Dihair Peco collapsed on the floor of the Storm Frontier's chamber, letting out a low whimper similar to that of a wounded beast.

A few minutes ago, the voices were some angry curses, howls of pain, but now, a few minutes later, he had lost the strength to do so.

The infestation of chaos brought intense pain at first: subspace energy tried to distort the structure of his body, confusing whispers disturbed his thoughts, as if ten thousand voices were simultaneously deafening at him from near and far away, and ten thousand wills were pouring chaos of knowledge into his mind at the same time. His dark eyes glimpsed through the veil of reality into the waves of the Supreme Heaven, and countless things that had happened and had not happened unfolded before his eyes at the same moment like a terrible picture.

His spirit was almost destroyed by these things, and even the mind of Astarte Superman could only rise and fall helplessly in the midst of such a grand wave. He became unable to count the time, he didn't know how long he had spent in this ordeal - was it a few seconds? Or a thousand years? In his anguish, he realized that his life as "himself" was coming to an end, and the nature of subspace unfolded his meaningless life in front of him, making him begin to think in despair that such an outcome might not be unacceptable.

He realized that his mind was being drained in the process, until it was so worn out that he didn't even realize it. Pollution clings to his soul, and turbidity brings false joy. In this way, within minutes of the physical world, Dihair Peco was succumbed to the power of the Supreme Heaven. He was almost completely engrossed, and the last of his sanity was held together by a single filament, pure black, like a wisp of night that had been pulled out, and stood out in the colorful supreme sky.

The filament sank between his hearts, tearing at his viscera painfully. This pain, which was more intense than neuropathic pain and burned directly on his soul, made him feel as if he were a specimen nailed to a display case. The pain made him instinctively want to pull at the filament, and when he did touch it, another thought chiseled into his mind like a sharp cone:

He saw his life again, starting from the smallest and smallest places. He saw the theft and deception at the bottom of the hive when he was a child, he saw the conflict and killing with the gangs in his youth, he saw his submission to power and violence, and he became the Astarte of the Chaos Gang with his brother, he saw himself as the Midnight Lord swimming unscrupulously in the sea of stars with his brother, plundering without scruples—he saw every evil deed he had committed, every sin he had committed, he recognized his past actions with surprising clarity, and then, Something he didn't care about had cut his palm bloody.

Dihair Peco groaned in pain as a result, and the creature instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm forced him to let go of his hand naturally. However, before the blood could fall, he re-grasped it with a desperate madness. The pain took hold of his sanity, and he was still barely able to maintain himself. An inexplicable instinct forced him to open his eyes uselessly, to look into the distance along the lines of his crimes, to grit his teeth and endure endless pain, despite his bloody arm.

Then he saw: the other end of the filament was in the hands of Conrad Coetze, the father of his genes.

He didn't understand what that meant. But at the moment of realizing this, a wave of ecstasy surged violently in the heart of Dihair Peco.

-----------------

"The contract between you and Tachika has indeed allowed you to share her abilities in contracts. But in fact, this ability itself is quite chicken, and she can use it because she is 'Fujimaru Rika'. ”

Before it all began, Merlin had this to say:

"Her contractual ability is essentially based on the Chaldean guardian Heroic Spirit summoning system - Destiny, so she only focuses on the step of 'acting as a wedge to hold the connection between the two parties', and the restraint and coercion can be said to be almost non-existent. But this power is not manifested in you in this way. ”

Merlin can only be trusted for his magic skills, so Conrad Coetzes waits for the rest of the story.

"The bottom line is because Rika Fujimaru, who holds the contract, is essentially just a 'human', and you-"

Merlin smiled:

"-I've died once, so it's almost time to realize what I am, right?"

-----------------

"It's just an option."

Dihair Peco's ears didn't catch any sound, but he still "heard" his genetic father say it.

"A choice." Conrad Coetzee declared, "You can choose to throw yourself into chaos and end your sins in this life with death." Or, you may choose to bear the shackles of pain and join me in atonement for the sins you have done in the past. The former is easy, the latter is difficult, and the choice is yours. And in any case, I will judge. ”

In Dihair Peccona's eyes, which had completely sunk into the nets of the heavens above, the form of his genetic father was like a swaying ghost, a dark living hell. The reason why he can still recognize the identity of the other party is not by virtue of a specific and fixed appearance in his memory, but by an instinct engraved on his soul. There was a horror in that figure that was incomprehensible to human intellect, and it was haunted by the echoes of the wails of countless sinners before they died, and even Astarte, who did not know fear, could not help but feel a tremble from the bottom of his heart just by glimpsing such a figure, let alone looking at it directly.

But he couldn't take his eyes off.

The echoes of chaos reverberated in his ears again, and a cacophony of voices shouted in his ears, "This is deception": it was Conrad Coz who led the Midnight Lord on this path, it was Conrad Coz who led the legions in betraying the Empire, it was Conrad Coetz who succumbed to his fate and left behind all his children, and now, once again, as a stooge of the Puppet Emperor, he reached out to you like a father - why should he? What qualifications does he have to do so?

Come and join us, just as you already are. The bewitching whispers wept like a complaint, lingering in his thoughts. The Most High will give you everything, what you have, what you want but don't have, what you seek, what you didn't find out what you seek, and you don't lose anything because of it. You can get rid of everything you hate, you will get the life you dream of, all your confusions about life will be answered, and all you have to do is not respond to the call of the puppet sent by the damned.

The price offered by Chaos is indeed tempting. Dihair Peco struggled to turn his painful and sluggish mind, and then, in that surprising lucidity, he realized that the Most High had promised him these things because they could no longer control him as they had done before.

Why choose such a path full of pain and thorns? Don't you see a future filled with lies and deception? Is there anything to hesitate about? The eyes of the fool are always blinded by the curtain in front of them, and you are undoubtedly qualified. Don't respond to Him, and then the Most High will show you the whole world as it is.

Dihair Peco clenched the filament in his hand in the whispers of subspace, allowing it to cut into his skin, slicing through his palms, ripping off his muscles, and leaving his hands almost skinless. An abnormal pain ignited in his wounds, and he was consciously forced to recall a betrayal of his companion as a child. Astarte often loses most of his memories of his past life during the makeover surgery, so Dihair is surprised that he still remembers it, and even in this memory, the apprehension, guilt, and faint fear in his heart at that time are vivid.

— and that's just the beginning.

In the next instant, or the next thousand years, countless of the same threads pierced Dihair's body. They sliced his physical shell to blood with merciless coldness, and inflicted great pain on his soul level. He was tried at the same time for all the crimes he had committed, and at the same time he was punished for all the evil obstacles he had created. Those thin threads were not meant to lead him back to the right path, but simply to engrave all his faults in his blood and bones and even on his soul with pain and fear.

Theft, deception, betrayal, cajoling, persecution, snatching, killing, torment, and weakness.

Yes, weakness.

Dihair Peco is always the weakest one. It's the same at the bottom of the nest, it's also in the gangs, and it's also in the Midnight Lord Warband. When he encounters obstacles, he is always the first to turn back, and when faced with difficulties, he must be the first to flee. He was ridiculed for it, but he also survived for it. He had never felt it a sin until the bitter judgment of the Father of Genes came, and it was the most unacceptable crime for him. He wanted to struggle, he wanted to plead, but the thin line wouldn't listen to him and didn't give him this chance.

As long as you refuse, these things you hate will stop. There was a hint of anxiety in Chaos' persistent whispers. Why insist on it? All you have to do is nod your head and we'll cut those damn threads for you. There's nothing to be ashamed of, just another escape, no different from what you've done countless times before. It's not cowardice, it's the wisdom of survival, don't you think so?

Give up, give up the pain in front of you. As long as you are willing to open your arms to the Most High Heaven, you can have everything you want.

For a moment, Dihair Peco almost agreed. But before he made his decision, he looked up again at the other side of the filaments. Conrad Coetze's erratic figure remained in place, no closer to him, no farther away from him. In a trance, he felt some kind of anatomical scrutiny, a pair of dark pupils that made his gaze pass over him carelessly with a little annoyance.

Dihair Peco let out a whimper of pain as he realized in that moment that it was all he really wanted.

His hands were almost devoid of flesh under the cutting of countless filaments, and the exposed white bones were difficult to move because they were not controlled by muscles—as they should have been in the material world, but at this moment, the hands that were only white bones moved under the strong will of Dihair himself:

They gripped the threads tighter.

The angry curses and curses of the High Heaven departed from him, and his whole body was plunged into never-ending judgment and torment. The near-death pain washed over his consciousness repeatedly, and every time he felt like he was about to be crushed, the thin threads would once again relentlessly piece his soul together. He despairs, he cries, he prays, he prays to those dark eyes, but he gets nothing but pain.

He struggled for a long time in a sea of pain, until he began to understand that they would haunt him forever and would not fade away. Amazingly, when he realized this, the sights that forced him to look back on his sinful karma began to dissipate, and his consciousness and soul began to return to his shell. The pain remains, but slowly and gradually to the point of being bearable.

Dihair Peco finally opened his eyes again in the cabin of the Storm Boundary. Luckily, it was Dihair Peco himself who reopened his eyes here.

He soon realized that he was still lying on the floor, surrounded by fragments of furniture he had destroyed. He had a splitting headache and didn't feel good about it — most severely on his hands.

When Dihair Peco looked down, he realized that there were no substantial wounds on his body, not even his hands. They may have been wounded, but they weren't big, a few minutes were enough time for Astarte's shell to heal those wounds, leaving only the blood that coagulated instantly on the palms of their hands. But as he moved his fingers, he could still feel the illusion of heat in his movements, as if some kind of blade or torture instrument had been embedded in his bones and muscles.

Red gloves.

His brain retrieved such a word in the Legion's seemingly nonexistent tradition. Then, a strong sense of absurdity struck him with the sudden appearance of the word, and the implied meaning beneath it made him feel as if he had fallen to the bottom, as if floating on the clouds.

The chiming on the Storm Boundary maintained a classical tradition, with the midnight clock ringing softly in every cabin. Dihair Peco heard hysterical laughter and cries coming from the room around him, and he was blessed to know that he wasn't the only one who had made it through that hellish experience.

An obscure sense of connection came to him suddenly, and he knew inexplicably that Conrad Coetze was passing through the corridor where the criminal was being held. The Father of Genes walked slowly and hesitantly, as if confirming something, and did not care that some of his thoughts were exposed to his children because of this connection:

He did not forgive anyone. The concept of forgiveness does not exist in his criteria. But he allowed them to live.

He identified with his children who had survived the journey of judgment, with the significance of their existence, and with their eligibility for atonement.

Sandwiched between constant pain and an almost absurd sense of happiness, Dihair Peco unconsciously joins in the wails of his brothers.