Killing a Demigod

No one was born a hero!

All it took was growing stronger from weakness, finding courage in fear, and seeing greatness in the ordinary.

People could grow...

Lu Yuanming knew he wasn't good at reading people, so he treated everyone he met with the utmost sincerity.

He wanted to survive, to wake up in his vegetative body. That was why he treasured life all the more. He wanted human civilization to endure. He wanted...

During those days, Lu Yuanming had soaked up every kind of goodness like a sponge. He was growing, and at a pace no one else could have imagined.

Lu Yuanming knew that jumping into the fray now was a foolish thing to do.

He should stay with the rest of the group and wait for the Monster Tide to pass.

But... he wanted to do something.

Just as when he'd first arrived in the Dark Matter World, been betrayed, and been cornered in a dog hole by a Man-faced Dog that gnawed at him—how desperately he'd wanted someone to come help him, someone to bring him light and hope.

Because he had once experienced that kind of despair, Lu Yuanming now truly understood the despair of those who had suddenly found themselves in the Dark Matter World, only to face a monster attack.

In this darkness, they wanted to see light.

And as it happened, he held a torch in his hands.

Then... why couldn't he be their light now!?

The spear in Lu Yuanming's hand shuddered, knocking a charging monster away. But at the same time, an enormous force slammed into him. He could only raise his other arm to block it. With a thunderous crack, the armor on his arm shattered, and the blow sent him flying more than thirty meters. He crashed into several wrecked cars, smashing them apart before tumbling across the ground for another ten meters.

In the spot where Lu Yuanming had just been, a Cyclops stood with a telephone pole raised to strike.

The Cyclops stood about fifteen meters tall, with a thick, powerful build. Its skin was a blue-gray color, more like granite than flesh. The ground trembled with every step it took.

It was a new giant monster, one that had emerged from the darkness after Lu Yuanming killed the three giant monsters at the scene.

The moment he saw the Cyclops, Lu Yuanming knew it was different from the three giant monsters he'd fought before—or, for that matter, from any other monster.

It had... a certain kind of intelligence!

When Lu Yuanming had killed two of the giant monsters, the one that remained had already lost its nerve. When he charged, it had even used other monsters as shields, refusing to face him head-on.

Strangely, though, it hadn't tried to run. It had stayed until he killed it. The monster had clearly been terrified on instinct, yet it hadn't dared take a single step toward escape.

Only afterward did Lu Yuanming realize that the giant monsters still weren't the monsters' highest-ranking leaders. The Cyclops emerging from the darkness was!

Lu Yuanming endured the agony in his right hand. He knew the bones were probably shattered.

The Semi-automatic Rifle had long since been destroyed. Even his Steel Armor couldn't withstand the Cyclops's attacks.

And there was something supernatural about the Cyclops... It wasn't merely strong and massive. It possessed true Supernatural Power.

When the Cyclops's single eye fixed on him, Lu Yuanming felt his whole body grow heavy, as if enormous pressure had appeared out of nowhere. He couldn't move fast enough to dodge its attacks, and in terms of strength, the Cyclops was at least several times stronger than he was. It was no ordinary being he could hope to match.

Lu Yuanming lay on the ground for two seconds, then tried to get up. But just then, that immense force appeared again. It was no illusion: the small stones beside him were crushed, and strips of metal torn from the cars were pressed flat against the ground.

Was this... gravity!?

A few myths he'd read in the past flashed through Lu Yuanming's mind.

Cyclopes appeared in the myths of many cultures around the world, but the most famous were undoubtedly the Cyclopes of Greek Mythology. It was said that every Cyclops was a child of Gaia, the Earth Mother Goddess, and a demigod with Titan blood. If one searched the accumulated knowledge of human civilization for the roots of the Cyclops's Sequence, it should have something to do with gravity or the earth.

The immense force came from nowhere, pinning Lu Yuanming down so that he couldn't rise. He could only kneel on the ground, struggling bit by bit to lift his head and body. In the distance, a trace of humanity appeared in the Cyclops's single eye. It looked at Lu Yuanming with amusement, then began to walk toward him, each step shaking the earth.

Get up... Get up!

Lu Yuanming strained with all his might to stand, but the force slowly tore his armor apart. His skin and muscles began to tear, too.

"Get up! Come on, get up!"

Then, all at once, someone shouted from a building on one side of the street. The Cyclops looked toward the voice, and monsters immediately rushed down the street toward the place where the shout had come from.

Only then did the Cyclops turn its gaze back to Lu Yuanming, who had been trying to stand. The invisible force pressed him back down onto his knees.

"Get up!"

"Hero, get up!"

"Get up! Get up!!"

As the monsters charged toward the shouts, silence fell over both sides of the street once more. Two or three seconds later, a great roar of voices suddenly burst out. Men and women, old and young, hidden in the buildings on either side, had been scraping by amid the Monster Tide. But now, some inexplicable emotion had seized them. They no longer cared that they were giving away their positions. Even with monsters threatening them, they still raised their voices in defiance. Shouts rang out from the buildings on both sides, growing louder and more numerous.

At that moment, gunfire erupted. Charlie, Peter, the organization's soldiers, and Tang Zhean all aimed their guns at the street below, shooting at the monsters and the Cyclops. They, too, shouted for him to get up.

Lu Yuanming closed his hand around a Colorless Light Particle. The Cyclops looked toward the buildings on either side, opened its mouth, and let out an angry roar, trying to drown out the cries urging him to rise.

In that instant, light exploded from Lu Yuanming, surging upward more than three meters.

Like a bolt of thunder, like a flash of lightning, Lu Yuanming leaped up. In the blink of an eye, he had crossed dozens of meters. The moment the Cyclops looked back, he swung his spear sideways. The shaft bent into a half-circle before whipping hard against the Cyclops's shin. With a series of sharp cracks, the spear shattered into pieces, and the Cyclops's lower leg bent backward, sending its enormous body crashing to the ground.

Everything around Lu Yuanming slowed to a crawl. He sprang high into the air, leaping over the telephone pole as the Cyclops swung it at him by a hair's breadth. He landed on the Cyclops's stomach, then charged toward its head.

It all happened too fast. The cries from the crowd hadn't even stopped when Lu Yuanming had already reached a point less than two meters from the Cyclops's head. At the same time, the Cyclops brought its other hand down over its single eye, trying to block Lu Yuanming from attacking and getting close. Lu Yuanming could feel the pressure on his body increasing rapidly.

The gravity the Cyclops exerted went far beyond what he'd felt before. It could even apply that force without looking at him. Only now did Lu Yuanming realize that the Cyclops had been hiding another trump card. As its hand was about to cover its eye, he didn't slow down. Instead, he unleashed every bit of strength he had and charged straight at the enormous eye at full speed.

As Lu Yuanming reached the Cyclops's eye, its hand came down completely. The tremendous pressure tore through his entire body. His bones creaked, and blood poured from his mouth, eyes, ears, and nose. But at the same time, he thrust one hand straight down into the giant eye—then his hand, his arm, and half his body...

Everyone around them stared, stunned. They saw the Cyclops cover its face with one hand, while Lu Yuanming's body disappeared from sight. The Cyclops raised its other hand and swung the telephone pole. Just as despair filled everyone's hearts, the pole swung more and more slowly, until at last it crashed to the ground with a thud. The Cyclops had completely stopped breathing.

A moment later, Lu Yuanming shakily crawled out from beneath the Cyclops's hand. He used the last of his strength to stand upright. All around him, the monsters howled and fled, though hundreds of them still remained. At the same time, people in the surrounding buildings began to cheer loudly. Charlie and the others were even firing their guns as they ran down.

Lu Yuanming saw a vast sea of White Light Particles erupt from the Cyclops's corpse, along with a mass of light that gave off a Dark Light. In both quantity and darkness, it far surpassed the Sequence of the Steel Armor.

As the White Light Particles poured into him, Lu Yuanming felt that same sensation of his whole body swelling as if it were about to burst. This time, the feeling was so intense that he didn't even get a chance to say a word to Tang Zhean and the others before the phenomenon of returning to his Original Body began.

His Original Body could wake up this time...

With that realization, Lu Yuanming managed only to smile at everyone in the darkness.

Then he appeared in the darkness of his Original Body, which was in a vegetative state.