Gabriel Tosh

"Run!"

The rain was still pouring down, and the Hurricane whipped up sewage, pipes, and plastic from the ground, pelting Tosh so hard he could barely open his eyes.

Amidst the torrential rain and rumbling thunder, no one could hear what Tosh was saying. All they could see was a crazed, dark-skinned child running around in the rain, gossiping among themselves that Tosh's grandson had been completely driven insane by voodoo.

After running several hundred yards, Tosh turned back to his shack.

Only then did he realize that he had left his grandmother behind.

"Where are they? I can't see them." Grandmother emerged from the dilapidated shack, letting the rain pelt her high priest's robe.

"Can you see them?"

"No, but my magic can sense them. Grandma, I'm sure those monsters in the sky are not Manan Seres' messengers." Although he was only a teenager, Tosh's mind was more mature than that of an adult.

"We'll be saved once we get to Geladi City."

"The people in the city won't let us in," Grandmother said in a hoarse voice. "The people behind the high walls are greedy and evil; they don't believe in witchcraft and hate it. They are all enemies of Manan Ceres."

"They don't have time for us." Tosh pulled his grandmother's thin, sharp, eagle-claw-like fingers and Lila the stubborn old priest out of the shack.

In Tosh's heart, his grandmother held an unparalleled position. Tosh was considered a "real" practitioner of witchcraft from the moment he demonstrated extraordinary abilities. Tosh was revered by the Voodoo Cult, who kept their distance from him, while others, out of fear of the unknown and the mysterious, kept their distance from or avoided Tosh for a long time.

As a powerful Psionics innate ability to read minds, Tosh knew for certain that there was only one person in the world who still loved him deeply: his elderly grandmother.

Her thoughts and every word and action left a deep imprint on Tosh's mind and profoundly influenced him.

Grandmother followed Tosh out of the shack and into the torrential rain, running deeper into the slum. In the past, Tosh's grandmother had always been a strong female leader and head of the household, the one who made decisions in the family. She had not received a systematic education, but she was opinionated and insightful.

But now, Tosh's grandmother is too old; her mind sometimes becomes sluggish, and her body is no longer as tall as Gabriel Tosh, who is almost as tall as him.

Tosh ran with his grandmother through the fierce winds, feeling the Hurricane sweeping away everything on the ground. They ran through dilapidated huts, shacks, and streets made of tires Ground-Effect Car.

During the storm, everyone huddled in their homes, shivering, unaware of the impending danger.

They were almost across the slum and onto the highway when a sharp screech pierced the night sky. A monster with fleshy wings was circling above Tosh. More winged monsters appeared, their numbers growing to nearly a hundred.

Tosh had never heard of the Zerg, and he knew very little about even the wild animals of this galaxy.

These monsters circled over the slums like vultures searching for carrion; their dragon-like heads had four pairs of scarlet triangular eyes, and their serpentine bodies, covered in sharp spikes and armor, were bizarre and twisted.

With a terrifying scream, the monsters landed on the roofs of slum huts and shacks, tearing off the tiles and awnings, and using the spikes on their tails to pierce the victims' bodies and lift them into the air, like tearing open a shell to pluck out the flesh inside.

The monsters grabbed the wailing and screaming people and rode the wind into the sky.

The others in the slums then poked their heads out to try and figure out what was happening, but it was too late. More monsters descended from the sky, constantly snatching away the wailing people and carrying them into the air.

It was a nightmarish scene: in the darkness of a violent storm, one screaming person after another was snatched away by monsters that fell from the sky. These people were quickly thrown down, smashed to pieces, and blood flowed everywhere.

Darkness, Hurricane, rain, thunder, and countless high-pitched screams assaulted Tosh, forcing him to keep running forward.

A winged monster spotted Tosh, skimming low across the ground as it pounced on him.

In that instant, under immense pressure, Tosh succumbed to his instincts and released the mental power that had been suppressed within his body. An invisible mental shock struck the monster's brain tissue, and after flapping its wings weakly a few times, it landed heavily on an abandoned agricultural grain threshing machine nearby.

Within seconds, it turned into a pool of highly corrosive green acid, and with a teeth-grinding, crunching sound, the threshing machine slowly dissolved in the acid.

Tosh dared not look back, but continued running forward. His grandmother could no longer keep up with Tosh, so the boy, with extraordinary strength and willpower, carried her on his back and ran. Most of the children in the Geladi Slums were emaciated due to malnutrition, but witchcraft gave Tosh strength far beyond that of ordinary people.

He had already crossed the slums and reached the highway. In less than ten minutes, he would be inside the city walls of Geladi City, which were equipped with automatic machine gun turrets, armed outposts, and anti-aircraft missile towers. There, an entire Confederacy Army division and a Goliath Combat Robot brigade were stationed.

Originally, such a geographically remote planet did not need to station such a large army; maintaining only a militia force capable of resisting the Kel-Morian space pirates would have been sufficient.

These were all prepared for a man named Augustus Mengsk and his ruthless rebel army. General Thor Rick, the Confederacy governor of Haj and the highest-ranking officer of the garrison, seemed convinced that the Heaven's Devils and the Revolutionary Army would attack the planet, and therefore had been taking a series of measures over the past few years to strengthen the planet's military forces.

Several more monsters roared and lunged at Tosh, but they were all struck by powerful mental shocks and smashed to pieces.

"They are the embodiment of death, messengers of Manan Seres," Tosh's grandmother said hoarsely on his back. "They are the Banshee of the goddess of death, reaping death."

Behind Tosh, the entire slum was shrouded in the deathly shadow of countless flying monsters, transforming it into a hellish slaughterhouse. Everywhere was filled with blood and the cries of dying humans, and the feelings and thoughts of each person at the moment of death would flood Tosh's mind, which was extremely sensitive to Psionics, pushing him to the brink of collapse.

One after another, the outlines of even larger shadows appeared in the sky, like round, shelled jellyfish, moving slowly through the air, surrounded by a large number of flying creatures.

At that moment, a beam of light pierced the darkness—the lights of Confederacy Army Armored Vehicle —followed by the sounds of brakes and servo motors.

Several twelve-foot-tall Goliath Combat Robot appeared in the lights of the Armored Vehicle, their pilots raising 30mm machine guns and aiming them at the sky. As the machine guns spun rapidly, a dense barrage of bullets instantly blasted a swooping Mutalisk into a bloody mess.

Behind the Goliath Combat Robot at the forefront was a red and blue Confederacy flag and an inverted triangle badge of the local armored forces. Goliath's huge walking legs strode forward, moving at a speed no less than that of a vehicle.

"It's Mutalisk! Damn it, how did Antiga's monster get here? We must report to the Confederacy Supreme Command." A hoarse voice came from the loudspeaker of the Goliath Regiment commander, who was smoking and speaking intermittently.

Another dozen roaring Mutalisk approached their target, like shadowy figures moving across the ground.

"Fire!" the Confederacy commander shouted, giving the order.

About seven or eight Goliath Combat Robot raised Hellfire anti-aircraft missile launchers, and nearly a hundred anti-aircraft missiles roared into the sky, tearing apart all the invading Mutalisk. Large amounts of limbs and blood fell continuously from the sky with the torrential rain.

"Command, tell the general we're in big trouble," the Confederacy commander said. "We need to immediately seal off Slum 16, not just Wayne Street and Enlister District, the entire slum must have been infected by the Zerg. They must have been lurking here for a long time."

"This is entirely the fault of the Geladi City and the committee."

"It's the army! Help us! Help us!" Tosh put down his grandmother who was being supported on his back and jumped up, trying to make the soldiers in the Goliath notice him.

"Target locked." The voice of Goliath's built-in intelligent and design-assisted fire control system sent a chill down Tosh's spine; for a moment, he almost thought they were about to fire on him.

"Stop, don't waste bullets." The Confederacy commander drove his massive Goliath to Tosh's side, noticing the trembling old grandmother in a high priest's robe beside the child.

"People from the slums are really unlucky."

"Help us, sir!" Tosh stammered, trying to get closer to the Goliath for shelter. "There are still many people there, tens of thousands in the neighborhood."

"Get out of my way." The Confederacy commander pointed his gun at Tosh and said contemptuously, "This bastard might already be infected by the Zerg; he'll bring the plague into the city."

"Take one more step and I'll kill you, understand?" the Confederacy sergeant shouted through the megaphone.

Tosh immediately raised his hands to show that he was not carrying any weapons.

"Calling command center. There are still civilians here, General." A woman's voice came from the cockpit of another Goliath Combat Robot.

Should we let them pass?

"I understand, General." The woman then said, "This is an order from command center. Immediately set up a cordon. This road is blocked. No one is allowed to enter."

"The engineers will be here soon; we need to set up a defensive line."

"Did you understand? Go back, you slum bastard, son of Roach and woodlice." The commander of the Goliath Squadron lowered his cockpit in front of Tosh, the bright cockpit lights making it almost impossible for Tosh to open his eyes.

"You damned mud-blood, bedbugs should stay with bedbugs. Don't bring us any more Zerg infestations."

Tosh's eyes widened. He knew that people in the city didn't treat the people in the slums as human beings, but he never expected that they didn't care about their lives at all.

"Now, back up. Yes, look behind you," the Confederacy commander said in a cold, ruthless tone. "Go back to your kennel."

"Look, those people deserve to die," Tosh's grandmother said to Tosh in a low voice as she sat on the ground.

"Manan Ceres won't let them get away with this," Grandmother said, coughing, her voice growing weaker and weaker. Grandmother had lived as long as this slum had lived; many said she should have died long ago, but was only clinging to life through witchcraft.

"We just want to survive," Tosh shouted, oblivious to the red glow emanating from his body.

"I'm sorry, child." The female Goliath pilot, presumably an adjutant, approached Tosh and said, "We can't let you pass. Nobody knows how long this place has been infected. Once the Zerg take hold on a planet, the infection spreads immediately."

"Infection is an enemy more terrifying than sharp fangs and claws. Only the Korhal rebels would risk infection to save people, but in any case, that would be tantamount to suicide."

"You don't need to explain so much to him; many people die every day in slums like this," the commander of the Goliath unit emphasized.

"We should forgive them; after all, she has already apologized." Tosh's grandmother's voice grew weaker, hoarse and shrill, containing a terrible creaking sound, like a screaming laugh.

Tosh slowly sat down on the ground, leaning against his grandmother.

Behind him lay the slums ravaged by the Zerg, and beyond the slums stretched the ocean with its churning waves; no matter which way he went, it was certain death.

At this moment, a group of slum dwellers who had escaped from the clutches of the Mutalisk fled out. There were about a dozen of them, followed by a dozen or so circling Mutalisk.

The Goliath squadron lined up and opened fire, the scorching gunfire sweeping across the people on the ground and the Mutalisk that were flying too low, turning everything in its path into a pile of fragments.

The next group of people ran out of the slums, only to be swept away one after another. Tosh listened silently, the desperate screams and grief of the people deeply reflected in his heart.

Tosh's use of "witchcraft" was still very rudimentary; he couldn't instantly kill everyone in the Confederacy Goliath squadron and the army behind them. Tosh could use his exceptionally powerful mental strength to instantly blow the brains out of a few of them, but the rest would immediately kill him.

A feeling of despair gripped Tosh's heart, and hatred for these people, for the Terran Confederacy, and for the Zerg was growing wildly within Tosh.

He was on the verge of losing control, no longer able to control his innate, terrifying power, and an unprecedented Psionic Storm was forming.

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