Stat Crusher - Twenty Million Settlement and Serena's Shadow

The timer’s start chime barely finished echoing off the iron rafters when Gideon lunged across the four-yard gap. His heavy cleaver came down in a vertical chop, black energy trailing off the blade and burning the air with a sulfur smell. Garrett dropped his center of gravity and shifted his weight off his back heel, letting the heavy steel edge shave past his chest by a fraction of an inch.

The air pressure alone tore a seam down his canvas jacket, leaving a thin red line across his sternum as the floorboards beneath them shattered under the blow. Gideon reversed his grip instantly, grinding his boots into the gravel to pull the heavy spine around in a low, rib-high sweep. Sparks showered into the dust as Garrett angled his spear shaft down to meet the flat of the blade.

The shockwave rattled straight through Garrett’s teeth, kinetic feedback tearing open fresh calluses on his palms and slicking his grip with blood. He let the raw momentum shove him six feet back toward the chalk line, his bare heels skidding through the dirt until he stopped two inches short of the boundary. Raynor’s live stream comment feed was moving too fast to read, green text turning into a solid blur across his handheld screen.

Gideon charged through the dust cloud, his dark aura expanding until the heat rippling off his shoulders blurred the wall behind him. He poured everything into sheer speed—a brutal sequence of overhead chops, diagonal slashes, and low backhand clears. Garrett parried, slipped, and ducked. His mind-node worked overtime, reading the shift in Gideon’s hips before the steel even moved, but the physical pressure was brutal.

Small abrasions opened across Garrett’s face and arms from flying concrete chips. Sweat and dark blood soaked the collar of his shirt. Forty-five seconds clicked over on the drone’s display. Gideon’s face twisted into an ugly, sweat-streaked mask. He stepped straight into the center of the ring, lifting his cleaver high above his head with both hands as black energy surged through the steel.

At fifty-two seconds, Garrett let his left knee give a small, clumsy buckle. His guard dropped three inches, the tip of his spear dipping toward the dirt as if his shoulders had finally given out. Gideon bit the bait. He stepped deep into the ring, bringing the massive cleaver down in a full executioner’s strike meant to split the kid from collarbone to hip.

At second fifty-seven, Garrett’s trembling leg locked solid against the slab. The fatigue vanished from his eyes. His Silver mind-core flared, telekinetic energy coiling along the shaft of the Black-Dragon Spear to balance its heavy weight. He drove his heel into the floor, snapped his hips, and thrust the weapon straight upward from his ribcage.

The air inside the warehouse cracked like a rifle shot as a tight air-vortex exploded off the tip. The iron point punched straight through Gideon’s shoulder pauldron, tearing through muscle, bone, and rear scapula before burying three feet deep into the concrete support pillar behind him. The Warlord was lifted off his feet, pinned to the wall six inches above the floor while his cleaver clattered onto the gravel.

Gideon screamed, his internal energy backfiring through his ruined shoulder. He reached out with his good hand, clawing at the air toward Garrett’s throat. Garrett stepped inside his reach, grabbed the Warlord’s leather duster with his left hand, and cocked his right fist. He punched Gideon straight across the nose, flattening it with a wet crunch.

He struck him again, knocking two gore-stained front teeth past Raynor’s feet.

“That’s for my dad’s cart,” Garrett growled, driving his knuckles into the man’s jaw a third time.

“And that’s for his ribs.” By the time Gideon’s eyes rolled back and his chin dropped against his chest, the drone overhead let out a long, flat chime.

00:00. Network lag froze the forum stream at eighty-four thousand viewers. Garrett shook out his right hand, his bruised knuckles throbbing from hitting solid bone. He wiped his gore-stained fingers on Gideon’s coat, pulled his satellite terminal from his pocket, and shoved the screen against Raynor’s pale face.

“Account details are right there,” Garrett said, his voice quiet against the wind blowing through the broken shutters.

“Transfer the twenty million before I decide to see if he survives another minute.”

Gideon’s nose was pointing toward his left ear, leaking thick, dark clots into his mustache. The digital timer on Raynor’s hol-cam drone flickered out with a tiny, pathetic chime, freezing at 00:00. Across Fort Sterling’s local network, the comment section on the live stream was crashing every public mirror node from Sector 1 down to the slums.

Seventy-four thousand operators had watched a seventeen-year-old high school kid pin a Warlord to a concrete support beam with an extraterrestrial iron pole and then beat his face flat. Nobody in Warehouse 9 moved. Garrett wiped his right hand against his sweatpants, leaving a smear of Gideon’s blood on the faded cotton.

His knuckles throbbed like hell. Hitting a Rank-1 Martial Officer in the jaw without gauntlets was like punching an anvil. Reborn muscle memory or not, bone was still bone.

“The stream’s off,” Raynor choked out, his fingers shaking so hard he almost dropped his tactical pad.

“I killed it. It’s off.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Marcus Cross said, stepping off the fender of the Tempest SUV.

He picked up a rusted iron bolt from the track bed and tossed it at Raynor’s boots.

“The municipal clearinghouse auto-logged the feed fifty seconds ago. You welch on this now, and the Citadel Alliance freezes Wyrmslayer’s commercial permits at the West Gate by noon.” A heavy step echoed from the loading bay door.

Squad Leader Du walked into the gloom. He was a veteran Rank-4 Warlord, built thick across the shoulders, wearing a dark grey trench coat over pitted chest armor. He didn’t look at Gideon hanging off the pillar, nor did he look at the four crippled thugs lying in their own blood near the rail line. He stared straight at Garrett.

“You’ve got a hell of a mouth on you, kid,” Du said.

His voice sounded like dry gravel tumbling down an iron chute.

“And your hands are too fast for your own good.”

“The contract was public,” Garrett said, his breath coming in slow, measured drags to settle his racing pulse.

“Twenty million credits. Liquid.” Du spat onto the dirt, reached into his coat, and pulled out a gold-plated municipal ledger terminal.

He didn’t ask Gideon for permission. He walked right up to the pinned officer, grabbed Gideon’s limp, blood-soaked right thumb, and slammed it against the terminal’s biometric scanner.

“Authorization code,” Du growled into Gideon’s ear.

Gideon let out a wet, gurgling groan, his eyes rolling back in his head.

“Du… he… my shoulder…”

“Code, Gideon. Or I sign the override as your squad lead and charge you a ten percent administrative fee for fixing your mess.” Gideon spat a tooth onto Du’s boot and muttered a six-digit string.

Du tapped the screen three times. In Garrett’s pocket, his satellite device buzzed. A long, crisp electronic chime echoed in the damp air of the warehouse. TRANS-ID: 99402-WYRM-SETTLE AMOUNT: 20,000,000 CREDITS (NET) STATUS: CLEARED / MUNICIPAL LOCK Garrett pulled the device out, checked the digits with a quick thumb-sweep, and put it back.

Combined with the ten million he had taken off Tristan Rhodes and Jaxom Mercer back at the optimization vaults, his liquid balance sat at thirty million credits. Thirty million. In his past life, it had taken him six years of crawling through monster-infested swamp ruins just to see five million in a single account. Now he had a real war chest.

And he needed every single cent of it. In three weeks, Sterling Bio-Tech and the Citadel Alliance were going to drop the continent’s very first batch of Spatial Storage Rings at the Grand Auction Hall. Three cubic meters of micro-void storage, forged from dark-stone void ore. The opening bids would start at a hundred million, but thirty million in cold cash was enough to get him through the VIP doors and secure a line of credit.

“We’re done,” Du said, turning his back on Garrett.

“Raynor, get the truck around. Unpin him.” Raynor and two other Wyrmslayer recruits rushed forward.

Raynor grabbed the shaft of the Black-Dragon Spear, grunting as he tried to haul it out of the concrete pillar, but the hundred-and-fifty-pound iron rod didn’t budge an inch.

“Get out of the way,” Garrett said, walking over.

Raynor scrambled backward in the dirt. Garrett grabbed the rear grip with his left hand, twisted the locking collar, and pulled. The spear slid out of the wall with a sharp, dry screech of scraping iron and bone. Gideon sagged into the arms of his men, howling as they dragged him toward the back of the transport. Captain Stone walked over, pulling a fresh cigar from his pocket and lighting it with a battered brass lighter.

He blew a thick cloud of grey smoke toward the rusted rafters.

“Thirty million,” Stone grunted, looking Garrett up and down.

“You’re seventeen, your coat is ruined, your knuckles look like ground beef, and you’ve got enough cash to buy a small apartment block in the North District.”

“My coat’s fine,” Garrett said, wiping his spear blade with an oily rag Marcus handed him.

“Sure it is. Come on, kid. I’m buying breakfast at the Flying Bird. I need a coffee, and Marcus needs to clean his boots before the blood dries on ’em.”