Strongest Nova: Path of Vengeance

Chapter 83: Tragedy

Stanley and Bradley walked through the open warehouse to arrive on the other side where they were greeted with cries and shouting and a whole lot of dead people piled up at the front.

Most of the people who had died were normal civilians, but there were also a few Defenders who were dead as well.

Stanley recognized a few by face, but Bradley recognized a whole lot more. His heart sank as he saw more of his friends die, except this time these deaths were entirely unnecessary.

Why couldn’t they have solved this problem through words? Why did it have to come to this?

There were a lot of people, who were being treated. Some were bleeding through their head, some had missing limbs.

One man even had a sword sticking through his upper shoulder, which was a surprise as he was still somehow alive.

The death and tragedy that had taken place tonight had been one of, if not the most tragic moments in all of the town’s history.

There were monsters that wiped out humanity outside, and when they should’ve been protecting themselves, helping themselves, they were instead fighting each other.

The two brothers made their way up the town to the Defender’s quarters where they waited for someone to come and treat them. It took a while for a physician to get to them as they were low on the priority of who needed to be treated.

Stanley was given some anesthesia to knock him out so that they could treat his injuries. His wounds themselves weren’t bad, but the burns on his feet and other parts of his body needed medicines.

Overall, they decided to knock him out.

The physicians were surprised at how much anesthesia it needed to knock him out entirely, but Stanley wasn’t awake to see that.

It was morning when he woke up.

He looked around and saw most of his body in bandages. He got up and off the bed, before slowly landing on his feet.

He had expected the feet to hurt quite badly, but it wasn’t as bad as he had expected. There was still some pain, but it was handleable.

He checked to make sure he wasn’t bleeding though, and after realizing he wasn’t, he left the medical hall of the Defenders headquarters.

Stanley walked out, surprised at how many others were like him, wounded and limping. He look around for his brother, but he couldn’t see him at all.

’Didn’t he come here with me?’ he tried to remember. ’No, he did.’

It was a little hard to think what had happened after he came to get treated. The anesthesia knocking him out had made it a little hard to remember everything.

Still, not everything was forgotten. He vividly remembered when the scene of the Defender stabbing the man through his torso. He vividly remembered Marcus’s corpse with its head blown wide open.

He vividly remembered George as he had killed him.

Stanley couldn’t help but feel sorrowful. Why was it that death followed him around? Was he cursed? Why was it that when all he wanted to do was kill some Crawlers, it was the humans whose death he had to face?

He was planning on going back to his room to rest but the path there seemed distant. The tragedy had still not finished digging its fingers through the wounds where it hurt everyone.

The corpses of everyone dead were gathered in the town’s center for the rest of the townsfolks to see.

It wasn’t to send some sort of message or to intimidate others from trying to do something like this again.

From what Stanley saw, it was simply for people to come and see if they recognized their family and friends.

Since the last night’s fight had taken place around an abandoned warehouse where the people from around the town had gathered, the family members of many were still unaware it seemed.

Stanley looked through them all, his eyes unwavering at the sight of all the dead bodies. He felt jaded to death, even though he had only gone through 3 that actually affected him.

However, even if it was just 3, they had all taken place within such little time that it all felt overwhelming and as a result, he no longer felt any other emotion when seeing a dead body.

His heart was hollow when it came to the death of another person that he didn’t know about. Still, just because he couldn’t feel anything for the dead, didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel anything for the living.

Hearing the cries of the many that had just now found out that their father, mother, spouse, siblings, best friends, or some other family and friends had died.

Stanley didn’t feel bad for the dead, but he certainly felt bad for the living. Hearing a little girl ask her mother where her father was, or hearing a newlywed wife’s cries for her dead husband, it all was a bit too much for Stanley.

It was torture to Stanley since the cries and pain they felt made him remember his own mother. The mother he so wanted to still be alive but wasn’t.

Tears fell down his cheek as he couldn’t handle it anymore. He cried standing, along with the many others that were doing the same.

Stanley didn’t even know if the tears were meant for his mother who was dead, or for himself who was still tortured by her memories.

After some time, Stanley finally gathered himself up and left for his room. He lay on his bed as the tiredness returned to him.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he found himself not that sleepy at all. He had only laid there for a few minutes when he heard the speaker turn on with a loud noise.

"Please gather by the Defender’s headquarters in the next hour," the mayor’s voice rang through the speakers. "I have a few things I wish to say."