down and subdued them on the spot.

Another group planned to capture Kapus’s brother alive. Then they would return the “favor” he had “granted” them over the past few days—several times over.

But they couldn’t catch Kapus’s brother at all.

His legs had been modified. He could run a hundred meters in only a few seconds. His Mechanical Arm was the latest model, too. Boosters beneath his feet could give him, for a short time, speed comparable to a racing car.

Besides his original two weapons, his arms also carried a high-damage weapon designed to deal with the Magic Maiden.

Of course, it could be used against ordinary people as well. It simply felt like using a cannon to kill a mosquito.

Still, if he reached the point of desperation, he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

This weapon’s attack was divided into three layers.

The first layer broke through the Mana Layer covering the Magic Maiden’s body. The moment it detonated, the second layer followed immediately.

The second layer contained nano-devices that blocked Blood flow. Once the Blood was obstructed, the Magic Maiden’s Mana could no longer circulate through her body.

The third layer was the killing blow.

The nanobots extracted the Mana within the Magic Maiden’s body and then detonated it. According to testing, if used properly, the weapon could supposedly kill Cantata Two.

His figure flashed among the mercenaries. The sharp Blades on his knees swept across their silver armor, leaving no marks behind.

They couldn’t hurt him.

He couldn’t hurt them, either.

For a time, the battle fell into a stalemate.

The places not covered by mercury were their weak points. They were the only places Kapus’s brother could injure.

If those people had been ordinary men, Kapus’s brother would have been confident of killing them here.

But these were mercenaries trained by Kapus.

They were disciplined. Their speed and strength were inferior to his, but they understood their own advantage. They did everything they could to make his attacks land on their mercury armor.

They fought a war of attrition.

No matter how powerful an enhanced body was, it still had limits. Just like an ordinary human body, it would eventually wear down.

They had numbers.

One day, they would grind him to death.

Kapus’s brother understood this clearly. If the battle continued, he would lose sooner or later.

He had already abandoned long-range attacks. At that moment, he was gripping one mercenary by the throat, preparing to crush it.

Then countless mercenaries swarmed him and attacked the parts of his body that hadn’t been modified.

His damn brother was the most dangerous of them all.

In only a few minutes, several cuts had been carved into the connective tissue between his legs and arms.

Those wounds had been left by his “dearest” brother.

If this continued, he would die!

“Please… help me…”

A trace of pleading entered his voice.

Kapus frowned tightly.

The only person who could make his brother lower himself like this was probably the Magic Maiden.

Then, from deep beneath the earth, a streak of silver liquid drilled upward.

The liquid reformed into the exposed figure of a woman.

She snapped her fingers.

Every mercenary wearing silver armor instantly transformed into a puddle of mercury.

Kapus’s brother reached out, trying to grab the mercenaries as they dissolved at terrifying speed.

Unfortunately, all he caught were tiny beads of mercury.

“What did you do to them?”

“I let the mercury enter their skin and replace everything inside their bodies…”

An unpleasant voice emerged from the silver figure’s throat.

Her palm drifted lightly across Kapus’s brother’s body before finally coming to rest on his shoulder.

“Now only you and your brother remain… I hope you won’t disappoint me.”

“As for me, I’m going to deal with those unruly people.”

Wrapped in lightning, Qiu Sheng slowly stepped out of space. Her eyes locked onto the silver figure in the distance.

Kapus’s brother walked toward Kapus.

He was confident he could defeat his brother. Every Mechanical Arm on Kapus’s body was an outdated model, while his own were the newest available.

Even if they weren’t power-focused models, their speed, strength, and firepower far surpassed Kapus’s old parts.

“I’ll tear you apart…”