Chapter 49: The Cost of Protection

[Nexus Corp Prime Hospital]

The steady, rhythmic beep... beep... beep... of a heart monitor was the first sound that drifted into Leo’s consciousness.

He didn’t open his eyes immediately. Instead, he lay completely still, letting his senses slowly expand.

The sharp, metallic tang of blood and the choking smell of ozone were gone, replaced by the sterile, clinical scent of antiseptics and high-grade medical gel.

Beneath his back, the surface was soft and yielded slightly, a far cry from the cold, caved-in concrete of the battlefield,

’I’m alive,’ Leo thought, his mind sluggish. ’That kid Imperion actually pulled it off.’

Leo known to the world as Sentinel, the Iron Wall of Elysium slowly forced his eyelids to open.

The ceiling above him was a stark, seamless white, illuminated by soft, recessed LED lights.

He tried to raise a hand to pinch his bridge, but his arms felt as though they were cast in solid lead.

Looking down, he saw that his entire torso and both of his arms were wrapped in thick, pressurized medical bandages.

His left arm, the one he had used to unleash that final, catastrophic attack was encased in a specialized stabilization brace, humming quietly as advanced Nexus Corp healing agents were pumped directly into his shattered bones.

Leo let out a weak, raspy sigh.

Even with his S-Class ability, Iron Fortress, which granted him pain nullification, almost impenetrable defenses, and adaptive evolution, his body had been pushed past its absolute limit.

His passive healing was working, but because he had completely burned his God Particles and physical vitality to throw that last punch, his recovery was moving at a crawl.

He was eighty-two years old, though his S-Class awakening had reversed his physical aging, leaving him with the body of a man in his prime.

But right now, he felt every single one of those eighty-two years weighing down on his chest.

And it wasn’t just the physical exhaustion.

As the fog in his mind cleared, the memories of the Chimera Lab raid rushed back with the force of a tidal wave.

Leo’s breath hitched, and the steady beeping of the heart monitor instantly spiked in frequency.

He remembered the final moments before Imperion’s arrival.

The physical and mental horror as Dr. Lannister’s monkey mask shattered under the stress of the battle, pieces of clay falling away to reveal a face Leo would recognize anywhere.

Grey-silver hair. Sky-blue eyes. And a distinct, star-shaped signature tattoo on the right side of his neck.

"Junior brother..." Leo’s voice was a barely audible whisper, his throat dry as sandpaper.

Leo’s mind spiraled back to his past. Long before the God Particles infected the Blue Star and turned fiction into reality,

He was just a regular human. When their parents died in a tragic accident, Leo was left alone to care for his younger brother.

He had even joined the military as a weak ground soldier during the first regular world war, throwing himself into the meat grinder of the front lines solely to ensure his brother would receive the hazard compensation if he died.

When the God Particles arrived and Leo awakened his S-Class Iron Fortress, he vowed to use his godly power to build a safe world where his brother could live in peace.

Because his brother had never awakened any abilities, Leo had painstakingly hidden his existence, burying his files and placing him in a secure, anonymous location far from the reach of the Hero Association, the Federation, and his own countless enemies.

He had done everything right. He had fought through three wars to protect him.

And yet, Dr. Lannister had found him anyway.

The sadistic scientist had kidnapped his brother and used his physical vessel as a "clone" shell, forcing his brother’s eyes to mock him, and his brother’s mouth to preach the "glorious evolution" of humanity.

The old scientist had orchestrated the entire televised setup specifically to break his mind.

Leo closed his eyes tightly, a single tear slipping down his temple and soaking into his bandages.

The pain in his chest was far worse than any fractured rib or punctured organ.

The psychological despair had nearly shattered his mind on that battlefield. He had felt so utterly, miserably helpless.

’I’ll kill him,’ Leo thought, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth groaned. ’

I don’t care if it takes me to my last breath. I will hunt down every single S-Class monster in that League of Villains, and I will rip Lannister’s real body to pieces.’

But as the burning, icy fury settled into his bones, Leo’s mind began to analyze the battle with the cold, calculating precision of a veteran soldier.

He remembered the peak of the battle, when his body had been covered in bleeding cracks and his arm was completely numb.

He had looked at the giant fifteen-meter aberrant and knew he was completely outmatched.

Yet, in that moment of absolute despair, he had refused to back down.

His dream of protecting the innocent and his desire to shield the new era from corruption had flared to life.

And with that absolute resolve, something miraculous had happened.

A dense, radiant blue-like aura had wrapped around his shattered left hand.

The God Particles in his body had condensed, aligning perfectly with his raw, unyielding will to protect.

When he threw his Protection! Smash punch, the sheer power had transcended the limitations of a Level 4 powerhouse.

It had entered the legendary realm of Level 5, completely disintegrating the entire Chimera factory and carving a massive, five-kilometer pit into the earth behind it.

’That wasn’t just God Particles,’ Leo realized, his eyes snapping open.

Up to Level 4, superhumans only focused on accumulating energy.

They treated their bodies like physical containers, growing stronger by simply absorbing more God Particles from the environment.

But Level 5 required a qualitative leap.

To reach Level 5, a powerhouse had to align their God Particles with an Absolute Will.

By condensing his eighty years of trauma, his dreams of a peaceful society, and his absolute obsession to protect his brother, Leo had temporarily bent reality to his desires.

That blue aura was his condensed willpower, the key to unlocking the qualitative leap of Level 5.

Leo took a deep, steadying breath.

He didn’t have cigarettes, and his body was a broken mess. But as he stared at the sterile white ceiling of the Nexus medical bay, he knew he had found his path forward.

He had touched the threshold of Level 5 once. If he could master that feeling, if he could compress his willpower into a permanent, physical force, he would officially break through.

"I won’t let you down, little brother," Leo muttered, his gaze hardening into an iron-like resolve.

"And I won’t let that kid Imperion carry the sky by himself forever."

Leo focused his mind, drawing upon the absolute, unyielding core of his Will of Protection.

Slowly, agonizingly, he directed the dormant God Particles in his chest down toward his shattered left arm.

The medical monitors in the room suddenly began to beep frantically as his energy signatures spiked.

Humm...

Beneath the heavy, white Nexus Corp bandages, a faint, beautiful blue light began to spark.

It was a dense, calm, and incredibly heavy aura that began to slowly knit his fractured bones back together.

It was a small spark, but it was absolute.

A grumpy, battle-worn smile finally crept onto the old soldier’s face as the blue light flickered in the quiet room.

The League of Villains had tried to break the Iron Wall of Elysium.

But instead, they had only forged it into something far more dangerous.

Sentinel was coming back, and this time, his defense would be truly impenetrable.