I Am Not a Hero

When he decided to shoot you from behind, his finger pulling the trigger would never hesitate. That's probably the feeling.

Neither side spoke, and the atmosphere settled. After a moment of vigilance, Mei took a step back and asked tentatively, "You seem to get along well with the Heroic Spirits, but you're not one of them. And your memory fragment is left in the Imaginary Tree. Are you perhaps a hidden figure among the Heroic Spirits?"

"...The nature of the Thirteen Flame-Chasers is rather special. I left a memory fragment not because I'm associated with the 'organization' of Flame-Chasers, but simply because..." Lin's gaze fell, stopping on the photograph. "I'm associated with them."

"Because your strength is no less than a Heroic Spirit's?"

"My strength?" Lin seemed surprised by the wording.

"Yes, Elysia told me you've killed Herrschers before, and not just once."

"..." Lin silently lowered his arms, which he had crossed. He looked at the pair of horns on top of Mei's head.

Mei's expression changed, and she covered her horns with her hand, taking another step back. "You don't mean... you too..."

Elysia's obsession with these horns clearly made her worry about some baseless things.

"Don't misunderstand. I've always been just a human. Perhaps a bit more capable than an ordinary human, but in terms of individual combat power, even Pardo, the weakest among the Heroic Spirits, is stronger than me." Lin said this calmly. It was unclear whether "don't misunderstand" referred to the horns or his strength.

He examined Mei's horns not with malicious intent, but merely with a complex feeling towards this non-human proof of a Herrscher.

"Individual ability isn't the standard for measuring combat power."

"Then who do you think is stronger, me or Kevin?"

"..." Mei was speechless, as Kevin was undeniably the strongest.

"I know you'll retort that Kevin is the strongest. Well, I can tell you that even at this moment in my memory fragment, when my physical body is at its peak, I'm still just an ordinary person. The reason I could kill Herrschers isn't because I'm strong, but because humans are strong."

"Just like they created Flame-Chasers, the conditions for me to kill Herrschers were also created by humans working together."

"So my relationship with the Heroic Spirits has nothing to do with strength. You can understand it as me being familiar with them before they had their current identities."

This was the first time Mei had heard Lin speak so much, and it was to explain a relationship that wasn't particularly important. Whenever they met in the Imaginary Tree, or when she obtained his imprint, he would only watch her silently.

"Alright, thank you for explaining. At least you're not as cryptic as Kevin."

Mei handed the photograph to Lin. It belonged to him, so it should be returned.

"You can keep it, or throw it away, it doesn't matter." Lin didn't take the photo. His visible blue window flickered, and he turned away. "It has no meaning to me anymore."

Mei confusedly took back the photo. She looked at the scene in the picture. The man in the middle, wrapped like a mummy, was far less faded than he was now. The background was a sun-drenched sea, peaceful and joyful.

A red-haired woman grinned, propping her head with one hand. The girl with streaks of color in her hair, Elysia, nervously held the red-haired woman's arm. Hua, who dared not look at the camera, stood a distance away in a brand-new uniform.

The visible window in his helmet displayed the photo.

"Haha, Lin, don't cover your delicate face when taking pictures."

"Don't be like that, Captain. Lin, our teammate, just recovered a bit. Hua, you help out too."

"Huh? I, I..."

"..."

Smiles, playful banter, brilliant sunshine, and the sea breeze.

The man in bandages waved, signaling the photographer to press the shutter.

The flash made him squint.

"Crackle."

The light illuminating his face inside the helmet flickered and disappeared, returning the darkness.

The passionate crimson, the serene azure, the youthful pale gray of that day were the most vibrant colors in his memory. Now, the man could only see one color.

Lin closed his eyes, letting the darkness embrace him.

Chapter Seventeen: Be Careful Someone Pulls Your Oxygen Tube

Bubbles rising from the soles of his feet passed through the transparent liquid, bursting at the top in the reflection of the repair pod.

The ventilator supplied oxygen continuously. Lin watched the greenish glow in his pupils, reflected in the inner wall of the repair pod, gradually disappear. The lost sense of pain was slowly returning to his body, thanks to the high-precision nerve repair surgery combined with the repair pod.

There were many injured soldiers lying in nearby repair pods, but the medical personnel gathered around Lin's pod, pointing and discussing him.

"When they brought him back, if the EKG hadn't shown a line and not a flat one, I would have suspected they'd brought back today's ingredients to make minced meat with eggplant." The physician in charge of Lin's surgery boasted proudly. "There wasn't a single part of him, inside or out, that was intact. More than half his bones were broken, his internal organs had varying degrees of damage, half his skin was burned off, and I won't even mention the rest. Not to mention two inexplicable toxins were still damaging his nerves."

If MOTH could announce its existence to the public, Lin's injuries would go down in human history as the most severe yet surviving case ever recorded.

And the physician who treated him would undoubtedly have their abilities recognized to the fullest after handling this case. This was why the physician was so proud, recounting his glorious deeds in the medical department twenty-four hours a day, listing Lin's injuries like old friends, wishing he could broadcast it on MOTH's all-day channel.

However, it was indeed thanks to his superb medical skills and MOTH's advanced technology that all of Lin's injuries could be healed without any sequelae. Outside of MOTH, an ambulance wouldn't even need to get out of the vehicle for Lin's injuries; he would be taken directly to the crematorium.

But the process was extremely long. Skin regeneration alone took several days. These battle wounds, large and small, would conservatively require Lin to sleep in the repair pod for a month before he could come out. Then there would be self-healing, recuperation, rehabilitation, and so on. It would take several months to return to combat.

This was no big deal for Lin. However, compared to other soldiers who slept soundly and experienced a few days passing in the blink of an eye, his brain, modified by toxins, could not be sedated with sleeping pills. Apart from natural sleep, his consciousness was abnormally clear, which made him somewhat bored.

Fortunately, some people had thought of this as well, so Lin often found people standing by his pod as soon as he opened his eyes.

The first to arrive was Elysia. She brought a fruit basket filled with her favorite fruits.

Yes, her favorite fruits.

"Oh my, I didn't expect you to be stuck in a repair pod, Lin. Munch, munch... So pitiful, only able to receive nutrient fluid. Munch, munch... That's why I specifically brought you some fruit. Don't worry, if you can't eat it, I'll eat it for you. Munch, munch..."

Elysia stood before him, taking out fruits one by one and eating them in front of Lin's almost frozen pupils.

Her white teeth bit a delicate little hole into the apple. The pink-haired girl licked the juice from the corner of her mouth with her pink tongue and tilted her head slightly, giving Lin a cute smile.

Lin merely closed his eyes quietly at her almost coquettish behavior, not saying a word.

"Oh right, Lin, why are you still wearing bandages on your face even in this pod?" Elysia revealed her true purpose halfway through eating. She called out to a nearby doctor and asked, "The patient says he can't breathe and needs the bandages removed. Is that okay?" "But he asked for it himself." "But he's not covering anything else, so why cover his face?"

Elysia tapped a certain spot on the pod wall with dissatisfaction, finding the behavior very indecent.

Lin's injuries were too severe, requiring his physical condition to be monitored in real-time. Miraculously, his face was not as badly damaged as other parts and had healed first.

Seeing the doctor's hesitation, Lin spoke through the intercom: "Elysia, what's the situation with the Third Honkai War?"

Whether due to weakness or other reasons, Lin's tone towards Elysia softened considerably. However, his voice had always maintained a state of being frozen at minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, so to outsiders, there might not have been much difference.

Elysia, however, was incredibly smart and sensitive. The moment Lin spoke, she recognized the shift in his attitude. Her delicate eyebrows curved into beautiful crescent moons, and she teased him playfully, "Ehh? Our robot friend is actually speaking to a girl in such a gentle tone? Did you pass the Turing test?"

"..."

Lin decisively closed his eyes.

"Hey, hey, wait a minute! It was just a joke, don't be so stingy!"

Lin always felt that Elysia could slowly break down people's psychological defenses, making him exasperated and helpless every time.

She fully embodied the principle that if you want to open a window, you first smash a hole in the roof.

"The question from before, what's the situation with the Third Honkai War?" Lin felt he was indulging her too much and reverted to his usual cold tone.

Elysia recalled what happened before she had the time to visit Lin. "Hmm... Let me think. This Honkai outbreak has a much wider range of danger compared to the previous two, so the excuse of a gas explosion, which was commonly used before, might not work as well this time. But it's all still within MOTH's control."

Once the existence of Honkai is known to the general public, the resulting social unrest would be uncontrollable, and the damage caused could be even greater than Honkai itself. Therefore, MOTH's primary task during each Honkai outbreak is not to clear the affected areas but to find ways to conceal the truth.

"After the Third Herrscher died, combat personnel from the branches were dispatched to clear out Changkong City and several other cities with severe damage. Without communication interference, the cleanup process was relatively smooth."

"But there were still some unexpected events. For example, the companion Honkai Beast of the Third Herrscher you defeated had a Core. When the combat personnel found it, it had already recovered halfway, but your captain and that cute girl from your team completely killed it."

Lin let out a slight sigh of relief upon hearing about the death of the snake-like Honkai Beast, which he was concerned about.

"However, it still wasn't completely over. After the Honkai Beast died, its corpse inexplicably disappeared. Perhaps it has the ability to revive, after all, it's a snake. Based on its Honkai Energy reaction, which far surpassed that of an Emperor-class Honkai Beast, MOTH has given it a new classification: 'Judgment-class'."

"Judgment-class," Lin murmured the three words.

"Hey, isn't that Elysia? What brings you here to see this half-dead little lab rat?"

Suddenly, a sarcastic female voice came from behind Elysia.

Chapter 18: He Still Has to Thank Us

"Is it your 'if anyone sees your face, you must get married' setting?"

"..."

Lin remained silent in response to Mobius's questioning, while Elysia behind him couldn't help but chuckle.

Lin had many mysteries, but the most eye-catching was undoubtedly how he always hid his true face, to the point that MOTH's internal network had set up a betting pool to guess what he looked like.

"At least the good news is that Lin is indeed a boy, and not a robot." Elysia took out MOTH's universal communicator, tapped on the screen, and found the top trending post. She glanced at the option with the highest votes. "Those who bet on a girl will be up all night tonight."

"...What is that?" Lin felt a sense of foreboding as he watched her operate the communicator.

Elysia casually swiped away the top trending topic and said with a smile, "Everyone is very interested in Lin's appearance, so I just went with the flow and set up a betting pool for them to make some money."

"..." Lin should have guessed that only one person in MOTH would do something so trivial.

Lin wasn't too bothered by it. He had his reasons for hiding his face. Purely in terms of MOTH's fight against Honkai, hiding his appearance was definitely more beneficial than detrimental.

Lin was more curious as to why Mobius was here.

"What's with that look? Did you forget who gave you the hands you're using now?" Mobius flicked her hair and stared playfully at Lin, who was submerged in the repair pod. "Or do you want to break the contract?"

As she uttered the last word, the air turned cold.

Elysia watched them with a smile, eating her fruit, and remained silent.

Lin shook his head slightly in the transparent liquid.

Mobius nodded, quite satisfied with Lin's sensible behavior.

"I'll have you do what I need you to do once this frail body of yours has recovered. You are my experimental subject now, so I will first tell you some precautions, especially regarding your body."

"..."

Lin expressed his willingness to listen with his silence.

Mobius's lips curved into a smile. She placed her hand on the outer wall of the repair pod and said to Lin inside, "You are lucky, literally lucky. Being rescued is a testament to the advancement of modern medicine, and it's even luckier that there are no sequelae after being rescued."

The "luck" in Mobius's words implied the six doses of poison she had given Lin. She had personally visited Lin before he was wheeled into surgery, confirming that he had used all six doses.

Although Lin did not exhibit the symptoms of brain death that previous experimental subjects had, which was within Mobius's expectations, he showed no signs of emotional fluctuation, which was far beyond Mobius's plans.

The adaptability shown by the poison and the limb replacement was something she hadn't seen in other humans. Lin's body was like a piece of high-quality clay, malleable no matter how it was kneaded.

If it weren't for certain aspects of Lin that practically amplified human flaws to the extreme, he would have been a perfect test subject.

"But unfortunately, your 'flaws' are as disappointing as ever."

Lin had already guessed what Mobius was going to say. After all, it had been several days since he regained consciousness, and his perception of his own body was far stronger than that of ordinary people. He could sense any abnormality.

Even with all the protection, prevention, and inhibitors, fighting for extended periods in such a high-concentration Honkai Energy environment, with close contact with Judgment-class Honkai Beasts and Herrschers in between, was unavoidable.

"Even though you took an inhibitor before entering the field, and another one when you were transported back, your pitifully low Honkai Energy resistance isn't something a few injections can fix."

Mobius looked up at Lin's calm black eyes and said faintly, "Your body has been eroded by Honkai Energy. It's an irreversible process, you know that, right?"

Honkai Energy erosion.

In this era, and even within MOTH, these words were synonymous with a death sentence.

This was also a problem Lin couldn't escape. As long as he remained on the battlefield, Honkai Energy erosion would eventually catch up to him.

He just hadn't expected it to be so soon.

Elysia's expression didn't show much surprise. She had already learned about Lin's condition through various channels before visiting him.

"But you don't need to worry. Honkai Energy erosion is just a process. As long as you use the inhibitor on time and I help you with some 'little tricks,' I can guarantee you a few more years of life." Mobius's smile was as unnerving as ever, becoming even more distorted when viewed through the transparent liquid.

He spoke dully, "How many years?"

Lin didn't ask about the price. He had no bargaining chips. It was more like asking how much of his dwindling lifespan was left.

"Roughly estimated, five years," Mobius chuckled lightly after Lin spoke. "But considering you've been fighting on the front lines for a long time, it might be even shorter than that."

Five years...

In just over 1,800 days, would he become a monster like a Mortal?

Lin was surprised to find that he seemed to be able to measure his life in countdowns, precise to every day, every hour, and even every second.