Chapter3

The ballroom went dead silent.

The only sounds left were the howl of wind blasting in through the shattered entrance and the crisp clinking of champagne flutes toppling over.

The socialites who had been laughing at me moments ago were now huddled in corners, shaking like frightened quail. Some covered their mouths. Some stared with their eyes wide open. Some had already collapsed onto the floor, too terrified to even run.

I kicked a shard of glass out of my way and walked straight toward Irene through the blood smeared across the floor.

Every step was slow. Steady. My boots crunched over broken glass, the sharp crunch, crunch echoing through the silent ballroom like the footsteps of death itself.

Irene trembled all over in Victor's arms, her face white as paper. The look in her eyes was pure fear—the kind of fear reserved for strangers, as if the man standing in front of her was no longer me, but some monster clawing its way up from hell.

"R-Rex... h-how are you..."

She stammered so badly she could barely get the words out.

I ignored her.

I pulled a thick stack of bloodstained financial statements from my pocket and slapped them across the face she had always been so proud of.

Smack!

The pages fluttered down like snow, scattering all over the floor. The glaring losses and red annotations stood out against the white paper like a barrage of slaps across her face.

"Open your eyes and look," I said calmly, so calmly it was like I was talking about the weather. "Your perfect fiancé already gutted the entire Winster estate and used it to plug the sinkhole overseas. That so-called old-money empire you worship? It's nothing but an empty shell drowning in debt."

Irene's whole body jolted.

She scrambled to grab the papers off the floor, her elegant features twisting instantly. Numbers don't lie—asset transfers, cooked books, offshore shell companies... every page laid it all out in black and white.

"No... no, that's impossible... that can't be true..."

She muttered to herself, her voice growing weaker and weaker, less certain with every word. Her hands shook so badly the paper rattled audibly.

"Victor... this is fake, right? Tell me this is fake!"

She whipped around and clutched at Victor's sleeve like she was grabbing the last life raft in the ocean.

Victor said nothing.

His expression had gone ugly too, but not because of the reports. Those numbers were real. He knew it better than anyone. The reason his face looked so bad was because he had realized I was absolutely not the useless grease monkey he had taken me for.

I raised the black satellite phone in front of the hundreds of cameras in the room and switched it to speaker.

"Ten seconds."

I locked my eyes on Victor's face as the color steadily drained out of it, my voice cold enough to sound carved from arctic ice.

"I want every account tied to the Sterling family turned into worthless paper."

Axel's fanatical voice came from the other end. "At once, my king!"

Beep—beep beep—

Almost at the exact same time, Irene's and Victor's phones began vibrating like death warrants.

Victor yanked out his phone. Twenty-three text alerts in a row, covering every Sterling family account across the globe. Every fund. Every account. Frozen. Not a single one spared.

Then came the calls from creditors. His phone started ringing nonstop, one name after another flashing across the screen—every person he owed money to.

He fumbled frantically, trying to shut it off, but his fingers were shaking too hard to hit the button right.

"No... that's impossible..."

For the first time, he truly panicked. The Alpha who ruled New York's underground with an iron fist was now wearing naked fear across his face. He furiously tried dialing a number, but all he got was a busy signal.

"My black card! My billion-dollar fund!"

Irene let out a shrill scream and collapsed to the floor like a madwoman. She clutched her phone with both hands. On the screen, her account balance showed one giant, merciless zero.

"No... no, no, no... where's my money? Where did my money go?!"

She looked up and clawed at Victor's pant leg with desperate force. "Victor, say something! Use your power and kill him! You can do something, can't you?!"

Victor had no time to spare on the woman at his feet.

He stumbled back two steps and stared at me, all the contempt gone from his eyes, replaced by boundless fear.

"Who... what the hell are you?"

His voice shook. He could feel it now—that ancient pressure spilling out of me, thick enough to seem tangible. That was not the aura of an ordinary werewolf. It wasn't even the aura of a high-ranking one. It was something older, stronger, and far more terrifying.

"Just a mechanic," I said flatly.

"That's impossible!" Victor roared. "A mechanic can't have this kind of power! Who the hell are you?!"

He suddenly bit through the tip of his tongue, and the taste of blood seemed to give him some of his nerve back. He drew in a deep breath, and the muscles across his body began to swell, his suit stretching with a ripping hiss.

A werewolf battle form.

Only a partial shift, but horrifying enough—muscles bulging, veins standing out, fingernails lengthening into claws, pupils narrowing into slits, sharp fangs pushing past his lips.

A wave of Alpha pressure exploded from him like an invisible sledgehammer, crashing toward me.

The socialites around us shrieked and stumbled backward. Some crawled away. Some fainted on the spot.

And yet—

When that pressure hit me, it felt like nothing more than a breeze.

I didn't even blink.

"That's it?"

I tipped my head slightly, disappointment dripping from my voice.

"This is the power you're so proud of?"

Victor's face turned green.

With a furious roar, he drove off both legs and shot at me like a blur. His claws went straight for my throat, moving so fast the naked eye could barely follow—

"Too slow."

I lifted my right hand and caught his wrist as easily as if I were plucking something out of the air.

Crack!

The sound of bone shattering rang out with brutal clarity in the silent ballroom.

"AAAH—!"

Victor screamed and dropped to his knees in front of me. His wrist bent at a grotesque angle, jagged bone punching through the skin in chalk-white splinters.

But I wasn't done.

I took one step forward.

BOOM!

The ancient bloodline pressure that belonged only to the First Wolf King crashed down without restraint, like a tidal wave towering ten thousand feet high.

The bones Victor had always been so proud of instantly began to crack under the strain. His spine bent. His knees buckled. The terrible force pressed him lower and lower and lower—

THUD!

Both knees smashed through the marble floor. His whole body was forced flat at my feet, pinned there so completely he couldn't move so much as a finger.

"Primordial... that aura... it's the legendary first bloodline..."

His voice had gone shrill with terror. He strained with everything he had to lift his head and stare at me, his lips trembling as he forced out a broken sentence.

"Y-you... you're him? The man from a thousand years ago... the one who unified all of Europe's underground world..."

"Shut up."

I dropped the two words casually.

Victor's whole body jerked, and he immediately clamped his mouth shut.

That was when I felt a faint pulse of movement.

Victor was secretly biting into his own wrist.

I looked down and saw him tear the skin open with his teeth, smearing the blood over a strange bone whistle.

It was the highest-level distress signal to summon the New York royal inspectors.

The whistle blew.

The instant the shrill note faded, the temperature in the ballroom plummeted to absolute zero.

Three figures in dark-gold robes tore through the rain and appeared silently in the center of the hall like ghosts.

Complex runes were embroidered across their robes, faintly glowing with dark golden light. It was the standard uniform of royal adjudicators. Every rune represented the supreme authority of the law.

The lead adjudicator's gaze was sharp as a blade. It swept over Victor, sprawled on the ground like a dead dog, before locking onto me with killing intent so dense it felt solid.

"A heretical remnant dares show itself in the mortal world."

His voice was low and majestic, as though it came from the heavens themselves.

He didn't waste another word. He drove the staff in his hand into the floor.

BANG!

The moment it struck, a wave of dark gold light burst outward. His two subordinates scattered instantly into streaks of shadow, forming a triangular kill formation around me.

"By the Wolf King's Law Array—suppress!"

Three blinding pillars of dark-gold light shot upward and wove together in midair into a massive execution net. Carrying an aura of total destruction, it came crashing down over my head.

The instant the formation landed on me, it felt as if an entire mountain of steel had slammed onto my back.

The seal had only just broken. I had recovered barely thirty percent of my power. To forcefully resist a forbidden killing array designed specifically to suppress the first bloodline made the blood in my body surge backward in chaos. My organs felt as if an invisible hand were crushing them one by one.

Pff—

A mouthful of burning blood burst from between my lips, splattering across the torn front of my dress shirt.

My legs shook violently out of my control. My knees gave a cracking cry as they nearly buckled under the crushing pressure.

"Just a defective relic that hasn't even fully awakened, and you dare challenge the royal law?"

The adjudicator sneered coldly and poured even more power into the array. The golden light grew so bright it stabbed the eyes. A scorched smell spread through the air.

I clenched my teeth hard enough to creak and swallowed the metallic sweetness rising nonstop in my throat.

And in the middle of that unbearable agony, a savage grin slowly twisted across my mouth.

"You think trash like this can make me kneel?!"

My eyes blazed crimson. Enduring the agony of every meridian in my body feeling like it was about to snap, I forced myself upright against the crushing weight of the array. My bones ground against each other with a shrill, painful scrape as I straightened my spine by brute force.

The adjudicator's pupils shrank.

"How is that possible...? The forbidden law array has absolute suppression over the first bloodline. How are you still standing?!"

He wasn't wrong. This formation had been created for people like me. In theory, any first-bloodline being who had not fully awakened should have been unable to move at all inside it.

But theory is theory.

Reality was that I not only moved—

I started walking forward.

Every step was hard. Every step left a deep footprint crushed into the floor by the force of the formation. But I kept walking. One step. Two. Three...

My skin split. Blood ran. My bones screamed.

I did not stop.

For the first time, the adjudicator's expression changed.

He raised his staff sharply, preparing to flood the array with even more power—

And right then, the night sky overhead exploded with a deafening roar of engines.

ROOOOM—!!

The ballroom's enormously expensive bulletproof glass dome was smashed apart by two black heavy assault helicopters forcing straight through it.

A rain of shattered glass came crashing down like hail, pelting the guests, the tables, and the marble floor with a wild metallic clatter.

The helicopters hovered over the gaping hole like steel beasts. Under their bellies, four six-barrel Gatling guns extended outward, black muzzles lowered. A dense web of infrared targeting beams instantly locked onto the three adjudicators.

"Open fire! Protect the king!"

Axel's roar blasted through the loudspeakers and shook the entire ballroom.

A deafening metal storm tore through the night in the next instant.

RATATATATAT—!

The howl of the Gatlings drowned out everything else. Depleted-uranium armor-piercing rounds poured down like a monsoon, blasting chunks out of the marble floor and throwing sparks in every direction.

The three adjudicators had no choice but to drop the formation and dive away in miserable retreat.

The instant the crushing pressure vanished, a tactical steel cable dropped down with perfect precision from one of the helicopters.

I wrapped one hand around it and shot upward under the absolute cover of overwhelming firepower, rising into the stormy night like a demon king ascending from hell.

The rotor wash churned through the devastation below, sending tablecloths flying and smashing champagne flutes across the floor in sharp, frantic bursts.

With my sharpened hearing, I clearly caught the senior adjudicator screaming into his communicator below in rage and panic:

"Target confirmed as first bloodline! He hasn't fully awakened yet! Issue the highest-level manhunt immediately—he must be found within seven days, or the entire royal court is doomed!"

Inside the helicopter cabin, the wind screamed.

Axel was on one knee, both hands trembling as he offered me a spotless white towel. Excitement was written all over his rugged face, and his eyes were even slightly red.

"My king... three years... you've finally returned..."

I took the towel casually, wiped the rainwater and blood from my face, then tossed the stained cloth out into the storm.

Looking down at the panicked New York elite scrambling below like insects, the heat in my eyes finally boiled over into pure bloodlust.

"Seven days?"

I let out a cold laugh.

"Too long."

I turned to Axel, my icy voice cutting clean through the roar of the engines.

"Set a course for the heart of Europe."

"Time to dig up my scepter."