Kryptonians: Man of Steel

Chapter 1506 Survive

This is not a command from consciousness.

My consciousness was already exhausted and all I wanted to do was succumb to despair.

This is more like a final reflex originating from the deepest part of the body, honed by repeated experiences of excruciating pain and near-death, and imprinted on the nerves and muscles.

It's an instinct to brace yourself with your arms after countless falls, even knowing it's pointless.

The twitching was as faint as the fluttering of a butterfly's wings, yet it was like a faint electric current that instantly pierced through Hachiman Hikigaya's suspended consciousness.

Wherever the current passes, memories, as deep as a pool, are violently stirred up.

The unreserved, radiant smile on Komachi's face as she held the crooked cake she had made; even further back, blurred like a faded photograph—young Komachi clutching his clothes tightly, her large eyes brimming with worry, dependence, and pure trust… Countless fragmented, faintly warm images surged up from the depths of memory due to the tiny ripples caused by this twitch.

These fragments are disjointed and their colors are dim, but the warmth they carry—the warmth of being needed by others, cared for by others, and the warmth of not wanting to betray that care deep in one's heart—briefly and stubbornly overshadows the whisper of giving up.

Throughout his life, he avoided being the center of attention, rejected heroic narratives, and built a high wall around himself by "cultivating his own virtue."

Ironically, every time fate corners them, every seemingly voluntary "self-destruction" is driven by something they can't completely sever—a bond and a desire to protect that they themselves are unwilling to acknowledge.

He loathed being called a hero, yet he could never truly turn his back on the despair before him.

This contradiction, like a maggot clinging to his bone, permeated his entire bleak youth.

倒计时无情地跳动着：06:15……06:14……06:13……

The darkness had already swallowed most of the area in my field of vision.

That cold pop-up window, that "yes/no" choice, is like the last lone lamp swaying in a storm, its light growing weaker and weaker, as if it could be extinguished at any moment.

"This is... incredibly troublesome..."

A silent sigh stirred the last ripple in the sea of ​​his utterly lost consciousness.

It wasn't anger, nor resentment, but a resigned weariness, a final compromise with the contradictory nature of oneself.

The left hand, stained with blood, twitched slightly at one of its fingers.

This time, it was no longer an unconscious twitch.

As if having exhausted the last bit of life force in its broken body, those few scarred fingers, extremely slowly and tremblingly, lifted up a tiny bit towards the pop-up window that was floating in the void.

With a resolute determination bordering on self-destruction after abandoning all thought, or perhaps driven by the last inertia of that faint warmth, the fingertips moved an extremely slight... millimeter toward the cold "Yes" on the pop-up window radiating a ghostly blue light.

The moment my fingertip touched the deep blue "Yes" character, there was no explosion of sound or light.

Only a cold, absolute torrent, like the first cold current at the beginning of the universe, instantly pierced through him!

This torrent did not surge in from the outside, but rather burst forth violently from the depths of every cell in his body, from every nerve ending on the verge of breaking, and from every crack in his shattered bones!
It carried an indescribable, forcibly imposed sense of "order," cold, efficient, and precise like the most brutal machinery, yet violently tearing at his fragile structure as a "human being." "Ugh—!"

From deep within Hachiman Hikigaya's throat, a completely inhuman roar, utterly distorted by excruciating pain, erupted. This roar was abruptly choked by the metallic taste rising in his throat, transforming into a chilling, dying gurgling sound.

His broken body arched upwards suddenly, as if struck hard on the spine by an invisible giant hammer, before crashing back down onto the cold ground, kicking up a cloud of dust mixed with blood.

My vision was completely distorted and shattered.

The world in my right eye was forcibly tainted by an irresistible force.

The blazing gold, like molten metal, instantly devoured the original colors and scenery. This gold was not a warm light, but a cold, inhuman scrutiny, with the precision and indifference of a scanner.

Through his gold-stained right eye, he saw not scenery, but phantoms of countless frantically flowing, meaningless streams of cold data and energy pathways.

His left eye still had human vision, but it was blurred by the excruciating pain, as if looking through a layer of blood mist. He could only see the disgusting, writhing shadow of flesh above him that was gathering again.

The excruciating physical pain miraculously subsided significantly, not disappeared, but was forcibly suppressed into the background noise of consciousness by a stronger, colder will.

In contrast, there is an unprecedented and chilling sense of "control".

He could "feel" that every muscle, every tendon, and even every nerve fiber in his body was being precisely controlled by this cold will.

This is not his body, but a vehicle temporarily rented by a weapon called the "Hero System".

His "gaze" (or rather, the scanning vision provided by the system) instantly focused on what was in front of him.

That place is a scene of hell.

An indescribable monster was lying on his shattered body.

It still retains the general outline of a human torso, but its head has been completely distorted.

The entire head splits open from the middle, resembling a huge, man-eating flower petal covered with serrated fangs, or the mouthparts of some kind of insect.

From the center of the split "petals" extend four fleshy whips, covered with barbs and tipped with sharp bone blades, resembling octopus tentacles—this is the signature attack organ of the parasite in Parasite!
One of the tentacles' bone blades was deeply embedded in the muscle of his right shoulder, greedily churning and cutting, while two others were tearing at his clothing and flesh. The fourth tentacle was raised warily, its four-lobed "eye" coldly scanning the surroundings.

A thick liquid, mixed with blood and an unidentified mucus, dripped from its body, making a "drip...drip..." sound. It was clearly enjoying its "prey"—Hachiman Hikigaya himself.

A surge of primal fear and disgust, stemming from biological instinct, instantly rose in his throat, but was immediately suppressed by the system's cold will. In its place came an absolute, inhuman, calm analytical perspective.

In the system's view, the monster's body was highlighted in red, and its weak points (the core nerve clusters were located at the root of the split skull) were precisely marked.

Hachiman Hikigaya's consciousness was like that of a passenger trapped in a cockpit, watching in horror as "his" body reacted.

(End of this chapter)