Already seated inside the Zerphyr-7 Stealth Reconnaissance UAV, Daren and Talia were anxious as they stayed at the battle footage showing the intense battle that continued playing out at the heart of the wasteland.

Seeing Leon stubbornly stay behind and continue fighting the terrorist leader even while surrounded by hundreds of terrorists and trucks who were attacking him, Talia panicked but at the same time she was angry.

"That bastard! He’s courting death!"

"Does he want to sacrifice himself?" She bit her fingernails in a rabid manner in a bid to calm her crippling anxiety.

When Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq arrived at the battlefield, she and Daren heaved a sigh of relief, but they knew that it was not over.

Throughout history, it was never easy to kill a D Rank Ascended.

And this was why when Leon did it...

CLANGGGGGGG!

...cutting through the gigantic Ratel Knight Exosuit and its pilot with his Great Sword, murdering the infamous terrorist Dhruv Laden, they could not help but stare with a look of disbelief on their faces.

And that was when it happened.

DING!

[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!]

[INCOMING! NUCLEAR BOMB!]

"...!"

’Huh?’

’Nuclear what...?!’

Stunned, Daren and Talia looked at the distant horizon where it seemed like the sun was blooming to life in Neo-Tokara for the first time in centuries.

Due to the current altitude of the Zerphyr-7 Stealth Reconnaissance UAV, they were the first to see it.

...

The first sign wasn’t the launch itself, it was the silence.

Amid the chaos of the battlefield- the engines, the gunfire, the screaming metal, and the stubborn Mechanist murdering their leader right in front of them, something invisible passed through the ranks of the terrorists.

It was the remnant of Dhruv Laden’s dying will.

’ACTIVATE WORLD-EATER!’

Since the old world ended and After Genesis, the remnants of humanity collectively agreed that no force should dabble recklessly with nuclear weapons.

Every ruler in the world After Genesis supported this unwritten rule, but the Extremist Movement have never quite been famous for sticking to established rules, they thrived in chaos and Dhruv’s final dying will was the perfect proof of this.

Far beyond the battlefield, buried in the ribs of the wasteland, the terrorists honored their leaders’ dying will as something ancient and forbidden woke up.

A hatch that was half-swallowed by sand and rust shuddered.

Bolts screamed as they tore loose, and dust flew off its surface like an avalanche as it split open, revealing a darkness beneath that pulsed with a low, mechanical heartbeat.

For one suspended moment after the hatch opened, the world seemed to hesitate, and then the earth erupted.

RUMBLE...!

Fire speared upward in a violent column as the missile punched out of its tomb, dragging a tail of incandescent fury behind it.

The ground cracked outward in a spider web of shock in its wake, flinging debris and ash into the sky.

The roar came a heartbeat later- deep, colossal, swallowing every other sound as the rocket clawed its way higher into the sky, tearing through the choking clouds like a Leviathan through a sea!

On the battlefield, heads turned, including Leon’s.

Even the fighting faltered for a heartbeat as in Leon’s vision, two different virtual interfaces came to life and overlapped with emergency notifications written in bold on them.

DING!

[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!]

[INCOMING! NUCLEAR BOMB!]

...

DING!

~----~

[ChronoSystem WARNING!]

[DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!]

[INCOMING NUKE...!]

~----~

Leon and Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq, including the hundreds of terrorists surrounding them stared in a daze as a streak of white-hot light cut through the poisoned sky, rising fast like a streak of lightning!

It left behind a burning scar across the heavens, a line that seemed to split the world in two as it approached them.

No one said a word, no one explained, but they all understood.

This was DEATH!

Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq froze. "They wouldn’t..." he muttered in disbelief.

Despite his decades of experience as a D Rank Ascended and mercenary, this Lt. Colonel was yet to see any faction or movement blatantly break the unwritten war rules of the world in such a daring manner.

"That bastard, he actually ordered a nuclear bomb..." he muttered in a daze.

The terrorists around him didn’t say a single word, but they all had similar thoughts as they quickly came to the conclusion that none of them was going to survive today.

There was no surviving a nuclear bomb.

As for Leon, prompted by the twin ominous notifications from the ChronoSystem and the Zerphyr-7, he was the one to react first in the entire battlefield as his brain geared into overdrive.

Unlike them, he was not ready to die. He was ready to live by all means.

Staring at the rapidly approaching missile that painted the world orange like a rising sun, all sounds faded from Leon’s mind, all distractions disappeared from his mind as his brain abstracted everything and narrowed his focus on the approaching missile.

He calculated. ’How long before it gets here...?’

The timeframe was too small for him to ask Davis to do the computations, so he did an estimate in his head.

Afterall, under pressure when pinpoint accuracy didn’t matter, the human brain is faster than a computer.

’10 seconds before this entire ecosystem is blasted to oblivion...!’ Leon concluded within less than a millisecond.

Since awakening in this world, despite fighting in wars involving large-scale armies and even C Rank Ascended already, this was the first time that Leon saw a side use nukes and just like Lt. Colonel Umar, he was caught off-guard.

Leon was not deluded enough to think that any of his constructs could save him from this, this singular missile was going to kill him if he stayed, either by the explosion or biologically through the radiation that would follow.

’That f*cking bastard...!’ He gritted his teeth.

Leon didn’t hesitate though once he calculated the timeframe that he had to escape from this battlefield.

’10 seconds... no more, no less’.

’9...’ He counted.

BZZZZZZZ!

His grayish white ADE erupted like a tsunami around him, spreading across to all 20 of the Doom Rover v0.2s that he deployed in this battlefield.

Miniaturization!

All 10 constructs immediately began shrinking, and as they did, they followed Leon’s last command with Command Link Network as they rushed towards him at full-speed, bulldozing their way through terrorists in the process.

’8...’

The Bulwark MK.II Titan Frame turned around even before the Doom Rovers could get to it as it took one step forward, then its massive hands wrapped around and grabbed Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq.

The Lt. Colonel didn’t resist as he let the mech suit grab him.

Finally, the terrorists realized what was happening and without hesitation, they turned around to shoot at the miniaturized mechanical soldiers that were rapidly flying towards the mech suit.

They wanted to stop the enemy from escaping.

In the heat of the moment, they all already made up their minds and accepted the situation.

As they shot, they roared. "Gud er større!"

"GUD ER STØRRE!"

"GUD ER STØRRE!"

"GUD ER STØRRE!"

"GUD ER STØRRE!"

Their voice echoed like thunder in the backdrop of the distant but rapidly approaching nuke missile head!

’7...’ Leon counted.

Clank! Clank! Clank!

14 of the miniaturized Doom Rovers made it, attaching themselves to the Bulwark MK.II Titan Frame like tiny magnets, but the interruption by the terrorists delayed the 6 other Doom Rover v0.2s as the E Rank Ascended put their lives on the line to stop them.

Seeing this, Leon didn’t hesitate. Money is expendable and could be made anytime, but he only had 1 life.

He resolutely decided to abandon the rest of the Doom Rovers.

Tututututututu...!

The terrorists shot at him, desperately trying to stop him from escaping but ignoring all their attacks, Leon’s ADE flared again.

Miniaturization!

Enhance!

He used Miniaturization on the Sentry-IV Autocannon Drone, pouring his all in without caring about ADE expenditure as the powerful Gun Drone became small enough for the Bulwark MK-II Titan Frame to carry.

While carrying Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq on its right hand, the mech suit picked up and lifted the Gun Drone with its left.

The weight of the Gun Drone even while miniaturized pulled at the Bulwark MK, but the internal musculature of the mech suit held.

Leon was multi-tasking as he activated Miniaturization and Enhance at the same time and while Miniaturization was for the Sentry-IV Autocannon Drone, Enhance was for the Bulwark MK.II Titan Frame.

He used Enhance at full capacity!

Bzzz...!

His ADE flowed like a tide, concentrating on the hands and the upper back area of the mech suit as the Modular Missile Pod Arrays and the Forearm Rail Cannons warmed up in milliseconds and unleashed a salvo at the ground!

The ground cracked and fractured, rapidly heating up and melting.

Leon used a similar strategy earlier to boost the Bulwark MK.II Titan Frame in pursuit of Dhruv Laden, using his weapons as a rocket booster, but now he used it to boost the mech suit, launching it into the sky like a NASA rocket.

BOOM!

The Bulwark MK.II Titan Frame launched into the sky.

’6...’ he counted.

At the same time that the Bulwark MK.II Titan Frame launched into the sky, leaving the terrorists behind, the whooshing sound of the air being sliced apart by a fast-moving object reverberated from above.

WHOOSH...!

The Zerphyr-7 was descending from the sky at full speed!

The stealth aircraft was descending, while the Bulwark MK.II Titan Frame was ascending and just before impact, Leon’s ADE flared again.

Miniaturization!

BZZZ!

The hatch of the stealth aircraft opened in perfect synchrony while the mech suit became smaller, small enough to fit right into the hatch with all the baggage it was carrying alongside.

Leon dragged himself and the mech suit, Lt. Colonel Umar Farouq, 14 of his Doom Rovers, and the Sentry-IV Autocannon Drone into the aircraft.

"GO! GO! GO!" He roared.

Just before hitting the ground, Davis performed the maneuver of its life as the stealth aircraft showed perfect aerodynamics and aerial dominance as it made a sharp turn, curving its flight path and setting course away from the battlefield, skimming just above the fractured ground.

The Zerphyr-7 wasted 0 energy or time in the process.

’5...’ Leon counted and finally looked at the footage being broadcasted inside the Zerphyr-7.

The nuke missile already arched at its apex, hanging for a fraction of a second at the edge of sight, then it began to fall.

’4...’

The descent was almost graceful, no longer screaming and no longer fighting, just dropping, guided by something cold and inevitable.

The trail it left behind twisted slowly in the upper atmosphere, forming a ghostly spiral that dissolved into the storm.

’3...’

Below, the battlefield finally became a frantic blur as the terrorists panicked. Some tried to run, others froze.

A few laughed, wild, broken, and exultant. While some remained pious to the end, screaming "GUD ER STØRRE!"

’...make it wondrous’. Leon remembered the terrorist leader’s words.

Then it hit.

KABOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!