Chapter 105 137: I, Apostle of the Emperor!

Surpassing the limitations of mortal flesh, Shinji used psychic power to capture the Angel's trail. From the very beginning, he had never intended to rely on sensors.

All databases were open to the Ireul; every terminal was under its control. From a scientific standpoint, there was no way out.

Then let us turn to the metaphysical. It was known that Angels were linked to the Negative Universe, drawing energy from there through their core and S² Engine. When the confrontation reached its limit, the Angel would frantically draw from the "Warp," creating a perpetual motion effect.

Nothing could win a war of attrition against an Angel because, with the Negative Universe at their back, their endurance was infinite. Yet precisely because of this, whether the Ireul was the size of a bacterium or as tiny as a micron, it still had to suck energy from the Negative Universe.

Shinji was looking for that rift. The more intense the struggle, the more obvious the rift became, and the more precise the localization.

"What do we do? All the sensors have been misled. One of the heat sources is right under my feet!"

Ritsuko Akagi cried out in a low voice. The Angel's core was at a micron level; if it couldn't be judged by thermal signatures, it simply couldn't be found.

"Continue. I have already found it."

'Huh? On what basis did you find it? That's unscientific.'

Ritsuko was about to retort immediately, but Misato Katsuragi grabbed her hand, her gaze resolute.

'Believing that Shinji-kun is omnipotent? Baseless sentimentality.'

Thinking this, Ritsuko took a breath anyway: "I can resist for 23 minutes at most. Otherwise, everyone get ready to go up in smoke."

"More than enough."

Boom!

Unit-01's hands tore open a rift, violently squeezing into the wall. It wasn't visible from the outside, but the corridors and pipelines within were covered in "creep," dyed almost entirely red.

'AT Field, deploy.'

The air distorted. The field erased the Angel and twisted the facility. Shinji dismantled his own home base without a shred of pity. His psychic energy passed through the armor plates, capturing the link point between the material universe and the Negative Universe.

It was indeed in the basement of Block B.

It was as expected, but after pulling up the map, he frowned again. The Ireul's instincts were powerful—its pursuit of evolution was absolute, and its desire for survival was no different. It had placed its core at the deepest point, in an area that was never designed to allow a colossus like an EVA to pass through.

'Force my hand to demolish 27% of headquarters; the reconstruction costs will be astronomical. This is acceptable, but there isn't enough time.'

With a quick look at the route map, Shinji had the calculation. He scanned the surroundings: shattered steel crushed by the AT Field was everywhere, and in the breaches hundreds of meters away, there was nothing but flickering red light.

Did you think an Astartes could only fight by piloting a giant robot? That you could rest easy just by blocking Unit-01?

Without a moment's hesitation, Shinji pulled the lever beneath his seat. The images in the cockpit vanished instantly.

"Unit-01, Entry Plug ejecting!"

"What? Has the Angel contaminated Unit-01?"

Misato's heart nearly stopped. Before she could check the vitals, she heard the boy's voice.

"From here on, I will execute the extermination mission personally. You all continue the battle."

"You're insane! We haven't ruled out the possibility of the Angel infecting a human body! Plus, Block B is filled with automated defense fire, and all the blast doors have been lowered!"

Ritsuko found it incomprehensible. This was too reckless. Fighting an Angel while piloting an EVA was one thing; fighting an Angel with one's bare flesh was an entirely different matter.

This was courage beyond human understanding. The key was: how would he get in? The entirety of Block B was contaminated. If it were that simple, wouldn't it have been better for them to just send in a Special Response Team?

There was no answer. Ritsuko bit her lip, Misato clutched the cross at her chest, and Gendo Ikari stood up with a darkened face.

"Terminate the operation. Prioritize the survival of the Third Child. Security Department, send out a Special Response Team immediately."

He was genuinely nervous. He had never imagined the boy would be so ferocious. Who would ever face an Angel with their physical body? Even a madman wouldn't go that far.

Ttap, ttap, ttap.

The sound of rapid footsteps echoed in the deathly silent corridor. Shinji sprinted toward the deepest depths, his expression devoid of any tension. No—to be precise, he was quite nostalgic.

This was the type of combat an Astartes excelled at. Piloting a "Titan" was more the business of the Knight Houses. When the flesh faces the enemy directly, the only feedback is exhilaration.

"A pity I couldn't bring back my body and power armor. Otherwise, I could cover this distance in two minutes."

Shinji stepped across the flickering floor. Since the Ireul was bacterial, there was no strange tactile sensation, but the entire area was contaminated. There were no lights; the area was illuminated only by that breathing-like flicker, making everything look extremely eerie.

Fortunately, he was completely immune to horror effects. Looking at the electronic map in his mind, he ran downward along the shortest path. As for those completely sealed blast doors—

They would be a nuisance for Astartes of other Chapters, requiring heavy firepower for breach. But for a Blood Raven, picking locks was practically an instinct.

Shhh.

Before he even reached them, the red electronic lights turned green. The half-meter-thick alloy doors unlocked directly, as if welcoming a master home. His progress was unhindered.

"It's only right that you can't understand it."

Shinji saw the flickering red light grow more rapid, as if the Ireul were thinking.

'Remote control has been cut—how are these doors opening automatically? No contingency plan included a human approaching proactively; what interception protocol should be adopted?'

"Shinji, be careful! The speed of the Ireul's intrusion into MAGI has slowed down; it must be focusing more of its energy on you. Come back now—we still have Ritsuko's plan."

"Received."

Shinji answered calmly. Once an Astartes initiates a charge, they do not retreat. "It has some brains, at least. It knows the greatest threat isn't Ritsuko Akagi, nor the EVAs, but me."

The ceiling ahead suddenly split open, and several sentry turrets dropped down. With its infinite computing power, they locked onto Shinji's head in an instant.

Rat-tat-tat-tat...

Bullets poured down like a storm. However, at the very moment they fired, Shinji ducked and rolled. A series of metallic clangs echoed behind his head.

Psychic pre-reading.

Psychic power against a biological computer; metaphysics against science. No matter how much computing power you have, or what "auto-aim" cheats you use, I can foresee what will happen one second from now. You can't even touch the hem of my clothes.

Sparks flew. The boy leaped and closed the distance like an acrobat. No matter how the sentry turrets predicted his movement or calculated the lead, it was useless. In just a few seconds, Shinji had slipped into the blind spot, and the obstructing blast door opened automatically.

Charging while dodging, without wasting a single second—this caused the Ireul's CPU to overload directly. It had obtained most of the data from NERV's database; it could be said to understand humans better than humans understood themselves.

'Is this thing still human? A six-barrel cannon plus supercomputer-assisted aiming can't stop him? The cyborg experiments in the database weren't this exaggerated! And all the defense doors are locked—how are they opening automatically?'

"Angel heat levels rising!"

"What? Its attack on Rei and the others has slowed, and its erosion of MAGI has slowed—how is it still overloading?"

Ritsuko was equally baffled. Had Shinji really just charged in? Fortunately, she didn't just stand there thinking.

"Go on the offensive! Fight for control of MAGI! The Angel has no true wisdom; it won't give up the prize in its mouth. Have Rei and Asuka push back too—redline its processing power!"

Only humans understand the concept of sacrifice. The Angel would only be pulled apart by these three fronts simultaneously, causing its biological CPU to overload.

"Well done. The link point is getting clearer and clearer."

Shinji looked ahead. The Angel had activated all of Block B's defense mechanisms. He even saw several treaded unmanned combat robots—all prepared by NERV to defend against enemy intrusion.

Facing steel with flesh is a death wish—except for an Astartes.

With a surge in his gut, a high-explosive shell missed his body and slammed into the corridor. Amidst the boom of the explosion, psychic energy pinned him to the wall. He charged at a vertical angle, then reached out his hand.

Stasis.

Several rockets with long trails froze in mid-air. With a flick of his finger, they turned around. With several loud bangs, the drones were blown into a floor of scrap metal. The billowing black smoke was instantly pierced by the youth.

Shinji lunged forward. Before the sentry guns behind him could aim, they were sliced in two by a bolt of pale lightning. Holding this psychic lightning in his hand, Shinji tore apart every defense in his path.

Unmanned machines, sentry turrets, timed explosives—all were physically erased. The warrior's advancing speed barely even slowed.

Unstoppable. Completely unstoppable. The rapid "breathing" turned the entire corridor blood-red. No matter how much the Angel learned from the database, it could not comprehend the scene unfolding before it.

Someone was truly crushing steel with their bare flesh. The defense machines NERV spent a fortune on were being torn to pieces like toys. Shinji didn't expect this mindless xenos to understand.

'Emperor be praised, it's a good thing I brought back my psychic powers.'

This was far from his peak. The destructive power of a truly powerful psyker was not inferior to that of an Angel.

The final door unlocked, and the fluid sealed within surged out. White smoke rose from the crimson corridor, filled with toxic substances. The Ireul calculated quickly; it had already evolved a way to directly harm the human body.

"A deathbed struggle."

The surging torrent failed to wash Shinji away. His pupils seemed to burn, and a shield like an AT Field blocked all attacks, allowing him to advance against the current.

His speed slowed slightly, but his pace remained firm. Ahead were long ripples formed by countless bullets firing into the water. In this human dead zone, he walked step by step back into the control room.

Before him was the long-shattered tempered glass. In the distance, a large mass of golden Simulation Body wreckage floated in the pool. The Ireul's computing power had reached its limit, yet it still didn't understand how a human could break through all its defenses and arrive accurately before its main body.

What complex plans, what terrifying calculations, what fearsome evolution.

"You have some brains, but who do you think you are facing?"

Shinji locked onto a giant floating arm. Even disregarding everything else, destroying a piece of flesh this large would normally require a bombardment from heavy cannons of 125mm or more.

His gaze was like a torch. Amidst this mass of matter measured in bacteria, he found a certain spot. It was hidden beneath the skin, showing how powerful its survival instinct was.

Raising his hand, psychic energy gathered in his palm into a spear. He even sensed the Angel's attempt to "communicate," but it was all for naught. The psychic spear ignored the resistance of the water, piercing accurately into the Angel's core—no larger than a cell nucleus.

Boom!

A brilliant light illuminated the entire pool. Golden light splattered in all directions, like magnificent fireworks.

Amidst the boiling pool, the Angel saw the youth leaning forward. Under his gaze, the endless data finally told it the answer.

Humanity was no match for it, let alone capable of reaching this place. But an Apostle of the Emperor—

Was not among them.

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