Ch.175175. Humanity’s Royal Guard

“Oh, this one’s good. I definitely made the right choice creating this.”

I—we were smiling contentedly as we watched the newly born Old Hero, Ray Chang.

Some might say we’re mocking this Old Hero who is merely a puppet in our self-created drama, but that’s far from the truth.

Why would I, who am undeniably the “God of Humanity,” dislike these Old Heroes in the first place?

During war situations like monster invasions, conflicts with alien species, or internal rebellions, or during massive disasters, I—we separate a part of myself to observe the scene.

Among the diverse human figures who struggle, die ugly deaths, or move according to their own desires in that chaotic mess… somehow, brilliantly shining humans always appear.

Like Ray Chang earlier, there are those who bravely fight against overwhelmingly powerful enemies, those who face opponents despite clear disadvantages, or those seeking revenge for their comrades.

Some take fatal blows in place of their companions, and even beyond combat situations—the battlefield reveals all kinds of people.

A mother supporting debris many times her weight to protect her child after an earthquake.

A firefighter who rushes into a burning building to save thirty civilians, heroically perishing in the flames.

A citizen who pushes someone out of the way of an oncoming dump truck only to be hit instead, a medic who personally carries hundreds of wounded from the battlefield to safety.

A major who deliberately overloads his psychic powers to perish alongside a strategic point about to fall, and countless other great heroes.

After these heroes accomplish their heroic deeds at the cost of their most precious possession—their lives—I—we collect their souls separately and confine them in a specially created space within the psychic dimension.

In this darkness-covered space that blurs self-awareness and focuses all senses in one direction, the heroes’ souls are given freedom to choose.

Eternal rest, or continuing to fight forever.

If a soul chooses eternal rest, it undergoes an elimination procedure like other souls under my—our management, then gets recycled for monster control or sent back into the cycle of reincarnation.

But if they choose the endless fight, I—we honor that noble spirit by appearing before them directly—

The shock of directly witnessing me typically causes GRS (God Reality Shock), leaving the soul nearly shattered. I collect these damaged souls and begin the reconstruction process.

During the restoration of the broken soul, I erase or distort unnecessary memories, remove negative aspects of the personality, and simultaneously inject my—our power throughout the soul during processing.

The soul becomes subordinate to me, waiting in the isolated space created from a part of the hive mind for Old Heroes, ready to appear in the galaxy according to my will.

As a precaution, they can only perceive what I want them to see with my power. So their essence is… no matter how you dress it up, they’re just psychic entities based on human souls that move according to my will.

These are noble yet contradictory heroes who believe they act of their own will while actually moving only by mine—working as subordinates of humanity’s greatest threat and nemesis in order to save humanity.

This is how Old Heroes are created.

Meanwhile, though extremely rare, sometimes souls appear who succeed in their sanity check or endure when seeing my “God of Humanity” form.

This tendency often appears among upper-tier intermediate psychic users or advanced psychic users.

For these strong souls, I—we take special measures directly.

First, I—we withdraw from them temporarily, put the soul to sleep, then carefully wrap the sleeping soul in darkness and transport it to a designated location.

To the Soul Forge, formed in one corner of the psychic dimension.

As the name suggests, souls wrapped in darkness that arrive at this special soul processing place are entrusted to the hands of the Fire Dragon Vulcania, the forge’s manager.

All subsequent work on the soul is personally conducted by Fire Dragon Vulcania, step by step.

The first procedure is cleansing.

Since darkness inevitably clings to the soul during the wrapping process, this step washes away that darkness and minor spiritual contamination.

The cleansing place is called the Waterfall of Oblivion. The soul is thoroughly cleansed by the liquid-energy pouring from this waterfall—as vast to a soul as Niagara Falls—and then neatly arranged by Vulcania’s hands.

The liquid energy that clung during cleansing is wiped away, impurities attached to the soul are directly removed, and a completely clean soul is completed.

This completed soul now melts under Vulcania’s hot breath in the furnace—the crown jewel of the Soul Forge.

Individually packaged to prevent mixing with other souls, all elements such as memories from life melt away, harmonize, and return to their essence during this process.

What remains is a mass where pure soul—the essence of all souls—and memory residue have melted and mixed together.

Once this happens, Vulcania begins the final procedure in the forge: tempering.

The melted mass is cleansed in the Waterfall of Oblivion to wash away residual memories and records, then melted again to filter out remaining impurities.

After repeating this process dozens to hundreds of times, what ultimately remains is the pure essence of the soul.

And not just any soul—the essence of a strong soul that didn’t break even when facing a god.

The primordial state before birth. From a Buddhist perspective, it’s essentially a soul essence forced into enlightenment through external intervention.

This essence is handed directly to me—us, and only needs sublimation to be complete.

I take the residue from the tempering process, break it down and restore it, creating a spiritual body using elements like absolute obedience to me—us and divine capabilities as adhesive, then inject the essence.

Thus, a psychic entity is completed that uses the soul’s essence as its power source and moves according to principles formed from its past memories and what I’ve injected.

These psychic entities, transplanted into specially crafted custom high-grade monster bodies, become my new royal guard resurrected from the past.

The “Royal Guard of Humanity.”

※ ※ ※

Anyway, the Royal Guard of Humanity, completed through this complex process, performs secret missions throughout the galaxy in place of me—us who cannot move directly.

Outwardly appearing as humans who’ve simply bulked up through common enhancement procedures, they avoid detection during various covert operations, and they possess several characteristics that make them perfectly suited for my use.

They have self-awareness allowing them to respond organically in various situations, while being more strongly subordinated to me than other monsters—their thinking is similar to, if not the same as, mine—ours.

Of course, they each maintain unique personalities and preferences, and even retain memories from their past lives—but these don’t influence their judgment.

Therefore, they can infiltrate anywhere except positions requiring genetic testing—such as Federal Army officers and various public offices—and carry out covert operations to advance my plans.

Honestly, without the Royal Guard, all I could probably do would be to forcibly unlock our entire galaxy through sheer power.

Anyway, while appropriately deploying these completed Old Heroes and Royal Guards…

“Hmm… isn’t this much lower than the expected value?”

I—we were somewhat dissatisfied that the intensity of automatic terraforming through imaginary psychic implementation—which could be considered the passive ability of the newly created monsters—was weaker than imagined.

The psychic intensity applied to inanimate objects with no anomalies is surprisingly strong, but the critical problem is that there are several fatal flaws that prevent it from being applied as is.

Living organisms have too much resistance to this psychic power, and even objects can gain resistance through minor countermeasures.

Above all, the irregular reaction speed of the psychic power caused me—us to contemplate:

“Should I really scrap this?”

I wondered if it might be better to boldly give up rather than cling to the sunk cost of resources spent producing the monsters.