Reborn: Apocalypse Ready. War Goddess by My Side novel Chapter 234

Chapter 234 A Death

Caleb smiled, the expression soft and fading like the last light before nightfall.

“These years fighting alongside all of you…” His voice came out barely above a whisper. “They’ve been the happiest time of my life…”

Caleb closed his eyes.

“Caleb!”

Louie’s grief broke open completely.

Louie wept like a child with nowhere left to go, holding Caleb’s cooling body for a long, long time while the sky deepened around them into shades of amber and rust.

The world slowly drowned in that heavy, dying gold, and it felt like the sky itself was mourning alongside them.

But the end of a life was never the end of a spirit.

Caleb threw himself between his teammates and a killing blow had hit without a single moment of

hesitation.

His courage would outlast every one of them.

Beneath that darkening, amber–soaked sky, every surviving member of the squad raised their hands in the highest salute they knew.

They stood in silence and watched over him as his soul finally departed.

If there’s a next life, may we be friends again.

Steven couldn’t hold on any longer.

The white vapor clinging to his body vanished, and he collapsed face–first onto the ground.

“Steven!”

“Steven!”

Peter sprinted to him and caught him before he hit the earth completely.

Activating Scorchblood Ignition this time drained every last fragment of beast–type Divine Sigil power from Steven’s body, scraping the well completely dry.

It was only now that Steven understood the truth of what he’d been doing all this time. It wasn’t that he didn’t need to recover after each activation.

It was that every previous time, he never reached deep enough into the beast–type Divine Sigil’s reserves,

12:26 pm

PPO

Chapter 234 Beath

to truly empty them.

Beast Energy Conversion replenished everything before the real depth of the drain could register.

But this time was different.

This time, the emptiness was total.

Every last reserve burned to nothing.

The weakness that crashed over him felt like being hollowed out from the inside, like every structure holding him upright had been dissolved at once.

“Kid, what’s happening? Don’t scare me!” Peter’s voice carried real fear in it as he held Steven up.

The rest of the squad gathered around them.

Steven’s voice came out faint and threadbare. “Get me into the safehouse. I just burned through too much.”

Alan didn’t waste a second. He pulled out the safehouse and got Steven inside without hesitation.

“Everyone else, sweep the field and maintain a perimeter.”

Alan and Olivia worked together to carefully secure Caleb’s body, storing it in a spatial converter with the quiet, careful reverence the moment deserved.

Every member of the squad carried the weight of it.

But the mission won’t pause for grief, and neither could they.

Inside the safehouse, Steven lay completely still and felt the profound, bone–deep weakness pressing down on every part of him. His arms felt like they belonged to someone else.

The sensation reminded him of going three days without water, that particular kind of dry, structural collapse where nothing in the body wanted to respond.

J

He reached out and took a handful of beast crystals, intending to run Beast Energy Conversion.

Then his beast–type Divine Sigil activated on its own.

The energy inside the beast crystals poured in immediately, drawn by the sigil’s instinctive hunger, splitting into two distinct currents.

One current flooded into the beast–type Divine Sigil in his chest. The other flooded into the beast–type Divine Sigil in his right eye.

Golden light pulsed through him in slow, rolling waves.

Steven’s mind went quiet with pure shock.

I could absorb beast crystals directly?

When the reserves run completely dry, the sigil can draw from beast crystals in raw unfiltered absorption?

How long was he out? A full day? Or maybe more?

Has a whole day really passed?

Every face around the fire still carried traces of the grief they’d been sitting with

They were one member less now, and that absence pressed against all of them.

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Chapter 234 Booth

Mason, the Blooddrinker, was nursing injuries of his own.

Uriah had taken wounds a few days prior that were still healing.

One way or another, everyone in the squad was carrying something.

Steven found an open spot and sat down

The squad glanced at him, one by one, still processing what they witnessed during the battle.

Steven’s performance had pushed past the boundaries of what any of them thought possible.

The final moment especially, standing alongside Edric to bring down a level 4 beast together, was the kind of thing people would be talking about for a long time.

Alan spoke without preamble. “Now that Steven’s up, let’s talk about the mission.”

Alan laid out the situation with his usual directness. “When we first left the city, Steven flagged the threat level of this mission immediately. That’s why I escalated our internal danger classification to maximum before we pushed further.

“Even so, what we’ve actually encountered has exceeded that elevated estimate by a wide margin.

“We’ve only planted three Celestial Eyes. The fourth goes in tomorrow.

“Given everything that’s happened, I’m considering pulling the mission entirely. I want to hear everyone’s thoughts.”

Steven blinked.

Alan’s leaning toward abandonment?

Abandoning a mission came with real costs, and not small ones. A voluntary abort would be permanently marked in the Awakened Squad’s official record, and that notation would follow them, creating friction in future mission selections and evaluations.

But Operation Moonfall was in a category of its own.

J

If walking away was on the table at all, it was worth considering seriously. The most important thing was making it back to Rowenville alive.