Chapter 417

Chapter 417

They were crouched on the second floor of the mall, peering over the guardrail into the central atrium below. It was vast and circular, clearly once serving as the mall’s main hub.

In the past, people could sit on the benches positioned around the fountain to relax and chat or use the spot as a meeting or orienting point before heading down its branching corridors.

Now, the corridors stretching out from this section in every direction were faded. The storefronts lining each hallway stood dark and hollow, their windows shattered, with shards of glass scattered across the floor.

Abandoned escalators, no longer nonfunctional, led up to the second floor, their metal steps thick with dust and streaked with rust.

In the center of the atrium below lay a dry fountain, long deprived of water. Its basin was crisscrossed with deep jagged cracks and littered with fragments of debris. Patches of stubborn moss thrived in its shadowed crevices, nourished by the occasional rainwater seeping through gaps in the fractured roof above.

“See?” Ragnar murmured to Jake, the two of them crouched low, keeping out of sight from the open expanse of the first floor. “Told you this place was crawling with mutants.”

Jake nodded to acknowledge his words but didn’t respond. His gaze was fixed on the mutants milling around the dead fountain, their eyes constantly scanning the area. The group consisted of several slashers and chasers, and among them, he noticed a couple of wraiths. The two moved with twitchy, unnatural motions, occasionally fading partly out of sight for no apparent reason.

Towering above the pack was the armored brawler, a brute whose sheer size commanded space. The hulking figure wandered the central atrium with heavy, deliberate steps. Its presence was so imposing that smaller mutants scrambled to get out of its way, but those who were too slow to react were shoved aside. Instead of hands, it bore spiked metal orbs, devastating weapons capable of pulverizing concrete.

So far, none of the mutants had noticed Jake and Rangar crouching at the guardrail on the second floor.

None of those mutants posed any kind of threat to Jake. They were nothing more than a minor inconvenience. He had faced plenty of them before, including groups as versatile as this one and even larger in number. He knew he could handle them without much trouble.

However, the human crouched at his side was a different story. The sight of the mutant group made him nervous. Which was understandable. Slashers and chasers were incredibly fast and agile. Against Jake, their movements were laughably slow, but for an ordinary human, those two types of mutants represented a significant threat.

As for the armored brawler, it was a formidable opponent even for Jake. While he had faced plenty of armored brawlers in the past, such battles could hardly be called easy or quick. Given this, Ragnar’s concern was understandable. While Jake could easily shrug off a strike from an armored brawler, humans lacked his resilience to damage. They were far more fragile creatures. One blow from such a powerful monster could turn them into a heap of broken bones.

To make matters worse, the group below included a pair of wraiths, mutants capable of turning themselves entirely invisible. Their presence turned any battle into a nerve-racking nightmare for humans.

“And the anomaly?” Ragnar whispered to Jake again. “Can you see it?”

Jake parted his lips to answer, but Ragnar pressed on before he could speak. “It’s right there, do you see it? It’s so faint… even knowing exactly where to look, I still struggle to make it out.”

Jake turned his gaze from the mutant group to the anomaly positioned at the center of the atrium below, hovering a few feet above the fountain. It resembled a sphere, roughly five feet in diameter.

While the anomaly was nearly invisible to the naked eye, almost impossible for humans to detect, his

Enhanced Senses

allowed him to see it without much trouble. The air within the sphere was warped, revealing the boundaries of the anomaly where the distortion ended.

“This anomaly’s bad news,” Ragnar warned, his voice low but firm. “See for yourself, pull up your PDA and scan it. But keep your head down. If those mutants catch sight of us, we’re done for.”

Jake didn’t have a PDA, of course. He didn’t need it to summon the anomaly’s description, as he could do it with just a simple thought. Which he did.

Name: Electro (Elite)

Description: An unstable entity that erupts in bolts of lightning energy when disturbed. It triggers either upon impact from any object or when a living creature approaches within a few feet.

Duration: 30 seconds

Effective Range: 30-yard radius

Danger Level: 245 (High Threat)

So it wasn’t a new type of anomaly. He had already encountered Electro-type anomalies in the past, and he knew they were dangerous. If activated, it would erupt in a storm of lightning bolts, crackling and lashing out in reckless patterns, and he would have to do his best to dodge them.

From his vantage point, he noticed the mutants in the plaza below giving the fountain and the shimmering anomaly hovering above it a wide berth. They either knew of its presence or were simply programmed by the System to steer clear of such volatile phenomena.

Ragnar was watching him, obviously still waiting for Jake to take out his PDA, which he didn’t possess, so Jake said to the human, “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t close it from here,” Ragnar whispered again. “We need to be much closer to the anomaly to shut it down. There’s no way to do it from the second floor. Believe me, I’ve tried every vantage point I could find without setting foot on the first floor, and it just wouldn’t work. Unless we descend to the first floor, the anomaly stays open.”

Jake tried to check if the anomaly had a challenge linked to it, but nothing happened. This could mean one of two things: either it didn’t have a challenge to offer, or, just like with closing it, he needed to get closer in order to check for challenges. Given that elite anomalies almost always came with challenges, it was most likely the latter.

“So what’s the plan?” Ragnar whispered to him.

Jake gestured toward the nearest escalator that led down to the first floor. “I’ll hold my position there. It’ll give me a clear line of fire to pick them off one by one as they charge up at me. As for you, stay here and provide cover fire. Just make sure you don’t hit the anomaly.”

“That’s… the entire plan?”

“The simplest plans are often the most effective.”

The human wasn’t convinced, though. He seemed to be having second thoughts now.

“You know what?” he began, his voice tense. “I don’t think the two of us can handle this. Sure, you’ve proven you’re a hell of a shot, but those mutants you picked off before were just walkers. Down there…” he gestured toward the atrium below, “are far stronger ones. We should turn back. Engaging them would be suicide, and I think…”

He didn’t finish his sentence because Jake suddenly sprang to his feet. Ragnar lunged to catch him by the leg, but Jake slipped easily out of reach, moving with practiced ease.

“What are you doing?” Ragnar hissed, raising his voice to a sharp, angry whisper. “I’m telling you, this is a bad idea.”

But Jake was already striding toward the escalator. At the top step, he paused and glanced back at the human.

“Get back now before they notice you, you idiot,” Ragnar hissed.

“You better get ready,” Jake replied as his hand slipped to his revolver. The weapon was freshly reloaded, and he was ready to face the mutants head-on.

Ragnar was still hissing something at him, but Jake had already tuned his voice out, his own focus locked on the battle ahead.

He drew a bead on one of the mutants below and squeezed the trigger.