"Jarvis, disengage the armor."
Jill heard Lyon's voice coming from inside the mech.
"Yes, sir."
Another voice, seemingly from within the armor, echoed. Jill stood there in stunned disbelief, thinking she might be hearing things.
But after that second voice, the propulsion system of the mech suddenly emitted flames.
Then, piece by piece, the iron plating unfolded, revealing the man hidden inside.
Jill's mind went blank the moment the propulsion system began spewing fire.
She suddenly realized this mech had been floating in mid-air as if gravity didn't apply to it.
It hadn't been using any propulsion device at all!
This was... like a ghost!
A chill ran down Jill's spine, sending a cold sensation racing up to her head, leaving her feeling eerily unsettled.
But that chill was quickly replaced by shock.
Lyon's faceplate snapped open, revealing a high-bridged nose, thick eyebrows, and deep-set eyes.
His hair fell loosely, every strand perfectly defined, giving him an air of lazy elegance, like the warm sunlight of an afternoon.
Jill's first thought was that this man looked like a living Greek statue.
However, Lyon's outfit was far more casual.
He wore a stone-gray knit sweater on top, khaki cargo shorts on the bottom, and a pair of brown hiking boots, his legs exposed up to the knees.
Now, he no longer looked like a serious and sculpted statue.
Instead, he resembled a student yawning and heading out to grab breakfast on a summer morning.
If things had ended here,
Jill might still have thought this impossibly handsome man before her was just a quirky elite soldier.
But after the armor opened up, the man named Lyon suddenly started flying!
Jill and Carlos were both so shocked that their mouths hung open, blurting out an incredulous "Holy shit," as if they had just witnessed a god.
They watched as Lyon floated into the air, his once lazy demeanor shifting into something sharp and fierce, with a crimson light flickering in his dark eyes.
The suit of armor, now acting on its own, folded up and hovered beside him, flames shooting from its propulsion system.
"I had originally planned to blend in with you as a regular person!"
"But this Tyrant keeps coming back to life again and again."
"At this point, no more pretending!"
"In truth, the armor is just a seal for my power!"
Lyon floated in mid-air, arms crossed, exuding a commanding presence even in his loose, knee-length shorts.
Roar!!
In front of him, the enormous leech-like creature, now over ten meters in size, suddenly exploded, sending out countless thick tentacles.
These tentacles sliced through buildings, spreading out like they could endlessly multiply, covering the structures and staining them with its hue.
At the center of the mass of tentacles, the Tyrant's upper body had somehow managed to survive.
Now, having grown even larger, the Tyrant stood in the middle of the street like a small building.
It no longer had legs, just two massive, nearly ten-meter-long clawed arms, and its head had transformed into something resembling a leech, filled with sharp teeth.
The Tyrant had officially entered its third phase.
After being "killed" twice, all of its hatred was now focused on Lyon.
With its newly developed body, it extended its neck and let out an ear-piercing roar aimed directly at Lyon.
RoooOOOaar!
A powerful gust of wind erupted from its mouth, sweeping across the entire street, causing cars to shake and sway.
As the foul wind rushed toward him, Lyon frowned.
He certainly had no intention of inhaling the Tyrant's rancid breath.
His figure suddenly shifted horizontally, reappearing directly beneath the Tyrant.
"Shut up!" Boom!
Lyon shouted in anger as his body broke the sound barrier, delivering a punch upward into the Tyrant's head.
Though the punch seemed casual,
it was enough to make the Tyrant's newly-formed head shatter.
The Tyrant didn't even last a moment.
In an instant, its head burst apart like a balloon, shattering into countless pieces.
Even its body couldn't escape the same fate.
—Lyon had enveloped the Tyrant in his bio-field, applying force to its entire form simultaneously.
With just one punch!
The Tyrant's body, along with the buildings its tentacles were anchored to, was uprooted!
Everything was lifted into the sky, thrown upward at supersonic speed, with massive chunks of black bio-matter, high-rises, and parts of the street flying through the air.
Lyon didn't pause. He pursued it into the sky, throwing another punch.
Boom!
An earth-shattering force exploded in the air, as if a meteor had fallen from the heavens.
In an instant, all the buildings, the Tyrant's body, and the zombies were obliterated into countless fragments.
On the ground, Jill and Carlos felt as if they had lost a chunk of their memory.
It was like they had blinked—or not even blinked—and suddenly, every building within a ten-meter radius had broken the sound barrier and shot into the sky!
Looking around, the area was now barren, with nothing but dry, desolate ground.
Even large patches of asphalt and concrete were gone, revealing the deep, dark underground sewers below.
In that moment, both of them stood in a state of utter bewilderment...
They realized they no longer recognized the world they once knew.
Jill stared blankly at Lyon, now just a small dot in the sky, her mind completely void of thought, overwhelmed by shock and awe.
Swoosh!
Without a sound, the distant dot that was Lyon suddenly reappeared in front of them in the blink of an eye.
"Sorry about that. The Tyrant's body was so strong and biologically impressive, I might have overdone it a little," Lyon chuckled, waving casually at Jill and Carlos.
"Although I did cause a bit of damage to the city, most of the residents have already turned into zombies, so no harm done."
"We'll part ways here. Goodbye, Jill, and Carlos, make sure to gather the remaining civilians!"
With that, Lyon flew up again, calling out to his suit nearby, "Let's go, Jarvis!"
"Master Lyon, would you like to put on your armor again?"
"Nah, no need for the armor. I was wearing it before in case I encountered kryptonite or a red sun. But there's nothing in this world that can hurt me, so it's unnecessary."
"Understood, sir."
"Come on, grab the package Tony gave me and follow along!"
As Lyon finished speaking, he vanished from sight in an instant.
With his current power, he could accelerate to hundreds of Mach in just a second.
Moreover, if he wished, Lyon could use his bio-field to move at high speeds with such subtlety that the disturbance would be quieter than the natural breeze in the city.
Jill and Carlos hadn't even fully processed Lyon's words when they realized he had already disappeared.
All that was left was a light breeze, stirring a thin layer of dust on the ground.
"Uh, he just... left?" Carlos stood there, dumbfounded.
"Seems like it," Jill replied, equally at a loss.
"Do you think he's really the savior from another world? He must be, right?"
"I don't know... probably."
"Did he say he's heading to Raccoon City Hospital and Police Station?"
"Seems like it…"
"So, what do we do now? Should we still head to the subway station?" Carlos rubbed his face vigorously, trying to make sense of it all.
"Yeah, let's go!" Jill snapped back to focus, a determined expression forming on her face.
"Lyon just told us to rescue civilians. I'm going to the subway station to keep an eye on you Umbrella guys!" Jill said, determined.
Her mind kept replaying the scene from earlier.
Although she hadn't been able to catch the details of Lyon's actions, the image of him, casually wearing cargo shorts, kept surfacing in her thoughts.
In comparison, everything else seemed insignificant.
As they spoke, the countless fragments from the earlier destruction were finally drifting down, like a gray rain shower falling from the sky.
________
Read 15 chapters ahead of WN-
P@treon: LiveLifeLove