8:12am.

"So, what's it going to be home boy?"

"Fight or surrender?"

Silence.

The silence on this battlefield was so absolute that you could literally hear the sound of the dust swirling and moving through the air.

Parasite looked at Talia, Talia looked at him.

His facial muscles twitched as he struggled to keep eye contact with her, then he spat on the ground and glared at her. "I hate b*tches like you the most!"

Talia laughed. "I'm not surprised".

Parasite glared at her some more then he took a deep breath, craned his neck sideways and cracked it before unstrapping the daggers that were strapped to the side of his new body's belt.

Talia was unfazed as she nodded calmly. "A fight it is".

Neural Projection!

She didn't hesitate.

Once again, she turned into an AR digital ghost and she rushed towards Parasite with the speed of a hurricane.

She wasn't alone.

With Talia so thoroughly exposing Parasite's bluff, revealing the weakness of the Artifact, the initial terror that gripped the hearts of her crewmates dissipated and with it came newfound determination to kill the Warlord.

When Talia moved, Daren, Ghostwire, and Brick also moved as they charged towards the E Rank Gene Augur like Bulls on steroids.

Parasite's face darkened, then he charged towards them.

Bio-Pulse!

BOOM!

The battle resumed.

With his new body, Parasite gained certain advantages in the fact that he abandoned all the physical injuries and stress accumulated by his previous body.

This didn't mean that he avoided the fatigue and mental damage though. The insidious effects of being attacked by two NetRunners remained, and he had no choice but to bear it and continue fighting with it.

Also, the fact that this body was inherently the body of a mundane human limited its potential from the onset.

His identity as an E Rank Gene Augur augmented the body, turning it superhuman, but it was weaker than a normal E Rank Gene Augur body.

Another factor that made Parasite worry even more was the fact that by losing his original body, he also lost all the advantages that came with it.

That body may have been battered and stressed, but it was the body where he stored and accumulated ADE in his blood across months. And now, he lost all of that accumulation when that body died which meant he lost one of his greatest advantages.

The current Parasite could no longer fight a prolonged battle for 3 straight days. With his current ADE, he could at most last a few dozen minutes.

Talia didn't realize this yet, but knowing his new body well, Parasite knew this and this made him feel that emotion that he absolutely loathed again, fear.

'I hate this b*tch!' He thought spitefully.

Even before Talia exposed Parasite's lies and the slight manipulation in his words, Leon had the same thought process as her and realized the flaws in Parasite's words as he arrived at the same conclusion that she did.

This was why the moment the battle started again, he was one of the very first to react and unlike the others, he didn't charge towards Parasite.

Instead, he unsheathed one of his backup kinetic pistols and aimed at the last mundane thug of the Zmer gang that was still alive in this battlefield.

'To kill Parasite, we need to eliminate all his blood slaves!' Leon's eyes narrowed into slits as he aimed with the pistol.

The thug didn't even notice that a gun was pointed at him.

After the brain-numbing fright that he just suffered, watching his friend die while Parasite mutated and took over his body, he was now like a brain-dead idiot as he stared at his friend's body which now looked like Lord Parasite in a daze.

"W-w-what… h-how…?" He kept on muttering like a mentally deranged man.

He didn't even see the bullet coming till it hit.

Bam!

Headshot.

One shot, one kill.

Parasite saw the annoying Mechanist when he aimed to shoot at the thug, he wanted to stop him but with four powerful enemies facing him, he did not have the luxury to pay attention to a fifth enemy.

The thug died, reducing his options for body-hopping.

Parasite's predatory blood-red eyes narrowed with anger and hate. He felt desperate, but despite his desperation he put in extra effort to mask it all with his bodily reactions and facial expressions.

He didn't want to show fear in front of his enemies.

'F*ck all of you, you'll never see me scared'.

'Lord Parasite doesn't feel fear!'

…

8:13am.

Community G, the cyber-lab inside the cell tower base.

"…!"

Brad stared at the footage of the main battle with a horrified expression on his face.

At first, when he heard Parasite explain the effects of the Artifact, he was shocked but he felt relief because he had never once participated in the events and grand banquets of the Zmer gang.

It also explained his memory loss.

'Maybe it's through this Artifact that he managed to alter my memories previously, making me forget the location of the underground bunker'.

The moment Ghostwire located the underground bunker, the familiar scenery became the trigger for all his hidden memories to come back.

This was also why he felt horrified again because he just remembered that although he didn't participate in the events and grant banquets of the Zmer gang, one night a few days ago, Cell brought him a gift from Parasite, a bottle of wine.

He shuddered in horror. 'I-is that wine…?'

He didn't need the answer because he already knew the answer.

Just like every other subordinate of the Zmer gang, he was also Parasite's blood slave!

…

8:15am.

CRKSH!

The last of the two daggers that Parasite found in his new body finally cracked and shattered after suffering a powerful attack from Daren.

At the same time that this happened, Brick lunged in and tackled him from behind, grappling and raising him up before slamming him down with a devastating German Suplex.

BOOM!

The ground cracked, the force making Parasite's back muscles and skin tear as blood flowed like a fountain, but then…

Cell Repair!

The torn muscles started stitching themselves back up.

Parasite was still in the battle, but he was only surviving against the onslaught of attacks from his enemies as they overwhelmed him.

Despite this, he kept up the bravado.

Though he no longer laughed manically, he still had a malevolent expression on his face as he stood his ground and never retreated from his enemies, tanking all the damage and healing again and again.

And now, he was forced to fight with just his fists.

The moment the battle restarted, while Leon immediately took out the last mundane thug with a well-placed shot, Rex instead charged towards the location of Parasite's first corpse.

There, he confiscated Parasite's main weapon, the Zweihander, taking it far away from him so he would be restricted.

And like expected, losing his main weapon weakened his offensive power considerably.

And now, he had no choice but to fight with no weapon.

Just like Talia said, he was an unkillable cockroach, not an indomitable Dragon.

Parasite's fists alone were deadly though as they hit with a force that could shatter bones but still, fighting with just fists restricted the overwhelming power of this E Rank Gene Augur as he was dominated.

And despite his bravado and his show like he could keep on going forever, tiny drops of water makes a mighty ocean.

No matter how small and inconsequential they were, the more time passed, the more the seeds of despair and fear were sown in Parasite's mind though he stubbornly refused to acknowledge them.

But while he was too stubborn to acknowledge fear, the same could not be said for his subordinates.

All of them could tell that they were now fighting a losing battle.

It was only a matter of time before they were killed.

The moment Gary finally overpowered Cain and he suffered a heavy blow, heavily injuring him, the Cyber Gladiator decisively turned around to run as he approached one of the Karaki CT-3X super bikes that was nearby.

Alexander Cain decisively made the decision to betray Parasite and escape.

'This is a losing battle. I won't die for you, bastard!' He thought as he charged at top speed towards the super bike.

The moment Cain betrayed him and abandoned the battle, Parasite noticed. 'How dare you?' He thought in rage as his eyes darkened even further, then…

BZZZ!

His orange ADE flared and converged around the blood-red pendant.

Parasite was not about to let a subordinate that he fed abandon him to die. Just like Cain decisively took action to escape, he also decisively took action to end his life.

Parasite's consciousness and soul left the body, turning it mundane again as within a single second, the body was torn apart by the attacking enemies.

The moment he left and the body weakened, his assaulters noticed something wrong as they immediately turned their head and looked at the running Cyber Gladiator.

In that moment, right in front of the Karaki CT-3X super bike, Alexander Cain suddenly stopped running as he froze with a shocked expression on his face.

The mutation and possession started!

But unlike the first blood slave, Cain's resistance was more than that of a mundane human.

His face rapidly turned purple as his body seemed to suffer from asphyxiation, losing oxygen, energy, and ADE rapidly.

Cain gurgled, coughing blood. "You… f*cker…!" He growled as anger, rage, and despair clouded his mind.

In that moment, Cain felt resentment, he felt uncontrollable rage.

'How could you…?!' He thought angrily.

'I worked for you! I fought for you!'

The truth was that he knew Parasite was the kind of person to do this since but in his last moments, in the face of death, he still crashed out.

He didn't want to die, but if he must die, he didn't want to go quietly as helpless, he could only lock in and focus his rage inside to directly face the existence trying to hijack his body.

'I curse you…!' He thought weakly as his consciousness turned faint like his soul was being erased from his own body!

It was horrifying.

In his last moments, Cain's life flashed before his eyes.

His life as a street thug in the Wastes flashed through his mind. He remembered the first day that he stepped foot in a city, Leviathan Quay.

He remembered how fascinated he was, how novelty the experience was.

He remembered the day that he got the knowledge and opportunity to become a Cyber Gladiator. He remembered the joy and excitement that he felt when he learned that superhumans truly existed.

He remembered the feeling of being a Cyber Gladiator, the rush of strength that came with it, the adrenaline and feeling of being superhuman, including the rush of excitement that made him decide to live and continue a thug life.

He also remembered the moment that he met Parasite and decided to join the Zmer gang.

Now, in his final moments, he regretted a lot of things.

But Alexander Cain was never someone to go quietly. In his very final moments, his rage manifested into tangible resistance.

BZZZ!

His purple ADE flared, briefly contesting with the orange ADE of the invading soul in a moment of defiance and stubbornness.

His body aggressively glowed purple and orange.

His right hand weakened even further as it dropped his Spear, but his left hand jerked before grabbing the dagger that was strapped to the side of his black cargo pants.

With shaking hands, he raised the dagger and stabbed himself on the neck!

'F*ck you!' He thought.

That was Alexander Cain's final thought.

Alexander Cain died.

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