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Chapter 480: Jumping Off A Building

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Traffic in first-world countries like these is one of the best to experience if you’re a speed junkie.

Speed limits are rare and the roads are smooth in addition to being wide.

Highways are four-lanes on one side at a minimum and there are dedicated ‘speedways’ for people like Rex who were using vehicles with an attitude to its name.

His reflexes were monstrously fast and accurate that despite his speed, he never lost balance and control. If it was any other driver, swaying left and right to avoid the traffic of other speeding vehicles with that level of precision and timing, they would have already become jelly-legged and trembling just from the near-close touches he almost had.

Rex wasn’t wearing his helmet, only his ‘mask’ but with Cortana’s help, all traffic laws monitoring tools and gadgets in the vicinity ignored him and even those cops on alert only ‘saw’ him on their naked eyes but he was never on their electronics.

To the Speed Patrol, ever since this day, a legend about the ghost rider was born…

……but it was for another story.

*****

Rex reached the vicinity of his destination after a full hour of speeding along.

The tires of the bike were hot and he thanked the dry yet still slightly chilling day —no, night— as he parked it on a paid parking lot two blocks away.

In here, he disabled all electronic ‘eyes’ around his location and so started to change clothes, putting on the specialized suit taken from the bike’s side compartments.

Handguns and knives were strapped on his body, and a mint-condition Nano-Kevlar Vest was put on his torso and limbs after putting on a black cloak to hide everything he was wearing.

Rex then pulled two bracelets on the compartment and put the end rings with them on his fingers… it was a garrote wire 1km each; as thin as a strand of hair and are primarily made out of the finest of the most flexible and durable of materials.

It was very expensive.

But on the trained hands, a frightening weapon.

He hid it on his gloves and then clenched his fists to tighten the grips. He felt ready.

To top these all of, he also slid hook-cartridges on his pants. These were for when setting up traps and angles for the garrote wire.

“I swear, if you hurt them, I will slaughter you all.”

As he strapped and wrapped his gear, he swore in his heart as rage burned in his chest.

He didn’t remove his ‘mask-shades’ as it hides his face while it also hides the burning golden eye on his forehead.

Cortana was in the middle of doing something that she found challenging —hacking into the Duke of Levingston’s internal server and finding out about his schedules and details.

While she did so, Rex moved out and with his legs boosted by superhuman optimization, he jumped off ledges and walls like he was batman.

Now, the operation rescue begins.

To any pedestrians around, they’d only hear the flapping of his cloak, but to those who luckily were looking at the night life after dusk, they sometimes see a flitting silhouette on a roof, or a ledge, or in a dark alley, moving along the shadows of the city in haste towards a certain direction.

Fifteen minutes later, Rex reached the building’s area and his map marked out the people inside the building and the civilians working for the company, as well as the guards that roamed the halls.

He narrowed his eyes.

People are everywhere so he can’t push his way in forcefully from either the front or back. He then observed the place.

The building was the tallest in the immediate area and the next tallest building was still 50m away.

—If only I could fly…

He lamented the lack of option.

Looking around, one of the buildings next on that next tallest building 50m away had a crane lift on its roof top. It was a still-in-construction building at 250m high already, rivaling the Duke’s building in its ambitious height of 400m high. But the thing is that building was 80m away from his target.

He kept looking around him.

If he used the target’s underground parking lot, it should be easy hacking into their cameras to make his way up... but the things is, right now, that place is full of people; employees and bosses working at the company overtime.

Even if he disabled or hypnotized the guards on the exit, there are still pedestrians outside the buildings that will see the act that, given his current outfit, will arouse suspicions.

He can’t hypnotize them all at once. That needed time and close proximity, which only increases the chances of his plan being discovered before it even began to take form.

As such, his only option is to fly his way towards the higher floors.

Rex’s gaze landed back on the building with that crane at the top. Then, he looked around him, his gaze landing on a strip of billboard on the building itself… he smiled dryly.

A wild suicidal idea formed in his mind.

*****

“No, this is a bad idea…”

[I already calculated it, sir, it’s possible.]

“This is not the game, Cortana, if I—no. Alright. I will do it. I will definitely do it.”

[If you fail you’re just going to die. At least you do not have to worry about it since you’re going to die, so g and jump. Just do it.]

“I know….”

[Though, your bones will break and your blood will splatter in all directions and pieces of your flesh will be on the streets… maybe you’d even squash a poor pedestrian or two when you fall while….]

“Don’t speak anymore…”

[…your innards will be revealed and they will see the things you ate yesterday and earlier, along with the grey matter of your brain and blood mixed up together with my Nano-filaments. And then…]

“O-Okay just stop right there or this novel will be rated differently with your vivid descriptions. God, you’re so brutal. I feel like pu…. Ueeekkk… shit.”

[My apologies, sir.]

“Shut up.”

[At least you’re not nervous anymore.]

“Thank you for that unusual way of making me feel something else aside from nervousness.”

Rex had killed before, yes, but falling to one’s own death was still different from being hit but a bullet, sliced by a sword, getting eaten by a beast, or squashed by a magic spell.

—No.

Right now, Rex was at the root of the long shaft of the crane lift at the top of the building and he was also holding onto an impromptu glider made from the torn billboard a few floors down.

Good thing this was a construction site almost fully and solely operated by machines and automatons so he snuck in and took the materials needed for his glider without anyone seeing him.

Right now, all that’s needed was to jump for his dea—no— jump and glide towards the building in front of him, 80m away.

[Wind speed and direction are calculated already, sir, so don’t worry. You’ll be fine.]

“Sigh… give me the visual data rendering and the timing directions and optimized jump routines.”

[Affirmative.]

Within the moment, on his vision, Rex could now see red, blue, green, and yellow colors for the wind direction and speed, timing labels with many indicators, his jump force and direction, as well as a guiding marker to where he should control his glider once he’s airborne.

[Wind direction’s changing sir. This is a good wind to make your jump.]

“Okay. Turn off the lights. And start distracting the guards... pull them away from this side of the building.”

[Beginning signal interception.]

Rex inhaled and exhaled, lowering his body for a run on the ramp shaft, and looking straight ahead on the markers and indicators on his vision.

[Jump in fifteen seconds. Run on my mark and reach the end of the shaft in fourteen seconds.]

“Alright.” he convinced himself, not affirming. “I can do this. I’m not gonna die. I’m not gonna die.”

As weird as it may seem, Rex just now realized he, after all, isn’t someone indifferent to life; because the fact that he feared for his fall to death is proof enough that he, for some odd reason or another, had in fact, actually, fundamentally changed.

The [God of Destruction] of Terroa fearing for his life ending here prematurely… is because he fear that if he died, he’d be letting a lot of people down including his and her —Amanda’s— parents.

Yes, he had his fill of killing, even in real life that he felt it …natural and not so different than when he killed Gods and Immortals in Terroa.

When he first killed someone in real life, he felt no such inclination of difference than his experience in Terroa all those years ago.

But right now, he felt it.

The fear…

It was so unfamiliar to him that when he greeted fear this time around, he felt himself somewhat a bit happy and still, yes, afraid, at the same time.

How long since he last felt fear?

Too long ago…

Perhaps the most recent is when he was still ‘the other guy’ and had first made contact with the real monster, AG, then entered Terroa and fought the Predators for the first time… or even earlier still, it was during the time of the road accident that took the lives of his parents.

That… was genuine fear. But right now, he was in all smiles, happy, right now, to realize something.

—he was happy at the fact that he realized where his feet are actually standing at.

Earth.

Experiencing the trillions of years as an Immortal who spread the Path of Immortality had become a source of his conceit. Hiddenly. For ‘Siva’, as long as he escaped in the face of danger, his lifespan is not a problem and he can even heal himself for thousands of years with no care to the outside world.

But here, in the real world, injuries will kill you and although he was an Immortal once, he is a mere Mortal now that even with his unique constitution, falling from this height will still definitely kill him.

[Wind speed and direction on set marker. Ready in three… two… one… GO!]

Rex pushed with his feet and with great balance, he run at the shaft despite the billowing high wind that battered him.

Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta…..

At the end of the long shaft ~SHOO~ he used all his leg force and jumped 20m high, even bending the shaft on his feet at the force he exerted.

At the apex of his leap Rex spread his arms and a strong gust of counter-wind forced the arms of his glider to lock itself on the joint as he rode the wind towards the building, following 80% of the optimal trajectory Cortana calculated for him earlier.

This was his first time experiencing gliding in real life but with his experience in Terroa in the past, it wasn’t a problem to find his bearing.

Cold winds bellowed at his ear, his clothes flutters and danced as he stared ahead of him.

“This was easier than I thou—WHOA!!”

[Jinx! Wind direction changed, recalculating gliding trajectory…!!]

Just as the words came out of her, he was rocked as a high wind kicked up and lifted the glider high along with him. The spines threatened to break as the metals creaked the longer and higher the wind carried him.

Rex began to panic as he used his own muscles to hold it all in place, controlling his bodily weight distribution as much as possible to minimize the stress the spines endured.

The excess parts flapped, the improvised wires he used as to sew the torn billboard began to flap wildly and Rex continued to go higher and higher, as the wind howled and threatened to kick him off the air.

[Wind direction changed again, recalculating…]

“Sheeeeeeetttt~”

What more…

As soon as he looked down and checked where he was… he found out to his dismay that he was actually above the still unfinished building. He did not even get close to his target at all, only higher.

[Your altitude increased, recalculating…]

And as if it was a movie or a novel, as soon as the circumstances were written, the winds stopped as a gentle breeze kicked in.

Rex started to glide ……away from his target.

[Wind direction altered! Recalculating trajectory...]

“…” He wanted to stop hearing calculations but his attention was locked on instinctually controlling the improvised glider.

Rex couldn’t do much as the wind carried him to the left, veering off away from the building. After that, the strong wind kicked in again and it carried him off higher… and higher… and…… higher…

…and………. higher…

………and …..high—EH?

“EEEEEEEHHH???!!!!!”

Before he knew it, Rex was already 400m high in the air, the same height as his target building. The superimposed layered x-ray vision of the building showed the positions and locations of where the security guards were roving. They were marked as red colored human-shaped individuals —the universal color for hostiles.

The walls’ edges were highlighted blue, lines after lines made up the pillars and walls. All doors were marked green exits as everything else was black not from the night but from the tinted glass walls.

It was a complete x-ray of the building.

‘Shit… it’s only getting worst by the minute.’

As Rex cursed at it, he heard something creak on his left side. He turned and saw one of the iron pipes he used as spine started to bend.

The billboard ‘cloth’ were sewn greatly and did not get torn off the pipes but the pipes themselves are the weakness as wind pressure exerted to all of them were so great, they began to bend and eventually break.

Although Rex included it on the calculations, he still did not expect that the lightweight materials of his impromptu glider wouldn’t stand the weight of the wind battering him from all directions.

“Shit.”

[Boss, it seems my predictions are—]

“Shut up—SNAP!—WAWAWAWAWAAAHHHH!!!”

Accompanied by the sound of horror, Rex began to plummet from the sky, falling and rolling in the air like a bird whose wing was shot.

The spine bent and Rex began a steep fall. There was the wild flapping sounds of his cloak and the billboard tarp sounding on his ears and he was on a straight collision towards the ground.

[You re falling.]

“I know!!”

There was still little resistance given by the ‘flaps’ but it only served little as he was still falling hard.

With this speed, directly crashing into anything at all would not only create loud noise but also injure him moderately, if not severely —and that already considered the fact that his body was special.

Rex’s mind worked fast and he grabbed the pipe spine that was bent behind him, plunged it into the middle spine of the tarp to create an “A” shaped spine with it. Rex then grabbed the two ends of the bent pipe and stepped with hard a foot on the “V” point, using the entire thing as a “Σ┼>” shaped surf board, riding the wind, slowing his decent.

He did it all in midair and with brute force alone! If it was any other man on his shoes, he could only wait for his death by falling.

“Shit. It’s so fucking heavy!”

Rex was using his own muscles as a support and depended heavily on his physique to resist the air resistance fighting off of his hand that threatened to slip through and release the metal pipes.

[Sir, 50m to impact.]

With the help of the air-board, Rex could at least mitigate the falling speed and angulate his fall as to make it a diagonal line heading straight towards the target building. But still, the speed of his descent was an issue —the injuries will still hurt if he crashes thru those tinted glass window walls.

“Damn it. There’s no way around it.” Rex grits his teeth as he prepared for the impact. 10m on his target, Rex released his hands and grabbed on to the guns on his thighs, firing off accurately angled shots towards the edges of the glass, fragmenting it, before firing off four bullets to the glass itself and—CRASSH!!

With a water wall effect, the tinted glass window of the building shattered upon Rex’s hard collision. A loud noise sure to attract attention, Rex focused his entire mind to detecting his surroundings as he rolled and continued to tumble, hitting the wall of the office so hard, he left a dent in it, his two guns still on both of his hands, his mind still going in circles from rolling more than ten times.

His body was riddled with pain with something tiny prickling his left arm and left —the side that first hit the floor upon his landing, if it can even be called that. But the good news is, he successfully arrived on the target building and there were no guards close by that heard the noise.

Although there are still those things that got sucked out when the open air entered this sealed office upon his entry.

Also, there was still his improvised air-board falling into the streets below. With one look one would notice it was an improvised glider immediately. He now had little time remaining before the people of Duke Levingston suspect something happening in their building. He had to move fast.

Rex picked himself up and looked at the mess he created. Papers were flying everywhere, sucked out of the building through the broken glass wall that shattered on his entry.

“Cortana, what floor am I?”

[106th floor sir.]

“I’m 19 floors higher than target.”

[Sir, four guards noticed the papers flaying off the windows and are now heading off to your side of the building.]

Rex checked his gear, his cloak, and his mask. He then inhaled and steadied his bearing, removing all sharp prickling things on his body and readying for the next part of the rescue plan.

[Sir, we can’t let your blood be left here. There are consequences if they synthesized your blood and used it for mad science experiments. Healing your injuries needs your body to be at least on a semi-relaxed state to hasten the process.]

“How long can you heal my body while I’m standing and killing some people?”

[These are merely light wounds, sir. Eight minutes will be enough.]

“Alright. Intercept their signals and make them stay away from this location as long as possible. Lead one to me for interrogation.”

While he spoke, he bandaged himself and then he pulled out the ‘things’ that stabbed him during his entry and with a touch, the blood was absorbed back into his body like magnets.

“How’s my constitution?”

[We’ve absorbed 98% of the blood that was lost.]

“There’s no point searching for this office for all of those bloods. I’ll just have to cover them with the blood of these guys.”

Although it was ‘over reacting’ to the eventualities, ever since Rex recalled his past memories, he had also began to adopt his old mannerisms.

Eventualities are eventualities, for many, but to the guy who survived a forest full of monsters alone, a tiny miscalculation, a tiny mistake, a tiny change in the situation can greatly affect the entire plan.

To avoid anything unwanted happening, lay out as much details to the minutest of its structure as you can possibly put in. This was his principle. And as far as he can remember, he may not be perfect in all possible way, but he was still a survivor of that God forsaken forest where you are only defined either as a Prey or as a Predator. Nothing more.

[Multiple hostiles. 20 meters.]

“I need their audio feed. Record their voices and prepare interception of their communications.”

[Sequencing…]

Good thing Cortana was with him and imitating the voice of their comrade and cutting off signals was easy to accomplish.

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He’s inside!!!

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