"Patriarch Masamune Tachibana?"
"You intend to arrest the High Patriarch of Hydra?"
The expressions of the gathered patriarchs changed immediately. Had Jovian demanded anyone else, they might have accepted it, but the man he wanted was their High Patriarch. If they handed Masamune over, Hydra would never recover from the humiliation.
Chisei Gen remained silent.
He had to choose between loyalty and his clan, between honor and survival.
Masamune had raised and educated him. He had been both teacher and father to Chisei.
If Chisei handed him over, he would become a faithless ingrate who had betrayed the man who raised him. Someone like that could never continue living within Hydra.
But if he refused, Hydra would no longer be able to survive in Japan.
"I know several senior officials in the United States. Perhaps you could show me some respect…"
A white-haired old man looked at Jovian and spoke in an almost pleading tone.
"Show you respect? Who the hell are you supposed to be?"
Jovian looked coldly at the white-haired old man.
"You…"
"Young man, you shouldn't be so arrogant."
The old man glared at Jovian and spoke coldly.
"Take him away. I suspect he's a member of the Oni Clan."
Jovian pointed directly at the old man's face and addressed the soldiers beside him.
"Yes, General!"
The soldiers saluted Jovian, then immediately moved to arrest the old man.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I asked you what you think you're doing!"
The old man trembled as he loudly questioned the soldiers surrounding him.
"Resisting arrest!"
"Get down! Get down immediately!"
The soldiers saw that the old man actually dared to shout at them and instantly drew their weapons. There was no fucking way they were going to tolerate that attitude.
"You…"
Chisei could no longer stand by and watch several strong young soldiers bully an old man. He prepared to intervene.
"Mr. Gen, I will interpret anything you do as an action taken by Hydra itself. Are you certain you want to involve yourself in this?"
Jovian politely looked at Chisei and asked the question.
Chisei thought for a moment, then sighed helplessly and lowered his head.
The burden of protecting his clan pressed down on him so heavily that he could barely breathe.
"Don't worry. As long as you people don't interfere blindly, I won't do anything to you. I'm not some kind of monster, after all. Right?"
Jovian smiled faintly at Chisei after watching him back down.
However, to Chisei and the other patriarchs, Jovian's innocent, kindly smile looked no different from a demon's grin.
"All right."
"Mr. Masamune Tachibana, if you still refuse to come outside, we'll have to go in and get you."
Jovian raised the bullhorn and continued shouting toward the building.
"Damn it…"
Masamune cursed.
He simply could not understand how his identity had been exposed. Everyone who knew the truth about him should already have been dead.
So how had this happened?
Masamune did not understand, but he had no choice except to steel himself and walk outside.
He emerged from the building and approached the gathered patriarchs.
The patriarchs wanted to say something to him, but with Jovian watching, none of them dared to speak. They feared that a single careless sentence might draw Jovian's attention and lead to their own arrests.
They were not personally afraid of being taken away, but their clans stood behind them. They could not allow their families to be buried alongside them.
"I…"
Seeing that none of the patriarchs dared to speak, Masamune opened his mouth.
He managed to say only one word.
A gunshot rang out.
Amid the drifting gunsmoke, Masamune collapsed before the Hydra patriarchs.
His blood stained the entrance of Genji Heavy Industries.
What a deeply ironic sight.
Hydra's High Patriarch had spilled his blood at the entrance to his own headquarters. The sheer humiliation left every patriarch unable to raise his head.
"He's so similar…"
Katsu Inuyama, known as the last true man of the Inuyama family after his clan's decline and one of Japan's most renowned swordmasters, stared at Jovian in his military uniform.
He remembered the day the Second World War ended, and the young man who had arrived with the warships coming ashore.
He had been just as young, just as confident and carefree, just as untamed.
He had single-handedly forced all of Japan into submission.
The difference was that the man from back then had represented absolute strength, while the man standing before them now represented absolute authority.
Strength taken to its limit, and authority taken to its limit.
Both were equally terrifying.
Both made it impossible to breathe.
Katsu looked down at the katana in his hand.
Ever since his defeat on that distant day, he had continuously trained with this blade. He had swung it again and again, growing faster with every passing year until his speed had nearly reached the ultimate limit.
Yet what did it matter how quickly he could swing his sword?
How could this imperfect blade possibly contend with authority as immense as a mountain?
There was nothing he could do.
"You…"
After a long silence, someone finally gathered his courage.
He raised his head and looked at Jovian in his military uniform. He wanted only to demand justice for their High Patriarch and defend the last remnants of Hydra's honor.
However, the instant he raised his head and met Jovian's eyes, every word vanished like smoke in the wind.
Those eyes were terrifyingly sharp.
If I speak now, I'll definitely die.
The thought echoed through the man's mind.
At that moment, he understood that the American officer before him was not someone he could provoke.
This was a man who would pull the trigger without the slightest hesitation.
And when someone like that controlled the most powerful weapons in the world, none of his enemies would ever sleep peacefully again.
"No…"
While the patriarchs stood in silence, Jovian spoke first. He stared coldly at the corpse before him.
"This isn't right."
"Isn't right?"
Everyone looked at Jovian in confusion.
They did not understand what he meant.
Why had he not left after killing their High Patriarch? Why was he examining Masamune's corpse and shaking his head?
Was he deliberately desecrating their High Patriarch's remains and insulting Hydra even further?
Hydra might have already lost all dignity, but at the very least, they still possessed one final shred of pride.
Just as the elderly patriarchs prepared to throw themselves at Jovian in a desperate attack, he finally spoke.
"Look carefully. Is the man lying there really your High Patriarch?"
The moment Jovian finished speaking, all the patriarchs froze.
Then they approached the dead Masamune and began carefully examining his body.
"No. His build is extremely similar, but there are subtle differences."
After inspecting the corpse at close range, Chisei finally noticed that its bone structure differed slightly from that of the Masamune he knew.
An ordinary person would never have noticed. Even they had trusted Masamune so completely that none of them would have discovered the deception on their own.
However, once Jovian pointed it out, the differences could no longer be concealed.
"Keep searching. I don't care how many Masamune Tachibanas are hiding inside that building. Find every last one of them and drag them outside."
Jovian's expression remained cold.
To be fair, Masamune was an extremely cunning old bastard.
Therefore, Jovian intended to mobilize several dozen more satellites.
He was absolutely going to kill this old fool today.
"Are you fucking insane?"
"Why are you so determined to ruin me?"
Inside the building, Masamune was on the verge of losing his mind.
After watching his double get killed, he had assumed Jovian would finally leave. Instead, the bastard refused to let the matter go and had somehow recognized the corpse as a decoy with a single glance.
It was absurd.
It felt as though Jovian had been sent from heaven as a literal deus ex machina. The villain had become too unstoppable, so the story had abandoned every elaborate twist and simply introduced someone whose sole purpose was to crush him with one hand.
"Masamune Tachibana, I'm definitely going to kill you today. You have ten seconds to decide. Come outside now, and I'll leave your corpse intact."
Jovian shouted through the bullhorn.
"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…"
The ten seconds passed in an instant.
Unfortunately, Masamune did not come outside.
"Still refusing to come out?"
Jovian sighed helplessly.
A brilliant light suddenly flashed within his eyes.
In the next instant, his vision penetrated every wall and obstacle before him until it locked onto Masamune's true body.
Then Jovian demonstrated how to fire a Barrett rifle with one hand.
Boom!
The shot thundered across the area.
The round blasted through the building's walls and tore Masamune's lower body apart.
"Go inside and drag up the man whose lower body I just destroyed."
"If anyone tries to stop you, shoot them in the head."
After giving the order, Jovian looked toward the soldiers behind him.
"Yes, sir."
The soldiers nodded and immediately stormed the building.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Gunfire erupted inside Genji Heavy Industries.
The soldiers had clearly encountered fierce resistance.
However, before overwhelming firepower, carbon-based life-forms were little more than a joke.
Before long, the soldiers returned carrying Masamune on a stretcher. A massive hole had been torn through his lower body, yet he was still desperately clinging to life.
"Jung von Herzog? How did you end up in such a pathetic state?"
Jovian looked down at the man on the stretcher and mocked him.
"Gah…"
Every time Masamune tried to speak, blood poured from his mouth.
Nevertheless, he continued forcing himself to remain conscious.
"Treat him."
Jovian wanted to know what Masamune was attempting to say, so he issued another order to the soldiers behind him.
At Jovian's command, the area was immediately transformed into a makeshift operating room.
The world-class doctors accompanying the soldiers began operating on Masamune in full view of Hydra's patriarchs.
Several hours later, Masamune's condition had finally stabilized.
"What did you want to say?"
Jovian stood before Masamune and questioned him.
"How did you discover my true identity?"
Masamune ignored the surrounding patriarchs and openly admitted who he was.
He knew he had already lost.
During the operation, he had attempted to kill himself, but the doctors were far too skilled. They had refused to give him any opportunity to die.
"Given my position, there is nothing in this world I cannot learn once I decide I want to know it."
Jovian smiled at Masamune.
"Authority? So this is absolute authority."
"I admit my defeat. You were a worthy opponent."
Masamune murmured weakly.
"Your authority wasn't bad either, but compared to me, you don't even qualify as an ant."
"I never considered you an opponent."
"The moment I decided to destroy you, your death became inevitable. The only uncertainty was how you would die."
"When the ending was predetermined from the beginning, and the two sides were never remotely equal, do you honestly believe they could be called opponents?"
Jovian smiled faintly at Masamune.
"Heh…"
"You're right."
"Just as I never considered anyone else my opponent. They were merely pieces on my board."
"Before the end, I have one final request."
"I know you also came here seeking the power of the god. Please, give me a chance to witness the great god's resurrection."
"Let me see the god alive with my own eyes. Will you grant me that?"
Masamune became increasingly emotional as he pleaded with Jovian.
"You've already seen him."
"A living god who walks among humanity."
As Jovian spoke, he drew a handgun, aimed it at Masamune's head, and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Blood sprayed across the room.
A great conspirator, a man who had once sought to steal divine power, finally reached the end of his story.
"If you intended to kill him, why did you save him first?"
After Jovian left the operating room, he encountered Chisei.
Chisei stared at him with empty eyes.
He had already learned everything he wanted to know from Masamune's own mouth. His entire world had collapsed around him.
Perhaps it was the lingering loyalty he felt toward the man he had once regarded as a father. Even after learning that Masamune, or rather, Jung von Herzog, had never felt the slightest affection for him, Chisei had still wanted him to survive.
That was why he had come looking for Jovian.
Instead, he had witnessed Jung von Herzog's death.
He could not understand it.
If Jovian had ordered the doctors to save Masamune, why had he killed him immediately afterward?
"Because I wanted to hear what he was trying to say. His mouth was full of blood, and I couldn't understand a single word."
Jovian walked up to Chisei and smiled.
"Then why did you kill him afterward?"
Chisei asked in confusion.
"Because once I heard him clearly, I found what he said incredibly boring, so I killed him."
Jovian answered without the slightest hesitation.
"Why? Why would you do that?"
Chisei did not know whether he felt anger or grief.
He could only continue asking the same question.
"There is no reason."
"I did it simply because I could."
Jovian smiled faintly at Chisei, then turned and walked away.
Thud.
After hearing Jovian's answer, Chisei fell to his knees.
He lowered his head as his body trembled faintly.
At that moment, everything Chisei believed about the world was being torn apart.
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