It is difficult for the parties present to explain what happened in those few seconds.
If there were any bystanders lucky enough to watch from afar, the scene might have been as tragic and magnificent as the fireworks at a summer festival.
Ford Hill believed that he was well prepared and it was no exaggeration. For a commentator like him who often went to the front lines of the battlefield with photographers, it was never too cautious when facing unknown dangers. During his investigation, he identified several sparsely populated and empty places that Azathoth might favor, including the unfinished building area where Erica and her friends had argued.
This young man, who had long harbored doubts about the authenticity of the "evil god theory", had equipped his hovercraft with a light electromagnetic cannon weighing about 20 kilograms, which was obviously a controlled weapon. The small gun in his hand was just a cover and a conflagration.
The moment he pressed the trigger, a scene of a kinetic energy bullet with hundreds of megawatts of energy bursting out of the muzzle passed through everyone's sight, tearing through the air with a fierce flame and crashing like a meteorite into the ruins less than five kilometers away. Considering its initial velocity of no less than six thousand meters per second, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it arrived in the blink of an eye.
But in the blink of an eye, the governor of Port Alpre, Ocasi Griffin, opened his eyes and looked directly into the face of Azathoth who was so close to him.
Since then, no one has known what he saw and understood in that less than a second.
Unpredictably, a flood of information, more than his brain could handle, flooded into O'Casey's mind. The image reflected on his retina was no longer human, but a terrifying, abhorrent, inhuman monster that had no place there. He suddenly let out a scream that was almost beyond human power, even drowning out the blast of the muzzle, like the desperate and terrified wail of a dying bird.
Then everyone saw the man stretch out his fingers to grab his aging face, which had turned purple due to suffocation. He scratched and beat it with all his strength as if enduring tremendous pain, and did not stop even after tearing his scalp and temples until they were covered with blood.
If Azathoth's tentacles had not still hung him in mid-air, Okasi might have already knelt on the ground and banged his head against anything hard in an attempt to pass out.
The shells struck from high above. Hugo hadn't put much thought into building his armor, using cheap metals that were centuries behind current technology. He simply wrapped his data core in a layer of a special alloy made from the same material as the Igor mecha (actually, it was removed from the armor).
At this moment, the cotton clothing, bionic skin, and ordinary metal shell were the first to be melted by the high temperature, becoming a gilded liquid with a faintly dazzling red glow that slowly flowed down. Hugo uttered a short, sharp curse amid the chaos. Thousands of bionic black-capped sparrows swarmed from all directions, one after another, blocking its way like a cocoon woven from feathers.
One after another, sparrows chirped as they died, and one after another, surviving bionic birds fluttered their wings to fill the gap.
Igor's expression was blank. He seemed to shout to Ford Hill, "Don't you want to live yourself?" But he didn't.
The time was too short, so short that even with the normal human reaction speed, Igor only slowly felt a burst of weakness and anger after surviving the disaster when the tentacles of Azathoth weaved into a web and collided head-on with the artillery fire, blocking all the energy beyond the reach of the humans below.
He raised his hand in a daze and wiped his cheek, and scarlet, wet and hot liquid flowed down continuously, like raindrops and tears.
And above his head, even though he could not see with his own eyes what the scene was like in the air, Igor could imagine the price Azathoth paid for this by seeing the tentacles constantly breaking, burning to ashes and then growing again, and the sticky blood that could not be evaporated by the heat flowing from the cracks all over the ground.
The boiling fire that suddenly ignited in his chest instantly burned away his rationality.
Before his brain realized what he had done, Igor had already rushed forward, disarmed Ford Hill, and directly thrust the pistol he had snatched from him into his throat.
"You want to die?"
He half-closed his scarlet eyes like a wolf, letting his gray hair fall to his ears with gravity. He made no effort to conceal his murderous intent as he coldly stared at the man pinned to the ground. Meanwhile, Igor easily suppressed the man's attempts to rise, leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Just so, I can kill you right now."
"People need to pay for their choices. Which one do you prefer?"
Ford Hill was speechless and closed his eyes while retching.
"Since you have chosen firearms, I can try something new." Igor seemed to have calmed down and said calmly, without any special expression. Suddenly, without warning, he pulled out his saber and stabbed it into Ford's lower abdomen.
“——!”
Igor threw the useless pistol aside.
Ford opened his eyes, coughing, and spoke haltingly, "...'All enemies will taste the bitter cup of their sins'? Is that what you mean?"
"It's not about justice or sin." Igor looked down at him and said, "If you attack Him, I will choose to kill you to eliminate the danger."
Ford was stunned for a moment, then he covered his torn wound that was bleeding profusely, curled up on the ground and laughed out loud: "Igor Sullivan! Ahem, hahahahahaha! I never thought that one day I would hear such words from your mouth!"
"But do you think—just me, just us, can harm that kind of existence, harm God?!"
"I'm just doing the best I can." Igor's expression was complicated. He put away the knife in his hand, grabbed Ford's head and knocked it to the ground. Mr. Commentator felt a sharp pain and his vision went black. He lost consciousness without any ability to resist.
“…”
Azathoth walked over and placed his hand on Igor's shoulder for the second time. He was not wearing a hat, his half-long black hair was soft and smooth, his features were beautiful and vaguely evil, but his expression at the moment was very happy.
"It's okay." He tried to comfort her for the first time, a little clumsily. "This is a consumable item."
A tentacle waved in the air, wrapped softly around Igor's neck, and carried an lingering scent of the sea.
Such close contact with non-human creatures should have been repulsive and terrifying, but Igor found himself not only not repulsed, but actually comforted by their close proximity. The fatigue from the previous accident gradually crept over him, and after his tense nerves suddenly relaxed, a tingling sensation rippled around his temples. He gently pinched the tentacle, not asking why Azathoth had stopped him from killing Ford Hill. He simply said:
"Even if it's a consumable item, there's no need for you to do it yourself in this situation."
Azathoth stared at his still dusty profile and said slowly, "Have I ever told you that I don't feel pain?"
Igor asked in confusion: "...What?"
Azathoth planned to demonstrate it live. He pulled out the bloody knife and slashed his tentacle before Igor could stop him.
Nothing happened.
He was stunned for a moment, and the word "embarrassment" suddenly appeared in his mind. Just as he was about to use a little more force, Igor quickly snatched his knife back from his hand.
"I understand!" Igor said quickly. "You don't need to give me any examples."
"I don't have a sense of taste either." Azathoth smiled and continued, "Pain and pleasure are, in a sense, very far away from me. This is why human emotions and experiences differ from mine."
Igor was slow to remember that no matter what flavor of food he brought to Azathoth, the other's expression never changed.
The only time he gave a comment was when he first brought snacks to Azathoth, and the god said, "I don't think it's as delicious as the ones you made on the spaceship."
——He never actively sought to satisfy his appetite. But as long as Igor handed the food to Him, Azathoth never refused it.
"...If you don't like it," the gray-haired young man suddenly felt a strange feeling he had never experienced before. He slowed down his speech and gathered his thoughts, "Please tell me. It doesn't matter if I accept punishment for it."
Azathoth: "I haven't encountered anything I don't like yet."
Of course, not wanting to go out when there are a lot of people around is another matter.
"I do have a lot of interesting things I like." He was surprisingly frank in this regard. "I wish you could land on the planet I used to live on sooner."
When Azathoth said this, the scene that emerged in his mind was when Igor rushed up to confront Ford Hill.
Even though Igor had his back to him at that time, the other's ferocious expression, which was filled with panic and pain, still clearly appeared in front of Azathoth.
At that moment, the unprecedented, overwhelming feeling emanating from his followers' emotions instantly awoke Azathoth's soul, already sluggish and chaotic due to his immense power and long life. Unable to restrain himself, he focused his entire attention on Igor. Even as part of his own tentacles were blasted mid-air, raining blood all over the sky, he found a sense of comfort amidst the blood, like soaking in a steaming hot spring on a winter's day.
——My Dear One is the most beautiful in the universe.
This was the only thought in the evil god's mind under the bombardment.
This idea obviously makes no sense, but Azathoth will never easily change what he has determined.
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