Soldier Boy took a step forward, his fingers swiftly reaching for Lynn's neck.
Before the chill of his fingertips arrived, the gust of wind already made Lynn's breath hitch.
The shadow of death descended, more concrete and unavoidable than the artillery fire on a battlefield.
Was he really going to die at the hands of his own summoned character?
What a disgrace to transmigrators...
[Host authority activated, establishing initial punishment link]
Soldier Boy's fingertips froze abruptly less than a centimeter from Lynn's skin.
His own body betrayed him.
The hand Soldier Boy had reached out with uncontrollably bent backward, gripping his own throat at an eerie angle.
The rage on his face was replaced by shock.
He could sense his knuckles exerting force, as if another person inside his body was about to crush his own throat bone.
He stared fixedly at Lynn, his eyes full of disbelief.
"You..."
At the same time, a warm current surged from his heart, sweeping through his entire body.
10% of Soldier Boy's power fed back.
Lynn felt every cell in his body cheering and leaping with joy.
His head, which had been throbbing with dull pain just moments ago, became clear, and the lingering sense of weakness was washed away completely by this power.
An unprecedented sense of fullness surged into his heart.
He slid off the bed, his bare feet touching the floor.
Lynn calmly looked at the disheveled "superhero" kneeling on the ground.
At this moment, the positions of hunter and prey had been reversed.
There were a few clear red marks left on Soldier Boy's neck, and he was panting heavily.
His arrogance had vanished.
"What did you do to me?"
"A reminder." Lynn flexed his wrists, feeling his healthy body. "A reminder that if you want to kill me, you have to kill yourself first."
"Bullshit!"
Soldier Boy stood up.
"No one can control me! No one!"
He raised his hand again, but his movements were noticeably slower, his eyes filled with wariness.
"You can try again."
Lynn pointed to his own neck.
"This time, I'm not sure if your fingers won't just plunge directly into your throat."
Soldier Boy stopped in his tracks, glaring fixedly at Lynn, but ultimately, he did not take that step.
The feeling of near-death just now was too real for him.
"Who exactly are you?"
"I am Lynn Morris. I brought you here to have you be a true hero, a legend who can end the war. This is good for both of us."
"What the fuck does that have to do with me?"
"I need you to be a true hero."
"Hero? Ha!"
Soldier Boy scoffed.
"I am the hero!"
"No."
Lynn interrupted him directly.
"Ask yourself, are you really a hero?"
"How many days have you actually spent on a real battlefield? Do those staged photoshoots Vought International arranged for you count as combat?"
"Have you ever seen city ruins leveled by artillery fire? Have you ever smelled the odor of thousands of corpses piled up, rotting and fermenting together?"
"This era needs a monster that can tear tanks apart, not an idiot smiling in front of a camera."
"You, Soldier Boy, will become that legend."
"Legend?"
Soldier Boy raised a finger and pointed at his own face.
"Buddy, from Maine to California, my face is on every kid's lunchbox! I am the legend!"
"That was the past."
Lynn corrected him.
"Those lunchboxes, that country, those people who worshipped you are all in another World seventy years later. Here, you are nothing."
Lynn took a step forward, closing the distance between them.
"What exactly do you want?"
Soldier Boy met his gaze but still gave up the idea of attacking.
"I want to help you."
Lynn's tone was as sincere as a missionary's.
"Help you become the kind of person you've always wanted to be but never could."
"You filmed movies and went on talk shows for Vought International, attended all sorts of boring ribbon-cutting ceremonies... You call that being a hero?"
"How many of those battle records of yours were made up by your PR team? And how many were built up by connections and drugs?"
Soldier Boy's breathing gradually became heavy.
His fists clenched, cracking audibly.
He glared fixedly at Lynn.
The violence in his eyes couldn't even be hidden.
But mixed into his heart was a terror he hadn't even realized himself.
These were all the stains hidden beneath the hero's halo.
This kid of unknown origin...
How the fuck does he know everything so clearly?
He felt as if he were standing naked in front of the other person, stripped of his clothes.
"I know everything."
Lynn looked straight into his pupils, which were slightly dilated from shock.
"Including why they betrayed you. Payback... they were jealous of your halo, and even more afraid of your uncontrollable power, so they would rather push you into the Russians' hell so you could never rise again."
"Shut up!!"
Soldier Boy finally roared out of control.
To Lynn, this roar sounded like bluster.
He took a step back, as if wanting to get further away from this devil who saw through everything about him.
That betrayal was the root of his decades-long nightmare.
Yes, he was not a hero.
He was just a poor wretch betrayed by his own people and abandoned by the times.
"But here, it's different."
"Here, there is no Vought, no media, no bunch of treacherous bastards. Here, there is only war and countless eyes longing for a hero."
He pointed out the window.
"Imagine, you descend from the sky, tearing a hole in the German Army's lines. You block machine gun fire with your shield and smash tanks with your fists."
"The soldiers here won't care what drugs you've taken, nor will they care if your PR drafts are well-written."
"They will only see a god, a god of war who can end this damn war."
"People will cheer for you and weep for you; they will build the tallest statues for you and write your name into history books. You will no longer be that packaged commodity, but a true immortal legend! A man who changed the history of the World with his own strength."
Soldier Boy's breathing became ragged.
He subconsciously avoided Lynn's gaze, his eyes piercing through the wall toward that unknown World shrouded in the flames of war.
Lynn knew that the future he painted was taking root and sprouting like a seed in the heart of this Beast.
No betrayal, only power and adoration.
Isn't this everything he had dreamed of?
"But why should I listen to you?"
He was still unwilling to give in; this was his final struggle.
"Because only I can give you this opportunity."
Lynn spread his hands.
"Or, you can choose to refuse."
His tone became nonchalant.
"I will send you back. Back to the place you came from. That pitch-black, cold, empty ghost of a place."
"Leaving you alone to stay there forever; no one will remember the name Soldier Boy, and you will disappear completely, as if you had never existed."
"You..."
He had experienced imprisonment by the Russians; he knew that kind of helpless despair.
By comparison, death seemed like a gift.
After a long silence, Soldier Boy seemed to deflate like a punctured ball.
The hostility receded for the most part, but his eyes remained fierce.
Grinding his back molars, he squeezed a few words through his teeth.
"Conditions."
He didn't ask "what to do," but rather "conditions," which meant that, in his view, this was still a transaction, not a surrender.
Lynn smiled; this unruly Beast had finally been forced to sit at the negotiating table.