Chapter 114: Among Mortals, There Are Heroes
Tadius himself did not know how he managed to do it.
He led his platoon, following Yan Fangxu’s orders, to this wind farm to carry out the mission.
After the orbital bombardment, he and his troops didn’t even count as the main force; they were merely assisting the Governor’s infantry regiment in executing a blockade.
Later, the Star Warriors and the Battle Sisters arrived, and at first, he had no idea what he was supposed to do.
It wasn’t until a Star Warrior and a Sister died in the core area left by the previous orbital bombardment that he began to understand.
Only when the surviving Sister, visibly panicked, reported the situation to her Sister Superior through the communications channel did Tadius grasp roughly what was going on.
Then, he strode toward that hollowed area.
Everyone looked at his actions in bewilderment, unsure at first of what he intended to do. But soon, a fellow soldier realized and rushed up to try to stop him.
In the heavy rain, his comrade grabbed him by the waist from behind, shouting in his ear, “Are you crazy! Do you want to die?”
“Let go!” Tadius struggled fiercely.
“Don’t go throwing your life away! Even the Star Warriors couldn’t handle it! You’d only be dying in vain!”
“Who says that?” Tadius broke free with a powerful twist, turning to the comrade who had fallen to the ground. “What this battle needs most is unwavering will, and that, I do not lack!”
As he said this, he thought of his friend Coddie, remembered how he had pulled the pin on his grenade and leapt into the enemy’s ranks, recalling what he himself had been unable to do at that time.
These thoughts did not discourage him; rather, they strengthened his resolve. “This world has nothing to do with those Star Warriors or Battle Sisters; if they can still give their all, then why shouldn’t we sacrifice ourselves to save our own home and fulfill the ambitions of the Governor and all of us?”
“I’m not afraid to die; I was afraid once, but this time I’m not! I will go to fight! I know I may be going to my death, but when I’m gone, I hope more heroes will rise!”
“We will win!”
He raised his arm in a spirited cheer, turned decisively, adjusted his red cap in the storm, and walked toward the hollow.
He couldn’t see exactly where the hollow was, but using prior intelligence, he estimated the general area and then reached out to feel his way.
A few minutes later, he found it.
A white mist floated before his eyes, and when he came to his senses, he was already in that mental realm.
The roar from the Fury Owl’s projection pointed out the location of the enemy to him.
Tadius had no hesitation and immediately plunged into battle.
Arriving in this mental realm as a soul projection, he was unarmed, but as soon as his strong desire to attack emerged, a rifle appeared unknowingly in his hands.
He let out a roar no less fierce than the Fury Owl’s projection and pulled the trigger at the monster. The bullets hit the creature, at least twice his height and needing three or four of him to surround it, making it stagger.
In essence, the gun and the bullets he fired were all manifestations of Tadius’s own mental willpower. He was fighting with his own will, and how this looked was irrelevant. The scenes within the mental realm would transform into the setting he was most familiar with and proficient in.
The bullets he fired had a significant effect, but relying on just this alone to kill the Fury Owl’s projection was unrealistic.
Despite his firepower, the Fury Owl’s projection roared at him. A white storm bullet shot out from its wide-open beak, hitting him squarely in the chest.
This storm bullet appeared far more terrifying than the magic the blue-robed enemies had used when he fought alongside Coddie. By all rights, he should have been doomed. But he paid no mind to this, focused only on landing as many hits on the Fury Owl as possible before he was struck.
Then, the storm bullet smashed into his chest, throwing him far backward.
He crashed down a distance away, his entire body aching as if he might fall apart.
But pain was good; if a single storm bullet had killed him, he would feel nothing at all.
Unlike now, where he could still endure the pain, struggling to stand up from the ground.
Yet during this process, the Fury Owl projection had already charged up to his face.
He swung his left arm to block, and a riot shield appeared on his arm, absorbing the Fury Owl’s fierce strike.
The Fury Owl went berserk, raising both its forelimbs high before smashing down.
Once, twice, three times…
Tadius braced himself and held on.
Blood dripped from his mouth and nose.
If there had been an observer, they could have seen that his spiritual form, representing his very soul, had become unstable, on the verge of dissolving.
As his mind grew blurry, Tadius’s thoughts turned to his friend Coddie.
They had grown up together in the Wasteland Society, cowered in the dark caves when raiders attacked the Wasteland Society, and together saw the light the Governor brought them. They enlisted together, becoming commissars side by side…
Then he couldn’t help but remember Coddie’s last moments, when his red-capped friend jumped from the half-ruin, grenades smoking in his hands and around his waist, destroying the enemy.
In a daze, holding the riot shield to block the Fury Owl’s attack, Tadius’s memory of that scene merged with the one before his eyes. He saw Coddie, truly, jumping down from the air, grenades smoking in his hands and on his belt.
Boom!
An explosion rang out!
The Fury Owl projection, lifting its forelimbs again to deliver a final blow, shattered from the blast.
Dazed, Tadius’s vision blurred with white mist, followed by the cold rain and wind slapping hard against his face.
He fell down, landing in a puddle, his ears filled with a loud roar, feeling the warmth at his nose and mouth as blood flowed uncontrollably out, only to be washed away by the rain.
Through his dazed eyes, he saw the figures of many comrades rushing toward him.
He tried hard to raise his hand, giving them a thumbs-up before his vision went dark, knowing nothing more.
…
Schneider could hardly believe what he saw.
After resolving the issues at his assigned wind farm, he rushed over out of concern for his injured battle brother.
On his way, he heard the grim news.
A brother who had survived the century-long expedition had perished here.
His heart burned with anger, mixed with resentment toward Martins.
He could accept the sacrifice of his battle brothers; in his past experiences, he had grown used to it.
But he couldn’t accept that his battle brother had died for no reason.
Indeed, this time, he felt it was meaningless.
They should die for the revival of their battalion, not on a planet incapable of supporting the battalion’s rebuilding.
He had always felt that Martins and Rizo were wasting time.
But if it was only wasting time, so be it. Perhaps, time would make his two brothers understand that placing hope in that feeble Psyker Governor was laughable.
But now, it was not just time they were wasting but also the lives of their battle brothers!
This was unacceptable.
He was here to retrieve his brother’s body, then confront Martins and Rizo, questioning whether their decision was right.
If they were to follow this Governor blindly to the end, would their remaining six brothers be enough?
One brother had already fallen, yet they still had not seen the dawn of their battalion’s revival. Instead, the city that the absurd Governor had painstakingly seized was about to be destroyed by a storm.
Furious, Schneider arrived here.
And then he saw a mortal defeat the enemy that his battle brother had died trying to vanquish.
How was this possible?
A mere mortal, how could he do such a thing?
He had just experienced a battle with the Fury Owl projection himself, emerging easily victorious.
He was a Phoenix warrior who had fought for three hundred years; his spirit, his will, was harder than steel.
He agreed with previous assessments by Sister Gretel and Chaplain Rizo. This level of tenacity could only belong to the Emperor’s Death Angels.
Even the Battle Sisters could not reach this level.
But a mortal here?
Why?
He admitted that, throughout his long battle career, he had encountered many mortals who earned the respect even of Star Warriors.
But heroes of that caliber, even in the finest Astra Militarum units, were rare. How could this native officer be compared?
He instinctively rejected the reality before him.
But the last hollow did indeed shrink rapidly and finally disappeared. The dark clouds shrouding the city, plunging it into darkness, dispersed, and a ray of sunlight shone down.
The wind calmed, the rain subsided…
No matter how hard Schneider tried to deny it, everything he saw was real.
…
[Hero Available for Activation: Tadius]
Gu Hang, immensely curious about how Tadius had managed this feat, tried to find answers from his system interface.
Then he saw a new message on the Hero Interface.
Tadius was now available for activation as a Hero.
He tried clicking on it.
The activation cost was 50 Grace Points.
He didn’t spend the Grace Points but gleaned some insight from the price.
Fifty points—the amount needed for him to level up from LV2 to LV3.
This meant that once activated, Tadius would start as a Level 3 Hero?
Gu Hang smiled with satisfaction. “Among mortals, there are indeed heroes!”