Infinite Dominion: The Silent Ascendant from Kot Addu
Book 1: The Awakening
Volume 1: The Summoning
Arc 2: Initial Trial – Resident Evil
Chapter 9: Licker in the Dark
The moment the team burst out of the Red Queen antechamber, the Hive came alive with fury.
Alarms screamed at maximum volume. Red strobe lights pulsed so rapidly they created a nauseating strobe effect. The floor trembled as explosions rippled through the lower levels—deep, resonant booms that shook dust from the ceiling and sent cracks racing across the walls like lightning in reverse.
"Surface tram! Now!" Sher Khan roared, voice barely audible over the cacophony. "We have maybe eight minutes before this whole place becomes a crater!"
They ran.
The corridor ahead was pitch black. The main power had failed completely after Arsh's final rewrite. Only sporadic red emergency strips remained, many of them flickering weakly or already dead. The air had grown thick with smoke and the metallic bite of burning circuitry.
Arsh took rear guard again, pistol in his right hand, multi-tool ready in his left. His Codex Fracture Scanner was going haywire, painting the entire collapsing facility in bright blue fracture lines.
Codex Fracture Scanner – Critical
Shard Instability: 68%
Warning: The Red Queen has initiated "Purge Protocol Omega." All correction entities have been released. Your signature has been marked as Priority Threat Level Alpha. The Greater Codex is now actively monitoring this shard. Continued high-level interference may trigger a Dimensional Auditor response.
Hidden Lore Entry #9 Unlocked:
When a participant fractures a shard beyond 40%, the native guardian can broadcast the anomaly to adjacent shards and the Greater Codex. This is how legends of "Ghost Participants" or "Anomalies" begin in veteran circles. If the Codex itself sends an Auditor, even your talent may face temporary suppression. However, every Auditor defeated grants permanent administrative privileges within God's Dimension itself.
The first Licker struck less than thirty seconds later.
It dropped from an overhead vent directly above Imran with no warning — a nightmare of exposed muscle, elongated skull, and whipping tongue. The creature's claws dug into the ceiling as its tongue lashed down like a wet spear.
Imran screamed.
Arsh moved faster than anyone could track.
He fired once while still running — the bullet struck the base of the Licker's tongue mid-extension, severing the muscle. The creature shrieked and fell from the ceiling. Before it could recover, Arsh was on it, driving his combat knife through the exposed brain in one clean upward thrust.
The Licker convulsed once and died.
Zain skidded to a stop, eyes wide. "How the hell did you even see that thing in this darkness?"
Arsh wiped the blade on the creature's hide. "Heard the vent buckle. The tongue makes a specific sound when it extends."
It was the truth. Just not the full truth.
He had comprehended the Licker's entire physiology the moment it appeared — echolocation patterns, muscle twitch telegraphing, even the exact air displacement caused by its tongue strike. The knowledge had arrived instantly, then been upgraded: he now knew how to counter every possible attack vector this variant could perform.
They kept running.
The scraping sounds multiplied. Dozens of them now, coming from every direction — vents, side corridors, even behind walls. The Red Queen was throwing everything she had left at them.
At the next junction, three Lickers attacked simultaneously from different angles.
One from the left corridor.
One dropping from the ceiling.
One bursting through a weakened wall on the right.
Chaos erupted.
Sana fired desperately at the left one. Bilal used his speed to dodge the ceiling attacker. Ayesha screamed as the wall-breaker lunged at her.
Arsh became a blur of calculated violence.
He first shot the ceiling Licker through the soft palate while it was still falling — mid-air headshot. Then spun and fired twice at the left attacker, destroying both eardrums and collapsing its echolocation. The creature thrashed blindly. Sher Khan finished it with his last shotgun shell.
The wall-breaker reached Ayesha.
Arsh was already there.
He shoulder-checked the massive creature, using its own momentum against it, then drove his multi-tool's plasma cutter into the base of its skull while it was off-balance. The superheated blade sliced through bone and brain matter like butter.
The Licker dropped dead at Ayesha's feet.
She stared at him, breathing hard. "Arsh… you're not normal."
He didn't reply. He simply pulled her to her feet and pushed the group forward.
"Keep moving. Facility collapse accelerating."
They ran deeper into the darkness.
The corridor began to slope upward toward the surface levels. Cracks were widening. Pieces of the ceiling rained down. In some sections, the floor had already buckled, forcing them to jump over gaps that revealed lower levels consumed by fire.
Another wave hit them in a long, completely dark maintenance tunnel.
This time there were five Lickers.
And one was different — larger, heavier, its exposed brain protected by thickened bone plates. An advanced variant.
The team was tiring. Ammo was critically low. Imran had been grazed across the ribs. Bilal was limping from a claw wound on his thigh.
Arsh's mind worked at maximum capacity.
He had already fully comprehended Licker pack tactics, their coordination through pheromone markers, and the exact frequency range of their echolocation clicks. He could now predict their movements three full seconds in advance.
He began issuing quiet, precise commands.
"Zain — left wall, knee height."
"Sher Khan — ceiling, three meters ahead."
"Sana — protect the right flank."
Each instruction was followed by perfect shots from the team, but it was Arsh who did the impossible work.
When the advanced Licker charged directly at him, tongue extended in a killing strike, Arsh didn't dodge.
He stepped into the attack, caught the tongue with his left hand — protected by the reinforced vest glove — and yanked hard. The creature stumbled forward from its own momentum.
Arsh drove his knife into its eye socket, then fired three rounds point-blank into the brain.
The pack leader died instantly. The remaining Lickers lost coordination and were quickly finished by the team.
They finally reached the surface tram platform.
The automated tram car waited, doors open, emergency lights inside flickering.
But the platform was not empty.
A final horror waited for them — the first Tyrant prototype, fully awakened by the Red Queen's final command. Nine feet tall, leather-like skin, massive claws, wearing the tattered remains of a trench coat.
It roared, the sound shaking the entire platform.
The team froze.
Arsh stepped forward.
His system flashed one final urgent warning:
Greater Codex Alert: Auditor drone dispatched to this shard. Estimated arrival: 4 minutes.
Arsh looked at the Tyrant.
Then he looked at the third rail running alongside the tracks — still live with high voltage.
He had already comprehended the entire electrical grid of the platform, including the emergency discharge capacitors.
"Everyone on the tram," he said calmly. "Now."
While the team scrambled aboard, Arsh walked toward the Tyrant.
The monster charged.
Arsh waited until the last possible moment, then dove between its legs, sliding across the platform floor. As he passed under the creature, he jammed his multi-tool into the third rail access panel and triggered a full capacitor discharge.
The Tyrant was hit by 40,000 volts of redirected power. Its body locked rigid as electricity coursed through it, cooking organs and frying what remained of its nervous system.
Arsh rolled to his feet and sprinted for the tram.
The doors closed just as the Tyrant collapsed, still twitching.
The tram accelerated into the tunnel.
Behind them, the entire Hive began to collapse in a series of cataclysmic explosions.
As the white extraction beam appeared at the end of the tunnel, Arsh stood at the rear window watching the inferno consume everything.
His system updated with the deepest lore drop yet.
Hidden Lore Entry #10 Unlocked
The Greater Codex does not like anomalies. It views them as viruses in its grand design. You, Rai Arsh Parhar, have now been classified as a Class-3 Anomaly. The first Auditor is coming. When it arrives, it will not come as a monster. It will come wearing the face of judgment.
The white light engulfed them.
They had survived the Hive.
But something far greater had begun to watch the silent man from Kot Addu.