The monster possessed by the Spider Demon had seen its bloated body reach its physical limit.
Eerie green psychic energy and foul flesh tissue erupted from the cracks in its twisted carapace, forming ominous black arcs of electricity.
It had become a living bomb, laden with destruction and malice.
Time, in this moment, was invisibly stretched.
"Big Sister!"
For the first time, an unconcealable urgency colored Fogremia's sharp cry. The longsword in her hand erupted with brilliant silver light, slicing several elite Cultists who tried to block her path into pieces with a single stroke, but she was still a hundred meters away, unable to reach it in time.
That meteor of destruction had already been released.
The Battle Intent of the surviving Astra Militarum Soldiers, just ignited by the golden halo, appeared so pale and weak when faced with this suicide attack that transcended the scope of conventional warfare.
They pulled their triggers subconsciously, and dozens of crimson laser beams struck the bloated mass of flesh with precision.
The lasers pierced through its body, leaving behind charred holes emitting black smoke.
But this was meaningless.
It felt no pain, no fear, only the purest ecstasy of perishing together with its target.
Its momentum did not slow in the slightest.
Terrania let out a scream, her throat constricted by fear, her small body hiding tightly behind Leticia, eyes squeezed shut, not daring to look at the impending destruction.
In the entire underground cavity, it seemed as if only the shriek of the human bomb tearing through the air remained.
And, the terrifyingly calm breathing of Leticia.
She stood in place, not even activating any psychic shield.
Her black robe snapped in the gale preceding the explosion, and strands of black hair brushed against her flawless, god-like profile.
Her deep black eyes, which seemed capable of devouring all light, simply watched the approaching incarnation of death quietly.
It seemed she was waiting for something.
The only one closest to her was that man.
Valerius.
He knelt there, his physical rigidity occurring in sync with the collapse of his soul.
His brain, that precision instrument armed with the imperial codex and iron-blooded discipline for forty years, was now a blank slate.
All regulations, all codes, all iron laws regarding "heretic" and "purification" were melted into meaningless steam before that golden halo named "Protection."
His world had shattered.
What should he do?
The woman before him was a "heretic." According to all the knowledge he had learned, he should immediately retreat and let this dangerous existence be self-purged by the powers of Chaos. This was the most "correct" choice, most in line with the interests of the Empire.
But...
Scenes flashed uncontrollably through his mind.
At the entrance of the mine, between the demonic claws capable of tearing apart a tank and his own back, there was that fair, slender, yet incomparably reliable palm.
Before his soldiers who were about to be crushed by fear, the woman's calm and warm voice: "Fight for me."
Amidst that roar of "For the Goddess," the flames named "Hope" rekindled in the eyes of his subordinates.
He had spent his whole life pursuing order and maintaining discipline.
He thought he was using cold steel to build a dam for the Empire against chaos.
But in the end, he saw with his own eyes that what truly allowed the soldiers to forget fear and gather courage was not his bolt pistol, but the light radiating from the woman behind him.
A kind of light he had never seen before—warm, capable of making mortals willing to die for it.
"What is your loyalty really for?"
That soul-piercing question rang in his ears once again.
For what?
Valerius raised his head abruptly.
He saw the hideous flesh bomb about to collide with Leticia.
He saw the angel with golden hair like the sun, trembling in fear behind Leticia.
He saw his soldiers in the distance, who had just been imbued with courage and Hope, yet were about to be reduced to ashes in the explosion.
He did not need to think anymore.
His body had already made a choice before his broken, chaotic brain.
It was an instinct.
An instinct suppressed for forty years, belonging to a "human," not a "Commissar machine."
"Roar—!"
A hoarse, completely inhuman roar exploded from the depths of Valerius's throat.
His knees, which had once buckled in despair, exerted force suddenly, and his whole body lunged forward like an arrow released from the string.
Not to run away.
But to meet that meteor of destruction.
Just at the moment before that foul mass of flesh was about to touch Leticia, a figure wearing the Imperial Commissar uniform used all his strength, spreading his arms like a clumsy eagle protecting its chicks with open wings, blocking firmly in front of Leticia.
With his not-so-strong mortal body, which had even been on the verge of collapse not long ago, he constructed a final barrier of flesh and blood.
"For the Empire—!"
He used his last ounce of strength to roar the slogan of his old faith.
This phrase he had shouted for forty years sounded now like a grand farewell to the past.
Because his eyes were not looking at any emblem representing the Empire.
He turned his head slightly, and his cloudy, bloodshot gray eyes looked over his shoulder, tightly, tightly, at the black-haired, god-like woman behind him.
In those eyes, there was no more struggle, no more confusion.
Only a sense of relief.
And... a trace of resolute, fanatical... devotion that he himself had not even noticed.
"My loyalty..."
"Is for you..."
The next second.
Boom!!!!!!!
The energy of destruction swallowed him completely.
White light instantly occupied the entire underground cavity, consuming all sound, all color.
The violent shockwave, like the invisible hand of a giant, tore down tons of rock and metal supports from the cave walls, grinding them into powder.
The entire mining planet Griffin IV let out a painful groan in this violent explosion.
...
Who knows how long passed.
Perhaps it was an instant, perhaps a century.
When the white light that could destroy everything slowly dissipated, the piercing buzzing sound gradually subsided.
Inside the underground cavity, it was a mess, like the arrival of the apocalypse.
A giant crater with a diameter of tens of meters had been blasted out at the center of the explosion, the rocks at the edge melted into flowing crystals by the high temperature, then instantly cooled and solidified into hideous shapes.
However, in the very center of this scene of destruction, a miracle appeared that could not be explained by any common sense of physics.
A translucent, emerald-green shield with a diameter of about ten meters stood there, completely intact.
On the surface of the shield, a soft, life-filled halo visible to the naked eye flowed, isolating all impact and high temperature outside.
Inside the shield, Leticia, Terrania, and those soldiers shrouded in the golden halo were unharmed.
The soldiers stared blankly at the scene of destruction outside the shield, then looked at themselves, their faces filled with the bewilderment and ecstasy of surviving a disaster.
They had survived.
In that level of explosion... they had survived.
It was the Goddess...
It was the Goddess who protected them!
Everyone's gaze converged on the center of the shield.
Leticia stood there quietly, her black robe not even showing a single wrinkle.
In her arms, she held a charred body that was almost unrecognizable.
The uniform representing the supreme authority of the Imperial Commissar had turned into broken charcoal, clinging tightly to the bloody body. The carapace armor had been blasted to pieces, revealing the chest underneath that had been burned through, deep to the bone.
Valerius.
He was not dead yet.
A trace of life, so weak it was almost imperceptible, flickered stubbornly in his broken body like a candle in the wind.
He seemed to feel something, his charred eyelids moving with difficulty, wanting to open, but he no longer had the strength.
Leticia lowered her head, gazing at the man in her arms who had given everything for her.
In her deep eyes, for the first time, a trace of complex, almost compassionate emotion was revealed.
She extended that fair, beautiful hand, as if created by the gods, and pressed it gently onto his chest, which had been blasted into a bloody mess.
A warm, soft, emerald-green light lit up from her palm.
She leaned down and whispered in his ear, in a voice only the two of them could hear:
"I have received your loyalty."
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