Chapter 267: Colonel? Even God Would Have to Die
"Okay, we have trouble."
Seeing this, Neagley licked her lips without realizing it. Although she said those words, she had no intention of retreating.
Bang!
Neagley charged in just as recklessly as Reacher, only to be sent flying backward and nearly crash into the soldiers behind her.
Fortunately, the soldiers' reactions and speed were fast enough to avoid being dragged into the impact.
What followed was a completely one-sided display of dominance.
Matthew transformed into a red-black demon. Surrounded by more than a thousand soldiers, he used the purest form of violence to send them flying one after another.
Every punch was wrapped in Conqueror's Haki coating.
The soldiers could not withstand even a single punch—not even if they blocked.
Yet no matter who it was, after being sent flying, they would always climb back to their feet, grit their teeth, and charge at Matthew again.
The battle lasted a full hour.
By the end, soldiers who had already lost consciousness lay scattered across the battlefield, resting inside craters of all sizes. Not a single one remained standing.
Except Matthew.
Matthew stood where he was and looked left and right. In the truest sense, everyone had been beaten into one pile. Quite a few soldiers were even stacked on top of each other, creating a deeply philosophical scene.
He twisted his neck. This counted as nothing more than a small warm-up.
The main reason was that his progress had been too fast. Reacher and the others were already growing at an absurd speed, but compared with him, they were still far behind.
Matthew had never been injected with serum. Big Mom's monstrous talent had already been fully unearthed by him, and on top of that, he had never stopped training, fighting, and developing the three types of Haki he had awakened. There was also his accumulation of magical knowledge.
All of these factors combined, causing his life level to improve every minute and every second. After all, life level was not only about the body—it also included the soul.
Take the Ancient One, for example. Her physical strength could not compare to any soldier from the three Warbands, yet her life level still stood at the T1 rank among Skyfathers because her power leaned toward the soul.
Matthew, however, combined both sides.
Another factor was Haki. In the world of One Piece, Haki was also a power driven by will.
Dark King Rayleigh had once said that the stronger one's belief, the stronger the power.
That was not an empty statement. The entire journey of the main cast proved those words again and again.
When belief gradually grew stronger, that strength would slowly show itself. That was why the main cast could go from small-time thieves in the East Blue to possessing the power of an Emperor's crew in just a few years.
Every time, the main cast shouted about companions, family, bonds, and things like that—and their strength shot up rapidly.
Getting back up again and again in battle, breaking through in the middle of a fight, had basically become normal.
It looked abstract, but in truth, it could also be considered a kind of rule.
Matthew had inherited that rule as well.
So his growth speed was just as unreasonable. From beginning to end, Matthew's belief had only been one thing—
Become stronger and surpass.
Surpass Professor X and Magneto on Earth. Surpass Thanos. Surpass Mephisto. Surpass the Ancient One. Surpass Odin. Surpass Dormammu. Surpass the four great abstract gods.
During this process, he established Terra and took in Reacher and the others.
There was protection mixed into all of this, but that protection was more like a duty, and a kind of mercy toward ordinary people.
His true belief had always been to grow stronger and surpass.
Matthew's belief was far too vast.
But the confidence brought by the system and by himself allowed him to step on his own left foot with his right foot and spiral straight into the sky. His belief was firm to the point of bursting.
So Reacher and the others improved quickly, but Matthew improved even faster.
Matthew was confident that even if the system's future sign-in rewards could no longer provide him with any real help, he could still rely on the resources and talents he currently possessed to surpass them one by one.
Matthew snapped his fingers, and the Mirror Dimension quietly shattered, returning everyone to reality.
This was the South Pacific island base. Although Terra had been established, the base had not been abandoned. It remained the training ground for the first batch of Warbands.
The logistics staff who had long been waiting on the island calmly loaded Reacher and the others lying on the ground into transport vehicles and carried them away.
They would be sent to the medical department for treatment.
Matthew did not use healing dandelions. Instead, he treated them through pure technological medicine. The repair process itself was also a process of growth.
Feel the pain, and draw strength from it.
Matthew was about to leave when he received news that a mutant transport plane had nearly been deliberately destroyed.
Someone had actually chosen this moment to cause trouble.
This was a direct provocation against Terra—and against Matthew himself.
…
Airport.
Nova received the exact information. Through the inspection of the Boeing aircraft, she obtained the situation inside the cockpit at the time.
After connecting with the Information Hub and matching it with the recorded conversation between the captain and copilot, they confirmed that the copilot was innocent.
So Nova asked Chevat, the Grey Knight, to read the captain's memories.
How could an ordinary person's mental power compare to that of Chevat, a full Grey Knights battle-brother? He soon obtained the man's memories.
From the captain's memories, they quickly found a crucial clue.
And that clue pointed directly to one person.
William Stryker.
When Nova received this information from Chevat, surprise appeared on her face.
"William Stryker?"
She immediately pulled William Stryker's file from the Information Department, and it was extremely detailed.
From his birth to the recent incident where the X-Men breached his Alkali Lake dam base in Canada, exposing his experimental data and nearly sending him to a military tribunal.
Fortunately for him, because of the people and connections backing him, he avoided trial. But fearing Professor X and the X-Men's later pursuit, he hid away like a rat in the sewers.
An old relic of the past actually had the nerve to carry out this incident.
If his plan had truly succeeded, all the mutants aboard that Boeing aircraft would have crashed and died inside American territory. That could easily have caused a dispute between America and Terra.
It might even have brought Terra's accountability down on America.
In the past, who would have believed someone could hold the American government accountable?
But times had changed.
In people's common understanding, America might still be the strongest country, but Terra had already gone beyond the concept of a human nation.
Even America could not stand against Terra.
If Terra chose to go to war with America, everyone believed the one destroyed in the end would be America, not Terra.
Clearly, this matter was no longer something Nova could handle.
It had nothing to do with her current duties.
So Nova compiled the investigation results and reported them upward.
For other countries, anything involving a former American military colonel would definitely become a political and diplomatic incident, followed by negotiations and endless back-and-forth.
But Terra did not care about that.
A colonel?
Even if God Himself came, He would be dragged before the Terran Inquisition for trial.
Shortly thereafter, a formal message was dispatched from Terra straight to the President's desk in the White House.
Meanwhile, Chevat set off.
...
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