Chapter 225: Let the War Begin! Let the Continent Burn! Let All Who Betrayed the People Fall from the Sky!
Thud!
The officer in command of the battle heard what the messenger had just said, and the legs that had only just started pushing him up out of his seat gave out again, dropping him limply back to the floor.
Everyone else in the command room, hearing that their entire senior leadership had just been wiped out in a "decapitation strike," wore the same look of disbelief.
"You son of a bitch! What the hell are you talking about?!"
A middle-aged man in camouflage fatigues, speaking with a thick Osaka accent, lunged straight at the messenger.
Before the man could react, the officer's fist slammed into his face.
Then the officer roared at him. "You bastard! Do you have any idea that spreading false intelligence gets you shot by a military tribunal?!"
"Undermining morale right before a major battle... I don't even need a tribunal for that. I'll shoot you myself, right now!"
With that, the officer pulled a pistol from his belt and pressed it against the messenger's head.
Feeling the cold press of the muzzle against his forehead, the messenger's body shook where he lay on the ground, but he held firm. "I'm not spreading false intelligence."
"Everything I said is true..."
"Bullshit!"
Bang!
A gunshot rang out.
A fresh hole opened up in the messenger's forehead, and he went limp on the floor.
Once that was done, the officer lifted his head and looked at the two remaining communications officers.
"Well? Was he lying?" There was open menace in the man's eyes.
He knew perfectly well that no one would be sending false reports back from the front right now. But to keep up the appearance of morale, he was still willing to kill the messenger anyway.
Seeing the threat in the man's eyes, the other two officers both flinched back half a step.
Desperate to stay alive, one of them blurted out, "N-no, that's right! He was lying!"
The other one caught on and nodded quickly too. "Yes! Yes, he was lying!"
"The Prime Minister told us in no uncertain terms to keep fighting, no matter what..."
Seeing that he'd successfully cowed the two of them, the officer finally holstered his pistol and turned to address the rest of the assembled command staff. "See? That bastard was trying to undermine our morale."
"I'd bet good money he was one of Umbrella's plants, an informant working inside our own ranks."
Whether it was because the rest of them genuinely refused to accept that the situation had already collapsed, or because they truly believed Umbrella couldn't possibly be moving this fast, every one of them nodded along.
But before anyone else could speak—
Out in the deep corridor beyond the command room, the sudden sound of heavy, rhythmic footsteps cut through the air.
Every head in the room turned toward that long, shadowed passage.
Light from the command room spilled a short distance into the hall. Beyond that, the corridor stretched away in a series of shadows cast by iron security grates.
The footsteps came from somewhere deep within that darkness.
Heavy. Perfectly even.
The sound of metal boot-soles striking the concrete floor echoed and amplified in the narrow hallway, until it no longer sounded like anything human at all, more like a pack of enormous steel beasts closing in.
In the security rooms lining either side of the corridor, several armed soldiers heard the noise and were on their feet almost on pure instinct.
They grabbed their weapons and rushed for the doors.
But before any of them could get a door open, the Astartes closing in from down the hall had already locked onto them straight through the walls.
Reading the heat signatures on their tactical visors, the lead Astartes pulled a handful of pumpkin bombs from its belt and hurled them without breaking stride.
The bombs punched straight through the thin wooden doors of the security rooms in midair.
The next instant—
A deafening series of explosions tore through the corridor!
The doors on both sides were blown apart in an instant, wood splinters and shredded fabric thrown out across the hallway floor in a scene of pure carnage.
The Astartes didn't so much as glance toward the wrecked security rooms.
Their pace never changed, undisturbed by anything around them.
Their power-armored boots crushed through the scattered remains on the floor, leaving a trail of sharply defined, dark red footprints stretching straight toward the command room at the end of the hall.
Inside the command room.
The officer who'd just put a bullet through a communications officer's skull was still standing about two meters from the door.
His hand was still frozen in the exact position it had settled into after holstering the gun.
But the instant he saw the Astartes appear, whatever burst of confidence he'd just talked himself into vanished in a single breath.
His legs started shaking on their own.
Not a small tremor.
A full-body shudder, like someone had reached over and flipped a switch on him.
The officer tried to draw the pistol again, to steady his own nerve.
But his fingers kept fumbling at the holster's snap, slipping off every time, right before it came undone.
No one could say how long it took, but eventually he finally got the gun free.
Before he could even level it at the Astartes, though, his grip faltered, and the pistol slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor.
The metal frame struck the marble in a series of sharp, ringing clicks.
The gun landed near his feet.
Looking down at it, he tried to bend down and pick it back up.
But the very next instant—
Stomp.
A metal foot planted itself directly in front of him.
The sudden kick sent the pistol flying off toward the wall, and with it went whatever nerve the man had left.
His whole body locked in place. He straightened up like a puppet on a string, tilting his head back to look up at the Astartes, a full two and a half meters tall, standing over him.
The instant he took in the cold, heavy bulk of its powered armor.
A wave of pure terror crashed over his entire body.
A moment later, warmth spread down the leg of his pants.
A dark stain traced its way down along the seam of his trousers.
Urine ran down both legs and pooled into a shallow, pale yellow puddle on the floor.
The sharp, acrid smell spread quickly through the command room, mixing with the lingering scent of gunpowder still hanging in the air.
The man stood there, shaking like a leaf, his face twisted out of any semblance of control.
Next to the arrogant swagger he'd been carrying just minutes ago, it was, frankly, a pathetic sight.
The lead Astartes came to a stop right in front of him, its gaze sweeping across every face in the room.
Finally settling on the chief officer, still slumped on the floor.
Having fully grasped that the situation was lost, the chief officer's legs kept scrabbling uselessly against the ground, trying to push himself deeper into the corner.
But none of it did him any good against an Astartes.
The Astartes bent down, closed one hand around the back of the officer's collar, and lifted his entire body off the floor.
Hoisted up like that, the officer's feet dangled in midair, exactly like a Shiba Inu held up by the scruff of its neck.
"I ask. You answer." The Astartes spoke flatly.
"The exact location of the rest of the command's senior officers."
Hearing that, the officer's mouth opened and closed.
His gaze flicked instinctively toward the man still standing in his own puddle of urine, then darted away again just as fast.
He was silent for a moment, his throat working hard.
Then, like all the air going out of a punctured ball, he raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the communications alcove on the left side of the room, then went on to list off the locations of the rest of the senior officials elsewhere in the building.
Once he'd finished, the Astartes let go, and the officer dropped hard back to the floor.
Following his directions, several Astartes split off in different directions.
The door to the communications alcove was kicked open.
Inside, three senior officials were huddled together, encrypted phones still clutched in their hands, not yet set down.
Seeing the Astartes burst in, all three immediately started begging for their lives.
It didn't matter. They were dragged out by the collar regardless.
Once they'd been thrown down in the command room, the Astartes went on, following the officer's directions, pulling the rest of the officials out one by one from wherever they'd been hiding.
One after another.
From under desks, behind cabinets, inside bathroom stalls.
Every place they'd thought might save them was searched in turn, and each one of them was dragged out and dumped in the center of the command room.
Some of them, apparently realizing death was already at their door, still tried flashing ID cards and reciting some clause of international law, hoping it would be enough to make their captors let them go.
The Astartes paid no attention whatsoever to their recitations of treaty clauses. They simply lined the officials up in a row, took two steps back, and raised their blast guns.
Then the triggers were pulled.
No hesitation. No declaration. No ceremony of any kind.
Just the sound of the rounds detonating all at once in the enclosed space.
No one could say how much time passed.
The gunfire settled.
The Astartes squad walked back out.
And with that, one more site of Japan's senior government had been wiped from the world without a trace...
And what had just happened here was playing out again and again, all across Japan, and in every other nation that had declared war on Umbrella.
Ordinary tanks and fighter jets stood no chance of stopping the Astartes' advance.
Only weapons of mass destruction could even slow them down, and only barely.
In a single day.
Japan had been completely overrun by the Astartes and had collapsed into a state of total anarchy.
Umbrella took over administration of the country directly afterward.
In the regions that had been devastated by the fighting, with Apocalypse's arrival, the streets, the buildings, every piece of ruined infrastructure was rebuilt.
At a glance, the results looked even more complete than the infrastructure that had been there before.
Poland wrapped up in a single day as well.
A blitzkrieg on Poland. Some traditions really do never die.
As for France, seeing Umbrella take two countries in a single night and watching its own army fall back again and again, it wasted no time reaching for its signature secret weapon.
A white flag.
Outright surrender.
It handed over every piece of territory Umbrella had already taken straight into Umbrella's administration.
A handful of nations with weaker resolve, seeing just how overwhelming Umbrella's offensive was, gave up the fight entirely and surrendered as well.
Elsewhere.
Inside an underground facility somewhere.
Thaddeus Ross sat reading the newspapers tearing him apart in print, his expression thunderous.
To avoid being "decapitated" by the Astartes, this was already his second day hiding down here.
Based on the reports coming back from the front, his own side's lines were collapsing, step by step.
The casualties had gotten so severe that entire units had started surrendering wholesale.
This wasn't a video game, after all. With a death rate that high, anyone with a pulse was going to get scared.
On top of that, Umbrella's forces had taken to actively persuading enemy soldiers at the front to give up, and morale was crumbling by the day.
"Why do none of these bastards understand me?!" Ross slammed a fist down on his desk.
"If people with this kind of power aren't kept firmly under a government's control, it's absolutely going to cause serious problems down the line!"
"Do they honestly think peace bought with surrender is going to last?!"
"Useless garbage, every single one of them!"
Staring at the map and the scattered clutter on his desk, Ross felt a wave of blind fury rising up in him.
With a roar—
He swept everything off the desk with a single furious swing of his arm.
Before he could get his temper back under control, the shut door suddenly—
Knock, knock, knock—
Hearing the sound, Ross composed himself briefly and said flatly, "...Come in."
The door opened.
A figure walked in, holding a tablet.
"Mr. Secretary, there's a video here."
"Would you like to see it?"
"...Give it to me."
He snatched the tablet away.
Ross looked at the video the man had mentioned.
In the footage, Matthew stood in midair, dressed in a grey knit coat, Umbrella's tower rising behind him.
Below him stood a dense formation of fully armed Astartes.
They stood assembled in the plaza, radiating overwhelming presence.
Around the edge of the formation stood a dense crowd of New York City residents.
Held in their hands were anti-war signs.
In the video, Matthew hung there in midair, silent for a long moment.
His gaze swept slowly over the silent ranks of Astartes below, then over the exhausted crowd holding up their anti-war placards.
Across that enormous plaza, not a single voice rose.
Everyone stood with their heads tilted up, holding their breath, waiting for him to speak.
The cold wind stirred the hem of Matthew's coat, and swept across the countless faces below, before finally settling over a sky and streets already stained red with cannon fire.
Taking in the whole scene before him, Matthew slowly closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there wasn't a trace of hesitation left in them.
He began to speak, slowly.
There was something strangely magnetic in his voice.
"You fools who started this war—"
"Do you understand... the chaos and violence happening right now was never something I wanted."
"I never wanted my legion to attack anyone. But it was your own incompetence, your own greed, that betrayed the people and the world."
"You stole the blood, sweat, and victories that belonged to real heroes, and lied to the entire world about it."
"You dressed yourselves up as the righteous side, and in the end, turned around and did exactly the opposite."
"All to feed your own selfish ambitions, you dragged the world into war!"
"If your governments can't lead the people and the world toward something better, then I will."
"Let the war begin!"
"Let the continent burn!"
"Let all who betrayed the people fall from the sky!"
"Let every last opportunist who tries to steal the spoils of victory be smashed to pieces!"
"Even if it costs the last drop of my own blood!"
"My legion—"
"For the people—"
"Send them on their way!!!"
Watching the footage of that thundering, defiant speech, and the crowd rising to answer it as one, Ross's face went dark as a storm cloud.
He knew exactly who Matthew had meant by "opportunist."
His gaze shifted to the crowd around the edge of the formation in the footage.
Seeing that they too had been moved by Matthew's words, cheering in unison, the fury inside him finally became too much to hold back.
He hurled the tablet down onto the floor with a single furious slap.
"That manipulative son of a bitch!"
"That whole mob of ignorant sheep! Ungrateful mongrels! Spineless followers!"
Ross snapped his head up, turning his blood-red eyes on the subordinate who hadn't yet left the room. "Relay my order!"
"New York is already fully under Umbrella's control!"
"Activate the nuclear strike plan!"
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