The front wall exploded inward.

Not the door this time.

The entire wall, brick and mortar and reinforced framing, just disintegrated as Marcus came through like a battering ram. His skin had turned grey and stone-like, his already massive frame somehow looking even larger, dense enough that his footsteps cracked the floor.

"Target acquired," Marcus announced, his voice carrying the grinding quality of rocks scraping together.

"Surrender, and you'll be detained.

Resist, and you'll be terminated.

Your choice."

Jorghan's response was to flood the room with blood essence.

Crimson energy exploded outward in waves, seeking Marcus's circulatory system, trying to invade and seize control. But the essence encountered resistance—Marcus's increased density extended to his blood vessels, making them harder to penetrate and more resistant to external manipulation.

Not impossible, Jorghan noted.

Just harder.

Marcus charged, covering the distance between them with surprising speed for someone his size. His fist, turned to literal stone, swung toward Jorghan's head with force that would have decapitated a normal person.

Jorghan didn't try to block.

He ducked under the swing and drove his own fist into Marcus's ribs. His hand, reinforced with blood essence, struck with force that should have broken bones.

Marcus barely flinched.

"That all you got?" the massive man rumbled.

Lightning struck through the ruined wall.

Dr. Cross hovered outside, his body surrounded by crackling electricity, his hands generating bolts that lanced through the air with pinpoint accuracy. The lightning struck Jorghan's blood essence barrier, and for the first time, his defenses struggled. Electricity bypassed the blood itself, attacking his nervous system directly, trying to disrupt the signals that controlled his body.

Jorghan gritted his teeth against the pain and redirected his essence.

Instead of trying to block the lightning, he absorbed it, channeling the electrical energy through his bloodstream, converting it into fuel for his abilities. His system, that bloodline-granted capability that managed his essence, adapted in real-time, learning how to process this new form of power.

Dr. Cross's expression shifted from confident to confused.

"That's not possible. You should be convulsing."

"You should stop talking," Jorghan replied.

He manifested blood essence as a spear and hurled it toward the floating scientist. The crimson projectile crossed the distance in a blur, aimed directly at Dr. Cross's heart.

Cassandra May appeared from nowhere, her hand touching the spear mid-flight. The blood essence projectile's velocity dropped instantly to zero, hanging motionless in the air before falling harmlessly to the ground.

"Kinetic manipulation," Jorghan observed.

"Useful."

"You have no idea," Cassandra replied.

She touched Marcus's shoulder, and suddenly the massive man's next punch came at Jorghan with velocity that defied physics. The acceleration was instantaneous, zero to bullet speed in a fraction of a second.

Jorghan barely dodged, the stone fist passing close enough to his face that he felt the air pressure change. The punch continued through the space where he'd been standing and struck the wall behind him, reducing brick and mortar to powder.

Before Jorghan could counter, something hit him from the side.

Yuki had entered through a window, moving with serpentine grace, her strike aimed at his neck, where her venomous touch would be most effective. Jorghan twisted, catching her wrist before she could make contact. His blood essence invaded her system immediately, trying to neutralize whatever venom she carried.

Yuki smiled, her eyes fully reptilian now.

"Too slow."

She'd already touched him with her other hand, poison entering his bloodstream through contact so brief he'd barely registered it. The venom was fast-acting, designed to cause paralysis within seconds.

Jorghan's bloodline responded automatically. His system identified the foreign substance, analyzed its structure, and began producing antibodies at accelerated rates. The poison was powerful, but his blood essence was more powerful, breaking down the venom's molecular structure and flushing it from his system before it could spread beyond his arm.

"Interesting," Jorghan said.

"But insufficient."

He yanked Yuki forward and headbutted her. The impact would have killed a normal person, but she was an S-rank awakener with enhanced durability. She staggered back, blood streaming from her broken nose, but she was still functional.

The space behind Jorghan twisted.

Wei Lin had activated his spatial manipulation, creating a pocket dimension entrance directly behind the target. If Jorghan stepped backward even slightly, he'd fall into a space that Wei Lin controlled absolutely, where escape was theoretically impossible.

Jorghan sensed the spatial distortion and felt reality bending in ways that his blood essence recognized as dangerous. He dove forward instead of back, rolling across the floor as the pocket dimension snapped shut on empty air.

"He can sense dimensional shifts," Wei Lin observed calmly. "Fascinating. Most awakeners can't detect my spatial manipulation until it's too late."

"Most awakeners aren't from my world," Jorghan replied, regaining his feet.

He was now surrounded. Marcus in front, built like a stone tank and augmented by Cassandra's kinetic acceleration. Dr. Cross above, generating lightning that forced Jorghan to split his attention between ground and air threats. Yuki on his left, already recovering from her broken nose, her movements making it clear she could strike from impossible angles. Wei Lin on his right, reality itself bending around him as he prepared to open more spatial traps. And Cassandra is coordinating it all, her ability to manipulate velocity making everyone more dangerous.

The Chen family cowered in the corner, forgotten by the combatants, just trying to survive being in the same room as this much destructive power.

Jorghan assessed his situation in the fraction of a second. Five opponents, all S-Rank, all working together with practiced coordination. Any one of them would be a serious threat. All five at once could legitimately kill him if he wasn't careful.

So he stopped being careful.

Jorghan's transformation began.

His body expanded, muscles growing denser, his frame increasing from five-seven to nearly seven feet tall. His skin darkened to deep crimson, blood essence manifesting throughout his entire form rather than just around it. His eyes blazed with red light that illuminated the room like burning coals.

But he pushed deeper than the normal Berserk Lord transformation. He channeled the mana he'd absorbed from the dead soldiers, converted it into fuel, burned it to push his bloodline to limits he'd rarely needed.

His blood essence expanded outward in a sphere thirty feet in diameter. Everything within that sphere became his domain, his territory, space where his will was absolute law. The air itself turned red, charged with power that made the S-Rank awakeners instinctively step back.

"Oh shit," Yuki said quietly.

Marcus charged anyway, his stone-enhanced fists swinging with Cassandra-augmented speed. He was too committed to the attack to abort, too experienced to hesitate when action was required.

Jorghan caught both fists.

The impact drove his feet several inches into the floor, the wooden boards cracking under the force, but he held. Blood essence invaded Marcus's body through the point of contact, and this time his increased density wasn't enough resistance. Jorghan's power, amplified by his full transformation, overwhelmed the defensive enhancement.

Marcus screamed as his own blood turned against him. Vessels burst throughout his body, internal hemorrhaging occurring in dozens of places simultaneously. Jorghan lifted the massive man—three hundred pounds of stone-enhanced muscle—and threw him through the already-ruined wall into the street beyond.

Dr. Cross unleashed his full power. Lightning fell from above like judgment from an angry god, multiple bolts striking simultaneously with enough voltage to power a small city. The electricity hit Jorghan's blood essence sphere and was absorbed, converted, added to his reserves. His system had learned the pattern now, understood how to process electromagnetic energy, turned it into fuel rather than damage.

"Stop feeding him!" Cassandra shouted.

But Dr. Cross was already committed. His ability was powerful but straightforward—he generated electricity and directed it at targets. Against most opponents, overwhelming voltage was sufficient. Against Jorghan, it was just making him stronger.

Jorghan manifested blood essence as a lance and hurled it upward. The crimson projectile moved too fast for Cassandra to reach, too solid for Dr. Cross's magnetic fields to deflect. It pierced through his left thigh, severing the femoral artery, blood spraying in an arc as the scientist's concentration shattered.

He fell from the sky, his magnetic levitation failing, dropping toward the ground in an uncontrolled descent.

Yuki caught him halfway down, her enhanced reflexes letting her intercept the falling man and redirect his momentum safely to the ground. It saved Dr. Cross's life but put her out of position for several critical seconds.

Wei Lin took advantage of her distraction. Space folded around Jorghan, multiple pocket dimension entrances opening simultaneously from different angles. Wei Lin's strategy was sound—if Jorghan could sense one spatial trap, overwhelm him with five at once, force him to choose wrong, capture him in at least one of the pocket dimensions.

Jorghan's response was to expand his blood essence sphere violently, pushing it outward with force that disrupted the spatial manipulation. The pocket dimensions destabilized, reality snapping back to normal as Wei Lin lost control of the complex geometry required to maintain multiple spaces.

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