Chapter 391: Recruiting the Raiders! Clearing the Air! Blessings Upon the Multiverse!
Before long, Paul arrived aboard the Hyperion with a squad of corporate troops. These soldiers were hauling several heavy Mark power armors, strutting through the ship with high visibility.
Seeing Paul personally leading a team and bringing along gear to meet their commanding officers, the Raiders—already sensing what was coming—assumed their leaders were finally about to receive rewards from the Megacorp.
After all, the Raiders had gone all-in for the Megacorp on Bysel, even retrieving the critical Keystone fragment at great personal risk—risking death by supernova in the process.
Now it was finally time to collect on that debt.
As for what that reward might be, naturally they expected tangible recognition—ranks, titles, honors.
Soon, Paul met with Raynor, Horner, Tychus, and the others, formally extending an invitation for them to join the Megacorp.
To make the moment as ceremonious as possible, Paul had even prepared several official commissions.
Raynor and the others were quietly delighted. It was a little over-the-top, sure, but the experience was still quite satisfying.
In truth, Raynor had already made peace with the idea of officially joining the Megacorp. This was just the final formality.
At Paul's request, Raynor and the rest of the Raiders' command crew donned the newest Mark power armor, looking more imposing and authoritative than ever.
All except for Tychus, who stood stiffly to the side in his chipped blue armor, clearly uneasy and lost in thought.
"Tychus, that suit of yours is an eyesore. Quit stalling and change into a new one," Horner urged.
Ever since Tychus had been released from prison, Horner had never seen him wear anything else—and oddly enough, he never seemed bothered by it.
"This has nothing to do with you," Tychus grumbled back, glancing sideways at Paul as if by accident.
What he didn't expect was that Paul had been watching him the whole time, his sharp gaze clearly saying: I'm waiting for you to take that armor off.
Before Tychus could speak, Paul beat him to it.
"Tychus, if that suit's not to your liking, we can custom-make one just for you."
"But before we do that, you'll need to take off the one you're wearing so we can get your body measurements."
There was no mistaking the meaning behind those words—Paul wanted him to strip down and reveal the truth.
Sure enough, Tychus's expression turned complicated. The reason he was still under Mengsk's thumb was precisely because the armor he wore could kill him at any time.
It wasn't a matter of whether he wanted to take it off—he couldn't.
No one on the Hyperion knew about this secret. If they had, there's no way Tychus would've been allowed to stay onboard this long.
"Thanks, but I'm used to this armor. No need for a new one," Tychus replied stiffly, trying to brush it off. But Raynor and Horner weren't fools—they'd already sensed something was off.
"Still such a sentimental guy, huh? But what I don't get is, who gets nostalgic over a walking deathtrap? Seems kind of absurd to me."
Seeing Tychus continuing to feign composure, Paul decided to just lay his cards on the table.
As soon as the words left his mouth, the surrounding Raider officers turned to look at Tychus. Raynor, in particular, stared silently at the floor, deep in thought.
So the day has finally come.
"What exactly are you trying to say?" Tychus growled, eyes wide with feigned fury.
But Paul wasn't intimidated by the bluster.
"I know all about your deal with Mengsk. He turned your armor into a prison. Pretty clever—though I wonder how you manage not to suffocate in that thing."
Paul's tone was cool, even detached. He deliberately avoided mentioning the specifics of Tychus's deal with Mengsk, because if he did…
…it could cause an irreparable rift between Raynor and Tychus.
After all, Mengsk had demanded Tychus kill Kerrigan as the price for his freedom. And Raynor? He was head-over-heels for her. If he ever found out, there'd be no going back—their friendship would be over for good.
Paul's goal was to win Tychus over, remove internal threats—not publicly ruin him.
Tychus's thoughts drifted back to his time in prison, the day he was released. Every day since had been an agonizing struggle.
That's why he drank—trying to numb the pain. Eventually, he couldn't even tell who he really was anymore.
Was he Mengsk's pawn? Or Raynor's blood brother?
One thing was certain: from the moment he put that suit on, every day had been suffocating. If he didn't drink himself into a stupor, he couldn't even sleep.
Realizing he could no longer lie his way out, Tychus finally let out a long breath and admitted the truth. "Yeah. I made a deal with Mengsk."
"I wanted to get out of that hellhole. It was the only way."
Deep down, Tychus had convinced himself that since Kerrigan had become the Queen of Blades, killing her would be doing humanity a favor.
That reasoning, at least, helped him sleep at night.
"I knew something was off about you," Horner snapped. "So it's true—you're Mengsk's lapdog. A traitor to the Raiders!"
No wonder he'd been so tense lately—he was secretly plotting to sell them out.
As Horner reached for his weapon, ready to confront Tychus, Raynor stepped in and held him back.
"Don't. Let him finish. We need the whole truth."
Raynor looked Tychus in the eye. If this reckoning was inevitable, it was better to get it all out in the open—no more festering wounds.
Seeing Raynor still willing to listen, Tychus nodded and laid it bare: "I wanted out of prison. Mengsk told me to kill the Queen of Blades. I agreed. That's it."
Just as Paul had predicted, as soon as Raynor heard that Tychus's freedom hinged on assassinating Kerrigan, his expression turned grim.
He had expected betrayal. But not this.
Before Raynor could react, Paul once again stepped in.
"You've admitted what you did. That means there's still hope for you."
"I'll help you get that armor off—so Mengsk can't keep spying on us through it."
Between men, sometimes all it takes is an honest conversation to begin healing the worst of wounds.
Paul had originally wanted to help Tychus keep some secrets. But the fact that Tychus was willing to confess everything probably meant…
…he'd already made peace with whatever came next.
Rather than continuing to muddle through life in confusion and self-deceit, Tychus suddenly felt that eternal death might actually be more liberating.
Raynor looked silently at Tychus. Deep down, he didn't really hate him all that much. After all, even he had once believed that Kerrigan could never return to being human.
Killing the Queen of Blades might very well have been a great service to humanity. Without her, the Zerg's offensive power would've been drastically weakened.
"This power armor… you can't take it off," Tychus said with a bitter smile—half mocking Paul's wild optimism, half mocking himself for acting like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand, pretending everything was fine.
The armor he wore was rigged with hypersensitive sensors. Any attempt to forcibly remove it would trigger the immediate shutdown of Tychus's vital organs.
But Paul seemed completely unfazed. "Removing that thing is easy. With our current decryption tech, even the most intricate kill switches are child's play."
"And worst case scenario? If we really can't get it off, we'll just cut your head off and grow you a new body in a clone pod. That's not exactly hard for us either."
It wasn't bluster. The Megacorp's biotechnology had long since blurred the lines between life and death.
The elderly could have their consciousness extracted ahead of time and installed into new bodies. The disabled could grow back lost limbs using regenerative force fields.
As long as someone wasn't completely vaporized, the Megacorp could bring them back.
Tychus felt a chill run down his spine after hearing Paul's proposal, but as disturbing as it was… it might be his only real way out.
After spending the past few days interacting with the Megacorp, Tychus had become convinced: this was a supercivilization from another universe—only they could pull off such miracles.
After a moment's thought, Tychus nodded and agreed. "Fine. Do whatever you want. I never really believed that bastard Mengsk would let me walk away anyway."
"Good."
Paul nodded at the soldier beside him, instructing him to escort Tychus to the forward base for surgery and extract the data from his power armor.
Throughout the entire process, Tychus offered no resistance. And Raynor, watching it all unfold, was genuinely thankful.
At the very least, this gave them a chance to start over.
"Thank you, Paul," Raynor said, emotion clear in his voice. Whatever Paul's true motives might be, one thing was certain—he'd always looked out for the Raiders.
"Gentlemen, welcome to the Megacorp."
Paul clapped Raynor on the shoulder, signaling that the matter with Tychus was settled. From now on, there would be no more rift between them.
Now that this moderate but unstable factor was resolved, Paul could finally breathe easy as he led the Raider forces into full integration with the Megacorp.
To minimize administrative overhead, the Raiders would remain under Raynor, Horner, and their original command until the consolidation phase concluded. Only then would personnel restructuring begin.
Under Paul's guidance, the Raiders even traveled through a stargate to Ideal City, catching their first glimpse of a true Megacorp world.
There, orbiting a single star, they saw celestial megastructures on a scale they'd never imagined—military formations of elite space fleets, and bustling interstellar trade routes stretching as far as the eye could see.
For these down-to-earth, scrappy human freedom fighters, it felt like they had stepped into heaven itself—a vision of strength and beauty fully realized before their eyes.
In that moment, the light of humanity cast its brilliance upon countless worlds across the multiverse.
"What the hell is that—?!"
The Raiders had thought that War Moon, their massive battle planet, was already the stuff of sci-fi legend. But now, in front of them, loomed a colossal ring-shaped structure.
That's right. It was a Ringworld with a circumference of a billion kilometers—also known as the Megacorp's largest zoo. The vast majority of interstellar beasts were kept there for observation and exhibition.
Here in the Megacorp, there might not be Ultramen battling kaiju… but you'd still find all sorts of flying and burrowing cosmic monsters, living peacefully in a natural balance.
All of this was made possible by one belief: the "peace through overwhelming force" doctrine of superweapons and dreadnoughts.
"This is your real homeland? Holy hell."
Even Jim Raynor—who'd seen more than his fair share of large-scale warfare—found himself reeling in awe, like Granny Liu entering the Grand View Garden for the first time.
"Strictly speaking, this is our corporate headquarters," Paul replied truthfully. "My actual home is on Kaladan, in Universe 005. But everything there now belongs to the Megacorp."
During their tour of Megacorp space, the Raiders also saw Dyson spheres, halo arrays, matter decompressors, and the crown jewel of Megacorp engineering: the Super Dreadnought.
Faced with this Infinity parade of miracles, Raynor—so often a symbol of defiance and resilience—felt small for the first time. Insignificant. For just a moment, his knees nearly gave out.
He had the sudden urge to kneel—to prostrate himself before the unnatural wonders towering before him.
That planetary-scale cubic battleship—cold and logical, as though sculpted by the laws of physics themselves—was the perfect embodiment of nature's most elegant equations.
Perhaps that was what divine weapons truly looked like: a simple cube, stripped of all unnecessary complexity, capable of deciding the outcome of galactic war.
The closer they got to Ideal City, the more Raider soldiers buckled under an invisible weight.
They couldn't explain it, but something about those celestial megastructures exuded an overwhelming pressure—an invisible sense of awe and authority that seeped into their bones.
The result? They fell to their knees.
"This is… unbelievable. I can't believe these miracles were made by humans," Raynor muttered, clenching his fists to suppress the tremors in his chest.
If not for his iron will, he might've already collapsed to the floor like the others.
Paul offered no lengthy explanations. The truth was, even he didn't fully understand how the Megacorp had managed to achieve all this.
Call it luck? But what civilization rises to this level on luck alone?
Call it refinement through hardship? The Megacorp's rise had been almost suspiciously smooth—its consolidation efforts never once faltered.
Even the Megacorp's core executives couldn't say for certain what had truly driven their meteoric ascent.
The answers pointed both to Li Ang , the executive who ruled from Ideal City, and to some unfathomable, cosmic truth buried deep within the final layers of the multiverse.
After thinking it over, Paul could only offer the Raiders a silent gaze.
At that moment, perhaps only speechless awe could truly convey the overwhelming power of the Megacorp.
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