The Righteous People with Many Psychological Activities

Washington, D.C. Thin clouds hung in the sky, like a gauzy veil shyly covering the moon.

This was a district that had been abandoned, cleared of civilians, and left without surveillance. It was about to be restarted and developed into a commercial city.

Aynu Alley.

Silent, cool, and deserted.

The dim streetlights buzzed, occasionally popping and startling the mosquitoes circling their glow into scattering. Before long, they swarmed back around the very light that had frightened them.

Jupiter and the others filed out of the sewers.

Streetlight and moonlight fell sparsely upon their confident, smiling faces.

Maslow divided human needs into five levels, from low to high.

1. Physiological needs: food, water, air, sleep, sex, and so on—the most basic needs for survival.

2. Safety needs: psychological needs for stability, security, protection, order, and freedom from fear and anxiety.

3. Emotional and social needs: people could not live without emotions. Everyone needed to form connections and exchange feelings with others, such as love, friendship, family affection, even the social thrill of watching a roadside spectacle. These needs had to exist, because an emotional person could not remain alone in a little dark room until death.

4. Esteem needs: self-respect and the desire to be respected by others. One did not necessarily need others' respect, but self-respect was essential.

5. Self-actualization needs: satisfying oneself, the highest need for spiritual and psychological pleasure.

Jupiter and the others never lacked food or clothing. They were supported, respected, and admired by others. While they could not quite summon wind and rain at will, among humanity, they lived as easily as fish in water, enjoying lives better than those of ninety-nine percent of ordinary people.

And nothing could realize one's own value more than saving the world.

How many people could save the world?

It was an ideal worth pursuing and dedicating one's life to.

None of them had ever doubted that they would fail.

Since humanity evolved, it had fought fierce beasts, learned to use tools to conquer them, and begun eating their flesh. On this planet, humanity had conquered the land, explored the oceans, and gazed up at the stars.

With crude tools, Homo sapiens had surrounded and slaughtered mammoths.

Steel ships forged from smelted metal had turned the ocean into humanity's backyard, adding the delicious taste of seafood to their tables.

Even the alien monsters that had emerged from the wormhole beneath the Pacific Ocean not long ago had been hunted down one by one by mechs created by humanity.

Now, visitors from space were merely a necessary step in humanity's march toward the stars.

Just as Homo sapiens had begun by learning to use tools.

And just as the aliens beyond space had arrogantly begun spreading superpowers, humanity would always step beyond the aliens' path and head into space, toward a new era.

Today, they had decided upon the strategy for the next ten years at a round table in the sewers. These sewers might be filthy and foul-smelling now, but in the future, this place would surely become the great and unyielding beginning that later generations praised and revered.

They believed.

Calm and confident, they walked up from the sewers, smiling knowingly at their shared conviction. A group of like-minded comrades fighting shoulder to shoulder filled them with confidence.

They firmly believed.

Just as the gauzy clouds in the sky could not cover the moon, much less its radiance, moonlight shone down upon them.

Nothing could stop them. Nothing could stop those of them who held steadfast faith. Like the vast moon hanging in the sky, the gauzy clouds were no more than thin smoke temporarily obscuring it.

They would eventually disperse.

Yet within that dispersing wisp of smoke was a sesame-seed-sized black dot. It seemed to be coming straight toward them from the moon, growing closer and larger until it blotted out the moon.

Everyone's gaze was fixed on the figure blocking the moon.

What's wrong with you all?

Don't look like your entire families just died because I'm here.

I still prefer your smiling, confident, composed faces.

He-El found it amusing inside. He descended slowly as though from the moon, the hem of his black cloak fluttering in the cold wind. His figure seemed vast enough to blot out the sky and moon, covering the moon and the night sky, filling their vision until they could no longer see the moon.

He was like a demon god emerging from the distant moon, descending before them. The approaching figure stiffened their joints and emptied their minds.

No human who had never faced He-El directly could imagine that overwhelming pressure. It was not merely pressure upon the air; it felt as though they were facing the core of a star, suffocating through every pore.

There was also the instinctive mechanism embedded in human genes since ancient times—avoiding powerful beasts and playing dead. It made them feel as though their bodies were beyond their control and their minds had gone blank.

Before such power, all intelligence and cleverness seemed pale and powerless.

"You... I..."

Jupiter's throat was dry and hoarse. Her face stiffened, and her mind was blank.

Watching He-El descend from the moon and fill her entire vision had already destroyed the defenses in her heart. She could no longer think of any way to avoid this moment, this terror of facing He-El.

Had He seen everything?

Humanity... everything... was over.

He-El swept his gaze over them without bothering with the group whose bodies had stiffened into a near-playing-dead response. As for Jupiter... he had never spoken to that tool.

In fact, aside from directly destroying American politicians with force and killing eight million people, all of He-El's conquest work—selecting suitable people as mayors to govern cities, appointing police chiefs to maintain order, dividing the military, and so on—had been carried out by Dawn, Stacker, and Jupiter.

Of them, Dawn had done ninety percent of the enormous workload, using the communications network to coordinate and issue every order. Stacker and Jupiter merely pointed out directions that artificial intelligence could not reach, then arranged for Dawn to handle them.

So what meaning was there in communicating with a tool like Jupiter?

He-El merely glanced at them before ignoring them and finding the target of his trip.

He-El hovered in the air, ignoring Jupiter as he slowly moved toward Edward. His looming figure came before Edward, and his outstretched right hand lowered its index finger toward Edward's brow.

Under the moonlight, it seemed in a daze as though a god were bestowing a blessing upon a mortal.

"So I won after all!"

Edward had initially thought He-El had come for Jupiter and would casually slice their group apart with Heat Vision.

After all, Edward had thoroughly analyzed He-El's many previous actions and understood that He-El could not tolerate anyone offending him.

Proactive attacks and even verbal provocations were classified by He-El as attacks against himself, which was why he killed without hesitation.

And they had just decided, at the sewer round-table meeting, on a ten-year strategic plan targeting the Earth Empire He-El was about to establish.

There was no reason for him not to kill them.

For him, it would only take one burst of Heat Vision—easy as lifting a hand.

But when He-El passed by Jupiter and came directly before him, looking down at him in the posture of a descending god, extending his index finger from on high toward his brow, as though to tap him to death—

Edward understood. He did not care about Jupiter and the others. He did not care about their ten-year strategy against the Earth Empire. Instead, he cared about Edward—he cared about him.

He cared about the Psychological Manipulation plan Edward had used against him.

Alien, you still possess the emotions of the common masses.

You are merely an ordinary person who has obtained immense power.

"Have you felt my threat?! Hahaha..."

Edward spread his arms as though welcoming a god's gift.

He smiled, wild and utterly pleased, even if he would die the next moment.

Before power on the level of a god, death was already unavoidable.

Why had He-El singled him out to tap him to death? Was it because He-El had sensed a threat from him, because Edward had seen through the weakness in his emotions?

To carry through his own values, to be regarded as a threat and physically eliminated for it—Edward knew he had already won too much.

Even if he died at this moment, successors would continue to emerge, endlessly targeting the weaknesses that appeared in He-El, breaking through his defenses, and bringing about the destruction of his true mind and intellect.

At this moment, Edward went willingly to his death.

Yet He-El merely tapped his brow. His mental ability received Edward's entire life into his mind, then he burst upward on a current of air and departed.

He did not bother with this bunch.

Edward and Jupiter were left behind, humiliated and pained.

The tension in everyone's bodies immediately loosened.

"Were we ignored?"

Some watched the departing figure with subtly amused expressions.

Some remained silent, their eyes fixed only on the black silhouette in the sky.

Some curled their lips coldly, some looked calm, and others were furious at being ignored, but not one of them yielded.

"You'll regret this. You'll definitely regret this!!" Jupiter's gaze instantly turned cold. Rational and calm, she muttered in a low, vicious voice.

One day, you will pay the price for disregarding humanity like this! You definitely will!

"Did I fail?"

Edward lowered his outstretched arms, feeling lost.