As soon as they noticed Zayn being alone, the Rheasians lost hope. They had seen these foreigners in action. They knew how good they were at fighting. That specific man, Kenneth, was a monster who could puncture a punching bag with a haphazard punch. They could already see in their mind—how badly beaten Zayn would have become after the foreigners’ nightmarish retribution. It only existed in their imagination for now, but still, it saddened the Rheasians. One of them even had reddened eyes.“Run!” One of them cried. He was warning Zayn.The other Rheasians froze for a second, then another one broke out of his trance and shouted, “Run for your life! These foreigners are sadists—they will rip you apart for beating their kin!”Another Rheasian quickly chimed in, too. “Run, man! Run before it’s too late!”Their desperate warnings shocked Zayn. He did not expect things to turn out this way. And yet, as his shocked eyes swept through a dozen of Rheasian faces, he saw concern, humiliation,
Jake Lewis was a university graduate hailed from a rural backwater. Ten years ago, he was a wide-eyed idealist with a big ambition nestled in his bosom. He went to Waltz City and believed that he would build something grand from hard work and intellect.But reality was a cruel mistress, and she was especially harsh to the quixotic. Jake suffered nothing but failures and setbacks since joining the big city until every ounce of his passion had been snuffed out. He gave up—two years ago, he suffered from an investment catastrophe that landed him in a bed of thorny debt. There had been many moments when he wanted to give up and just let the current of life take him, but he could not when he had a wife and children waiting for him. He had to soldier on. Problem was, at this age, he had nothing special to him anymore. All he had was hard labor. It was not the sort that could generate fast income.Then, four months ago, he saw an advertisement, searching for a cleaner. He was to be paid $20
Receiving their hero’s compliment made the men feel even prouder of themselves, and they puffed their chests even higher.Kenneth managed to shatter the feel-good moment, though. With an icy sneer, he scowled at Zayn and the Rheasians with the snarling ferocity of a monster and cocked his head to the side. “You think… That a bunch of Rheasina weaklings like yourselves would have anything to stand up against us? You really want to die so badly?”All twenty-odd foreigners had begun to surround Zayn, Jake, and the rest, their eyes brimming with hostility.Jake and his coworkers showed fear. Admittedly, the foreigners dwarfed them so much that the Rheasians and the foreigners belonged to two separate classes altogether.They gulped, clearly in fear. Smith and Kenneth took a few steps toward them and scanned the Rheasians with scorn until they finally rested on Zayn. “Rheasian weaklings. You’re of an inferior race! And you think you can fight against our noble race?”“You Rheasians sho
Smith, Kenneth, and his ilk took in the fear and anxiety in these people’s faces in delight. The jeers grew as much as their contempt ballooned.Zayn sighed quietly to himself, realizing that most of his compatriots still held deep-seated fear toward these foreigners. How could they not when the latter was so much larger than them? But he was not going to give up, oh no. To him, it meant that the responsibilities on his shoulders had multiplied. He would have to change this!He turned to his people with fire and edge in his eyes. “Don’t be afraid, all of you. With me around, these foreigners won’t be able to lay a finger on you at all. I want all of you to be brave; we’re not the same race they beat up a hundred years ago now. We have arisen! We don’t need to be afraid of them anymore!”Zayn’s impassioned speech managed to assuage many of their fears, but their faith in Zayn was still lacking. “Um, Boss, tell me you summoned some help before you came here?”The others’ eyes shone w
The Rheasians standing behind Zayn could feel the pressure before Kenneth’s attack even arrived. Blood had escaped their faces as they stumbled backward, their hearts threatening to stop as fear tightened its grip around their chests.Zayn did not move despite the attack. He remained still, as though he was so shocked, he could not move anymore. No dodging, no side-stepping. Kenneth smirked, confident that a punch drawing two thousands pounds of force—nearly ninety-percent of his strength—could snap Zayn’s neck like a twig.Smith and the rest were excited too. They were sure Zayn was going down.Thump!The punch had connected—and Kenneth was stunned. The last time he fought with Zayn, he remembered his opponent being fast enough to evade him. So why did he not? What was going on?Jake and the rest watched Zayn’s face bracing the full brunt of the attack, their hearts sinking. There was no hope.Of course that was not the case; in fact, it was even more bizarre. Zayn remained in h
No one would have thought Zayn could defeat Kenneth before this played out. It would have been ludicrous to suggest that when one compared their size—Kenneth was like a lion while Zayn had the imposing stature of a rabbit. And yet, it turned out that Zayn not only could take a ceaseless fusillade of punches from the lion-like Kenneth without any injury, but also threw a punch at the latter so hard that the poor man flew backward and out of consciousness.When the room trained their eyes on the evident dent on Kenneth’s chest, the same question leaped to everyone’s mind: how the hell was he supposed to survive that?Zayn did not pull his punches this time. Even if Kenneth managed to survive, he would have to live his life crippled and defective.Jake and the rest of his compatriots gulped in disbelief. It was happening. This was all real. And it completely, utterly, flew at the face of what they knew about the world.Zayn, meanwhile, espied the intensifying fear on the foreigners’ f
Zayn had never felt so alive and gleeful since he walked the path of being the best fighter. Not even killing Xander nor Mia had been as ecstatic as this.“Stop it, Rheasian! F**king stop it! Stoooooop!” the foreign transhuman screamed as he chased Zayn around. There were a few times when it felt as though he was close to stopping Zayn, but the invincible man always dodged it with his impossibly nimble maneuver.All twenty-off foreigners were felled, one by one. No one could withstand a single one of Zayn’s attacks. Some of them were being smacked so hard they crashed onto the wall and caused it to collapse.Kenneth woke up from his brief spell of unconsciousness and watched it unfold with his face turning whiter and whiter. His fear was so gripping that it numbed him from the pain flaring all over parts of his body.“God help me, Satan’s here,” he mumbled to himself. To these foreigners, Zayn was nothing but Satan himself.By the time Zayn stopped, every single foreigner was dead
The entire scene was deathly silent. The foreign transhuman died before Jake and the others. His sinister appearance left behind an impression that could not be erased in their minds. They looked at Zayn now with a feeling that could no longer be described with the word ‘shocked’. In the gigantic arena, only the Rheasians were left standing while the 26 bodies lying on the ground were all foreigners. Zayn adjusted his breathing ever so slightly. Despite doing something so shocking earlier that appeared to be a lot of work and exhausting, not much of his energy was drained in truth. In fact, his shirt was all clean now as if he just did something trivial. He was troubled by the sight of Jake and the others being terrified. He realized that his action earlier had perhaps scared these bunch of ordinary people.Hence, he cracked a smile as gentle as the breeze in the spring. He chuckled and said, “There’s no need to be afraid, they deserve their punishment.”Upon hearing Zayn’s