The crimson power pierced the heavens, dyeing the dark clouds a blood-red hue.
In the air, the wails of countless souls rang out. They screamed in agony, turning into a terrifying psychic tide that swept across the entire hive city.
Under that violent red surge, the members of the First Warband all clutched their heads and let out shrill, agonized cries.
Countless bloody and twisted thoughts rose within them, while inhuman roars from some unseen realm urged them toward slaughter.
In such a situation, only those with powerful psychic strength and unshakable will could resist the influence of those blasphemous echoes.
Like Gaia.
But she felt no relief at all.
Because the scene before her was the very prelude to the dream of death.
According to the order of the prophecy, the next step would be a spear from above and to the side piercing through her body...
Wait. Above and to the side?
Gaia abruptly turned her head, her gaze locking onto the elevator carriage hanging in midair.
As if to confirm her suspicion, the tightly shut elevator doors suddenly flew open the next instant.
Several hundred Planetary Defense Force soldiers stood inside, their eyes blazing with sinister red light.
Twisted expressions hung on their faces, and the standard armor on their bodies had been torn apart by muscles swollen from physical mutation.
To keep that armor in place, each of them had draped a bloody cloak of human skin over themselves.
Gaia looked at them in despair as they raised their guns from above, as she watched those muzzles aim directly at her.
She had never expected that the Planetary Defense Force guarding the hive elevator would have mutated.
As the long lasguns began glowing red, the suffocating pressure of death closed around Gaia's chest.
Her mind raced through an astonishing number of thoughts in a brief instant, only to realize there was nowhere to hide.
The enemy had planned this from the start. This was an execution trap meant specifically for her.
This was too strange. How had these mutated things become this smart...?
Chaotic thoughts flashed through her heart, only to end in a desperate scream.
She was unwilling. But she could do nothing.
Just as she slowly closed her eyes and waited for her fated death to arrive, a hand filled with astonishing strength suddenly grabbed her leg.
Before she could even react, her whole body was yanked down by that hand and slammed hard onto the ground face-first.
Amid the sharp pain in her nose and the ringing in her skull, she heard a sound that was deeply familiar from her memories.
The creaking wheels of her adoptive father's cart.
Yes. That was the sound buried deepest in her memory, the sound that had run through the happiest years of her childhood in this life.
When she had first been picked up, it was with that sound in the background that a warm hand had lifted her up.
During her years of growing up, it was the supplies bought through that sound that had raised her.
And through all the battles that followed, that same sound had always told her that the person who loved her was still by her side, never once far away.
But why was she hearing that sound now?
There was no time for Gaia to think. Along with the crackling hiss of lasfire burning into the ground, a wave of scorching air rushed against her face, and an intense burning pain spread across her back...
By the time that volley ended, the red-eyed monsters could no longer restrain their urge to kill.
They all threw aside their lasguns, grabbed melee weapons instead, and leaped down from midair with savage roars.
On the ground, the First Warband, already affected by the red light, was quickly overrun by those madmen.
For a moment, screams filled the battlefield without end.
Amid the dying cries of the warriors, Gaia, who had fallen to the ground, slowly opened her eyes.
She... wasn't dead?
The moment Gaia realized something was wrong and turned her head, her pupils immediately shrank.
Because that familiar cart had somehow come to a stop above her.
The several red-hot holes left in it made her heart turn as cold as if it had fallen into an icy abyss.
Ignoring the injury on her back, she rolled out from beneath the cart and threw herself to its side.
On the cart, her adoptive father forced out a smile.
There were three scorched holes in his abdomen, so deep that she could see the ground beneath the cart through them.
Life was slipping away from him, yet he felt neither fear nor sorrow.
Instead, he was full of gratitude and relief.
He thanked the God-Emperor for allowing his crippled body to erupt with extraordinary strength in that final moment, letting him fulfill his promise...
He had protected his child.
The prophecy of death had not been overturned, but the soul that fulfilled that destined death had changed because of a love beyond all measure.
Her adoptive father's gaze was as gentle as ever, but now it no longer had the power to soothe her soul.
Instead, it became the cruelest blade in the world, carving mercilessly into Gaia's heart.
Amid the dizzy ringing in her ears, the discordant whispers that had vanished for two whole years returned once more.
But this time, they spoke no cryptic hints.
They only let out inhuman mocking laughter.
"Hee hee hee..."
Extreme grief and pain tore through her soul, shattered her reason, and made her release a beastlike roar from the depths of absolute despair.
In the next instant, her body vanished from where it stood.
Then, the head of a monster in the middle of hacking at someone exploded instantly.
Within streak after streak of afterimages, the monsters immersed in slaughter were torn to pieces one after another.
Their mutated bodies wrapped in armor were now as fragile as paper, butchered at will like livestock on a chopping block.
The monsters stopped their killing.
Because at that moment, the air was filled with a sobbing sound that seemed to come from the soul itself.
It was like the bell of death.
Every time it rang out, several monsters were reduced to shattered remains.
This was not a battle.
It was a massacre.
As the feast of slaughter continued, the killer's speed became faster and faster, and her methods more and more practiced.
By the end, she could cripple an enemy without killing them, while inflicting the greatest possible pain.
Under that heart-rending agony, bloody tears streamed from Gaia's eyes, yet amid the screams of those being butchered, the corners of her mouth slowly curled upward beyond her control.
Her expression twisted, and inside her heart an immense conflict raged.
On one side was the ultimate grief born from the loss of her adoptive father.
On the other was the boundless pleasure brought by the thrill of slaughter.
Her mind was distorted. Her senses were shut away.
At this moment, only one thought remained in her.
To use killing to soothe her soul.
With the howl of a dying beast, she lunged at another target.
But just as she was about to tear off its limbs and rip open its belly as she had done before, a giant hand as powerful as a hydraulic press seized her fist.
"Go see your father."
A voice like thunder exploded beside her ear and struck straight into her soul.
Only then did she gradually regain her senses and realize that the one cowering before her was not an enemy, but a terrified member of the Tearblood Gang.
She looked around and finally saw that the enemies had either become shattered corpses or limbless, screaming husks writhing on the ground.
As if her soul had left her body, she shook off Raven's massive hand and staggered toward her adoptive father.
(End of Chapter)
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