Kryptonians: Man of Steel

Chapter 1504 This is a gift to the brave.
Death is first and foremost a bone-chilling cold.

It felt as if some invisible force was greedily draining all the blood from my body, leaving only cold, sticky filth slowly crawling through my limbs and bones.

Hachiman Hikigaya's consciousness was frozen by the biting cold and floated up, sinking and rising in the boundless sea of ​​darkness.

The pain sensation becomes distant and dulled, as if viewed through a thick layer of frosted glass.

Only the cold asphalt road against his back, and the rough texture transmitted through his tattered uniform shirt, stubbornly reminded him that he had not yet completely detached himself from this broken body.

The view was a blur, with broken neon signs twisting into strange, flowing spots of light in the distance, like spilled cheap paint.

The tinnitus continued sharply, like countless fine needles churning inside my skull, shutting out all the sounds of the real world—the greedy gnawing of monsters, the faint screams in the distance, even the howling of the night wind.

In this shattered silence, only my own increasingly faint heartbeat beats heavily and slowly against my eardrums, each beat feeling like a step down into the abyss.

On the very edge of this chaotic state where consciousness was about to be completely extinguished, a strange, sharp light pierced through the darkness.

The point of light was initially extremely small, like a cold and lonely star in the distant universe.

It stubbornly flickered, ignoring the blurring of vision and the dissipation of consciousness, forcibly intruding into Hachiman Hikigaya's soon-to-be-silent field of vision.

The light spot rapidly expanded and extended, outlining extremely regular and sharp edges—it was a black pop-up window suspended in mid-air.

It defies the ambiguity and distortion that should be present in all near-death hallucinations, presenting an almost cold clarity.

The material resembles both glass and metal, with extremely fine, eerie blue light filaments flowing along its edges, like electronic circuits.

It was cold and inorganic, filled with a futuristic or otherworldly sci-fi feel that seemed out of place in this bloody night.

Hikigaya's unfocused pupils strained to focus on it, his nerve endings conveying the last trace of doubt.

Is it a revolving lantern?
He thought about it slowly.

But this revolving lantern... is far too cold, far too... neat.

Inside the pop-up window, the stark white text pierced his vision like icicles:

[Code of Conduct: Offered assistance to those in need, and did not stand idly by while someone was in distress.]

The cold words instantly ignited fragments of burning memories deep within my mind.

It's not a gentle, fleeting recollection, but a bloody, forcibly torn moment, where time is infinitely stretched and distorted, as if crammed into a suffocating slow-motion scene.

Does he remember what he was thinking at the time?
Oh, I wasn't thinking about anything.

There was no room to weigh the pros and cons, and no time to calculate the gains and losses.

Only one almost instinctive impulse, driven by the body before the brain—like a flimsy and foolish wall—suddenly pierced between that destructive trajectory and fragile life.

He could even “hear” the murky gurgling sounds coming from the monster’s throat, a mixture of bloodlust, excitement, and discontent, right up close, the stench of which was hot against the back of his neck.

"Fool……"

A faint thought flickered in his chaotic mind like a candle in the wind, before being completely overwhelmed by the intense pain and the cold words.

[Identity Trait Assessment: Despite being in a clearly vulnerable position, driven by willpower, they still perform protective actions against a threatened target.] "Vulnerable position"?
This cold description was like a rusty, dull knife, slowly cutting away at his remaining self-esteem.

It precisely struck at the deepest, unhealed wound in his heart—wasn't he, Hachiman Hikigaya, the perfect embodiment of the word "vulnerable"?

Marginalized lone wolves, "superfluous" individuals excluded from the world, can only ever watch the bustling scene inside through a glass window.

So-called "willpower-driven"? That's nothing more than the most foolish stress response that the body makes on its own when forced into a desperate situation.

A self-destructive impulse, a deeply ingrained mockery and rebellion against the "hero" narrative, ultimately manifested itself in the most ironic way as its most clumsy imitation.

Protect?

He felt the excruciating pain of his back muscles being torn apart and his bones groaning under the weight, and he felt his life force flowing out with his warm blood.

What exactly is he protecting?
A possible survivor?
Or is it... my own pathetic and laughable, already riddled with holes but still unwilling to die completely, humble and extravagant hope for "meaning"?

This opening line of "gift" sounds like the cruelest joke fate has ever played on him.

[Mental Resilience Assessment: Encountering a completely insurmountable hostile target, the cognitive system suffers an extreme shock, and the mental threshold is reached. However, it has not completely collapsed. In the final moment of despair, it still attempts to launch futile but symbolic acts of resistance.]

Ineffective but symbolic acts of confrontation...

This precise, even biting, description instantly pulled him back to that final, futile struggle.

That wasn't out of courage, but rather a completely instinctive counterattack from being driven into an absolute corner!
His helmet—it can't even be called a weapon!
With a kind of self-destructive, cathartic madness, like the faintest mockery.

This act was ridiculously insignificant and pathetically tragic.

What's the point besides provoking the other party?
Is this his "confrontation"?
It symbolizes his final, futile wriggling as an insect before being completely crushed.

This judgment is less a praise than a cold, brutal dissection and a merciless mockery of his insignificant struggle.

The cold light of the pop-up window mercilessly scorched his blurred vision, and the final line of conclusive text, like a brand of judgment, appeared with an unquestionable, almost absurd, absolute authority:

[Approved based on overall assessment.]

[Conclusion: Under this principle, you are—the 'hero'!]

This is a gift to those who practice this way.

Brave? !

This glittering title, which carries countless epics and hymns, now felt like a red-hot iron, fiercely searing his almost stopped heart.

The sense of absurdity swept away the remaining dam of reason like a tsunami.

The intense emotional turmoil triggered a fatal cough, and fragments of shattered internal organs mixed with sweet-smelling blood surged up his throat, trickling down from the corner of his mouth and leaving a sticky, warm residue on his chin.

Each cough pulled at the torn muscles in my back, bringing a new round of hellish pain, and the pop-up windows in my vision shook violently and blurred.

Brave?
Is he Hachiman Hikigaya?

That loner who believed in "cultivating one's own virtue," took "youth is a lie" as his guiding principle, and spent his life pursuing a peaceful and stable "rotten" existence?
(End of this chapter)