As Tatehan walked to his room, members of the Red Crest Clan looked at him in disbelief.

They had surely watched his fall on the news; watched him fight Commander Cherak high above the city.

He wondered how the news drones had managed to record so high in the sky, capturing every moment of the battle, even when he'd summoned the Devastator Hand Cannon and fired point-blank into Cherak's chest.

When he thought about it more carefully, he realized that by the time he'd used the pistol and delivered those devastating punches, they were already halfway down. When Cherak had first grabbed him and jerked him upward, they'd climbed so high that Tatehan had almost been pulled out of Mars's atmosphere entirely. Up there, he could barely breathe, and the air was too thin for the drones to reach.

The drones had only caught the descent—the final, brutal moments of the fight.

Everyone watching had seen him fall. Even with his armor on, they'd seen his body react to the impact, the way he'd skidded across the crater before finally coming to a halt.

Most people thought he should be dead.

No sane human would have survived a fall like that. And while Cherak might have stood a chance: his ability to fly giving him some measure of control even in freefall, Tatehan shouldn't have walked away from it.

But he had.

Because of those punches.

The ones that killed Cherak..

ninety-five percent dead, maybe even one hundred percent...before the man even hit the ground. Without those strikes, Cherak would have recovered in the middle or the fall, activated his flight ability, and dragged Tatehan back into the sky where he'd have been helpless.

But Tatehan hadn't given him the chance.

Damn.

He'd become a monster in the sky.

This was the third person he'd killed in a face-to-face solo fight since arriving on Mars. 'Face-to-face and solo', because he'd killed a hell of a lot more than three people during the fortress assault. Up there, in the chaos of explosions and plasma fire, he'd lost count of how many enemies had fallen to his chakrams, his fists, his gravity manipulation.

He could only guess but he wasn't so sure and even with the guesses... he'd still be skeptical.

He didn't want to think about the numbers.

Now, as he walked through the corridors toward his quarters, Red Crest Clan members stared at him like he was a walking corpse. Some were soldiers who hadn't been part of the strike team. Others were survivors from the forty who'd gone up into the sky with him.

Tatehan winked at a few of them, smiling the whole way. Just a reassurance. Don't panic. I'm fine.

But as he looked at their faces, a flicker of sadness crept in.

Two faces were missing.

Dane. Kira.

The soldiers he'd spoken to the night before the mission. The ones he'd told not to be afraid. The ones whose deaths had sent him into a rage, turning him into a killing machine on that fortress platform.

Mars sure is a hellish place, he thought. He wasn't sure he'd ever made motivate anyone on this planet into doing anything again.

The Dane and Kira deaths left a slight trauma...

He had told them it was dangerous though.

A female member of the Red Crest Clan, one of the tech specialists who'd controlled the remote bombs, spotted him and froze, her eyes going wide.

It seemed like she had just seen some ghost.

She'd visited him three hours ago in the medical center, back when he'd been unconscious and hooked up to monitors. Then, he hadn't looked good. She'd been worried.

Now, seeing him walking without limping, a smile on his face, left her in complete shock.

"Sir," she called out, stepping toward him.

Tatehan stopped, his attention caught by her face. She was beautiful, stunning, really, with sharp features and dark eyes that seemed to cut right through him. Her fitted uniform didn't hide her curves, and Tatehan found himself momentarily distracted.

"How... how are you walking?" she asked, genuine concern in her voice. "You should still be in the medical room."

Tatehan smiled.

"I'm alright," he said. "It's nothing serious."

"Nothing serious?" she repeated, her tone incredulous. "You fell from the sky, sir. You fought a commander with super strength and flight. You—"

"And I won," Tatehan said simply, reaching out to pat her gently on the arm.

She didn't resist the gesture, though her expression remained troubled.

"We lost soldiers in that fortress," Tatehan continued, his tone more subdued now. "Real people died. People I led. People I motivated, told them we could do this. People who actually believed me."

He paused.

"They died. I'm no better than them."

She grimaced slightly, her brow furrowing.

"But you survived," she said quietly. "They died not wanting to. And now it looks like you want to do the opposite."

Tatehan met her eyes.

"I'm fine," he said firmly. "Really. I'm assuring you, I am fine."

He walked past her, and she just stood there, watching him go with a mixture of disbelief and worry.

As Tatehan continued down the corridor, he realized he'd forgotten to ask for her name. Or get her contact information so they could talk later.

He dismissed the thought as hormones talking.

Though... he was slowly starting to feel like he needed a girlfriend.

Lol.

The women he passed showed more empathy, asking how he was feeling, expressing genuine concern. But the men? They hailed him like a hero, calling him "BOSS!" and saying anyone who could pull off something that dangerous had to be a god.

But that wasn't the only reason they reacted that way.

After putting up what they considered an absolutely cinema-worthy fight against Cherak—stunning, engaging, brutal—he'd somehow survived a landing that should have reduced him to paste. Literally. A fall like that would crush and mangle bones, turn a human body into nothing but broken meat.

But Tatehan had survived.

And now, just four hours after the fall, he was walking past them with a smile on his face and a wink in his eye.

To the women, this was alarming. Deeply concerning. But to the men? It was like witnessing a god walking among them.

And truthfully, Tatehan's movements were fine. A bit stiff, though not noticeably so, but functional.

Finally, he reached his room, opened the door, and immediately headed for the shower. He washed off the dried blood and grime, brushed his teeth, and then collapsed onto his bed.

He decided not to jump onto the bed for the rest of the day. His body still ached in places, and the impact of landing with any force was painful.

He summoned a fantasy novel from his inventory, something about dragon slayers, and started reading. After nearly an hour, he'd gotten through about thirty percent of it. He unsummoned the book and just lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling.

His mind drifted back to the battle at the fortress.

To Cherak's words about the Obscuron. About how truly powerful that man was.

A notification from his system suddenly appeared across his vision, distracting his thoughts:

[Do you want to analyze the fall?]

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