This scene—a single man storming a fortress, looking down upon an army of ten thousand from the summit of the dead iron city—would almost certainly have become one of the most iconic, legendary, and monumental moments in the history of source energy civilization's warfare, had the humans back on Blue Star been able to witness and record it.
Yet that was impossible. For the lone besieger standing atop the iron wall was the only human on this dead planet, and the only human fighting in this war for their species' survival.
"Honestly, even if there were another human on Mars, they probably wouldn't have time to record this anyway, would they?" Before he realized it, he was thinking about his joke book again, and along with it, the epic scenes of his arch-rival Han Qingyu. Pink Peg couldn't help feeling a tinge of regret and gloom.
Because what had just occurred was never a frozen tableau. It had existed for merely a flash—less than a single second.
This was a surprise attack. A chance at an ambush hard-won by Pegmont through sheer combat prowess, tenacity, and intellect. He had finally caught sight of the tractor field; it was already activated and had to be stopped. He had finally scaled that wall of dead iron, looking down from above for the first time after spending half the battle getting pounded from below.
The tide of battle permitted no delay... He could not, and would not, hesitate for even a tenth of a second.
Bracing with his left hand, he took the final leaping stride, a streak of pink fluttering in the high winds... Even as he vaulted upward, Pegmont slammed his last tube of source energy blocks into the device's metal cassette, drawing his blade in the same fluid motion.
Less than half an hour had elapsed since the fighting began, yet he was already wounded—seven gashes across his body, exposing blood, flesh, and bone.
At the same time, his source energy was nearly exhausted, and time was running out...
This was his sole opportunity. This was the final strike. The drawn dead iron blade slashed forward, the moonlight flashing brightly across its edge for an instant—just once.
BOOM!
A colossal eruption of source energy shook the towering iron wall, setting it humming.
Of the six newly loaded source energy blocks in the device's metal cassette, a third burned away in an instant. A suicidal surge of life source energy pushed beyond all limits, burning everything... This was a god of war fighting to the death.
In an alien land, in a place without another soul.
"For that distant homeland, for humanity, for our kind, for everything that draws breath..." In the howling wind of the moonlit night, high atop the several-hundred-meter iron wall, Pegmont raised his blade with both hands. Leaning forward, he kicked off in a blinding surge of energy.
Plummeting diagonally downward from the heights...
The wind tore like shrieking cloth,
and man and blade plunged straight toward the tractor field.
At the very same moment—"Arooo! WHOOSH..."—the ten thousand Great Spikes on the ground unleashed their source energy in unison.
In his field of vision, centered on the tractor field, thousands of black armors and blue-sheened Great Spikes surged forward, dug in, and stacked upon one another.
Then, nearly three hundred even more violent blasts of source energy detonated in a chaotic chorus.
Over two hundred Red Shoulders brandished column swords and sprinted in from every direction and position. Gaining momentum as they reached the ring encircling the tractor field, they bounded up the ramps of stacked black armors and blue-sheened Great Spikes in one or two strides, vaulting repeatedly into the air to slash upward into the sky.
Dozens more Red Shoulders shot rapidly out of the massive underground pit housing the tractor field. Emerging from the pit, they likewise leaped skyward with all their might, moving to erect an aerial barrier above the spire of the tractor field.
In an instant, the entire airspace—from every quarter, at every altitude—was choked with gliding Red Shoulders bearing raised swords...
Pegmont slashed down.
As if they did not exist.
Without bending his path, without adjusting his angle, without slowing down to evade, he plunged ahead in an unbroken straight line, blade raised, blasting toward the tractor field.
Because of differences in takeoff time, trajectory, and speed, not every Red Shoulder could converge at once, nor could every Red Shoulder get in Pegmont's way.
Most lunged into empty air, unable to reach his attack trajectory.
And even those that managed to block his path were vastly outmatched by Pegmont in relative speed and momentum.
The first wave of leaping Red Shoulders, roughly several dozen in all, misjudged Pegmont's speed entirely; every single one struck empty air in midair, passing him by.
The second wave—BOOM!
A cluster of Great Spikes that had just converged blew apart in midair like a pile of corpses caught in an explosion. The bodies of at least two or three were instantly blasted into mangled fragments.
He tore straight through them without the slightest deceleration, smashing through like an arrow piercing a target.
Throughout the collision, Pegmont did not even make a slashing motion. He simply leveled his blade before him, breaking through entirely on absolute speed and crushing momentum.
Not a single new wound opened on his body.
Yet because his body was continuously sustaining an overloaded burst, and under the energy recoil of the impact, his internal organs shuddered with agony, and blood spilled copiously from his mouth.
It welled out—blood flowed ceaselessly from Pegmont's lips, nostrils, and ears, trickling downward.
Yet he did not even open his mouth, showing none of the typical physical reactions of someone spitting up blood.
Everything was suppressed. At this moment, any superfluous motion would shatter his state of absolute focus, of body fused into an arrow, plunging relentlessly onward.
Pegmont's overloaded body was already hovering on the brink of self-destruction.
BOOM!
BOOM!
Red Shoulders' burly frames were sent flying horizontally and diagonally across the sky.
And across the sky, Pegmont's blood sprayed.
Only then—WHOOSH!
Pegmont unleashed a second full-power surge in midair, raising his blade once more. At the same time, he voluntarily cast aside all bodily source energy defense, channeling every shred of energy forward.
Of his final six source energy blocks, more than half had been consumed.
The roar in his heart was soundless.
He accelerated!
From an already miraculous, limit-breaking speed, after piercing three successive lines of defense, just as his momentum was beginning to fade and his body was battered by severe internal and external trauma, Pegmont—the super-combatant of humanity—accelerated yet again in midair, plunging toward the ground tractor field with an even fiercer momentum than before.
The ground was not far now, but the defenses remained. A barrier formed of Red Shoulders leaping from the tractor field's crater had just barely assembled before him.
At least forty of them.
Granted, because they had not formed layered tiers this time, only a fraction could actually clash head-on with Pegmont. As long as he was not halted, most of those Red Shoulders would never even get the chance to strike at him or impede his descent.
At that hair-trigger instant,
Pegmont moved abruptly, shifting his blade to his left hand while raising his right.
BOOM!
In midair, the moment Pegmont raised his hand, a savage blue-glowing column sword shot forth like an exploding javelin toward the barrier of Red Shoulders above the tractor tower.
—Impact! The thunderous crack sounded only after it hit.
Not a single Great Spike had anticipated this column sword or this move. In fact, none of them had noticed when or where Pegmont had picked it up, or that after drawing his blade, he had carried a column sword strapped to his back all along.
Pegmont had caught the column sword out of the air. Just a moment ago, amidst the debris showering down after he smashed through the third interception line, he had reached out, snagged it, and slung it across his back.
Though Pegmont had never admitted it out loud, as fellow super-geniuses carrying humanity's highest hopes, deep down he had always envied Han Qingyu's ability to manipulate dead iron with his special trait, drawing and reacting with column swords... and tonight, he envied it most of all.
He thought that if only he possessed a trait suited for ranged attacks against overwhelming numbers, his chances of victory tonight would be far higher.
Sadly, he did not.
Regrettable... until just a moment ago, when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of this column sword, and inspiration struck. Pegmont decided to do it manually... Anyway, there's no one else here, so nobody can accuse me of copying that bastard.
The column sword smashed directly into the formation, killing at least two Red Shoulders on the spot and sending them plummeting, while rattling the barrier's formation.
The deflected column sword flew back toward Pegmont.
It grazed past his cheek.
Throughout this, the one-man human army didn't even blink.
Pegmont straightened mid-flight, his torso abruptly rearing up as his right hand joined his left around the hilt of the dead iron blade. Swinging his arms, he lunged forward and brought the weapon crashing down.
Cleaving straight into the Red Shoulder barrier above the tractor field.
CRACK!
The Red Shoulder barrier split right down the middle. Bodies flew sideways, hurtling to the ground.
Pegmont was covered in wounds, practically drenched in blood.
Breached!
Amidst the raining blood, Pegmont's blood-soaked figure continued to slash down toward the tractor field.
At this moment, his body was tearing itself apart, and his consciousness was fading into blurriness.
But it didn't matter. Nothing in his sight could stop him now. The black armors and blue-sheened Great Spikes clogging the pit around the tractor tower could never block this final, desperate strike.
"Fuck... looks like I'm not making it back.
"Wait, no. After pulling off something this badass, I have to go back! I have to make that old midget Bochen and that bastard Han Qingyu stand at attention and salute me!"
He thought this through the fog of his fading senses.
Eighty meters, sixty meters, forty meters...
BANG!
Pegmont's final strike of the night—the slash aimed truly at the tractor field, his dead iron blade raised high and swinging forward...
In the end, it failed to strike home.
A medium Great Spike airship flying low across the terrain charged in from the flank, crashing directly into him.
Pegmont was hurled two hundred meters away.
Two hundred meters out, another large source energy airship locked on, adjusted its position, and dove straight down, violently slamming the body of this planet's lone human warrior into the earth...
Blood flew.
His source energy was completely spent.
Deprived of all self-defense, Pegmont's shattered source energy device, metal cassette, and straps went flying.
Yet he had not let go of his dead iron blade, holding it horizontally, braced firmly against the bow of the source energy airship.
The airship drove him into the dirt.
Driving him nearly a hundred meters deep into the earth.
...
Gradually, everything finally quieted down.
The Red Shoulders climbed back to their feet. The swarm of Great Spikes slowly relaxed in their hesitation, then cautiously gathered around the source energy airship that was partially wedged into the ground.
"Is he dead?"
"...Dead."
The Red Shoulders spoke on the ground. In more than nine months, this was the first time they were so certain that this invincible, bizarre pink human was finally dead.
...
"Am I dead? Looks like I'm dead."
"No, you're not dead. That bastard Han Qingyu was gravely wounded and blasted into a volcanic crater by Daie, and even he didn't die! How could you die just from getting rammed into the ground by an airship?!"
"Hey, fair point. Wait, who the fuck are you?"
"Me? I'm Pegmont."
"You didn't die? Wait, I didn't die?"
Deep beneath the ground, the greatest anomaly in the history of humanity's source energy world, its greatest hope—Pegmont—lay in muddled consciousness, arguing and bickering with himself, just as he had grown accustomed to doing in his long solitude.
Chapter 883