42: Chapter 42 Stella!

Boom!!!

An arrow shimmering with intense green light, like a brilliant meteor flowing upstream, dragging a long tail, collided fiercely with that pure white holy spear light cannon that was destroying the heavens and the earth!

There was no loud explosion, only the extreme silence of a great sound.

In the VR horizon where players across the network were blinded by this light, that meteor shot by a one-star Archer actually held back the light of judgment sent down by the gods in mid-air!

Green stars and white light pillars raged and annihilated each other above the firmament!

The entire night was illuminated as if it were day!

That light not only dispelled the shadow of death, but also drew a magnificent arc of hope over the desperate singularity!

"Blocked, it... it blocked it?!"

PD widened his eyes, staring fixedly at the two terrifying forces in the sky that refused to give way.

The barrage in the Shark Stream Room was also filled with gasps:

"Holy crap! Is this really a special effect that a one-star card can produce?!"

"This is ten thousand times more spectacular than a five-star Excalibur! One person going head-to-head against a god's light cannon?!"

"So hype! This chant gave me goosebumps all over!"

"Great Hero! Push it back! Wake up that high and mighty god!"

Amidst the shouts of millions of players...

With the explosion of the last bit of green light, that arrogant holy spear light cannon was finally completely neutralized and offset in the sky, turning into a sky full of light rain, sprinkling down on the safe village.

"We won! It really blocked it!"

PD waved his fists excitedly, ready to hype up this low-star war god he had long neglected in the stream.

However, in the sky, the green light completely dissipated.

On the tactical sandbox, that figure in the green cloak was gone.

A breeze blew over the charred sand, leaving only a broken longbow slowly falling from mid-air.

"Where is he? Where did Arash go?"

PD was stunned. He hurriedly lowered the viewpoint, searching the map for the man who always wore a hearty smile.

Just then, the system's emotionless, cold notification sound suddenly rang out in the stream, like a heavy hammer, smashing into everyone's hearts.

[Noble Phantasm release complete.]

[Servant spirit base has reached the limit of collapse.]

PD instinctively looked down at his list of deployable Servants at the bottom of the screen.

There, the card portrait of the [Arash] story support Servant, which should have been in the dark red "cooldown" state, waiting for the bar to fill up to be deployed again.

But at this moment, the card was covered with dense cracks.

"Crack..."

In the horrified eyes of PD and tens of thousands of viewers, that card representing Arash actually shattered into countless golden ashes right in front of everyone's eyes, disappearing... from the system's UI interface!

Immediately after, a blood-red system prompt popped up:

[Servant: Arash, confirmed dead.]

[Permanently unavailable for deployment in this chapter's campaign.]

Dead silence.

The stream, which had just been cheering, fell into a silence so deep one could hear heartbeats in this second.

PD stared blankly at the empty gap in the team list, his mind blank.

"Shattered... it shattered?"

He muttered to himself, his voice trembling uncontrollably, "He... he is real... really dead?"

In previous game levels, any Servant who ran out of HP would just enter a "re-deployment cooldown" for a few dozen seconds; as long as the time was up, they would be a good man again.

Players had never imagined that a game would combine "plot sacrifice" with "underlying UI mechanics" so cruelly and so realistically!

"So that phrase 'the arrow that can only be shot when facing a desperate situation' cost his life..."

"He overdrawn his entire spirit base and used his own life to block the god's strike for us..."

The plot continued.

In the village that survived the disaster, the refugees looked at the light rain falling from the sky, knelt on the ground one after another, and wept with joy.

Mash held up her shield, looking at the broken longbow on the ground, tears falling in big drops.

And in the real world, in the Shark Stream Room, the rich guy PD, who usually bragged endlessly and didn't blink when spending a hundred thousand, was now like a fat bear whose spine had been pulled out, slumped blankly on the large gaming chair, his eye sockets already flushed red.

To hide his embarrassment in front of his viewers, he forced a smile that was uglier than crying, his hands trembling slightly as he took out a cigarette from the table and lit it with a lighter.

"Sigh... what's the big deal. Brothers, don't panic, it's just a one-star paper NPC..."

PD muttered while pretending to be calm, stuffing the cigarette into his mouth, wanting to take a deep puff to suppress the choking in his voice.

"Dead is dead, at worst I'll just go to the friend point gacha and pull ten thousand more..."

However, at the very moment the cigarette butt touched his lips.

"Sssss —!"

"Ow ow ow ow ow!!! Hot hot hot hot hot!!!"

PD, who was pretending to be indifferent a second ago, let out a shrill, pig-slaughtering scream, jumping up directly from the gaming chair, clutching his mouth and jumping around wildly in front of the camera, tears instantly bursting forth from the piercing, burning pain!

In his daze, PD didn't pay attention and held the cigarette backwards! He stuffed the burning end directly into his mouth!

This scene, which was absurd to the extreme, did not cause the usual laughter in the stream.

Instead, it turned the regret already suppressed in everyone's hearts into even deeper grief.

Because all the viewers across the network understood how chaotic this knowledgeable tycoon's heart was at this moment.

"Teacher P, your cigarette... is backwards..."

"Wooo... don't pretend anymore, Boss P, if you want to cry, just cry out loud, you can't even tell the difference between the filter and the burning end!"

And on the other end of the platform, in the stream room of the plot-focused streamer "A-Dai", there wasn't even this kind of "reverse smoking" cover-up; it had long since become an ocean of tears.

As a sensitive girl, the moment A-Dai saw the Great Hero turn back and smile, and the subsequent shattering of the card, her psychological defense completely collapsed.

"Wooo... Great Hero... My Great Hero..."

A-Dai lay on the computer desk, sobbing uncontrollably.

"He smiled and told us not to show expressions of despair, while he went to die himself!"

"What kind of game does this kind of knife-twisting? Even the card is shattered, I can never see him again!"

Not only A-Dai and PD, but the entire Youxing Network forums and major game communication groups were completely submerged in tears and shock this night.

"I'm broken, brothers, my heart skipped a beat when the card shattered."

"Too ruthless! Father Gu is twisting the knife this time, not just in the plot, but right in your game UI! Letting you truly feel that you have lost him forever!"

"What five-star daddy, what damage ceiling, tonight, there is only one god, and his name is Arash!"

"He smiled and told us not to show expressions of despair, he smiled and faced the inevitable end. This is a true hero!"

Within just a few short hours.

#Praise Stella#, #Return My Great Hero#, #PD Reverse Smoking# — these hashtags occupied the top ten trending searches on all social media in Blue Star at rocket speed!

Even many passersby who had never played the game, after clicking on these trending searches and seeing that "Meteor Shower" that shocked the firmament and the world-famous painting of PD burning his mouth, couldn't help but redden their eyes.

On this night, the players of Blue Star finally understood one thing thoroughly.

Even if life is as short as a meteor, even if it is destined to dissipate in the dust of history.

That brilliance of voluntary sacrifice to protect the weak is enough to split the deepest despair and illuminate this land abandoned by the gods!

The hymn of humanity is the hymn of courage!

This is the most soul-stirring spiritual core under the grand narrative of "FGO".