In a brightly lit room, a surgical operation was ongoing.
The life of a tyrant president was in the hands of a group of surgeons. The scent of disinfectant hung heavy in the air. Gloved hands moved with steady precision. Scalpels and other metallic tools glinted beneath the surgical lamps.
The air was heavy as the surgeons worked on the failing heart of their patient. The tyrant president, a man feared across the country for ruling with an iron fist, now lay fragile, stripped of power, reduced to nothing more than flesh and blood. His chest was split open, ribs pulled back, heart exposed under the guidance of one of the greatest surgical hands alive.
For some time, everything was going smoothly... but then...
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The sharp alarm of the monitors pierced the tense atmosphere. On its screen, the green line depicting the patient’s heart rate spasmed, then plunged erratically.
"His heart rate’s unstable! He’s crashing!" one supporting nurse shouted.
"If his heart continues at this rate, he won’t survive much longer!" another doctor barked, sweat gathering at his brow despite the cold temperature of the operating room.
"Calm down," a handsome middle-aged man leading the operation said evenly, eyes locked on the patient’s chest. Unlike the doctors he was supervising, he didn’t panic. His hands, still working on the delicate tissues of the heart, moved with a smooth professionalism that even a complete novice could sit and watch in awe.
"The body is but a stubborn machine," he said, his tone so calm it felt like a commandment. "All you need is the right mechanic."
The other doctors stared in disbelief as the failing heart obeyed his command. From the monitor, as if by magic, the erratic rhythm steadied almost instantly. This man was on another level.
He was Bruce... not Bruce Wayne, the secret identity of the iconic hero Batman, but Bruce Ackerman.
Bruce Ackerman, hailed as the No. 1 Surgeon on Earth. A man who shattered every record in the medical world. His near-perfect success rate in surgery bordered on the impossible, and his understanding of the human body, even extending to other living organisms, surpassed any living mind.
In this age, Earth had advanced so far that every profession was ranked by tiers; from the lowest G-Tier to the legendary SSS-Tier. Warriors, engineers, researchers, artisans, even chefs, every field was classified. Bruce Ackerman, as an SSS-Ranked Surgeon, stood at the very pinnacle. Both in practice and intellect, he was often described as a living dungeon of knowledge, a man whose genius could not be measured.
But then, before the awe could settle, the ground shook.
Surgical lights swung like pendulums. Forceps rattled on their trays. A tremor rumbled up from the depths of the earth.
"An earthquake?" someone gasped.
Yes, but this was no ordinary earthquake. Outside, the world was practically breaking.
Through the glass windows of the skyscraper hospital, the sky twisted into unnatural hues of crimson. Clouds boiled like blood, and from the rips in reality itself, portals opened, dozens, hundreds, vomiting forth creatures mankind had no name for. Hulking, chittering, howling things from other realms.
And then it came.
The vortex.
A cosmic whirlpool tearing through the heavens, its size dwarfing villages. Out of its spinning mouth emerged something ancient, something colossal: a dragon. Its wings spread like storm clouds, its scales glinting black as obsidian.
Out of the portal, the dragon flapped its massive wings and looked down at the world. Its gaze locked on the densest cluster of humans.
It was not the hospital, as one might expect, but a marketplace, an international market located nearby.
With a single flap, it descended, speed beyond mortal imagination.
It looked like a black meteor, scales glistening, smoke curling from its nostrils and jaws.
Then a roar!!!
The entire market froze in panic. They didn’t even have time to adapt. For this was no ordinary roar... it was a roar of flames.
And these flames weren’t normal flames, their temperature reached well over 1000°C, and from a monster of that size, their reach was devastatingly wide.
Time faltered. A heartbeat felt like a century. A second stretched into eternity. By the time people could scream, the marketplace was ash.
Instant devastation!
As it turned out, Bruce Ackerman and his team of surgeons survived the first few minutes of the apocalypse only because the tyrant president had booked every major doctor to prioritize his treatment. He had shut down the entire hospital for his rare heart disease, canceling and delaying every other treatment, to ensure his own survival.
Because of this, there were far fewer people in the building. If not, the hospital might have been the dragon’s next target after the marketplace.
Meanwhile, inside the surgical wing...
The tremors continued.
The surgeons could only curse their luck for such an intense earthquake to suddenly happen with no warning during their operation.
"We’re almost done with the surgery, and now this? If he dies, then it’s no longer our fault. Maybe this is karma for everything he’s done to the people of his country," one of the junior doctors muttered, half-joking, though he was only saying what everyone was already thinking.
Truth be told, everyone here hated the patient. But they had their code of conduct as doctors... and they had to follow through with the deal. And, of course, they loved money.
Honestly, who doesn’t?
Money brings happiness. Screw the popular contradictory saying that it doesn’t. That’s just one of the many lies the rich use to deceive the poor.
"Focus." Bruce’s stern gaze fell on the unruly junior surgeon. The man gulped and returned his attention to his part of the operation under Bruce’s watch.
They were so focused on the surgery that if not for the earthquake shaking minor equipment loose, they would have remained unaware of the chaos outside.
The hospital, though a skyscraper, had been built on solid foundations, with advanced engineering and stabilizers designed to minimize tremors during earthquakes. Inside, the shaking was muted.
But this was no normal earthquake.
The intensity increased until even the stabilizers could no longer soften the blows. By now, Bruce and the surgeons were almost done.
"Finish the surgery," he ordered, and so they did, hands moving with desperation, knowing each second above ground was borrowed.
The final stitch was tied. The final seal pressed.
"Congratulations, Sir Bruce, you broke yet another record!" a voice exclaimed in the background.
Bruce waved it off casually. "Now’s not the time for that. This earthquake isn’t normal. Move the patient to the elevator, we’re going underground. It’ll be much safer if this escalates further."
The doctors hurried to comply. Fortunately, the power grid still held, and the elevators carried them underground.
Once there, the patient was swiftly reconnected to life-support equipment to stabilize his body after surgery.
Bruce, however, was lost in thought.
’What was that energy I felt before the first tremor?’ His brows furrowed. ’It was more intense than the energy from cellular respiration. Stronger than fuel combustion. Not atomic or molecular... just raw, pure energy. Something observable at the atomic level reacting with the patient’s body like that!’
At that moment, his curiosity stirred toward something beyond him. Something beyond science. Something beyond the mortal realm.
But as an SSS-Ranked Surgeon, curiosity had always been his strength. This time, it might prove to be his downfall.
As the saying went: curiosity kills the cat.