novelraw Chapter 31 : The Tragedy of Popeye
Chapter 31 : The Tragedy of Popeye
Chapter 31: The Tragedy of Popeye
Inside the underground base of the Bureau of Transcendent Affairs, the piercing wail of alarms echoed throughout the facility.
But all those alarms were soon drowned out by a roar filled with endless grief and rage.
“Stop him! Hurry, stop him!”
In the command center, Chen Mo stared at the figure on the screen—mad and frenzied—and shouted hoarsely without pause.
Several squads of heavily armed soldiers poured in from every direction. The kinetic rifles in their hands spat out a storm of flames, bullets pelting Zheng Wei like torrential rain.
Yet the rounds—powerful enough to pierce steel plates—only sparked weakly against his granite-like muscles. They could not even scratch his skin.
Zheng Wei ignored the attacks completely, as though they were mere mosquito bites.
He grabbed a nearby support pillar, over half a meter thick, and with brute force, tore it straight out of the ground!
“Boom——！”
With the sound of steel and concrete snapping apart, Zheng Wei swung the several-ton “stone pillar” like a mythic Titan, sweeping it across the soldiers’ formation!
“Bang!!!”
Blood and flesh flew!
Sturdy alloy barriers, meant to withstand heavy fire, were shredded like paper.
More than a dozen soldiers were crushed into pulp before they could even scream.
“Heavy fire! We need heavy fire support!”
Outside the base, dozens of main battle tanks adjusted their turrets and roared with thunderous fury.
Armor-piercing shells shrieked through the air, striking Zheng Wei squarely in the chest.
The explosions shook the ground, filling the air with clouds of dust.
But when the smoke cleared, all that remained on Zheng Wei’s chest was a charred patch of skin—it hadn’t even seriously wounded him.
“Is that... all the strength you’ve got?”
Zheng Wei slowly raised his head, a twisted yet sorrowful smile spreading across his face.
The next second, Zheng Wei moved.
His massive body burst forward with speed that defied his size, appearing in front of a tank in an instant.
As the terrified driver looked up in horror, Zheng Wei swung his enormous, pot-sized fist.
“Bang——！”
The tank’s multi-layer composite armor—tough enough to withstand most anti-tank weapons—shattered like a fragile eggshell beneath that punch!
His arm pierced straight through the tank, from front to rear!
Zheng Wei slowly withdrew his arm. The entire tank groaned under the strain, then exploded violently, becoming a burning heap of twisted metal.
In the sky above, attack helicopters circled, unleashing a relentless hail of machine gun fire and rockets.
Zheng Wei simply grabbed a huge concrete slab from the ground and hurled it upward as casually as one might throw a stone.
The slab whistled through the air and struck a helicopter’s rotor with deadly precision.
With a screech of twisting metal, the helicopter belched black smoke and spiraled down like a kite with its string cut, crashing and exploding not far away.
Inside the command center, there was only silence.
Everyone stared blankly at the figure on the screen—a demonic god descended to earth—hardly able to breathe.
So this was... the terror of a Transcendent losing control?
Chen Mo closed his eyes in pain.
On the battlefield, Zheng Wei’s slaughter continued.
He seemed tireless, senseless to pain—driven only by the urge to destroy everything before him, to destroy the world that had taken his daughter from him.
To Zheng Wei, a world without his daughter had no reason to exist.
Even though he knew he was reaching his limit, he didn’t care.
He took a can of spinach from his pocket.
It was Xiaoxiao’s favorite snack. Every time he went to see her, Zheng Wei would bring her a can.
Now, he bit open the lid with his teeth and devoured the spinach—mixed with tears and blood—in great, desperate gulps.
“Xiaoxiao... Daddy’s coming... to be with you...”
“Boom——！”
An explosion of power—hundreds of times greater than before—erupted from within him!
His body swelled again, his height exceeding five meters. His muscles turned a dark, unnatural shade of greenish-black, like the legendary Popeye himself.
He lowered his head, staring at his own hands, then slowly crouched down, plunging them deep into the foundation of the underground base beneath his feet!
“Get——up——!!!”
With a roar that could have split the heavens—a roar that every onlooker through the screens would remember for life—a scene fit to be carved into history unfolded.
The colossal military base, built of countless tons of reinforced concrete, was being torn out of the earth itself!
The ground moaned. The sky trembled.
Zheng Wei lifted the entire mountain-like structure above his head and slowly straightened his back.
Then he turned toward the distant army formation—hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles—and hurled the “mountain” in his hands straight at them!
All they could do was stare as that massive shadow fell upon them like a collapsing sky.
……
Zheng Wei’s rampage finally ended in the most tragic of ways.
After hours of devastating fury, he collapsed from exhaustion—moments before dozens of thermobaric bombs descended, engulfing him completely.
“...Target life signs... lost.”
As the blinding white light and annihilating shockwave faded, a trembling voice came through the comms from one of the few surviving soldiers.
After razing the billion-dollar base to the ground and killing nearly a hundred scientists and soldiers, Zheng Wei had become nothing more than a massive crater over a hundred meters wide.
His death also marked the brutal failure of the government’s attempt to control the situation within the “Game of Gods.” They were now nothing more than background characters.
……
【Faction: Radiance – Player: Popeye has died】
【Current remaining players: 【Radiance】 – 4, 【Shadow】 – 2】
The cold system notification tolled in the minds of every surviving player like a funeral bell.
……
In Yun Ge’s apartment.
Yun Ge watched as the glowing dot representing Zheng Wei flared brilliantly one last time—then faded into dust.
He softly clapped his hands.
“A perfect tragedy.”
“Born of love, ended by love.”
He poured himself a glass of whiskey over ice. The amber liquid shimmered in the glass.
“Now then... the board is ready for the final match.”
……
Zheng Wei’s death plunged all of Jiang City into chaos and panic.
The Bureau of Transcendent Affairs and the Joint Command Headquarters were in total disarray.
They threw everything into sealing the news, declaring it to the public as the “aftermath of a terrorist attack” and a “massive gas pipeline explosion.”
At the same time, they frantically investigated who—and by what means—had infiltrated the most secure medical base to murder Zheng Wei’s daughter.
Soon, a chilling fact was laid before Chen Mo.
“Report! We’ve repeatedly cross-checked all surveillance footage from the night of the incident…”
The technician’s voice trembled. “We discovered that within the half hour surrounding Zheng Xiaoxiao’s death... two identical Dr. Li Zhenguos appeared in the base!”
“One was working overnight in his own lab—with a perfect alibi.”
“And the other... was the one who entered the intensive care ward and killed Zheng Xiaoxiao!”
Two identical people!