Chapter 581 - 552: The Button of Destruction

(This Chapter’s content involves the protagonist’s world and is entirely referenced from post-apocalyptic alternate reality settings like "Radiation," emphasizing again as usual: the content in the text has nothing to do with reality, and is not related to reality at all. This can be seen from the fact that the author was criticized for lack of common sense from the very first Chapter, as it is indeed pure fantasy, not even understanding basic physics, so please do not associate it with anything else.)

A grand human conflict took place, its scale far surpassing that of the Third World War that people had once imagined.

After all, the worst thing people had imagined was a Fourth World War fought with stones, yet the war that occurred in Lille’s memory had nearly flattened all the space above ground.

People could still find stones, but these stones were basically imbued with lethal amounts of radiation.

The primitive people didn’t know how to use this radiation; if they lost technology, they might just have to wait for some species of cockroach to evolve radiation resistance, otherwise the surface was no longer fit for biological life.

But war did not begin with the launch of the final use of around a million nuclear weapons—

In the beginning, people first contained each other’s trade, causing economic damage to the area, and as the situation worsened, restrictions on imports and exports turned into a complete halt in trade.

When goods couldn’t cross national borders, weapons began to do so.

"...This is a dream, I need to stress that,"

Lille paused here.

Martin nodded lightly: after all, he had his own kind of strange, inexplicable film energy as evidence.

More importantly, he could feel that Lille wasn’t fooling him: Deception was an action that could easily induce a sense of right and wrong, and it was easy for him to discern.

"Weapons crossed national borders, but just like in the early days of the complete trade blockade..."

War started from border disputes, small countries saw the opportunity in the conflict, seizing the weapons they couldn’t make themselves to fight desperately, and some could only watch in despair as their homelands became battlefields—

There were many places in the world without their own armies, but many military bases that didn’t belong to the citizens.

Small-scale military conflicts initially caused concern, but then the long passage of time diluted the initial worries.

Until some declining giants stepped into the children’s playground, people looked with increasing concern at entities with military forces of different dimensions forming alliances, small-scale "riot control" turning into full-scale war, with smoke rising in the air, the oceans and the land, high-tech weapons appearing on the battlefield.

Subsequently, people began to threaten each other with the nuclear weapons they had at hand.

But as with all the previous stages of change, the initial worries turned into fear over time, and eventually into terror...

However, these emotions too dissipated as time stretched on.

But in reality, things were steadily getting worse, with economic recession, massive unemployment, false prosperity in a few sectors...

Of course, indeed some areas throve in the hope that tomorrow would be better.

Some thought of destroying the world, some thought of giving up on the world, some thought of making one last profit, and some still tried.

These people were still trying, but everyone wanted to save the world, yet they were just... unable to come to an agreement.

No one trusted anyone, everyone thought they were right, chaos began to spread, and the ranting online turned into offline gatherings.

Until a shocking "misfire" occurred.

"A shocking misfire," Lille recalled as if truly reminiscing, "triggered the early warning systems so shockingly that people had little time to think, so what moved first were the programs that had been pre-written—

The mechanism of mutual assured destruction was triggered, thousands of nuclear missiles burst into the sky, the meteor shower launched by the defense systems completely covered the whole sky—

But just as estimated, no defense system could ensure 100% interception of intercontinental missiles.

Almost every country had nuclear bombs falling, some were lucky, some not so much."

Lille continued to recall, only to suddenly realize that his memory became somewhat hazy after that.

"...I... I was working at that time, we hoped to make a breakthrough in nuclear fusion, to generate a sufficiently strong magnetic field, we spread the material load across each unit of material that could withstand it, and we built a huge, huge facility...

We seemed to be on the brink of success... just a little more, but then...

Everything was gone, later proclaimed as a ’misfire,’ but it dealt a comprehensive strike to the global economic system, and society collapsed under this ’misfire,’ no longer able to support such endless research.

The whole world had entered a wartime state, and it... seemed it never returned to how it was before, everything in my memory was getting worse..."

Lille found it increasingly difficult to see what lay ahead; however, there was definitely a strange sadness, anger, and frenzy infusing those memories:

These emotions were almost uncontrollable—they were so close to completing the experiment, yet there was never again a chance to go back to the way things were.

The war continued in a strange manner:

"...MAD didn’t play out as a no-holds-barred scenario like the Cold War had envisioned, but rather was modified into a probing attack with some restraint, the most extreme method of displaying political demands.

The first wave of bombings didn’t completely cripple society, it was just a few unlucky places that got blasted.

I remember we even quickly restored order, and the world was actually even quieter than before the war, a full-scale war didn’t break out: countries suddenly tacitly ceased fighting and stopped communicating, I never heard any news from outside anymore, and started preparing for an all-out war.

It’s just... days never got better, each one was getting worse and worse, and in the days that followed, it seemed like I was always building weapons, constructing large-scale ones, with everyone mired in the mud, struggling for a war that was coming..."

Martin expressed confusion, and beneath the table, the film energy had begun to infect Lille’s feet: "It does sound depressing, but if that’s the case, I don’t see... I can’t see how you were so brutal; you seem to have always been a victim, a mere underling?"

Lille held his forehead, a trickle of film energy steadily climbing up his pant leg into his eyes...

His eyes suddenly changed color.

He indeed couldn’t remember details, but he knew the answer.

"...Because the long-awaited all-out war, it was I who initiated it."

The film energy began to rage, with flames dancing joyously.

"The misfired Nuclear Weapons only had a few Nuclear Bombs that successfully detonated in populated areas, but my home, my city was within the blast radius.

All my loved ones, my students, teachers, and classmates, everyone like us who looked forward to tomorrow, who should have had a tomorrow, they were all turned to ashes—"

Lille lifted his head, his indifferent expression tinged with an unquestionable madness—

Martin saw something familiar in his eyes: hatred.

It was different from his own hatred for Osborne...

This prolonged hatred and torment had completely transformed Lille.

"Everyone died, some were vaporized by the heat, some were crushed by high pressure, some were roasted to a crisp by Radiation, and others lived wretchedly in the shadow of Radiation till their bodies became deformed for various reasons and they met death amidst pain and moans, I saw them cry, bewildered, lost, I saw them clutch my hand, asking me why this had happened?

All I could say was: I don’t know.

And after many years of preparing for this war, they suddenly declared it a misfire, insisting that nearly 50 years of preparation were strategic mistakes, claiming all the volunteers invested in the experiments, all who died in labor, had completed their tasks.

That is to say, whether before the war or after, everyone’s efforts were in vain—"

I hoped for peace, but they chose war, destroyed everything I had, claimed we should prepare for war; and used this reason to lead the world down half a century on a downhill slope in the mud they created, holding onto that damn killing tool fantasizing about ultimate victory; in the end, after all those who originally hoped for peace died, they suddenly said to me:

’Let’s start over, right from the place where we last made the wrong decision, let’s happily go back to the pre-war honeymoon period and rebuild the glory of human society.’

It was laughable, so on behalf of those left, I answered them:

’We must press the button, and if you don’t comply, I will come right now and chop off your heads and hands to press it.’

It was I who started the war—the initial ’misfire’ involved 654 Nuclear Weapons of various types of nuclear missiles, perhaps amounting to less than one-tenth of the global Nuclear Weapons arsenal. We still had a chance for reconstruction, but they didn’t do it.

After entering a global wartime state, we manufactured a total of 250,000 Nuclear Weapons including Nuclear Fusion Weapons, yet again they said they had had enough—"

I, along with others who shared my sentiment, chose to use all of these weapons.

We pressed the button of destruction.

It was I who decided to destroy that world."