My Fate Is Mine, Not Heaven's!

Hawk did not know how the other Saint Seiya trained.

After all, the Saint Seiya in his memories came from an anime.

This was reality.

As everyone knew.

Stories needed logic; reality did not.

So...

Hawk had thrown ten thousand punches every day for a thousand consecutive days. He had long since mastered such a simple punch technique.

How did that saying go again?

If someone could draw and sheath a sword one hundred thousand times, they could master the Heaven-Slaying Sword Art.

He had withdrawn and thrown his fists far more than one hundred thousand times. After completing the Cosmo Cultivation activation quest, this punch technique of his finally underwent a qualitative transformation.

Sonic Fist!

A fist technique that could raise the speed of his punches to the speed of sound, and perhaps even break the sound barrier after burning his Cosmo.

What was a Sonic Fist?

It meant that when my fist struck your body, you would feel the pain first and hear the sound of my punch afterward.

That was a Sonic Fist.

Boom!

As the aircraft exploded above the street, the Chitauri Captain, who had leaped from it to escape at the last possible moment, heard the explosive sound of a punch beside his ear. He drew a weapon from behind his back that likewise glowed a ghostly green. It was not a gun, but a spear-like weapon. He stared at Hawk, who stood before him bare-chested, with a muscular physique like a sculpture.

There was no helping it.

Hawk had not been injured in the Chitauri's carpet bombing just now, but the T-shirt he had worn for several years had finally met its end under the barrage of flying rubble.

But it did not matter.

After taking off the ruined T-shirt, Hawk, clad only in gray casual pants and an old pair of sneakers, felt as though he had grown a little stronger.

And it was not an illusion.

As everyone knew.

Exploding clothes meant increased combat power!

"Human!"

Holding the ghostly green-glowing spear, the Chitauri Captain fixed Hawk with his relatively large mung-bean eyes from beneath his faceplate.

Hawk's image also appeared on the display screens aboard the Chitauri alien mothership beyond the wormhole.

Hawk looked at the Chitauri Captain holding the ghostly green spear, tilted his head, and smiled.

The next second.

He extended his right hand toward the Chitauri Captain, spread his palm, curled his fingers, and beckoned at him.

No more words were needed.

"Come!"

"Die!"

The Chitauri Captain looked at Hawk's utterly unconcerned expression and nearly insulting gesture. Expressionless, he stomped down with a bang, instantly shattering the ground beneath his feet. He swept toward Hawk through the air, rapidly closing the distance as the tip of his spear bloomed with ghostly green light and fired one energy beam after another.

Hawk also exerted force through his feet. The instant the ground cracked and sank beneath him, his entire body transformed into a streak of golden light that tore through the field of vision as he shot toward the Chitauri Captain.

In his memories, once Bronze Saints awakened their Cosmo, gained the recognition of their respective constellations, and donned the Saint Cloths belonging to those constellations, their bodies would become terrifyingly formidable.

Their bodies possessed astonishing defenses, while their punches and movements would reach the speed of sound.

Even their lifespans would far surpass those of ordinary people.

Although Hawk had only awakened his Cosmo and had not yet lit up his constellation, let alone obtained even a trace of a Saint Cloth, it did not change the fact that, in a sense, he was no longer an ordinary person.

So...

"Pfft!"

The Chitauri Captain, who was rushing toward Hawk and trying to disrupt and stop him with ranged attacks before closing in to kill him, suddenly changed expression. Then he spat out a mouthful of ghostly green blood.

The ghostly green blood burst forth with such force that it knocked the metal mask off the Chitauri Captain's face, revealing beneath it a savage visage that looked far more like an insect than a human.

The next moment.

The sound of the punch arrived, exploding beside the Chitauri Captain's ear.

Boom!

Dazed, the Chitauri Captain lowered his head and looked at the arm that had pierced through his sturdy armor and was embedded in his chest.

The Chitauri Captain let out an incomprehensible, perhaps meaningless, howl. He tried to raise his increasingly heavy head for one last look at the human who had killed him in a single move.

But...

He had no time left. Just as he raised his head halfway, Hawk withdrew his arm from his chest, and boundless darkness instantly engulfed him.

Boom!

Without Hawk's arm to support him, the Chitauri Captain, shrouded in boundless darkness, collapsed toward the ground like a dead giant bug.

As the Chitauri Captain fell to the ground, Hawk hooked his right hand and snatched the Energy Lance from his grasp.

Ghostly green liquid-like energy filled the inside of the Energy Lance, and as the energy flowed, the spear also radiated ghostly green light.

Hawk weighed the Energy Lance in his hand.

A question suddenly came to mind.

Say, if he put this Energy Lance and the several weapons dropped by the Chitauri Soldiers he had just killed on the black market, how much could he sell them for?

Alien weapons...

They should be worth a lot, right?

As Hawk thought this, he subconsciously turned to look toward a corner of the apartment ruins.

While arranging the bodies earlier, he had also tossed the four dropped Energy Guns into a large pit.

Just then.

The corner of Hawk's eye caught the brilliant blue light that suddenly bloomed above Manhattan.

Coming back to his senses.

He gazed toward the sky above Manhattan.

Before his eyes.

The sky-blue pillar of light that had seemed to exist between heaven and earth all along had vanished. At the same time, the rift tearing open the sky above Earth was beginning to close at a visible speed.

"That's it?"

"It's over?"

"The Chitauri Soldier invasion of Earth dungeon is finished?"

"Why does it feel like..."

Hawk blinked.

He had wanted to say that if he had known the Chitauri Soldier invasion of Earth would be so feeble, would he have been so worried and afraid?

But...

Hawk withdrew his gaze and looked at the ruined street, now a complete mess like postwar wreckage, where severed limbs could still be seen. He swallowed those words.

It was not that the Chitauri Soldiers were too weak.

It was that he had become stronger.

"If I hadn't happened to awaken my Cosmo at this exact moment, one of those severed limbs would probably have been mine."

Hawk's gaze fell on the visible severed limbs. As he thought this, he became even more resolute in one conviction.

He had to become stronger.

Keep becoming stronger.

Not for anything else, but solely to earn the right to say one thing.

My fate is mine.

Not heaven's!

But Hawk still had an urgent matter to deal with.

That was...

He needed to find somewhere to stash the five alien weapons he had worked so hard to loot from monsters, then figure out how to sell them for money and improve his life.