Eon Calendar, Year One, January 3rd.
Ashara, Imperial Palace.
【Host: Seraphine】
【Physical Strength: 132000 Planets】
【Soul: 132000 Planets】
After just a single day, Seraphine’s attributes had naturally doubled, their raw numbers already surpassing one-third of the Sun’s mass—continuing to rise toward an even more terrifying magnitude.
Pulling her gaze away from the attribute panel, Seraphine leaned lazily against the dragon throne. Her half-lidded eyes, radiant with divine brilliance, pierced through the heavy palace walls and endless corridors, gazing far beyond the Imperial Palace.
“There are far too many insects in this world begging for death.”
Resting her chin against her palm, she let out a low laugh. “Wave after wave, they never stop coming. Crushing them is almost amusing.”
“Come out then—all of you. Crawl out so I can grind you properly beneath my feet.”
In the distance stretched a vast square: Ganian Palace Square. Older than the founding of Emberlight itself, the square had already endured over a millennium of history.
Though the original main temple had long since dissolved into the mists of time, Ganian Palace Square—once the first great public square before the Industrial Revolution—had been carefully preserved by the empire’s successive dynasties.
Ever-renovated, never neglected, it stood as one of Emberlight’s enduring cultural emblems.
It was also the ceremonial stage for countless imperial festivals and celebrations.
Now, this square, usually sparse with only the occasional traveler, overflowed with tens of thousands of people.
The crowd stretched like a living ocean, kneeling in tightly packed masses.
Faces flushed with zeal, they waved placards, posters, and banners, their throats raw from shouting.
Some signs bore words like:
“Kill the traitorous ministers.”
“Her Majesty has been deceived.”
“The enemy festers in the court.”
“There are vipers inside the Imperial Palace.”
“We beg Her Majesty to rescind the decree.”
Others carried long, fluttering banners that read things such as:
【Preserve the noble statutes—this cultural heritage of Emberlight—ten thousand times ten thousand voices cannot abandon it】.
Or:
【All under Heaven is the sovereign’s land, all within the realm are the sovereign’s subjects. Your Majesty must not forsake the millions of loyal clans who have defended this realm for three centuries】.
Or:
【The masses require leaders—3000 cities, 3000 gods】.
The demonstrators were clad in rough, plain white garments. Across each chest, written in bold black script, were the words: 【Born as Emberlight people】.
On their backs: 【Died as Emberlight ghosts】.
Even their foreheads were bound with headbands inscribed: 【I love Emberlight】.
And yet, despite their ragged clothing, their every gesture dripped with an air of haughty disdain—an aristocratic arrogance that could only be cultivated after at least three generations of wealth and security.
This was the so-called aristocratic temperament.
Among them, kneeling and screaming himself hoarse, was Serath Draven.
Yesterday, after the entire House Draven was expelled from their ancestral mansion, Patriarch Darius Draven collapsed from illness and died within hours.
Tragically, the destitute Serath Draven had no coin to purchase even a simple coffin for his father—much less afford a funeral or a burial ground.
While Serath and more than a hundred clan members agonized over their uncertain fate, a band of mysterious figures approached him with an invitation: to take part in the protest the following day.
“This… will this truly have any effect against her?”
Inside a dimly lit room, Serath furrowed his brows, unease etched into his voice. “Is this the plan you spoke of before? This…?”
The middle-aged man seated across from him exhaled heavily. “It is the only method with any chance of working. Against that one, we cannot allow even the shadow of aggression—that would be nothing but suicide.
We must wield morality, ancestral law, ethics, and public opinion as our weapons.”
“Public opinion…” Serath’s eyes glimmered as sudden realization dawned. He allowed a thin smile. “So, the Ganian Palace affair was just a distraction. The real leverage lies elsewhere, doesn’t it?”
“Correct.” The richly dressed man gave a slow nod. “Ganian Palace serves two purposes: first, to divert attention and give space for our outside preparations; second, to draw Her Majesty herself into view—or at least compel her to send an envoy. As long as we secure a window to speak with Her Majesty directly, we will have our chance.”
Serath frowned again, suspicion flickering across his face. “And what exactly do you intend to do?”
The man’s lips curved into a knowing smile. “That must remain hidden for now. All you need to know is this—something immense is about to happen.”
“Something immense…” Serath whispered, hesitating. “But won’t this be… dangerously reckless?”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than he let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “What do I even have left? Nothing but a stripped title and this miserable life. Very well! I, Serath Draven, will stake what remains and join you!”
“Excellent.” The man’s voice boomed with satisfaction. “In striving for greatness, there is only triumph or ruin—no middle ground, no principle of reward without risk. With the courage of a true warrior, why fear that greatness cannot be seized?”
“Indeed!” Serath nodded fiercely.
“…The heart of a loyal subject must not be cast aside…”
“…My ancestors bled for Emberlight…”
“…My clan toiled for Emberlight…”
The thunder of shouted slogans suddenly crashed into Serath’s ears, yanking him back from the edge of his memories.
He swept his eyes across the crowd and recognized countless familiar figures—patriarchs of noble houses from every corner of Emberlight, as well as an even greater number of venerable clan elders.
There was Valen Darius, Patriarch of House Darius.
Deylen Veyra, Patriarch of House Veyra.
Caius Auryn, the Seventeenth Duke of Aurem.
Magnus Vorren, the Fifteenth Duke of Vorren.
Thaddeus Dorran, Elder of House Dorran.
Lucan Lysander, Elder of House Lysander…
These were men who, under ordinary circumstances, carried immense status—distant figures never glimpsed by the common folk. Yet now, they had stripped away their layers of dignity, shouting until their voices cracked, veins swelling across their necks and foreheads. Their children and heirs stood beside them, crying out the same slogans for the sake of lineage, glory, and inheritance.
The sight pierced Serath Draven’s heart, filling his eyes with tears.
Suddenly, he wiped his face clean, straightened his back, and roared:
“Your Majesty! Please come forth and hear the people’s cries! We beg Your Majesty to withdraw the imperial decree!”
“We beg Your Majesty to withdraw the imperial decree!”
“We beg Your Majesty to withdraw the imperial decree!”
“We beg Your Majesty to withdraw the imperial decree!”
"...."
The entire scene was captured by the countless cameras circling the square. From every angle, reporters addressed the audience, their tones grave, voices weighted with tension.
“…As you can see, a vast number of former nobles have gathered in Ganian Palace Square. They kneel here, facing the Imperial Palace itself, weeping and crying out…”
At the southeastern end of the square, a female reporter spoke with solemnity into the lens.
“…No one can say what kind of effect the sudden abolition of the nobility statutes will have on the structure of society. Will it be good, or will it be disastrous? At this moment, we simply do not know…”
She exhaled softly before continuing.
“But I believe Her Majesty would not enact any measure without purpose. All we can do now is wait and see.”
With that, her broadcast concluded, and her image faded from the screen.
The feed cut back to a brightly lit studio, where a stern, handsome male anchor composed himself before addressing the camera in a deep voice:
“Thank you, Nana, for your live report.”
He then turned to a heavyset, white-haired scholar seated beside him.
“Expert Liu, what are your thoughts?”
The scholar adjusted his glasses, his brow furrowed. “Hmm… well, the nobility statutes have endured for three hundred years. That longevity itself proves they served a vital—”
Before he could finish, a staffer rushed forward and handed the host a slip of paper. The anchor glanced at it, his expression tightening with visible shock. Without hesitation, he cut the expert short.
“Expert Liu, we’ll have to pause here. We have just received breaking news.”
The scholar blinked in surprise, then gave a quick nod. “Ah… of course.”
The host drew a sharp breath, his tone heavy with urgency as he stared into the camera.
“Ladies and gentlemen, viewers—our program team has just received an important update.”
The host suddenly rose to his feet, strode to the massive LCD screen behind him, pointed sharply at it, and spoke in a grave tone:
“Please—look.”
The moment the words left his mouth, the screen lit up.
A grid of images appeared, resembling a Sudoku puzzle—each square an aerial shot taken from helicopters.
In every frame, a colossal crowd stretched like a living dragon across the city’s arteries. People brandished placards, banners, and posters, their voices united in a deafening chorus as they surged down the main avenues.
“Protect the nobility system!”
“Protect the nobility system!”
“Protect the nobility system!”
“Withdraw the imperial decree!”
“Withdraw the imperial decree!”
“Withdraw the imperial decree!”
“Never forget the blood and tears of our ancestors!”
“Never forget the blood and tears of our ancestors!”
“Never forget the blood and tears of our ancestors!”
The chants rolled like thunder, shaking the skies above the city.
So vast was the tide of marchers that no one could even begin to calculate their numbers. What was certain, however, was that the entire city had been brought to a standstill.
Cars, buses, and cargo trucks lay stranded, blocked at every intersection by the sea of people flooding northward from the southern districts.
Frustrated drivers leaned on their horns, the shrill blasts swallowed instantly by the wall of noise. But the marchers refused to yield. Instead, they turned on the motorists with furious gestures and shouted abuse. Those foolish enough to curse back risked being dragged from their vehicles by hot-blooded protesters and beaten on the spot.
Fortunately, with Ether’s recovery, every human body had grown far more resilient than in ages past. Even surrounded and assaulted, no driver’s life was immediately at risk—though hospitalization afterward was unavoidable.
And this was only one city.
Back in the studio, the host gestured at the screen, his voice steady but weighted with tension.
“Friends, viewers—what you have just witnessed is a sudden mass march. We do not yet know what first ignited this wave of unrest. However…”
With practiced motion, he pulled the screen’s corners inward. The giant Sudoku grid compressed into a single small window, which he dragged to the lower right.
As the host shifted aside, the rest of the screen flared to life—revealing not one but dozens, then hundreds of grids, each its own Sudoku. Each showed a different city.
And in every city, the same: tens of thousands flooding the streets, aerial shots capturing rivers of humanity surging forward.
A rough tally put the total number of participants across the nation at well over ten million.
“Uh… this?” Expert Liu, seated nearby, gaped in shock. “Never in all of history… has a protest on this scale occurred.”
“Indeed.” The host nodded, his voice tightening as he turned directly to the camera.
“According to confirmed statistics, one hundred and five cities across Emberlight are now experiencing marches of at least ten thousand citizens each. In several major metropolises, the numbers exceed one hundred thousand.
We have reason to believe…”
His voice dropped into a deliberate weight.
“…We have reason to believe that Her Imperial Majesty cannot remain silent. She will answer the voice of the Emberlight people.”
Far away, in a vast yet elegantly appointed tearoom, several robed elders sat in quiet council, sipping tea.
A tall, thin old man raised his gaze, his voice slow and measured:
“From the immeasurable power Her Majesty wields—and from the restraint with which she has always borne it—one can see clearly: Her Majesty is an emperor of compassion.”
“Indeed.” A richly adorned old woman smiled gently. “According to the Association’s think tank, if we set aside Her Majesty’s destructive campaigns abroad, the actual number of those truly slain since her power was revealed is surprisingly small—far fewer than the casualties of even a localized war.”
“Hm.” A bald elder carefully poured tea, his tone calm. “As for Her Majesty’s seventeen psychological models—though each varies in accuracy, and no one model can fully define her—they all converge on a single truth: Her Majesty cares deeply for the Emberlight Empire, and profoundly for its people.”
“This is unusual.” A long-bearded elder shook his head with quiet doubt. “From antiquity to now, those whose power surpasses the limits of flesh and soul almost always grow detached—aloof, indifferent, their ethics eroded. Such beings are unmoved by love, friendship, bloodline, or clan. Yet Her Majesty… perhaps she is still too young. Though her might is unfathomable, she clings to a fierce loyalty to 【people】—and above all, to the idea of 【the Emberlight people】. She may not even realize it herself.”
“Sigh~” The richly dressed matron gave a kindly smile. “That is why we old ones must bear the worries she should not. Her heart is good—she only wishes to reclaim authority to guide Emberlight toward healthier growth. But her temperament is impatient. In truth, given the current state of the world, even without intervention, other nations would eventually bow before Emberlight. There is no need to rush.”
Her eyes turned toward the richly dressed middle-aged man standing respectfully nearby. She asked warmly: “Have the industrial protest-production measures begun?”
He bowed. “Yes. As of five minutes ago, a total of 950,000 factories and 12 million artisans across Emberlight have launched protest production activities in every city.”
“Excellent!” The tall, thin elder laughed. “A nation cannot be ruled by force alone. Commerce, industry, and finance—these are the great pillars of empire. Even if Her Majesty’s power is divine, she still requires countless ‘hands’ to manage the endless affairs of state. Otherwise, even if fatigue does not touch her, she will be plagued to death by the tedium.”
“And those ‘hands’,” the long-bearded elder added smugly, “must be enticed by profit, nurtured by profit. Such worldly burdens are best left to our Business Council. Her Majesty should remain what she is—a deity above the fray. Mortal matters should be handled by mortals.”
“Exactly.” The benevolent old lady smiled again, though her voice trembled. “Ah… just thinking of Her Majesty’s youth—the same age as my grandson, taken before his time—makes me weep.”
She covered her face, her voice breaking with sobs. “Such a tender, innocent child… How can she bear so crushing a weight? It is too cruel. She should be free to enjoy peace and quiet within the palace. Leave these harsh burdens to us, the old ones.”
Bang!!
One side of the tearoom wall suddenly erupted into a shower of stone and splinters. Startled, the elders sprang to their feet and staggered back a few steps.
The richly dressed middle-aged man’s face hardened. Stepping in front of them, his aura flared violently—one that surged even beyond the level of an Evershield Body.
Clap ~ Clap ~ Clap ~
From the ragged breach in the wall, a towering young man stepped forward, a pure-red great saber resting casually on his shoulder.
His face was cruel and arrogant, his crimson eyes burning with malice. Every inch of his body radiated killing intent, writhing like a nest of blood-colored serpents hissing endlessly.
It was Kael.
He tilted his head toward the lavishly dressed old woman still trembling dozens of meters away. With a sharp swing, he lowered his saber in a wide arc, pointing it directly at her, and sneered:
“You old dog. Do you think you’re fit to call my Master your grandson? Heh. You’ve lived far too long already—allow me to send you to your grave.”
His grin vanished, replaced by a deadly coldness. He didn’t even bother to lift his saber. Instead, the suffocating killing intent pouring off his body condensed into hundreds—thousands—of scarlet blades that screamed through the air toward the petrified elders.
“Don’t—!”
The middle-aged man cried out, horror twisting his face as he tried to intervene. But he was too late.
The storm of saber Qi swallowed him whole, along with the shrieking elders of the Business Council. In an instant, they were torn into nothing but fragments of flesh and blood.
The storm did not abate. After shredding its victims, it crashed into the far wall of the tearoom.
Boom!
The crimson, dragon-like surge obliterated the thick masonry, ripping outward to engulf the sprawling estate beyond.
Kael hadn’t so much as lifted a finger. With nothing but the manifestation of his killing intent, he annihilated an entire suburban estate.
Meanwhile, in distant Ashara.
At Ganian Palace, beside the Imperial Palace wall, nobles still knelt in the square, crying out for Seraphine to appear.
Hours of kneeling had left these pampered aristocrats—long accustomed to indulgence and comfort—aching, grumbling, and bitter. Many were already beginning to whisper of retreat.
But then, the massive palace gates creaked open.
Out stepped a tall, slender girl—cold, beautiful—her long blue twin-tails swaying as she casually crunched on a lollipop, her leather boots striking the ground with a crisp metallic clank… clank… clank.
...
“…Including Evermere, Nivarra, Clarion, Veyra, and Lorath—across Emberlight, a total of one hundred and three cities, great and small, have erupted into mass marches. The preliminary estimate of participants… stands at twelve million. And the majority appear to be ordinary citizens.”
“Furthermore, several tens of thousands of factories… have joined in protests, halting production.”
The minister’s throat bobbed as he forced out the words, hoarse with unease: “The number of striking workers is… no less than those marching in the streets.”
Around the hall, courtiers traded anxious glances. Their faces reflected the same thing—shock and dread.
What madness was this?!
In any past age, this scale of unrest would already be counted as full-scale rebellion.
And yet these people… how dared they?!
To stand against Her Majesty—a living True God—what arrogance, what lunacy possessed them?
As the minister’s trembling voice droned on, Seraphine reclined back upon the throne, a soft, amused laugh slipping past her lips.
“No matter. At dawn, I already dispatched twenty thousand Cruel Shadows across the realm. By now, they should be in position.”
“…Cruel Shadows?”
Bewilderment rippled through the court. Ministers traded confused whispers. The name itself carried a brutal, blood-soaked weight.
“They are my personal legion,” Seraphine said evenly, her voice slow, deliberate. “Most adept at rapid, large-scale… slaughter.”
Slaughter?
The word struck like a blade. The courtiers flinched, eyes widening in horror.
One minister, pale and trembling, stammered: “Y-Your Majesty… do you mean… to kill the citizens taking part in these marches? And… the workers in those factories?”
“Of course.” Seraphine regarded him with genuine surprise, as though the question itself were absurd. “What else would I do?”
Hiss—
The entire court drew sharp breaths, disbelief tightening their faces.
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These were not a handful of rebels. These were more than twenty million ordinary people!
At last, a Grand Supporting Minister forced himself to speak, voice quavering yet resolute: “Your Majesty, this subject begs you to reconsider. We can dispatch envoys to meet with the march leaders, to hear their demands, to gradually persuade the citizens to disperse. Surely they are misled! The common people are, after all, by nature benevolent…”
Seraphine turned her gaze upon him, cold and fathomless. The minister felt his very soul seize, frozen in place, his voice strangled into silence.
“Negotiate? Inquire? Benevolent?”
Her tone dripped with incredulity. “Are you attempting to decide for me?”
The Grand Supporting Minister collapsed instantly into a pool of sweat. He dropped to his knees, bowing again and again, forehead striking the floor until his voice broke. Choked sobs tumbled from his throat: “This subject… guilty… guilty… I dare not… mercy, Your Majesty… guilty…”
Behind him, the other courtiers dabbed at their brows, shivering at his terror.
“Benevolence?” Seraphine let out a low laugh. “A hollow pretense. In this age of upheaval, blind clinging to such foolishness is sin itself.”
She shook her head, still smiling faintly, then rose from the dragon throne. Hands folded behind her back, she let her vision stretch outward—toward Ganian Palace Square.
Every single soul in that mass of bodies lay bare to her. Not a thought, not a whisper of intent could evade her sight.
She had no need to pierce their minds. The crude brainwaves of mortals were enough, flashing like beacons in her divine perception.
What she found was no surprise. These nobles—debauched, wallowing in their wealth, ruling their fiefdoms like petty gods—lived in greater luxury than she herself, the Empress.
And yet here they were. After all the world-shattering events that had reshaped history, they dared gather in her shadow. They dared protest? Halt production? Pathetic tricks and cheap theatrics, flaunted against her?
“Money and power,” she said softly, almost amused, “make even the lowliest unafraid of death. Very well. Words cannot wake the foolish. Only death can.”
Her eyes gleamed with divine light. Will surged from her, unfettered, sweeping across all of Emberlight in an instant.
In a single blink, she had them all. Every hidden schemer, every agitator, every ringleader masquerading behind the tide of ignorant citizens—more than a thousand in total.
She knew them down to the smallest detail: names, faces, whereabouts. Even in the far-off industrial districts, where sprawling factories had ground to a halt, every inciter was laid bare in her palm.
And with but a single thought, she could erase them—snuff them out as easily as exhaling.
She knew the truth: kill the leaders, and the masses would crumble. The protests would collapse within hours under the weight of state suppression.
Yet Seraphine chose not to.
Why concede to the rabble?
Ten million? Twenty million? It mattered little. Numbers were nothing before her.
And as for the world’s opinion?
What did that mean to her? A thought from her could reduce Earth itself to ash—why would she bend for whispers?
“Hmph.”
Seraphine let out a quiet laugh, her voice threading invisibly across the distance into Selene’s mind, who was even now approaching the square:
“You know what to do, don’t you?”
Selene’s steps faltered for the briefest instant. A radiant smile touched her lips. Inwardly, with reverence, she replied:
“Whatever Your Majesty commands, I shall obey.”
“Good. Then kill them all. But not too quickly—kill them slowly. Make sure the broadcast stations capture every frame.”
“As you command.”
With the voice fading from her mind, Selene drew the “lollipop” from her mouth—no candy at all, but a stick sparking with high-voltage plasma arcs, white-hot in the air. She thumbed the switch, powering it down. The glow sputtered and dimmed as it cooled, and she slid it casually into her jacket pocket.
Already, the nobles gathered in the square stirred as their eyes fell upon her.
The surrounding media swung their clustered camera arrays in her direction.
“She’s here, she’s here.”
“Who is that?”
“Unfamiliar face… must be Her Majesty’s envoy.”
“She’s come to parley, to negotiate with us!”
“Hah! So Her Majesty does care after all.”
“See? No Imperial Guards. We were worried for nothing.”
At the head of the noble procession, Serath Draven gritted his teeth against aching knees as he rose, but his face lit with excitement.
The Association’s plan succeeded! he thought, chest swelling. So many media outlets present, and Her Majesty sends an envoy instead of troops. She must be under pressure—the marches across more than a hundred cities, the stoppages in the factories… they’ve given her no choice.
Buoyed by triumph, his mood soared. Even the tall, cold-looking girl approaching across the square seemed suddenly charming to him. He grinned, filled with hope of restoring his noble station.
But then… why were her eyes suddenly red?
Her eyes were glowing.
Selene reached the forefront of the crowd. In that instant, her pupils ignited—burning crimson.
Buzz—
Twin beams of scarlet light lanced forth, carving a straight line through the sea of bodies. Everyone in the several-meter-wide path ahead was vaporized in a heartbeat. Flesh charred, bone shattered, smoke curled into the air.
In less than a second, a corridor of ruin—narrow, blackened, soaked in blood—split the tens of thousands of nobles into two screaming halves, left and right.
Serath Draven froze mid-smile, staring at the death corridor barely ten meters away from him.
Not only he, but tens of thousands of nobles, the reporters with their cameras, and the millions watching live from Ganian Palace through television… all were struck dumb, breathless.
The square was silent as a grave.
Selene stood at the end of the corridor, lower body shrouded in coils of black smoke, her eyes glowing crimson once more.
“Murder!!!”
A shriek, ragged and piercing, shattered the silence.
Then the human tide broke.
The noble hosts and their families scattered in every direction like a hive torn open, shrieking and clawing to escape.
Some young nobles, who had only moments ago been laughing idly at the rear of the crowd, now fled in blind panic—as though their parents had just died—terrified they would be the next to be cut down by a blazing beam.
Serath Draven, swept along with the stampede, was ghost-pale. His hand clutched his chest as he gasped raggedly for breath, stumbling in desperation toward the square’s edge.
How dare she? With so many watching—how dare she?! His mind rang with chaotic disbelief, yet his legs refused to stop.
Selene, still calm amidst the carnage, merely turned her head to the right.
Buzz—
Twin lances of white-hot light shot from her eyes, cutting across a thousand meters in an instant. The beams carved through hundreds of fleeing nobles in the blink of an eye.
Those caught fully within the path were erased instantly. A few who stood at the edge of the beams were less fortunate: their bodies sheared cleanly into grotesque slabs, as if sliced by an invisible pair of titanic shears. Their remains hit the ground hard, twitching. Still alive, they clawed feebly across the stone, screaming in voices torn with despair.
The air filled with shrieks and sobs. Charred fragments, blood, and ash littered the square until the whole place seemed no longer like a seat of empire, but the mouth of Hell itself.
But Selene did not pause.
Her forehead gleamed as the beams intensified, sweeping outward in great arcs like the blazing scythes of a war god.
Swish—swish—swish—swish—
Thousands of nobles, who had barely managed to sprint a hundred meters, were shredded mid-flight, torn apart into tens of thousands of blackened, smoking remains.
Within seconds, nearly a third of the tens of thousands gathered at Ganian Palace lay butchered at Selene’s feet.
Still she advanced.
Her steps rang against the shattered stones as blue light burst from her hands, solidifying into a pair of colossal, gleaming blades. The thrusters on her back howled, flaring white.
Boom!
The ground split open as Selene vanished, reappearing in a blur among the panicked masses ahead.
Swish—swish—swish!
Silver arcs of light slashed outward, scattering blood and bone in showers. Nobles screamed as their ranks collapsed, bodies breaking like waves against jagged rocks.
Her crimson eyes flared once more. One glance, and scarlet beams lanced across the square’s perimeter, striking nobles who had nearly reached safety a full thousand meters away. In an instant, hundreds collapsed in gruesome heaps.
The unlucky survivors writhed in their own ruin—torsos torn, limbs gone—dragging themselves through their own blood, leaving crimson streaks as their last cries shook the air.
“Hhhhuuuh… hhhhuuuh… hhhhuuuh…”
Serath Draven threw every shred of strength into his desperate flight, stumbling toward the edge of the square.
Exhausted, lungs burning, terror gnawed at him. Behind, he felt it—that cold, suffocating menace drawing closer. Despair clouded his face.
Then—
“Stop.”
The voice thundered within Selene’s mind just as she descended upon him, blades raised for the kill. She froze mid-motion.
It was Seraphine.
“The remaining tenth—I have use for them. Withdraw.”
Selene bowed her thoughts in silence. As you command.
The slaughter ceased.
Her crimson eyes dimmed as she turned her gaze across the ruins of Ganian Palace Square. She sought the reporters—yet the media had long since fled, their camera rigs clutched tight, their silhouettes dwindling specks in the distance.
No doubt they feared she would turn her frenzy upon them as well.
Across Emberlight, countless viewers shuddered before their television screens. Some switched channels, unable to stomach more.
But they were wrong.
Other stations were already broadcasting scenes far worse than Ganian Palace.
Emberlight, Lorath City.
The inland city infamous for its ferocity. Here, disputes were never settled with words—only with fists, knives, and blood.
For generations, Lorath had been a nightmare for the empire’s governors, forever ranked first in crime and bloodshed. They called it, without irony, the City of Violence.
It was here, fittingly, that Emberlight’s most advanced clinics for limb repair and trauma surgery thrived—out of sheer necessity.
And now, in this season of marches and upheaval, Lorath lived up to its name.
Over one hundred thousand strong, the people of Lorath surged into the streets, a mob like a drug-fueled demon horde.
Cars were overturned and set ablaze. Shops looted. Windows shattered. Entire blocks caught fire.
Crowds brawled in the open, knives flashing, clubs cracking skulls. Some were beaten to death, some trampled, others dragged into alleys for unspeakable acts.
The whole city became a battlefield, the air thick with smoke, fire, and a murderous frenzy so heavy it seemed to choke the sky itself.
Dark clouds rolled in, blotting out the sun. The world dimmed to a twilight of chaos.
Then—without warning—patches of black shadow seeped across the cobblestones, spreading like living oil. They clung to walls, pooled in alleys, expanded along the ground with uncanny speed.
Amid the brawls, two gangs of muscular men—knives and clubs raised—found themselves suddenly enclosed.
The shadows sealed them in, writhing and tightening.
“Hahahahaha—kill, kill, kill!”
A bald brute with a black snake tattoo coiled across his neck swung a saber wildly, cackling as he hacked at the mob.
But in the next instant, a jagged black thorn shot through his chest and gut, slamming him against a wall.
“AAAHHH—!” His scream split the air as he thrashed helplessly.
The thorn pulsed once—then detonated into a forest of razor spikes that erupted outward from his flesh.
His body convulsed, face contorted in agony, before he fell limp, riddled like a carcass.
Before anyone else could even flinch, the entire shadow domain erupted. Hundreds—then thousands—of spiral thorns whipped out in every direction, skewering men like insects.
Flesh tore. Bones cracked. Screams choked into wet gurgles.
In seconds, the brawlers were nothing but twitching husks and torn meat strewn across the alley. Blood ran like a flood, painting the crumbling brick red.
And across Lorath, it was not an isolated scene.
Over a hundred such shadow domains bloomed at once.
Some sprouted thorns. Others manifested into storms of spectral blades—hundreds of thousands slashing in perfect unison.
Still others ignored the terrain altogether, coalescing into phantasmal Gatling guns that ripped through rioting crowds with mechanical precision.
Entire mobs were erased in moments.
When a shadow domain finished its purge, it dissolved, then surged onward at near sonic speed, spreading to fresh hunting grounds.
These vast black fields of slaughter were no natural phenomenon.
They were alive.
Each one was a Cruel Shadow—a super-soldier born from Seraphine’s experiments, forged from the genes and organs of Dark Star Abram, combined with her refinements of the superpower framework.
Every Cruel Shadow was an apex predator: impervious to conventional weapons, capable of continuous fire, moving with terrifying speed, and projecting a domain nearly 10,000 square meters wide.
Within that domain, cold steel or firearms could be conjured at will—materialized from the void itself.
Field tests had proven it: a single Cruel Shadow could annihilate a modern, fully equipped regiment.
Effortlessly.
And now, captured by daring helicopter crews, the truth was broadcast across Emberlight.
Crowds that had looked like unstoppable armies a heartbeat before were vanishing as though erased from existence.
When the shadows withdrew, only ruin remained.
Streets slick with blood. Alleys littered with hacked limbs. Half the city drowned in carnage.
Viewers sat frozen before their screens. Shock hollowed them. Horror smothered them.
Until a line surfaced in their memory—words spoken by a sociologist after the fall of Eliondra:
“The entire Earth will become her plaything… wrapped around her fingers.”
And Lorath was only the beginning.
In every city, Seraphine unleashed a hundred more Cruel Shadows.
Every city where protests had erupted sank into unrelenting slaughter.
The same massacres spread through Emberlight’s factory districts, engines and smokestacks turned into killing grounds.
Half an hour later, it was finished.
Every citizen and artisan stirred up by the Noble Association and the Business Council lay dead.
Then, just as Emberlight drowned in blood and terror—
Something appeared in the sky.
From the horizon above each city ravaged by the Cruel Shadows, a single searing ray blazed across the heavens.
BZZZHHH—
It was like the light of creation itself.
At its arrival, over a hundred shattered cities—bridges, factories, shops, vehicles, homes—were instantly restored to their pristine state.
Even more terrifying: the mangled corpses, the rivers of blood, the very stains left by twenty million slaughtered lives… all were erased into nothingness.
Aside from the fact that more than twenty million people had simply vanished, there was no evidence the genocide had ever occurred.
Then—suddenly.
In the skies above those same cities and factory districts, human shapes began to materialize.
At first a handful. Then dozens. Then hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands.
In seconds, over twenty million distinct figures—each one a complete person—emerged with eyes closed, descending slowly from the heavens.
The impossible was real: Seraphine had resurrected them. All of them.
For Seraphine, who could manipulate matter down to the original sub-nuclear scale, rebuilding flesh was trivial—like breathing.
As for the soul, that most elusive essence, it was no longer a mystery to her.
The deepest root of the soul still eluded her analysis, but beyond that? The structures, the lattice, the components—she could replicate them with ease.
To restart twenty million souls, all that was required was to preserve their roots.
And once the root was mastered… then life and death themselves would hold no secrets from Seraphine.
The resurrected hovered for a heartbeat above the ground, suspended as though waiting for a switch to be thrown.
Then, one by one, their bodies trembled. Eyes fluttered open, dazed and unfocused.
“I… just…”
In Lorath, a bald, tattooed brute stared down at his own hands in confusion. His voice rasped, disbelieving:
“Didn’t I just die? I… remember… the shadows tearing me apart.”
In an instant, all the pain, struggle, despair, and regret of his death surged back into his mind. The burly man’s legs buckled, and he collapsed to his knees.
His eyes flew open, filled with a strange mixture of confusion and clarity.
It was the clarity of one who had glimpsed the other side of death.
It was the clarity that eclipsed the terror of dying itself.
And it was not his alone.
In the eyes of all twenty million resurrected by Seraphine, that same brilliance shone.
What they had once failed to understand, they now comprehended.
What they had once clung to, they now released.
Beyond life and death, there are no great matters.
At that moment, Seraphine’s voice resounded across Emberlight, carried between heaven and earth:
“Cherish my benevolence—return home at once.”
The more than twenty million citizens who had marched and gone on strike woke as if from a dream.
One after another, they fell to their knees, sobbing, crying out to the sky:
“We were wrong! Your Majesty… is too merciful!
We love you! Your Majesty!”
Three days passed after the chaos.
In those three days, much had changed.
Seraphine, in her compassion, had spared the ignorant citizens and artisans. But not those truly guilty.
The organizers, the agitators, the instigators, the hidden coordinators spread across more than a hundred cities.
The petty functionaries who ran errands for bribes or out of fear.
And above them all, the true architects—the Noble Association and the high-ranking executives of the Business Council.
Seventy-five thousand in total.
Every one of them was captured. Without exception.
Why had the Business Council risked such a reckless scheme, dragging calamity upon themselves?
The answer was simple: when the rabbit dies, the fox grieves.
When Seraphine, with a single decree, shattered the power of the noble class, how could these fattened parasites, who had fed so long on profit and influence, not tremble?
Their ruin was inevitable, so they chose to gamble.
Merchants, after all, always dared to wager everything for profit.
But what enraged Seraphine was not their gamble—It was that they had no strength to bear the ultimate loss.
On that same day, with two words of contempt, Seraphine dissolved the Business Council.
All its members, guilty or innocent, were seized without distinction.
And their wealth—banks, companies, factories, entire industries—along with tens of trillions in liquid assets, was frozen and confiscated. Reclaimed by the Emberlight Empire.
During this time, some so-called experts, scholars, and opinion leaders even dared to speak out. They accused Seraphine of trampling “sacred” laws of private property.
They claimed her actions violated the supposed spirit of the age.
Regarding this, Seraphine acted with effortless decisiveness.
All those bold enough to protest were seized en masse—dragged away live on television broadcasts for the entire nation to witness.
Private property? Inviolable?
What a ridiculous farce.
The entire planet is mine.
The oxygen you breathe belongs to me.
Even your body—and your soul—belong to me.
And yet you dare speak of private property?
Naturally, the commercial titans and financial magnates—those who had fattened themselves at the expense of the people—were not about to sit idle, awaiting their deaths.
Their influence ran deeper and heavier than that of the Noble Association.
Thus, the death throes of these swollen flies were ferocious, even deranged.
But their so-called “counterattack” was, to Seraphine, no louder than a mosquito’s whine.
At her command, the Secret Service, Military Intelligence, and countless other shadow agencies were unleashed in full force.
These cold-blooded operatives, accustomed to living in perpetual darkness, now found themselves emboldened by the presence of a divine Majesty behind them.
Their courage surged without limit. Their restraint vanished.
They abandoned all previous secrecy and struck with unflinching brutality, using the most merciless methods and the harshest violence to scour every corner of Emberlight.
Rank, station, or pretense meant nothing.
If they chose to investigate you, they would investigate you.
No airtight evidence was required—mere suspicion sufficed. First, the arrest. Afterwards, the interrogation.
Resist? Then die on the spot.
Under this sweeping purge that blanketed the Divine Continent, Seraphine’s desk filled with bloody, meticulous reports.
And from those documents, she made a staggering discovery: over ninety percent of her courtiers and officials were entwined with the Business Council.
Three of the four Grand Supporting Ministers.
The Ministers of Finance, Civil Affairs, and Foreign Affairs—each seated as senior executives within that same Council.
Beyond them, every provincial governor, every city lord bore connections to it.
The entanglement ran deeper still. Senior officers across critical research divisions—the Department of Sky and Space Technology Development, the Academy of Sciences, the Bureau of Technology Development, the Military Research Institute—had all bound themselves too tightly with the Council.
Even four generals, one grand marshal, and tens of thousands of soldiers stood compromised.
The Emberlight martial world—already ravaged by Kael—had for years been quietly nourished by Business Council resources.
In short, Emberlight’s entire hierarchy, from its loftiest seats of power down to its grassroots institutions, was inextricably woven into the Council’s grip.
It was nothing short of astonishing.
After several days of sweeping investigation, statistics from every department revealed the staggering scale of corruption.
Across all of Emberlight, from the highest echelons to the lowest tiers of power, more than two million individuals were implicated.
And almost none of them were common citizens.
Every last one was a figure of influence, a bearer of authority, or a holder of wealth.
The depth of this network, its roots, and the sheer breadth of its reach explained everything—how they could rally vast marches, how they could bring industries to a standstill.
It had to be said plainly: the Emberlight Empire was a nation corporatized to its very marrow, infiltrated and hollowed out by the Business Council.
A stench of money clung to its very foundations.
This Council—barely more than a century old—was nothing less than a malignant tumor, parasitic within Emberlight’s body, ravenously gorging itself on the empire’s lifeblood.
If it could not be carved out, Emberlight’s future was uncertain. And Seraphine herself would endure constant, intolerable disgust.
Thus, she resolved swiftly—a purge of blood and fire across all of Emberlight.
The vanguard of this Great Purge consisted of three superpower-modified legions, each forged at immense cost through Seraphine’s own resources.
Mortis Authority:
Semi-biological, semi-mechanical super-soldiers. Each body a fusion of machine and flesh, powered by miniature nuclear fusion reactors, framed by Ether-Crystalline carbyne skeletons, reinforced with stellite muscle. Armed with electromagnetic cannons, Dragon Breath Cannons, Demon Acid Cannons, Void-Burning Cannons, death array matrices, and organs tuned for Sentience Realm effects.
In short, lacking only the rarest superpower frameworks, the Mortis Authority were Selene 2.0 incarnate.
Fifteen hundred in number, they carried the greatest firepower and combat potential of all, but also at the steepest cost.
They were personally commanded by Selene, her forms refined through the Mercury Race’s pinnacle nanotechnology and integrated with its advanced Etheric Battleform, now evolved to version 3.0.
Cruel Shadows:
A legion born from Dark Star superpowers, mastering abilities such as cognitive distortion, shadow body, shadow sand, shadow evasion, and shadow puppetry across wide ranges.
Immune to physical weapons and concentrated fire, they excelled in crowd suppression and annihilating enemy formations.
Numbering twenty thousand, these ethereal executioners answered only to Vale.
Blades of Tyranny:
Led by Sani, each soldier bore the Bright Star ability of molecular locking and bodily solidification—an ability refined and expanded multiple times.
Their entire forms could undergo complete Ether-Crystallization, from skin to marrow.
The result: super-regeneration, mimetic transformation, strength in the tens of thousands of tons, concentrated energy discharges—and total immunity to hypnotic brainwashing or psychic intrusion.
These monstrous warriors could even endure within a hundred meters of a nuclear blast’s epicenter. Numbering five thousand, they were a force built to exterminate superpower users and martial artists alike.
Together, these three legions became the cutting edge of Seraphine’s purge—the divine instruments of an empire’s wrath.
Each court official was dragged into chains.
Each superpower user and martial artist was cut down.
Each high-rise toppled.
Each city collapsed into chaos.
In an instant, all of Emberlight was plunged headlong into turmoil.
While Seraphine worked leisurely in her laboratory, the outside world drowned in unending waves of arrests, executions, and mass imprisonments.
Gunfire, bombardments, shrieks, firestorms, blood, explosions, death—an unbroken litany that thundered for a full day.
In that single day, Emberlight was ground into turmoil by Seraphine’s hand, torn and overturned without pity. She churned the empire’s body as though stirring a cauldron of gore, heedless of its agony, until at last she wrenched free a reeking, howling tumor that had festered too long.
The death toll climbed into seven figures.
Most of the dead were mid-tier officials and low-ranking adherents—fodder swept away in rivers of blood. As for those decrepit old dogs who had lurked in power for decades… killing them outright would be far too dull.
Seraphine had other designs for them.
A cruelly brilliant idea.
One that would make them regret ever being born into this world.
But such amusements could wait.
For now, she had greater matters at hand—matters that demanded nothing less than the transformation of the entire Emberlight.
With her successive conquests—the No Company, the Mercury Race starship, and the enigmatic Pyramid—her technological reserves had skyrocketed overnight.
Skyrocketed to the point of excess.
“Overwhelmed,” not in her own measure, but in Emberlight’s—an empire so primitive in her eyes it scarcely qualified to serve as her tool.
And as three more days passed, her attributes once again surged—this time, by a factor of eight.
【Host: Seraphine】
【Physical Strength: 3.2 Star】
【Soul: 3.2 Star】
Here, the unit 【Star】 referred to the Sun itself.
By theory and by measure, Seraphine’s current Physical Strength and Soul attributes had entirely surpassed the Sun’s mass, reaching 3.2 times its weight.
And the reason this new unit appeared was simple.
Ever since her attributes had first advanced into the 【Planet】 scale, the system had revealed a hidden function—allowing her, the Host, to adjust the display unit at will, shaping it to match her own cognitive understanding.
For example, consider the Physical Strength attribute.
If Seraphine chose to display it in the original unit of 【Point】, her Physical Strength would read: 6.336 octillion.
Expressed in 【Planet】, it became: 1,056,000 Planets.
The weight of a million Earths.
For simplicity, however, Seraphine had chosen to represent it in large stars.
The conversion was straightforward:
6 sextillion 【Points】 = 1 【Planet】 (Earth’s mass).
330,000 【Planets】 = 1 【Star】 (the Sun’s mass).
By that measure, Seraphine now stood as a humanoid Sun.
Within her body, torrents of Grand Sun divine aura surged ceaselessly, each wisp blazing more fiercely than the Sun’s very core.
Her soul, immense and weighty like a world, yet ethereal as a celestial spirit, harbored a terrifying Divine Will—so potent that a single stray thread of it could vaporize Earth without effort.
At such a level of existence…
With every blink, she felt the land beneath her feet, vast yet fragile. She felt the sky above, endless yet hollow.
And with but a passing whim, she knew she could annihilate them both entirely.
Too weak. Everything—too weak.
Suspended in the heavens, Seraphine gazed upon the distant Sun and murmured:
“I truly want to punch a planet until it explodes. I want to feel what that’s like.”
The desire to shatter a planet—or even a star—had long been surging within her, swelling like a storm she could no longer contain.
But Earth was far too fragile. Even the Sun itself could not endure her idle caprice.
It was suffocating.
There remained only one solution.
She would leave this place—fly beyond, into the farther reaches of space.
Even if there were no immediate gains, to scatter a few stars with her fists would be enough to ease the weight of her destructive hunger.
“Earth has become far too small.”
Seraphine mused aloud:
“But before I leave, I need to upgrade the Emberlight Empire.”
She could not, for the moment, indulge in the thrill of a Saiyan casually obliterating planets.
But—shift the perspective slightly—and treating Emberlight as though it were a living game of Clash of Clans did not seem so far-fetched.
And what she imagined, she enacted.
Her gaze swept downward.
Instantly, the complete data of Emberlight streamed into her mind.
At present, though the empire seemed lighter after the excision of the cancerous Business Council, its administrative system had been left half-paralyzed. The deaths of too many mid- and high-ranking officials had carved gaping voids in the machinery of governance.
Into those voids crept organized gangs, violent and dark, rising like weeds after a storm.
“These underground rats always multiply,” Seraphine murmured softly.
And with that whisper, hundreds of thousands of lightning bolts materialized across the atmosphere, cascading down in blinding torrents.
Crackle—crackle—crackle—crackle!!!
In the span of two seconds, the scum were erased.
But what of the vacant seats of authority?
“Easily solved.”
With a thought, Seraphine selected hundreds of thousands of citizens across the land. Their minds were suddenly engraved with vast libraries of knowledge:
How to perform their new duties.
Where to begin.
What protocols to follow.
Whom to contact.
How to conclude their tasks.
The information was branded into their brains so deeply it felt innate, as if they had been born with it.
Simultaneously, their identities and appointment orders were transmitted directly into the minds of their new superiors and subordinates.
In less than a minute, the imperial administration—once hollow and broken—was filled and restored.
All that remained was for the machine to run.
As for personality and will, Seraphine had already carried out precise calibrations when selecting candidates, ensuring that every one of them would prove useful.
And whether it was morally questionable to treat human beings as mere instruments?
To be frank, such concerns did not fall within Seraphine’s scope of consideration.
Thus, hundreds of thousands of lottery-winning citizens, after a brief daze, marched cheerfully to their new posts.
Among them, those blessed with extraordinary luck were elevated at once—appointed as city lords, provincial governors, even Grand Supporting Ministers. Overnight, instant promotion.
In truth, Seraphine had been meticulous in her choices. Every selected individual was handsome in form, sharp of intellect, and firm of mind.
And after receiving the torrents of job knowledge, a few among them—smarter than most—realized something deeper. Their very personalities and mental architecture had shifted.
These perceptive ones immediately traced the change back to the divine empress herself—Seraphine.
Rather than resentment, the revelation only deepened their awe. Not one harbored the slightest thought of rebellion.
For the truly intelligent understand: to break through the layers of society, to climb into the upper echelons of power, always demands a price.
And compared to the usual sacrifices, this was the lowest price imaginable.
After all, who in society does not, over time, have their rough edges shaved away?
Who can claim to keep their mind and spirit untouched forever?
Change is inevitable—and not always for the worse. So why resist?
With the matter of appointments settled, Seraphine turned her gaze to productivity.
A flicker of thought.
Buzz—
Across Emberlight, thousands of silver hemispheres, each a full thousand meters in diameter, shimmered into existence.
They were large-scale, controllable nuclear fusion reactors.
Their technological roots derived from Earth’s science tree, but carefully extrapolated and perfected by Seraphine herself.
Merely five of these titanic plants could supply the entire current energy needs of the empire.
For productivity, energy is the root. Once energy becomes virtually free, high-consumption applications bloom without restraint.
Massive computing grids. Quantum processors.
And with that explosion of computational power comes rapid scientific acceleration—driving breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, reshaping human society beyond imagination.
Interstellar mining and deep-space exploration would no longer be dreams but attainable goals.
Abundant energy would also unlock the path to advanced super-materials.
Take Ether-Crystalline compounds: their production requires staggering amounts of energy. But with power so cheap, their manufacture would proliferate.
Soon, ultra-heat-resistant alloys, supercold superconductors, unbreakable ultra-hard materials—all would roll off assembly lines.
The mass production of such materials would ignite entire megaprojects: space elevators stretching into the heavens, colossal vertical farms stacked layer upon layer, vacuum tube transport systems whisking people and goods at impossible speeds.
And this was only the beginning.
For in Seraphine’s meticulous blueprint lay the true cornerstone of Emberlight’s future civilization: the Citizen Module.
