Chapter 620 Cogs ALWAYS Fit Somewhere  

Moments before Lee Joon-ho had been attacked, he was enjoying the feeling of unfettered flight kilometers above the surface of Proxima Centauri b. He had done it before, of course—at least in the simulation and on Earth—but there was something different, something special about doing it on an honest-to-god alien planet. And having been stuck in the research base without being able to fly on his own had been like sandpaper rubbing against his desire to exercise his superpower.

Before he’d been blessed by mana, he had been lost. As restrictive as the Kim regime had been, at least he knew he had a place. He was a cog. A small cog, but a cog nonetheless, and cogs ALWAYS fit somewhere. But then China stuck its fingers in the North Korean pie and triggered an attack on South Korea, the retaliation for which had completely wiped out the dictatorship that ruled the northern half of the divided country.

And his place had been wiped out with it.

So he lost himself. He lost himself in food, in luxury, in fantasies. His new “place” was the tiny bedroom in the tiny house, because tiny was comfortable. Tiny was safe. Tiny was all that he had ever known, ever been.

But then he became oh so very much more. He discovered a new place, a new role, and he became a slightly bigger cog in a much, much larger machine. A machine that he actually liked being a part of. A machine that allowed him the freedom to fly with the wings that fate had given him. So he hadn’t been too upset when his mother had signed him up for the Imperial Hero Academy. Sure, he had made a scene and pitched a fit, but deep down, he was thrilled. Why? Because the academy would let him be a Hero, with a capital H. And that stoked a desire that he had never known was inside him.

When Ayaka had ordered him out on a high-priority rescue mission, he felt a thrill that tickled him somewhere deep inside, in his most primal nature. He had never before been “in charge” of anything; even the rank he held in the fleet was merely a courtesy and had no actual privileges of command or responsibilities. It was just the spot in the imperial machine that a Joon-ho–shaped cog happened to fit, is all. No more and no less.

But now he had an actual responsibility, and found something deep inside that responded to that. He was responsible for five scientists and two marines, and held their very lives in his hands. If he failed in his mission, they would be lost, or so he believed anyway. It wasn’t known what Ayaka thought would happen to them if he failed, but that didn’t matter to the eighteen-year-old awakener. All that mattered to him was that he had just been given an opportunity to fulfill his recently discovered drive for heroism.

The truth, though, was that he would never in a million years have been allowed to go on his own, had anyone thought there was even an iota of risk to him. He was the sole awakener on the Farsight’s crew, and the only one cleared for ground operations in the entirety of Task Force Proxima. So he was a precious resource to the fleet and would not, under any but the most dire of circumstances, be allowed to risk himself.

And because of that misunderstanding, he’d not only been put at risk, but had been thrust into a life-threatening situation.

......

A whimpering cry escaped Joon-ho’s lips as rage boiled over within him. He wanted to roar, he wanted to shout, he wanted to scream his defiance and spit in the eye of whatever... thing... was on the other end of the roots holding him down. He refused—absolutely REFUSED—to go down without a fight! The silvery-gray glow in his eyes brightened as mana coursed through his body and a wave of sheer force blasted out of him, tearing the roots around him to shreds, along with the tattered remnant of his environment suit and the uniform he wore beneath it. He rolled over, stifling a moan of agony that momentarily penetrated the rage driving him as he used his less-injured arm to force himself to his hands and knees.

His head held low, he panted as an enormous flood of mana wrapped around him, responding to the primal thought that he must stand. He must face his death on his feet, as a man, not as a coward on his knees. Exhaustion didn’t matter. Fatigue didn’t matter. Pain didn’t matter. All that mattered was his pride as a man and his will to push on in the face of a world that had declared itself his enemy.

He rose to a standing position, his feet drifting inches off the ground as his mangled legs were incapable of supporting his weight. In his mind, he issued a hearty “fuck you” to the laws of physics as he recalled his training back at the hero academy.

Looking off into the distance, he saw the massive roots that had flattened the rover he’d been sent to rescue and all conscious thought left him. His animalistic instincts took over and he raised his good arm, pointing his palm toward the base of the roots rising from the flood water a hundred or so meters away from him.

“Die!” he snarled, then put everything he had left into a single focused area of gravity that swept out in a beam, ripping, tearing, and shredding the roots apart from their very tips down to the ground beneath the water.

If he’d had anything left in him, it fled at that moment and he collapsed bonelessly to the ground, his eyes fluttering as he drifted in and out of consciousness beneath the pouring rain and rumbling thunder.

He felt himself lifted from the ground and enveloped in a warmth and, in his delirium, saw Ayaka leaning over him. “You shouldn’t have come,” he slurred. “You’re in danger. Leave here!”

He mustered up the last dregs of his mana and threw “Ayaka” from him, only for her to be replaced by what looked like a hybrid of Hatsune Miku and Deedlit, from Record of Lodoss War. ‘Am I... dead?’ he thought as he finally lost the battle to remain awake.

A new, and much smaller, root quested its way to him and wrapped around him. It was soon followed by another, then another, and still more until the only thing remaining was a writhing pile of worm-like root tips floating on the rapidly rising flood that was accompanying the incoming storm.

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