Chapter 301: Commander’s duty 2

Words : 2691 Updated : Oct 3rd, 2025

Albright charged, pressure nodes across his body glowing like constellations beneath his skin. He unleashed a barrage of Pinpoint Collapses—each a surgical strike aimed at vital organs. The pressure nodes visible across Albright's body weren't implants but specialized focus points he'd developed through years of rigorous training. These nodes acted as controlled release valves for his naturally unstable detonation energy. Without them, his power would be wild, unpredictable, and potentially self-destructive. The glowing patterns that form across his skin during combat represented his conscious channeling of explosive force through these self-created pathways, allowing him to execute precise techniques rather than simply causing indiscriminate destruction. This filtration system is the result of decades of discipline and practice - his way of turning raw, chaotic power into surgical precision. Owen's body blurred as the Combat Engine engaged fully. Where before his movements had been measured, now they became fluid poetry. He weaved between the invisible death strikes, each dodge adding to his kinetic reservoir. Steam poured from his joints as internal temperature rose. When Albright overextended on a strike, Owen countered—a palm strike to the chest that released a fraction of his stored energy. The impact sent Albright skidding backward fifty meters, leaving twin furrows in the arena floor. A group of third-year students perched on a damaged balcony gasped at the display. "Holy shit," one whispered. "I've never seen the Commander move like that." "Is that what a Third Gen awakened commander looks like?" another asked, voice trembling. Albright recovered, wiping blood from his lips. His uniform was singed where Owen's strike had connected. "Not bad," he admitted. "But you're holding back. Afraid of hurting your old friend?" Without waiting for a response, he slammed his fist into the ground. An Overpressure wave Arc radiated outward in all directions, tearing up the arena floor and sending debris flying like shrapnel. Owen executed a move he called the Engine Drive: Recoil Drop, slamming his foot into the ground and discharging energy downward. The counterforce launched him fifteen meters into the air, above the destruction wave. As gravity reclaimed him, he redirected momentum into a diving punch aimed at Albright's position. The impact was catastrophic. Owen's fist, charged with accumulated kinetic energy, struck the arena floor where Albright had stood a split second earlier. The concrete disintegrated in a fifty-foot radius, creating a perfect crater. Shock waves rippled outward, shattering remaining windows throughout the arena. Albright reappeared at the crater's edge, breathing heavily. "So the rumors are true," he mocked like the information was new to him,"The Combat Engine gets stronger the longer he fights" Owen rose from a crouch at the crater's center, eyes locked on his opponent. "I trained you," he reminded Albright. "Taught you everything you know about combat. Did you really think this would end any other way?" "You taught me?" Albright laughed, the sound edged with hysteria. "No, Owen. I learned the most valuable lessons watching you fail. Watching you send children to their deaths against Harbingers while claiming it was for humanity's greater good." He began to glow, pressure nodes across his torso pulsing with white-hot energy. "I'm not the monster here. You are." Owen's eyes widened as he recognized the pattern forming across Albright's chest—a death pulse forming at near nuclear level. He glanced to his right, spotting a group of injured students sheltering behind toppled bleachers directly in the line of fire. "Albright, don't!" Owen shouted, already in motion. "There are students—" Albright's chest erupted with white light. A concentrated beam of destructive energy blasted forward, superheating the air in its path. The concrete floor melted instantly beneath it, forming a trench of molten material. Owen threw himself into the beam's path, crossing his arms before him. The Combat Engine screamed as he absorbed the kinetic force, converting it into his own power. His uniform disintegrated under the onslaught, skin blistering and cracking as the heat penetrated his defenses. When the beam subsided, Owen stood smoking but upright, his exposed skin charred black in places. Behind him, the students stared in shock, alive only because a headmaster had intercepted the attack. "Get out!" Owen roared, not taking his eyes off Albright. "All remaining students—evacuate now!" Across the arena, doors burst outward as Owen and Albright crashed through them, their battle spilling onto the arena grounds. Owen seized Albright by the throat and drove him backward through a decorative stone pillar, pulverizing it to dust. The impact carried them across the central plaza and into the main thoroughfare beyond the arena walls. A civilian transport vehicle swerved to avoid the battling commanders, crashing into a building facade. Owen's head snapped toward the sound, concern flashing across his features. Albright seized the opening, driving a knee enhanced with explosive energy into Owen's abdomen. Owen doubled over as internal organs threatened to rupture from the concentrated force. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he staggered backward. "Always distracted by the innocent," Albright taunted, pressing his advantage with a series of explosive jabs. Each connected with the sound of thunder, driving Owen further back. "Your compassion is your weakness!" Owen absorbed the blows, the Combat Engine converting even these punishing impacts into fuel. Steam erupted from his back in geyser-like columns, the kinetic reservoir nearing capacity. With a primal roar, Owen activated Overclock: Redline Break. His veins illuminated beneath his skin like molten metal in a forge. The air around him distorted from the heat as his metabolism tripled. Albright's next attack seemed to move in slow motion from Owen's perspective. He sidestepped it with contemptuous ease, then countered with a flurry of strikes too fast for the human eye to track. Each punch discharged a portion of his stored energy, leaving Albright's body smoking where they connected. The final blow—an uppercut that released a concentrated Gearbreak, a technique where Owen unloaded all stored momentum into a single limb—caught Albright square under the chin. The impact sent him rocketing upward, crashing through the underside of a hovering transport platform seventy meters above. The platform tilted dangerously before its emergency systems compensated, civilians screaming as they clung to safety railings. Owen leapt, using a Recoil Drop against the ground to propel himself upward with explosive force. He reached the damaged platform in seconds, landing in a crouch as his eyes searched for Albright. A shuttle craft hovered at the platform's edge. Two figures stood at its loading ramp—a man and woman in civilian clothes but with the unmistakable bearing of Purge operatives. Mr. and Mrs. Rowe. "Rowe!" Albright called, pulling himself from the wreckage of a shattered vendor stall. "Wait!" The couple exchanged a glance before the woman reached for the shuttle controls. The loading ramp began to retract. "What are you doing?" Albright shouted, staggering toward them. "We had an agreement!" The man—Rowe—offered a cold smile. "Plans change, Vice Commander. Your usefulness has reached its end." The shuttle's engines flared as it banked away from the platform, leaving Albright behind. "No!" Albright screamed after them, face contorted with rage and betrayal. "You promised! We were supposed to—" Owen's fist connected with his kidney, driving him to his knees. "Friends abandoning you, Albright?" he asked, standing over his former second-in-command. "That's the problem with traitors—they tend to betray each other too." Albright's response was a backwards elbow strike enhanced with a Pinpoint Collapse. The invisible force caught Owen in the thigh, instantly cooking the muscle tissue. Owen's leg buckled, and he fell to one knee with a grunt of pain. Albright rolled away, coming to his feet with murderous intent gleaming in his eyes. "You understand nothing," he spat. "The Purge offered salvation, not friendship." He began charging another death pulse, his chest glowing with accumulated energy. "When the Harbingers return in force, only those Purged will be spared!" Owen forced himself upright despite his damaged leg, steam billowing from his frame as the Combat Engine compensated for the injury. "The Harbingers don't spare anyone," he countered. "They consume. Destroy. If we surrender now, humanity dies." "No one dies with the Purge. You don't understand it, do you? Isn't it better humanity experiences a controlled extinction than total annihilation?!" Albright shouted, the glow intensifying across his torso. "The Purge understands this! Why can't you?" His eyes strayed across the chaos of the platform back to the arena—and suddenly widened in shock. Near a lobby's edge lay a body, half-hidden beneath fallen debris. A young man in an Academy Twelve uniform, his neck bent at an impossible angle, eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. "Adrian?" Albright whispered, the energy gathering in his chest faltering. "No... no, that's not possible..." Owen followed his gaze, recognizing Albright's son. At that moment, be didn't know how to feel. "He wasn't supposed to be here," Albright mumbled, stumbling toward the body. "He was supposed to be in the secure hangar... safe..." He went over and fell to his knees beside his son's corpse, trembling hands hovering inches above the boy's face, afraid to touch him as if that would make the death real. "Who did this?" he whispered, then louder: "WHO DID THIS?" His head snapped up, eyes wild with grief and rage. "It was one of them, wasn't it? One of Eclipse's friends? They killed my son!" Owen approached cautiously, the Combat Engine still humming with stored energy. "Albright, think. Adrian was on the arena floor when the attack began. The Purge—your allies—caused this." "No!" Albright roared, rising to his feet. Energy began to pulse not just from the nodes in his chest, but across his entire body. The platform beneath him started to warp from the heat. "My son was supposed to survive! He was supposed to be protected!" Owen recognized the pattern forming across Albright's body with growing horror—Event Breaker: Forbidden Protocol. A world-tier detonation that could vaporize everything within a mile radius. Albright had used this once in his younger years against a group of one horn Harbingers. The carefully cultivated pressure nodes that normally channeled Albright's power were dissolving, like dams crumbling under catastrophic flood waters. The geometric patterns of light beneath his skin—once ordered and precise—now spread in chaotic, fractal tendrils. What had been a controlled river was transforming into a raging sea. Owen had seen this only in classified footage. When a nuclear reactor loses coolant, its core doesn't simply overheat—it melts through all containment, creating an unstoppable chain reaction. Albright's body was becoming that reactor, his grief-maddened mind abandoning the psychological restraints he'd spent decades building. The energy wasn't flowing through his nodes anymore—it was flowing around them, through him, using his entire body as a detonation vessel. The air molecules around Albright began to vibrate at impossible frequencies, creating a visible distortion like heat waves on steroids. Gravity itself seemed to bend toward him, dust and small debris floating upward as fundamental forces answered to the imminent cataclysm. What made this truly terrifying wasn't just the scale, but the complete absence of control. It was like watching a star collapse before nova—a point of no return where physics itself surrenders to pure destructive potential. "Albright, stop!" Owen shouted. "You'll kill everyone—including yourself!" "Everything dies," Albright snarled, his body now glowing like a miniature sun. "Everything burns. At least I'll see my son again in the ash." The civilians still trapped on the platform began screaming as they felt the atmospheric pressure changing. Gravity itself seemed to warp around Albright's glowing form as he drew in energy for the cataclysmic release. Owen had seconds to act. The Combat Engine roared at maximum capacity, every motion feeding more power into his kinetic reservoir. Steam erupted from joints across his body as internal temperatures reached dangerous levels. He charged forward, moving faster than he ever had before. The platform beneath his feet cracked from the force of his acceleration. Albright saw him coming but was locked in the detonation sequence, unable to defend himself without interrupting the build-up. "You're too late," he grinned maniacally. "We all burn together!" Owen's right fist, charged with every ounce of kinetic energy his Combat Engine could produce, struck Albright's glowing chest with surgical precision. The Engine Drive: Gearbreak technique focused all accumulated force into that single strike. The sound was like a thunderclap multiplied a hundredfold. The shock wave radiated outward, shattering every piece of glass within half a kilometer. But instead of expanding outward, the destructive energy Albright had gathered imploded—collapsing inward on itself. Albright's eyes widened in shock as his own power turned inward. The glow beneath his skin intensified to blinding levels as the Event Breaker consumed him from within. His mouth opened in a silent scream as his body began to disintegrate at the molecular level, starting from his core and spreading outward. Owen maintained the connection, his fist driven into Albright's chest, redirecting and containing the catastrophic release. The Combat Engine screamed in protest as it channeled more energy than it was designed to handle, mechanical components fusing from the heat. In the final moment before Albright's complete disintegration, their eyes met. Something like clarity flashed across the Vice Commander's face—regret, perhaps, or simply recognition of the end. Then he was gone—consumed by his own devastating power, channeled and contained by Owen's desperate gambit. The implosion concluded with a vacuum effect that pulled nearby debris toward the point of impact before settling. Where Albright had stood, nothing remained—not even ash. Owen collapsed to his knees, steam no longer venting from his frame as the Combat Engine went dormant, components fused and damaged beyond immediate repair. Blood seeped from cracks in his skin where the system had overloaded. He stared at his right hand—the flesh seared to the bone, muscles exposed and charred black. The pain would come soon, but for now, shock kept it at bay. Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself to his feet and turned toward the civilians who had witnessed the battle's end. "Is anyone injured?" he called, voice hoarse from exertion and smoke inhalation. A young woman stepped forward hesitantly. "Commander... you saved us." Owen shook his head. "Get to the emergency evacuation points," he ordered. "Hover-transport shuttles should be arriving from neighboring academies to assist." He limped toward the platform's edge, where he could see the arena grounds below. The arena was partially collapsed, smoke rising from multiple points. Combat still raged in isolated pockets—students and faculty fighting remaining Purge operatives. A group of third-years had gathered near Adrian Albright's body, respectfully covering it with a jacket despite the chaos around them. "He died fighting," one said quietly, noticing Owen's approach. "We saw him take face down the kids from 1B and Sophie Reign," Owen nodded, a lump forming in his throat. For all Albright's faults as a father, Adrian had been a good student. Dedicated. Honorable. Everything his father had once been, before bitterness corrupted him. "See that his body is treated with respect," Owen instructed. "He died doing his father's will.Remember him for that, not for his father's crimes." The student nodded, then hesitated. "Sir... your hand." Owen glanced down at the mangled remains of his right hand and forearm, flesh charred where he had channeled Albright's detonation. "It's nothing that can't be repaired," he lied. The Combat Engine was likely beyond salvation, and with it, much of his combat effectiveness. But that was a concern for another day. Right now, his students needed him—not as a weapon, but as their leader. Their protector. Commander Owen, Headmaster of Academy Twelve, steeled himself against the pain beginning to register through the fading shock and turned his attention to the battle that still raged below. The Purge had taken one of his oldest friends today. They would not take his academy.

Chapter 301: Commander’s duty 2

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