Lord of Annihilation

"Keep your heads close to the ground. You don't want your worthless heads to be blown off do ya?" Hartman bellowed.

The squad replied in affirmation and crouched their bodies lower. 

After hearing Zaine's idea and receiving the Captain's approval, the squad immediately moved into action. Leaving their safe haven behind the half-collapsed wall, they started to move towards the interiors of the Main Hanger.

Zaine's idea was simple- It was to blow the airlock of the Main Hanger.

"Look around, do you see anybody alive other than us?" 

"By blowing the airlock prematurely, we can catch those bastards off-guard and deal a serious blow. It's going to be breached sooner or later, so we might as well take initiative to fu*k things up." This was Hartman's explanation.

Blowing the airlock would depressurize the Main Hanger, sucking everything that was on the inside and flinging it into outer space. 

With the invaders standing on the other side of the door, these heavy armaments would serve as the perfect ammunition to deal a significant blow.

To blow the airlock there existed two different ways. One was to manually pull a lever that was positioned next to the large hangar doors, while the other was the push a button in the control room.

Considering their current situation, the first option of unviable without the use of spacesuits. As such, their current object was to get to the control room.

Normally, this would take them less than a minute to achieve, even less if soul power was used. However, with the mess that they were currently in, all direct paths were blocked.

"Move, move, move. My dead grandmother could move quicker than you maggots in her coffin! God bless her soul!" Hartman kept insisting.

Zaine, who was on his fours crawling across the floor was positioned just behind Hartman at the front. His eyes scanned their surroundings and nervousness kept building within his heart.

'So many pools of blood!' Zaine felt vomit rise up within his throat, as he looked at the smashed pieces of flesh and organs floating within the pools of blood.

"Get a hold of yourself, soldier!" Hartman echoed. He had caught sight of Zaine's unnaturally pale face and understood what was happening.

"Remember your current feelings and suppress them within your heart. When you face those bastards, let it all out! The wrath of your dead comrades will flow through you!"

"Dying isn't scary! But dying in vain is!"

"Do you understand?!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" Zaine yelled. He felt a little better after Hartman's speech.

"Then keep moving!" 

Silence returned and the squad continued to crawl towards their destination. The situation was still perilous with broken pieces of metal and glass flying through the air, the roof of the hanger collapsing in places, and the continued rolling and sliding of the unbelted machines of war.

The continuous shaking of the vessel only served to make the situation all the worse. Just as they were about to pass through a collapsed spaceship, a sudden explosion ensued.

BOOM!

"Halt!" Hartman immediately ordered. Seeing the structure around him shaking and being on the verge of collapse, he quickly instructed: "Quick! Roll and evade, get your asses to the nearest cover!"

None of the other squadmates disobeyed and immediately complied. Each of them fell onto their stomachs and quickly rolled towards the nearest cover. 

Barely a second had passed, when another series of explosions ensued. 

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Similar to a row of fireworks being lit up, the spaceship and the surrounding machines blew up, spreading carnage and heat. 

Zaine who was hiding behind a broken mech unit could feel the top of his hair singe. His ears had also started to ring from the loudness of the explosion.

After what seemed like an eternity, he could feel the heat dissipate and the ringing within his ears stop. Peeking his head out, he checked to see if the other members of the unit were okay. 

"Report!" Hartman's gruffly voice sounded.

"Felix, here!" "Hawk, here!" "Ro-rose, here!" "Four-eyes, here!"

One by one, the voices of his squadmates began to sound. Zaine swallowed a mouthful of saliva and replied with a dry tone.

"Zaine, here!"

"Diaz! Snowball?!" Hartman echoed. There was no reply.

"I-I-I had seen them move over there!" Rosa stuttered while pointing towards a certain spot. The Captain and the rest looked over, only to find flaming debris and some charred remains.

Zaine's eyes became blurry, as he turned his head towards the side and refused to look at that location. The other squad members' reactions were also similar.

The atmosphere became grim, as everyone grew silent.

"…no-no. This can't be happening." Rosa started to mumble beneath her breath..

In a low voice, Hartman spoke: "Open your eyes and look. There is no point in evading this sight. Look closely!"

"This is the cruelty of war." He did not speak further.

Zaine's heart grew heavy. His mind recalled the faces of his two recently demised comrades.

Diaz. He was a soft-spoken guy, who always wore a foolish-looking grin on his face. He was a senior-soldier and the person who showed Zaine around when he had first arrived here.

'See this picture here, that's my daughter. She just turned 6 years old this week. She looks like an angel doesn't she?' Diaz bragged while wearing a foolish-looking grin.

'No!' Zaine's fist tightened and his fingernails sunk into his skin. A trail of tears fell from his eyes, as he recalled his interactions with this reclusive but honest senior.

Felix on the other hand also felt an unspeakable amount of grief. His mind recalled the scenes of his bunkmate, Snowball. The fat, adorable-looking guy who loved to eat and procrastinate.

'If Captain catches you sneaking food into the quarter, he'll kick your ass.' Felix smirked

'Well, then he'd have a lot of ass to kick. I'm sure Captain enjoys doing it too.' Snowball blinked his large, black eyes and turned around to shake his butt. Both of them then fell into a fit of laughter.

"AH!!!" Felix opened his mouth and howled. His soul power started to run amok due to his fluctuating emotional state. 

"Control yourself!" Hartman immediately screamed. He neared Felix and furiously shouted: "Are ya' going to lose control, over a single death?!"

"But sir! He was my friend!" Felix retorted.

"You think you're the only person to lose a friend! Look around, maggot! All of the people here were once our comrades! Open your eyes and look closely!" Hartman thundered while pointing to the pools of blood surrounding them.

"Stop being a sissy! You're angry, yes. And you have every right to be!"

"But instead of crying and complaining channel that anger to kill the ones that caused this!"

"Now wake up and start moving!" 

"SIR, YES, SIR!" Felix screamed through his cries. 

Zaine, Rosa, Hawk, and the other survivors also wiped their tears and yelled: "SIR, YES, SIR!"

"Better! Hawk, get over here!" Hartman instructed.

"Use that ability of yours and find us an alternate path through this mess. We don't have much time!" 

"Yes, sir!" Hawk did not waste time and immediately started his work. Closing his eyes, he channeled his soul power and activated the ability of his soul. [Sharpshooter]

'[Eagle Eyes]!' Hawk suddenly saw the scene before his eyes change. The originally dark scene quickly moved to show a panoramic scene of the ground from the sky.

From his vision, Hawk could see himself, his squadmates, the various objects obstructing their path, and the control room that was some distance towards the east. 

He had done this exact same thing, a few minutes ago before the squad started their trek through his crumbling battlefield. 

He quickly started to note down the various paths in his head and plotted the most optimal route to the control room. Having finished, he canceled [Eagle Eyes] and felt his vision be restored to normal.

Opening his tightly shut eyes, Hawk felt dizzy as he could feel his soul power rapidly drop by almost half. Due to his control over soul power being largely unpolished, Hawk wasted a lot of it while activating his ability. 

He would sometimes fail to properly activate his soul power which would then result in a terrible backlash, the worst of which was losing his consciousness.

Actually, this was the case with most of the awakened humans. While they had received a great amount of power, they were still unable to properly use it. This made the use of soul power and their abilities, something of a trump card between the humans and not something that was commonly used. 

Most of them were even unaware of the physical boost that soul power gave, by simply having it revolve around their bodies. This resulted in awakened humans be not much different from the regular humans, greatly underestimating their potential.

"Did ya' draw up a path?" Hartman asked.

Nodding his head, Hawk then crouched on the ground and drew a simple map, on the soot-covered floor. 

"There is a slight problem over here in the form of a tumbling mech. If we can move it out of the way, the rest of the path will be unobstructed." He concluded.

Hartman thought for a few seconds before nodding his head, "This will do. Let's get moving, we don't have a lot of time left before those bastards break-in!"