Sword light exploded in the cavity, reflecting a patch of silvery lightning.
Fogremia's figure was like an elegant butterfly weaving through a storm; every flash was accompanied by the sharp ringing of a blade cutting through demonic chitin and metal.
The magnificent longsword in her hand traced trajectories invisible to the naked eye, pinning the enraged spider-demon possessed host in place.
The demonic host let out a furious roar, its ghostly green psychic power and broken mechanical arms flailing wildly, yet it couldn't even touch the hem of Fogremia's skirt.
This magnificent and deadly brawl divided the entire underground cavity into two worlds.
One side was the violent eye of power and destruction.
The other side was the deathly silent team, with only their faith crumbling.
Leticia did not look at Fogremia's battle; her knight did not need her worry.
All her attention was focused on the disheartened man still kneeling on the ground before her.
Valerius.
"My loyalty..."
He spoke hoarsely, as if every word were being forced out of a rusty throat.
"Loyal to the Emperor! Loyal to the Imperium!"
He almost roared this standard answer, the only truth he had spent forty years of his life practicing; yet, there was an empty weakness in his voice that even he could not ignore.
There was no expression on Leticia's face.
She simply stated one cold fact after another.
"The Emperor is far away on Terra."
Her voice was calm, yet like a steel needle, it precisely pierced the gaps in Valerius's defenses.
"The Imperium is a mere scrap of paper."
The second steel needle.
"When you executed that deserter, were you serving them?"
The last one, piercing straight to the core.
"I... I was maintaining discipline!" Valerius jerked his head up, his grey eyes bloodshot. Like a trapped beast driven to a dead end, he frantically defended himself, "Without discipline, the defense line will collapse! More people will die! This is in the Imperial Infantry Tactics Manual..."
"But the defense line collapsed anyway."
Leticia interrupted him, her voice still very light, yet it struck his heart like a thousand-pound hammer.
"They died anyway."
Valerius's rebuttal came to an abrupt halt.
Yes.
The defense line collapsed.
People died too.
He had used an iron fist to execute that young deserter, using fear to temporarily suppress the soldiers' collapse, but what was the result?
A momentary delay.
Another, more violent wave of death that eventually consumed everyone.
Everything he had done, the discipline he firmly believed in, the iron-bloodedness he was proud of—in the end, nothing had changed.
Nothing had been saved.
Leticia took a step forward.
The hem of her black robe silently brushed across the ground stained with filth and blood.
She leaned down slightly, her pure black eyes, which seemed capable of swallowing all light, locking gaze with Valerius's eyes, which were filled with confusion and pain.
"Your discipline did not save them."
"Your loyalty received no response."
"So, tell me, Commissar."
Her voice seemed to carry a strange magic, piercing through the layers of psychological defenses Valerius had built from codexes and regulations, reaching the softest, most untouchable part of his soul.
"Is your loyalty truly to a cold codex that gives you the right to take their lives and derive self-satisfaction from it?"
"Or is it loyal to..."
Leticia's gaze moved past Valerius's shoulder, looking at the Astra Militarum Soldiers in the distance who were groaning in pain, their minds broken by the psychic shock.
"...loyal to those living, breathing people—who cry, laugh, bleed, and feel fear—that you once swore under the statue at the Commissar academy to protect with your life?"
The people.
What a familiar, yet strange word.
Valerius's brain buzzed, as if something had been completely split open by this bolt of lightning.
His whole life, he had claimed to serve the people, to purge heretics for the people of the Imperium, to maintain order for the people of the Imperium.
But when had he ever truly looked at the faces of those "people"?
What he saw were "soldiers," "miners," "believers," "suspected heretics."
They were just symbols that needed to be categorized, managed, and judged.
The deserter, in his eyes, was not a boy who had just reached adulthood and was crushed by fear; he was a "coward," a "virus sample" that needed to be cleared to prevent contamination of the army's morale.
The soldiers cheering for the miracle, in his eyes, were not a group of poor survivors; they were "those whose minds were bewitched by sorcery," error codes that needed to be "corrected."
Regulations.
Discipline.
Order.
He held these as his golden rule, forging himself into the sharpest, most ruthless hammer of law. He thought he was using this hammer to strike out the most solid cornerstone of the Imperium.
But now, this woman he had defined as a "heretic" had used the simplest question to make him see the cruelest truth.
What he was loyal to was never the cornerstone.
But the hammer itself.
What he was obsessed with was the power to judge everything and control everything when wielding the hammer.
It was that cold, absolute sense of order that simplified complex human nature into the two labels of "loyalty" and "treason."
He was not protecting the people.
He was "managing" the people.
And when his management failed, everything he had done lost its meaning.
"So... is that how it is?"
Valerius opened his mouth, but could not make a sound.
Cold sweat slid down his forehead, dripping into his blood-stained collar, bringing a cold, chilling sensation.
His spine, which had been as straight as if cast from steel, collapsed silently, inch by inch, at this moment.
The faith he had been proud of for forty years, the logical loop he had upheld his entire life, were completely shattered at this moment, turning into meaningless dust dancing in the air.
He found himself to be so empty, so... ridiculous.
Just as Valerius's mental world was about to collapse completely and sink into the endless abyss—
"Big Sister!"
A crisp and urgent shout pierced through this oppressive silence like a sharp sword.
It was Fogremia!
Leticia raised her head and looked toward the other end of the battlefield.
She saw Fogremia's figure pull away from the demonic host in a rapid retreat; her blade was stained with viscous ghostly green liquid, but her light purple silk dress remained spotless.
"This thing has very strong regenerative abilities!"
For the first time, there was a hint of combat-related gravity in Fogremia's voice.
"Its power is endless, all coming from that ugly altar behind it!"
Her gaze, like a bolt of silver lightning, shot towards that evil creation twisted from bones and metal.
"If we don't destroy it, we can't kill it!"
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