After Beating the Game, I Became the Villain BOSS

Chapter 550: Chapter 355: Self-Redemption (Part 2)

Gordon’s nails dug into his palm, blood oozed from between his fingers, yet he felt no pain. He wanted to scream loudly, but no sound came out, and all he could do was swallow the grief helplessly: "Kallen... I’m sorry... I’ve let you down..."

"Let’s leave now, okay? Didn’t you always want to start over in the Capital City? We can go there now! We can go anywhere you like! I won’t be King of the Borderlands anymore! We’ll start over together!"

"Hahaha!" Kallen let out a sharp laugh, looking at him with a mocking gaze, "Gordon, if you could stick to your beliefs without wavering, and from now on just kick me away, determined to be this king, then I’d at least see you as a bastard with principles."

"Now our daughter is dead, and you want to start over? Where were you before? If you could so easily abandon your empty fame, then what was the point of all the fighting and killing all this time?"

"Whether you were down and out in your youth or later became successful, you never figured out what kind of life you wanted to live."

"King of the Borderlands, you’re truly pathetic."

After saying this, Kallen suddenly took out a small self-defense pistol from her pocket and aimed it at her chin.

The death of his daughter had left Gordon in utter grief, his vision completely blurred by tears, so he didn’t react at first. By the time he realized what Kallen was doing and tried to stop her in panic, it was too late.

"Bang!"

The bullet pierced through her chin and exited the top of Kallen’s skull. Her body collapsed beside her daughter’s remains, and the pool of blood shone a ghastly red under the dim light.

"Ah!!! No!!! No!!!" Gordon broke down, collapsing to the ground, tears gushing like a fountain, dripping continuously onto the bodies of his daughter and wife.

He wanted to hold Kallen and Agatha, but his hands stopped in mid-air, as if blocked by an invisible wall, afraid to touch that cold death.

He pounded the floor in despair, wailing towards the gathering crowd outside the door: "Doctors! Is there a doctor?! Someone save them!!!"

Perhaps everyone had already seen that they were beyond saving, and looking for a doctor was useless.

Or perhaps, in this place called the Borderlands, indifference to others’ affairs had become most people’s rule of conduct.

The onlookers did not take any action. They merely exchanged glances, whispered among themselves, and then looked at Gordon with a very strange expression.

At first, Gordon did not realize what that look meant, until an unprecedented sense of helplessness filled his heart, causing memories that had been left behind to quietly resurface.

Scenes from the past began to merge with the present reality, various memories surging like tidal waves.

He suddenly realized that in his youth, he had been watched by this same gaze many times.

When he knelt in front of the coffin shop and barked like a dog.

When someone knocked him down and poured urine on his face.

And time after time when he was trampled underfoot, treated like garbage.

The nearby onlookers then also looked at him with this gaze.

This gaze was telling him—

You are truly a pitiful creature.

...

...

...

As past events floated before his eyes like smoke, the elderly Gordon found his face unknowingly covered in tears.

Fenrir’s silhouette grew farther and farther away, with Dongdong lying on her back, reaching out to him, crying uncontrollably.

"Come with us! Don’t leave me behind! Wah..."

In Gordon’s blurred vision, that youthful face sometimes became the memory of his daughter Agatha, and then sometimes returned to the child he watched grow, as if the two were overlapping.

Gordon watched Dongdong depart into the distance, and with tears streaming down, he muttered, "Child, don’t cry for me. You once told me, if you ever reached the top, you wanted to become an umbrella, to protect those caught in the rain."

"I once reached the top but spent my life in meaningless slaughter... and now, finally, I too can become that umbrella."

An acrid wind swept over the brutal battlefield, the ground near the tunnel shaking to its utmost, the roars of the beasts nearly tearing through the sky.

For the last time, Gordon gazed at Dongdong, then turned to walk into the perilous tunnel, his body bowed with age, yet suddenly exuding an unprecedented and overwhelming aura.

The plasma formed by the triple overdrive swept his body, igniting both his body and eyes, and the explosive power rendered the ground’s tremors insignificant.

The aged King of the Borderlands was ablaze with battle spirit, hair and beard bristling, as if returned to his youthful prime, heading towards the end of his destiny.

...

Fenrir carried Nuobai and Dongdong, sprinting down the street, continuously defeating the beasts along the way and rushing towards the East District, where they were to meet the mercenary troops stationed there.

Throughout this, Dongdong struggled and cried, but her strength was long depleted, unable to break free from Fenrir’s hold.

As Fenrir ran, she instinctively sensed a strange danger. Quickly, she dashed behind a barricade, set down Nuobai and Dongdong, and opened her arms to protect them.

Almost simultaneously, the mutation occurred.

At the edge of the sky, a blinding flash erupted like a solar flare, illuminating the once overcast sky completely. Even with eyes tightly shut, the intense light seeped through the eyelids, illuminating the capillaries and presenting a red curtain in vision.

"Boom!!!"

Along with the deafening sound of explosion, an enormous pillar of flame surged into the sky of the Northern Border District, piercing the clouds completely, the fiery light turning the entire sky red.

Simultaneously, the shock wave from the explosion spread to surrounding streets, the ground began to collapse, rocks and soil torn into fragments, tumbling in the windstorm.

The dilapidated buildings toppled one after another, as if torn by a giant’s hand, with multiple street surfaces splitting into fissures, and the land sinking, forming numerous deep pits, the landscape entirely changed.

When the airflow from the explosion finally settled, and the tremors throughout the borderland ceased, only a flaming red mushroom cloud remained in the sky above the Northern Border District, its heat obliterating everything.

Fenrir glanced at the mushroom cloud, murmuring: "He self-destructed..."

This level of power was undoubtedly unreachable for a Prosthetic Implanter under normal circumstances; only through self-destruction could it be achieved.

The energy core within Gordon was a "Pioneer Level 1," ranked the fifth tier in the prosthetic power system, naturally possessing terrifying output power. Coupled with the massive boost from "Triple Overdrive," the energy produced by self-destruction was astronomically high.

Gordon had previously faced the beast tide, fighting all the way deep into the tunnel with his physical body.

Compared to surface bombardments, exploding in the deep layers of the earth had a better effect, not only collapsing the tunnel structure completely but also killing the injured Tunneling Insect.

Now, the complex crisscross tunnels beneath the Borderlands were entirely destroyed and sealed, burying countless beasts within the earth’s layers, cutting off their offensive at the source.

Whether new Tunneling Insects would later appear with beasts is unknown, but at least for this moment, Gordon’s sacrifice greatly relieved the pressure on the mercenaries and secured more time for the yet-to-be-relocated borderland refugees.

This First Generation King, who spent half his life in killing and the other half in healing, finally in his twilight years burned himself out, offering everything for this homeland and its people, completing a lifelong redemption.

Fenrir gazed distantly in the direction of Gordon’s sacrifice, a fist resting against her heart, giving a solemn salute to this king forgotten by time.

Dongdong hugged her arms tightly, kneeling on the ground, her mouth wide open in a silent wail, only tears falling in streams.

To most uninformed, this may just be the death of a stranger.

But to Dongdong, once more, she lost an important family member.