Listening to the two of them talk, Aemdo gritted his teeth.
They had casually destroyed this planet, killed the living beings on it, and now they showed no remorse at all. They were even treating it as something to joke about.
Their words were filled with indifference, completely uncaring toward life, with no sense of respect whatsoever.
Aemdo clenched his fists as the sound of footsteps drew closer.
Soon, he saw two figures. Both of them wore pitch-black high-tech armor, with amber-like visors, holding weapons, either long halberds formed from imaginary energy or firearms loaded with imaginary energy as ammunition.
When Aemdo noticed them, they noticed him as well.
So the two turned around and looked at Aemdo, who was covered in blood.
"Well, look at that, there really is someone here! Haha."
"Surviving that kind of bombardment, you've got some luck."
"So what? He still has to die now. We can't let him leave. He might not cause much trouble, but who knows what impact keeping him alive would have on mining the high-purity energy ore on this planet?"
"And no matter how small the public opinion issue is, dealing with it would still cost the company manpower and resources."
"True. And it could also be used against us by the Strategic Investment Department."
"Then let's kill him here."
With that, the two soldiers, or rather, employees hoping to climb the ranks, raised their guns, the dark muzzles aimed straight at Aemdo.
Their actions and words made Aemdo's heart tighten. Just like that, with a few casual lines of conversation, these two people had decided his fate.
When those black gun barrels pointed at him, Aemdo clenched his teeth, his whole body trembling with anger. These two… were great evil,
With less than half a second of hesitation, Aemdo immediately gathered his courage and charged forward.
A body tempered through countless hardships gave him strength and speed far beyond ordinary people.
Before the two employees could even react, Aemdo had already tackled one of them to the ground and swiftly snatched the weapon from his hand. While the other was still turning his gun toward him, Aemdo pulled the trigger.
A beam of imaginary energy burst out instantly, slicing off the upper half of the other man's head in a flash.
The employee pinned beneath Aemdo tried to resist and call for help, but Aemdo grabbed his throat and snapped his neck in an instant.
After killing the two, Aemdo dragged their bodies away.
From their reactions, it wasn't hard to tell there were others nearby. After hiding the bodies, Aemdo used the ruins as cover and tried to gather more information from others wearing the same black armor.
During this process, he felt his strength returning. His physical condition and stamina were recovering at an unusual rate. A warmth spread through him, as if sheltered by the radiance of Pure Beauty.
After gathering enough information from the outskirts, Aemdo changed into the armor of one of the employees he had killed, then blended in with the others and infiltrated the company's base on the planet.
There, he saw numerous pitch-black space warships, along with large numbers of fully armed soldiers and advanced weapons.
Although the Knights of Pure Beauty had declined, he still hoped to speak with the person in charge here as a knight.
He didn't ask them to stop developing the planet, but he hoped they would recognize the wrong in their actions and make some form of restitution for the lives lost in the bombardment.
Even if it was just erecting a monument, publishing a book, or even a broadcast or newspaper record, something to document the friendly civilization that once lived here and had now been wiped out.
After all, Qlipoth, the Amber Lord, was the Aeon of Preservation. Their belief was protection. Aemdo believed that communication and understanding were not entirely impossible.
However, before he could speak to the person in charge, he heard that person's stance at a mobilization meeting, "Perhaps you've already noticed that life once existed on this planet."
"But now, all we can find are fragments of ash and bone, or traces of existence that are hard to identify."
"But there's no need to feel sad about this, nor should we dwell on it. Our actions are for the company's development, and the company's development is for better preservation."
"Before that, some sacrifices are necessary. Dwelling on them is meaningless…"
At that moment, Aemdo's anger ignited completely.
Ever since he set foot on the path of Pure Beauty, he had trained himself, spread its ideals, and never once felt anger like this. Nor had he ever craved power the way he did now.
Because he knew he had no way to face the army stationed here alone, nor the warships hovering above the planet.
If anger could be used as a weapon, then at that moment, Aemdo only wished his fury could burn like a star, erupting and reducing all these people to ashes.
———
Aemdo pulled his thoughts back.
At this point, the ending of that day was already clear.
Even though the God of Beauty had already departed, Pure Beauty still responded to his wish. He gained power, and his divine body was burned away from the inside out by the flames of his own fury.
On that day, the Omen of Burning Stars, Falcorez, was born. In the very moment of its birth, it ignited a planet, along with all the company's employees and warships that had landed on and surrounded it.
From then on, the frenzied Omen of Burning Stars roamed the universe, fighting evil wherever it found it.
The Pure Beauty knight who once sought dialogue became a monster that could only howl.
Whatever he judged as evil, he would strike down with the Sword of Judgment without leaving anything behind.
The company, the Annihilation Gang, the Genius Society, the Family… many organizations had all suffered attacks from Falcorez.
Until one day, Falcorez killed a Mirror Holder and took the mirror in his possession. Deep within that mirror, he saw a monster consumed by burning desire.
Only then did the consciousness named Aemdo break through the prison of flames once more.
Aemdo let out a sigh. Though he had regained his sanity, that was all he had regained.
At this very moment, his actions in collecting the fragments… how were they any different from what the company had done back then?
Aemdo blinked, watching the boy rushing toward the center of the explosion. It felt as if a breeze had brushed through his heart…
Huanlong also noticed Nero's movement. Watching the boy leap toward the explosion, she, an emissary of destruction who pursued a body that could not be destroyed, suddenly had four words pop into her mind.
"Suicide soldier?"
And under everyone's shocked gaze, Nero leaped up into the sky, then opened his mouth and swallowed the mirror fragment that recorded the neutron star explosion in a single bite.