Darkness.
Cold.
The suffocating pain came from every limb, as if every bone in her body were crying out.
Mercy’s consciousness drifted in the boundless chaos, her ears filled with the dull, continuous rumble of explosions and the groaning of collapsing structures.
The scent of death was thick as a physical presence, wrapping around her, trying to drag her into eternal silence.
Just as she was about to surrender to the darkness, a voice pierced through the layers of rubble, faint but crystal clear, reaching her ears.
It was singing.
Her mother was singing.
But the song was no longer the gentle, comforting hymn of before.
It was hoarse, broken, a desperate cry squeezed from a crushed throat with the very last of her strength.
The melody was still recognizable, but the lyrics were fractured by pain and gasping breaths: “…From…
the…
sea…
of…
discord…
rise…” “…Harmony…
sound…” “A thousand…
strings…
interwoven…
soothe…” “…Wounds…
and…
loneli…ness…” “Xipe’s…
name…
guide…
us…” “…For…ward…” “…Shattered…
mirrors…
shall…
at last…” “…Be…
made…
whole…
a…
new…” Every note came with a spray of blood.
Every word was like a red-hot iron branded onto her soul.
This song was no longer meant to comfort the community.
It was a mother burning the last light of her life, trying to soothe the two trembling, death-dangling children beneath her.
“Mom…” Mercy’s heart was crushed by an icy grip.
The pain was so sharp she could barely breathe.
Her mother was still alive.
She was protecting Robin and Sunday with her life!
A surge of unknown strength exploded from within Mercy.
The instinct to survive, the obsession to protect her family, and the searing pain of her mother’s singing pushed past every limit of her body and consciousness.
“ARGH—!” She let out a low growl, and the weight pinning her down shifted.
The power of [Martial Artist], pushed to its absolute limit by her will to live, exploded outward.
CRASH!
The heavy wall slab pinning her down was shoved aside and flipped over.
Rubble and dust rained down.
Fresh air, thick with the stench of gunpowder and blood, flooded her lungs, making her cough.
She struggled to her feet, ignoring her own wounds and the blood that covered her, and looked desperately toward the sound of the singing.
In that moment, time seemed to freeze.
The scene before her was like the cruelest brand, searing itself into her soul forever.
In a small triangular space formed by collapsed walls and broken beams, her mother lay in a protective, almost prostrate position, shielding Robin and Sunday beneath her.
On her back rested a massive, jagged slab of concrete that had once been part of a load-bearing wall.
Its edges had cut deep into her spine.
Blood had long since soaked through her plain dress, pooling beneath her in a dark, horrifying stain.
And yet, under this crushing weight and agony, she was still singing.
Her head was raised with great effort, her lips moving, blood streaming from the corners of her mouth and staining her pale chin.
Those eyes, once so gentle, were now bloodshot from unbearable pain, yet they remained fixed on the two children held in her arms, filled with a final, all-consuming love and reassurance.
(T/N: Got me tearing up man…) Robin and Sunday were held tightly in their mother’s embrace, unharmed.
But their small faces were etched with absolute terror and despair.
Tears mixed with dust, carving muddy tracks down their cheeks.
They watched their mother’s suffering and listened to her broken song, and their small bodies trembled like leaves in the wind.
“Mo…
Mom…” Mercy’s throat was blocked, only a broken gasp escaping.
Tears burst forth instantly, mixing with the blood and dust on her face, searing hot as they fell.
Her mother seemed to hear the sound.
With immense difficulty, she slowly, painfully turned her eyes toward Mercy.
When she saw that her eldest daughter was alive, battered but still standing, a faint but brilliant light of relief flickered in her pain-filled gaze.
The singing stopped.
With the last of her strength, she managed a terribly difficult yet infinitely gentle smile at Mercy.
Her voice was soft as a whisper, but it reached Mercy’s ears with perfect clarity.
“Good…
Mercy…
you…
are the eldest…
from now on…
protect…
them…
both…” “…Grow up…
well…” The final light in her eyes guttered out like a candle in the wind.
Her lifted head fell limply.
The arms that had held her children so tightly finally lost all their strength and went slack.
“MOMMMM!!!!!!” Robin and Sunday let out a piercing, desperate wail.
The sound was sharp and hopeless, like fledglings who had lost their shelter.
It became the final, most sorrowful note of their mother’s life’s song.
Mercy stood frozen, staring at her mother’s lifeless body, hearing her siblings’ heartbroken cries.
The world lost all color before her eyes, leaving only that blinding red and the suffocating gray of despair.
At that moment, a cold, emotionless voice sounded directly in the depths of her mind.
[Ultimate protective conviction and existential crisis detected.] [Special time-limited mission issued: With Myself as Fuel, Light the Path Ahead.] [Mission objective: Save all surviving civilians in the current community.
Hold out until the Penacony relief fleet arrives.
(Remaining time: approximately 71 hours 59 minutes.)] [Mission restriction: Hunter Form time limit removed.
Energy consumption will be forcibly covered by the system.
After the form ends, the host will enter a weakened state of unknown duration.] [Mission reward: Astral Express boarding pass x1.
Storage space upgrade authority x1.] [Warning: If mission fails, or if the host dies, the system will detach and seek a new bond.] (T/N: Have you no sympathy, Daria!?) The system notification hit like ice water, jolting Mercy from her overwhelming grief and numbness.
Save…
everyone?
Hold out…
for three days?
With Myself as Fuel…
She slowly raised her head, looking at her mother’s body, still frozen in a protective pose.
She looked at Robin and Sunday, crying until they were nearly unconscious.
Finally, her gaze pierced through the gaps in the rubble, looking out at the hellscape beyond, where the Legion ran rampant amid screams and explosions.
A flame, colder than anything she had ever felt, ignited in the depths of her heart.
It was grief, rage, despair, and everything else, forged together into a single, unyielding resolve to die.
“Heh…” A low, hoarse laugh, like something from the abyss, escaped her throat.
She reached out a hand, stained with blood and dust, and placed it on the massive concrete slab pressing down on her mother’s back.
There was no scream, no roar.
Only a terrifying calm.
“Mom…
don’t worry,” she said softly, as if afraid to disturb her mother’s rest.
“I will.” The next moment, her arm surged with power.
The strength of [Martial Artist], with the system’s limits removed, poured forth like a breached dam.
BOOM!!!
The heavy concrete slab was sent flying, crashing onto a distant pile of rubble with a deafening sound.
She had no time to mourn.
No time to bury her mother.
She bent down and, as gently as she could, lifted Robin and Sunday from beneath their mother’s body.
They were limp from crying, and she held them tightly against her.
The two children, feeling their sister’s embrace, cried even harder, their small hands clinging desperately to her clothes.
Mercy carried them to a relatively sturdy corner and set them down.
She crouched before them, cupping their tear-streaked faces in her hands.
As she did, a strange change began to occur.
With the system’s full release of the [Martial Artist] form, her body began to glow.
Her bones made faint cracking sounds.
Her frame elongated and grew taller before their eyes.
Her features, still somewhat childish, quickly sharpened and became more defined.
The roundness of childhood faded, revealing the clear, sharp beauty of a young woman with a trace of fierce resolve.
In just a few breaths, she had transformed from a girl of about ten years old into a tall, slender young woman of sixteen or seventeen.
In her features, one could now see a striking resemblance to their departed mother.
She lowered her head and pressed a gentle but resolute kiss onto the foreheads of Robin and Sunday, who had been stunned into silence by the transformation.
Her voice still carried the clarity of youth, but now it held an undeniable force and an icy, bone-chilling killing intent.
“Robin, Sunday.
Close your eyes.
Cover your ears.” “Wait here for Sister.” “Sister will not let those scum…” “…hurt you again.” Then she turned away, not looking back at her siblings, nor at her mother’s final resting face.
She was afraid that if she looked one more time, the resolve she had so painstakingly gathered for death would shatter.
She walked toward the exit of the ruins, toward the hell beyond.
With each step, a faint shimmer of energy, like flowing molten gold, began to surface and coalesce around her body.
Her pupils slowly shifted to a cold, emotionless, bright gold.
A powerful, violent aura radiated from her like a storm.
“Martial Artist…
Form…
Release.” She spoke the words softly, as if invoking some forbidden incantation.
The flowing light fully enveloped her body, outlining a silhouette of immense power.
She raised her arm and looked at her fist, now gleaming with a cold, metallic sheen, wreathed in golden energy.
Then she took a deep breath of the air, thick with gunpowder and death, and raised her head.
A cry erupted from her, shaking the entire ruin zone, carrying endless grief and towering fury.
“YOU SCUM OF THE ANTIMATTER LEGION—!!!!” “I AM HERE!!!!” “COME AND FACE ME—!!!!!” The cry was like a thunderclap, cutting through all the noise of the battlefield.
Like an invisible shockwave, it reached the sensors of every Voidranger nearby, and the ears of the Legion commanders directing their war machines in the distance.
It was a naked challenge.
A declaration of war that condensed all her hatred and rage into one final, irrevocable act.
Almost instantly, from all directions, countless crimson electronic eyes lit up, locking onto this target that had suddenly erupted with such powerful energy.
The ground began to tremble.
Heavy footsteps and the roar of engines converged from all sides.
Like sharks scenting blood, every Antimatter Legion unit was drawn to Mercy’s defiant cry.
Mercy stood atop the highest point of the ruins.
Her golden eyes swept coldly over the tide of Voidrangers and war machines pouring in from all directions, their forms twisted and grotesque.
She slowly clenched her fist.
Golden light flickered and seethed between her fingers.
Come.
Come one and all.
Fueled by the hatred for those who took the ones I love.
Burning with what remains of my life.
I will fight…
Until death itself.
The golden figure, like a meteor streaking against the current, charged fearlessly into the endless tide of destruction.
The dirge of revenge and protection had begun its most brutal and soaring prelude.