“How heartless... ‘Starflow.’”
The bleeding gash healed rapidly, leaving only a faint white mark after a single breath.
But the blood—that garish, crimson blood, hotter than a normal person’s, scalding to the point that its very flow seemed ready to ignite—remained. It seeped clammily into the crevices between his armor and the edge of his jaw, bringing with it a sensation as complex as his current state of mind.
Lei Ting walked slowly toward Evenheiler. This time, as his armored boots bore his heavy frame across the floor, they no longer left the strangely nonexistent trail they usually did. Instead, the aero-alloy plating, shimmering with golden light, sank slightly under his weight, sending out ripples of faint silver light like waves.
It was as if subjects were drawing back to make way for their sole sovereign.
Directly in front of that metallic monarch, the agile, blonde man had torn open a massive, chaotic rift.
Lei Ting did not stop Evenheiler from sending the others through the rift, nor did he prevent them from immediately fleeing in the nearby civilian transport ships. He merely watched it all with composure—watching those people fly toward the dragnet cast by the First Legion in the distance.
Around him, golden radiance surged like fire, like the sea, like an approaching sun, like death itself.
His pace remained as measured as ever, yet it was no longer peaceful. On the contrary, as solar-corona flames began to burn around him, a terrifying majesty was no longer restrained.
Evenheiler caught only a brief glimpse of him before his eyes were nearly stung blind by that aura of shrouded gold.
*Danger!*
From emotion to logic, from will to instinct, everything within him shrieked a warning of the approaching peril. He felt as though he were closing in on a star... no, they were closing in on each other. He had already been captured; escape was impossible. It was terrifying—he was falling into a corona that could vaporize all things.
Evenheiler’s head swam as powerful hallucinations flooded his mind. Endless golden light churned and burned within his psyche. So scalding...
It was the first time he had ever experienced such searing heat.
And the person releasing this cataclysmic mental heat... even a starlight blade capable of cleaving a starship was like a cheap glass toy in his hands.
For a fleeting moment, Evenheiler wondered—was that truly still a ‘human’?
If the answer to that question was yes, if that figure was still a human being...
Then why, ever since returning to the Capital System, did a sense of dread akin to the Uncanny Valley effect rise in Evenheiler’s heart whenever he faced him?
It was frightening, deranging—something impossible to defy, yet something he recoiled from in his very soul.
On the surface, he appeared human. In reality, he was something else entirely. To the eyes, he was ‘Lei Ting,’ he was ‘Solar Star.’ But the moment one closed their eyes, they would realize that this existence was by no means human. It—or He—wasn’t even a normal biological organism...
...It was a blazing sun, radiant to the point of blinding, incandescent to the point of horror.
Whenever he looked at that man, instinct would immediately leap out to remind him: *Do not be fooled by his outward appearance; this is the most dangerous enemy you have ever encountered in your life!*
Thus, even when he controlled himself with logic, in critical moments, the malice within his emotions would still spread, involuntarily targeting this enemy.
Standing personally before the rapidly closing spatial rift, Evenheiler drew his light blade with a reverse grip.
He squinted at the figure, his gaze flickering uncontrollably. It didn't feel like looking at a person; it felt like staring directly into a star.
*Will I be burned blind?* he asked himself.
Lei Ting took a step toward him.
The answer was... he didn't know.
Evenheiler gasped for air. Cold sweat had already soaked his inner garments, leaving a clammy chill inside his black-and-gold armor.
He found it difficult to pull his gaze away from that light. At this moment, the attraction a high-level esper exerted on the surrounding ‘Spirit-thought’ had become terrifyingly vast. An indescribable sensation caused him to fail repeatedly just a second before he could look away—
He knew he had lost before the battle even began.
Because in this moment, he had lost his speed, his strength, and his alertness. As long as Lei Ting opened his visor, a man named Evenheiler Kang would cease to exist in this world.
This was the feeling Lei Ting gave Evenheiler, and it was the image he projected to other ‘S-ranks.’
An unknown, terrifying enemy; a ‘thing’ that could destroy everything just by drawing near...
...A god.
A god walking among the masses, seemingly benevolent yet filled with a desire for control and destruction; appearing gentle, yet arrogant enough to wrestle with the entire world.
Evenheiler lowered his head and suddenly coughed up a mouthful of crimson blood, red light flickering in his eyes.
He could feel his internal organs rebelling. It wasn't just his old ailments; it was also the excessive exertion from moments ago, and... Lei Ting’s light.
The movement of the metallic elements... they were completely beyond his own control. He nearly stumbled to his knees, but his willpower and pride forbade it. Instinctively, he propped himself up with his starlight blade, leaning heavily and precariously against it. Through his dazed, blurred vision, he watched the heavy armored boots come to a halt before him.
Thinking back, everything they had done these past days must have been under this man’s watchful eye.
Freedom was merely an illusion.
He had never truly escaped... the gravitational web of this sun.
Evenheiler laughed—a strained, raspy sound carrying a sense of terminal decline that had never been so clear.
Amidst the sound of shattering glass coming from nowhere, he whispered, his voice so low he could barely hear it himself: “Solar Star... no... Lei Ting...”
*If only I had power like yours. If only I, like you, could decide everything before me.*
His lashes lowered, his green eyes lost focus, and strands of his golden hair were overtaken by a withered silver-white.
Under that deep, silent gaze, Evenheiler’s lips twitched with difficulty.
Desperate powerlessness, powerless desperation... this feeling had been gnawing at his soul for over a decade.
He knew that the existence of the Resistance was the will of ‘The Beloved,’ and ‘The Beloved’... He represented ‘a certain part of humanity.’
Whether it was the Federation, the Resistance, or the struggle between the two...
In essence, they were all merely the choices of the collective known as ‘Humanity.’
However... the Resistance, burdened with another heavy responsibility, had yet to be recognized by the mainstream Orion collective.
And that mainstream collective was now in the hands of one man...
...The greatest mistake of his life. A man who, if he so desired, could ignore the will of everyone else.
A young man who, even to this day, could attract him on every possible level.
“Look at you,” he heard the young man say softly. “Look at what you’ve turned yourself into, Uncle Starflow.”
“...”
Evenheiler’s lips moved with great effort. He could barely maintain his standing posture, yet he still let out a low chuckle. Suddenly drawing a sharp breath, he raised his blade and struck at the man before him!
*CLANG—!!*
When the pure, high-concentration energy blade was snapped by a flick of Lei Ting’s finger, a terrifying counterforce surged into Evenheiler’s hand and arm. Naturally, his weakened hand failed to grip the deflected light-knife. Having lost his final support, he could only stagger back helplessly and dizzily, passing through the already sealed space to slump heavily against the wall.
Even though his energy was still abundant, his shattered, chaotic mind had begun to lose the ability to maintain his cognitive functions.
This caused his armor to begin manifesting scars—wounds it had suffered in the past. Along those wounds, the armor met its mottled, crumbling end, dissipating into the air as flakes of soft, cold starlight.
Evenheiler closed his eyes slightly, making no attempt to speak with Lei Ting.
Or perhaps it should be said that he had lost the ability to speak.
—He was dying.
Lei Ting’s fingers twitched slightly beneath his cloak. But he did not rush to act, for he knew that even now, Evenheiler... must still hold some kind of trump card. The kind of trump card that truly made ‘Starflow’ a ‘deterrent to external forces.’
He was not afraid of being attacked, of course—he was afraid that this man, whose soul was shattered and who had always been filled with a desire for self-destruction, would commit suicide.
“...Evenheiler Kang,” the tall man muttered the name, staring fixedly at the figure. He asked hoarsely, “You would rather die than be free of me?”
Evenheiler leaned silently against the wall, head bowed, slowly sliding down until he sat on the floor, without uttering a word.
“...”
Lei Ting opened his mouth slightly, for a moment at a loss for words. “I...”
“...I have never harmed you.” His words still sounded slow and steady, yet they carried a trace of unprecedented trembling. “Why?”
Evenheiler remained silent. If he had any strength left to say anything, he would have said: *Because your desire for control is too terrifying. You want humanity to walk the path you’ve laid out, but ‘The Beloved’ does not agree with your path—the emotional side of humanity does not agree with your path.* And: *Do you realize you are pitting yourself against the emotional side of trillions of Orions?*
In a cold, chaotic darkness, Evenheiler remained still.
He could hear a fanatical, piercing roar gradually rising from the depths of that darkness—the roar of a high-level Abyssal Demon...
...It was his own roar.
Weak, powerless, hesitant.
Despairing, sorrowful, insatiable.
Evenheiler Kang’s life had botched everything, and now, he was about to be submerged by the darkness that haunted him...
Under the destructive radiance of a blazing sun, he was about to become... the monster that brought all that pain to the world.
Evenheiler sank into the darkness. He felt as though he had never been so calm—his thoughts were alienating, his senses were warping, and the rules of spatial awareness, distance, and ‘position’ were failing him. *Was it like this for ‘Emperor’s Blade’ back then?* he thought. *Probably so.*
He felt himself descending into the sea. Such cold, heavy pressure... it was about to crush him, to merge him into that churning ocean, to be completely replaced by the monster surging toward the surface from the deep.
From then on, he would no longer exist.
And the name ‘Starflow’ would dissipate, in such a flat and absurd manner, under the gaze of the stars.
