The temperature in the entire ward violently spiked, turning the ambient air into a scorching furnace.
Witnessing Cheng Du's staggering, apocalyptic metamorphosis, Gao Tianfang stood rooted to the linoleum in absolute shock.
That wasn't just a suppository... What the hell kind of payload could trigger such a catastrophic instantaneous mutation?
It was a comprehensive stat boost. The sheer kinetic pressure radiating off the corporate rat was now matching his own.
The iron guardrails of the hospital bed beside Su Jin began to glow cherry-red from the radiant heat.
The sterile linens at the corner of the mattress instantly spontaneously combusted.
Scrambling to avoid being cooked alive, Su Jin ducked out from under the bed and frantically backed away.
"Cheng Du, status report!"
"I... I feel absolutely fucking phenomenal! My stamina is overflowing, and the power output is still climbing! Boss, what the hell did you just deploy on me?!" Cheng Du locked his burning gaze onto Gao Tianfang, clenching his right fist into a fireball.
"Classified! Just terminate the target!"
"GRAAAH!!!" Cheng Du raised both fists, pounding his chest like an enraged silverback gorilla.
Torrents of brilliant plasma erupted from his sternum with every strike.
Gao Tianfang took a half-step back, his lips twisting into a manic grin. "Interesting... Let's evaluate your new metrics!"
"Die, you motherfucker!!" Cheng Du threw a haymaker. A jet of pure flame blasted from his elbow, rocket-propelling the heavy punch forward.
The velocity was absurd. Gao Tianfang couldn't even register the motion before Cheng Du’s fist cratered into his abdomen.
With a sickening crack, his bone carapace shattered, and the behemoth was violently blasted out into the corridor.
"FUCK YES!!!" Cheng Du let out a manic, feral howl. Flames blasted from his calves, launching him airborne straight after the monster.
"...What the fuck?" Su Jin slumped against the ward wall, completely dumbfounded.
Was this the actual ROI of the company's issued hardware?
Who the hell wrote such a conservative product description for the manual?!
This was unbelievably overpowered! It was a direct evolution into an invincible god of war.
If he had known the utility was this high, he would have deployed it on himself!
He had just endured an entire night of brutal physical trauma for absolutely nothing.
Shaking off his stupor, Su Jin sprinted into the corridor to monitor the engagement.
A chain of concussive explosions rocked the hallway as two blurs of black armor and red plasma violently collided in a high-speed melee.
Cheng Du's berserker offensive completely suppressed Gao Tianfang, mercilessly hammering the beast against the drywall over and over.
In less than sixty seconds, the impenetrable bone armor covering the soldier's body was pulverized into shrapnel.
Yet the monster wasn't entirely defenseless. As a former Tier 1 operator, his pre-infection combat algorithms were deeply ingrained.
Coupled with his mutation, his reaction times were still superhuman.
Cheng Du swung too wildly, missing critical strikes and instead punching massive craters into the load-bearing concrete walls.
Gao Tianfang capitalized on the openings, delivering brutal counter-strikes that staggered Cheng Du, rapidly adapting to this new, hyper-lethal combat rhythm.
However, the superheated plasma radiating from Cheng Du was inflicting catastrophic thermal damage.
Every time Gao Tianfang landed a punch, thick black smoke billowed from his searing knuckles, his face twisting into a mask of pure agony.
"Absolutely fucking incredible... conserve the battery, you idiot!!" Su Jin muttered under his breath, his heart lodged firmly in his throat as he tracked the chaos.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
The two titans brawled like rabid beasts, tearing a path of destruction from the middle of the corridor to the dead end, before violently brawling their way back.
Su Jin’s eyes bugged out as the brawl barreled toward him. He frantically scrambled backward into the clinic.
Cheng Du and Gao Tianfang smashed through the doorway right on his heels, bringing the apocalypse into the confines of the room.
The concussive blasts were deafening. Every impact of flesh, bone, and fire against the walls sent violent tremors through the floorboards.
Cheng Du was a walking hazard; every physical blow he absorbed triggered a volatile secondary eruption of liquid flame.
Su Jin blindly grabbed a stainless-steel surgical tray, clamped it over his face like a pathetic riot shield, and huddled trembling in the corner, furiously pretending he was invisible.
This engagement was way above his pay grade.
Trying to intervene now was a death sentence; the sheer area-of-effect splash damage from either of them would vaporize him on the spot.
"Trash! You're absolute trash! Gao Tianfang, is that all you've got on your resume?! I'm severely disappointed!" Cheng Du taunted arrogantly, his volcanic strikes relentlessly battering the soldier.
"Where's all that big boss energy from a minute ago?!"
Gao Tianfang kept his back to the wall, desperately weaving through the barrage as chunks of concrete exploded into dust around his head.
While he could slip the direct kinetic impacts, he couldn't negate the overwhelming elemental splash damage.
The flesh on his face was already melting into a twisted, charred ruin. His eyes had been completely boiled away.
He looked like a flayed demon clawing its way out of hell...
"Throw a punch, you coward! Are you just gonna block all day?!" Cheng Du kept pushing, desperately trying to bait the monster out of its defensive shell.
He unleashed a superheated uppercut aimed at the gut. Gao Tianfang, who had been turtling for minutes, finally snapped into action!
Relying entirely on echolocation and the shifts in air pressure, the blind behemoth violently twisted his torso, slipping past the lethal punch.
Completely abandoning his guard, he pivoted with terrifying speed, sweeping his massive arms around Cheng Du to lock him in a brutal rear grapple.
He drove a heavy combat boot straight into the back of Cheng Du's knee, forcefully collapsing the Fire God to the floor.
Cheng Du instantly vomited a massive geyser of flame, the violent reverse-thrust slamming Gao Tianfang brutally into the scorched drywall.
Gao Tianfang hawked up a geyser of boiling blood, but his lethal momentum didn't falter.
He tanked Cheng Du's wild, backward headbutts with his ruined face. Maintaining the chokehold with one arm, his free hand ruthlessly reached down into the fire.
Cheng Du's glutes violently clenched, an icy spike of pure terror piercing his fiery heart.
Schlorp... It felt like a critical piece of hardware had just been violently unplugged.
But his output hadn't crashed yet. Gritting his teeth, Cheng Du frantically accelerated his thrashing attacks.
Gao Tianfang didn't make a sound. His sunken, charred face was completely devoid of human features.
Clutching the slick Emergency Suppository in his right hand, he bypassed his own tactical belt and violently shoved it home!
"URGH!! Hck..."
A horrific, guttural groan tore from Gao Tianfang's throat, his suffocating grip on Cheng Du involuntarily slacking as his body processed the invasive payload.
Seizing the window, Cheng Du broke the grapple. He frantically swiped at his own backside, whipped his head around to look at Gao Tianfang, and went instantly, ashen pale.
"Boss! I think he just pulled my plug and installed it in himself!"
"WHAT THE FUCK!!" Su Jin dropped the surgical tray, screaming in absolute horror. "Terminate him! Kill him right fucking now! Hit his weak points!"
If a standard corporate drone could utilize this item, letting a mutated bio-weapon access its buffs was an apocalyptic scenario!
Hearing the order, Cheng Du instantly flattened his flaming fist into a blade, driving a brutal knife-hand strike straight at Gao Tianfang's throat.
The fiery chop connected. Gao Tianfang's upper body rocked backward with a wet cough, while the flames wreathed around Cheng Du's body noticeably flickered and dimmed.
He immediately followed up with a second savage strike to the exact same spot.
But this time, Gao Tianfang barely flinched.
An icy, hellish chill washed over Su Jin, cold sweat soaking his collar.
Cheng Du was too close to the blast radius to see the macro shifts.
But from Su Jin's vantage point, the data was terrifyingly clear.
The pulverized bone armor across Gao Tianfang's entire body was rapidly regenerating. The Emergency Suppository was successfully integrating into the monster's system!
Once that freak achieved full system recovery, their survival probability dropped to absolute zero.
Desperate for an out, Su Jin ripped back the heavy window curtains behind him.
The pitch-black sky was finally bleaching into a pale gray, a singular streak of golden light catching the distant glass skyscrapers.
Dawn... dawn was breaking!
"Cheng Du, fall back! Disengage immediately!"
Su Jin vaulted forward, grabbed Cheng Du by the harness, and hauled him toward the exit.
Gao Tianfang was still locked in a state of hyper-regeneration. The charred, dead skin sloughed off his face, revealing pristine, newly synthesized flesh beneath.
Registering the fleeing targets, a feral, predatory sneer split his face as he launched into pursuit.
"Where do you think you're going?!"
The two men sprinted down the corridor like their lives depended on it. Cheng Du yelled, "Boss, we had him locked down! Where are we running?!"
Sweat pouring down his face, Su Jin’s eyes rapidly scanned the rows of identical doors until his internal radar locked onto a specific target.
"Stop asking questions! Your DPS isn't high enough to kill him. Follow my lead! The second I make my move, you sweep his legs!"
"Copy that!"
They breached the room. Su Jin immediately lunged forward, violently ripping down the blackout curtains before frantically stripping off his own jacket.
A monstrous, apocalyptic silhouette instantly filled the doorway!
Gao Tianfang’s face was completely restored. The new layer of bone armor covering his physique gleamed with an impenetrable, metallic sheen—and he was still evolving!