Upon hearing the unfamiliar girl call out “Father,” Seraphine froze for an instant.

  Her Divine Will stalled mid-air, suspended motionless.

  She asked in surprise:

  “You… what did you just call me?”

  The girl opposite her—wrapped in sharp strands of energy like a Valkyrie—wore a bewildered expression.

  “That voice…?”

  Just then, hundreds of thousands of kilometers below.

  The enormous Solar Squid, lurking in the blazing depths, raised a colossal tentacle, churning up a hundred thousand miles of the sea of light.

  At the same time, its skull-like bulk, covered with dozens of unevenly sized eyes, thrust upward and roared at the heavens:

  “Roar!!!!!”

  “Too noisy.”

  Seraphine’s sword-like brows knitted tightly as she cast a disdainful glare down at the Solar Squid.

  Buzz ——

  In an instant, an immense, merciless thought—one capable of erasing countless sentient beings—crossed the vast gulf, pierced through the octopus’s moon-sized pupil, and drilled violently into its soul.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

  Dozens of eyeballs erupted at once, bursting into torrents of raw energy. Waves of destruction surged across the sun’s surface before spilling outward into the cosmos.

  With nothing more than a glance, Seraphine had shattered the creature’s soul. The Solar Squid was forcibly “cleansed,” reduced to a soulless corpse, left stiff and motionless upon the burning sea of the sun, like a husk already dead.

  This scene was so staggering that the heavy-armored woman, along with the high-ranking Federation officials aboard the distant battleship, went blank in the mind, utterly stupefied.

  Seraphine exhaled lightly, then turned her gaze to the woman.

  “What is your name?”

  The woman immediately replied:

  “I am Marie!”

  Seraphine tilted her head slightly, murmured as though considering something, then smiled at her.

  “Marie… I think we have a great deal to discuss.”

  Looking upon that familiar yet foreign smile—so like her father’s, nearly ninety percent alike—Marie suddenly felt the blazing solar atmosphere around her turn unexpectedly gentle.

  Swoosh ——

  Within the boundless universe, the two of them set off together.

  Their destination was not Earth.

  But rather, the enormous, multi-layered mechanical colossus spinning in the superheated void just beyond the Sun’s outer shell—the Dyson Sphere.

  Unlike what she had imagined.

  From only a few of Marie’s words, Seraphine came to understand: the vast Dyson Sphere was not merely a structure built to harvest energy—it was the very heart of humanity’s civilization in this age.

  As for Earth… it had long ceased to be a home fit for life.

  Swish!

  Swish!

  Before long, the two arrived at one of the Dyson Sphere’s massive outer rings. Compared to the thinner energy-harvesting layers, this segment was far denser, like a colossal mountain range forged of steel.

  Rip ——

  A colossal metal gate, hundreds of meters tall, rumbled open, and the two stepped inside.

  After a sequence of sealing, depressurization, nurturing, and sluice-release procedures, Seraphine and Marie finally crossed into the true human residential zone.

  Through it all, Seraphine displayed an unusual patience and gentleness—so unusual, in fact, that even she found it strange. Yet she did not resist this serene, weightless state of mind. Instead, she allowed it to flow freely through her heart.

  Click ——

  Clang, clang, clang, clang!

  The final massive gate came alive, its intricate transmission gears moving with the fluidity of darting fish, before it slowly parted.

  From the widening gap spilled warm sunlight, washing across the dim metallic hall where Seraphine and Marie stood, painting it in a sudden brilliance.

  “Comfortable… at ease.”

  Seraphine smiled faintly, her eyes turning toward the radiant source. Suspended in the azure sky was a Great Sun, unmoving.

  But under her all-seeing gaze, she pierced its illusion. That blazing orb was no true star, but the three-dimensional projection of a cluster of light. Her sight went deeper, beyond the projection, grazing the “blue sky” wall itself.

  Behind it lay a layered alloy bulwark, concealing vast engineering veins and primitive components. And beyond that—stretching without end—was the true universe.

  “This is the Memorial Hall of the Human Federation Headquarters.”

  The two emerged into the sunlight, coming before a pristine white hall of magnificent scale.

  Marie walked ahead a few steps, pointing at a towering stone relief guarded by white columns. Her voice carried reverence:

  “The statues within honor those who rendered great service to all humankind. Their place at the inner and outer entrance means they will forever stand as humanity’s enduring shield against the cosmos.”

  Seraphine gave the relief only a glance before losing interest. Her attention drifted outward, past the edge of the elevated platform where the Memorial Hall was set.

  Around the vast, fortress-like structure stretched verdant mountains and winding rivers, dotted with elegant and sturdy multi-story buildings. The scenery reflected vividly in her eyes.

  Amid the mountains, rivers, and clustered cities, she saw men and women of striking beauty. Mechanical butterfly wings shimmered faintly upon their backs as they manipulated gravity fields, soaring freely through heaven and earth.

  Each one radiated life energy on the level of an Evershield Body.

  Studying these distant figures, Seraphine mused:

  “They must have evolved and strengthened through generations of living in a High-Ether environment.”

  Her gaze softened as she turned to the young girl beside her. Pointing toward the radiant, sprawling city in the distance, she asked gently:

  “Do you live there?”

  “Mm. That city bears my name.”

  Leaning against Seraphine’s shoulder, Marie whispered:

  “I lived in Marie City for twenty years.”

  “Twenty years… Then how old are you now?”

  “Exactly thirty-three years old.”

  Seraphine sighed softly, her hand reaching almost instinctively to stroke Marie’s full head of black hair.

  “Marie, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  She nodded, her eyes locking with Marie’s as she spoke solemnly:

  “As you’ve seen, I am not a man. Nor am I of this timeline. From your perspective, I come from the past… from another parallel universe.”

  Seeing Marie’s emotions shift and ripple, Seraphine exhaled again and gently patted her shoulder.

  “I don’t know what became of my counterpart in this timeline. But he… he must have had his reasons.”

  Slowly, Marie steadied herself. Instead of pulling back, she clung to Seraphine’s arm even tighter. Her voice trembled as she declared:

  “I don’t care. Just take me as your daughter from the very beginning. You are my father!”

  Seraphine was taken aback for a moment, but still reached out to calm the trembling girl, patting her shoulder.

  “Let’s go home. We’ll talk properly there.”

  “…After the chaos of the Remains of God, Emberlight spiraled toward destruction. Its forces were purged, heroes rose and fell.

  For centuries, the world drowned in turmoil. Martial artists rampaged through society. Nations clashed in endless wars. In the end, nuclear bombs were exchanged—shattering the planet into a radioactive wasteland.

  On that wasteland, survivors were powerless before the tyranny of the strong. Like a fractured world of ruins, warlords carved up territories everywhere, ruling through their personal martial might.”

  Hearing this, Seraphine asked:

  “Right—where is that Remains of God from before? The one called Vuron. What became of it after the Ashara massacre?”

  Marie tilted her head, thinking.

  “I’m not sure it was Vuron… I think its name was Cuan. It was more like a natural disaster—no faction, no goals. It just killed aimlessly… though most of the time it lay dormant.”

  “Cuan, huh.” Seraphine’s gaze sharpened.

  “What about the kin of the Remains of God? Have you heard of the Aurora clan?”

  “I don’t think so.” Marie’s delicate brows furrowed.

  “Fifty years after the first Ether recovery, just as the second began, that Remains of God was slain by Uncle Kael.”

  “Kael, is it.” Seraphine mused.

  “With his talent, he could indeed accomplish such a feat. He must be Earth’s foremost figure.”

  “Yes, exactly!” Marie nodded vigorously.

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  “Uncle Kael is incredibly strong. Even this sword of mine—capable of massively boosting my combat power—he gifted it to me when I was born.”

  “Oh?” Seraphine raised her brows slightly in surprise.

  “So, in this timeline, ‘I’ and Kael shared a close bond?”

  Marie’s head bobbed in affirmation.

  “Of course. You were comrades who fought side by side.”

  Then, with a sudden mischievous gleam, the girl looked up at Seraphine.

  “Father… do you want to know who my mother is?”

  Seraphine’s brows furrowed faintly. The thought had never even crossed her mind.

  She had never once entertained feelings for the opposite sex.

  In truth, Seraphine had no desire for shallow tales of romance.

  All she had ever wanted was to become stronger.

  What use was admiration of another? Only by striving relentlessly could one rise above all beings in the universe.

  And yet…

  Curiosity stirred within her, and she asked quietly:

  “Who is it?”

  Marie giggled, her eyes locked on Seraphine’s as she enunciated each word:

  “Selene Wilder!”

  “Hmm…” Seraphine barely reacted to the revelation.

  “Alright, let’s leave it at that. Tell me this instead—why did you abandon Earth? And this Dyson Sphere… how was it built? Earth’s civilization shouldn’t have that capability. Even if it did, a Dyson Sphere is more symbolic than practical—little more than a chicken rib of technology.”

  Constructing such a structure would demand an impossibly vast amount of raw material, with engineering hurdles beyond measure.

  Even if every planet and asteroid in the Solar System were dismantled, it would still fall short of encasing the Sun—at most, it could form a partial shell.

  And the cost versus benefit was absurd.

  A low-tier civilization might exhaust itself, collapsing long before completion.

  But for an advanced civilization with the power to actually build a Dyson Sphere, such a crude energy-harvesting method would be unnecessary, even laughably inefficient.

  For the Human Federation—barely a century old in this era—the feat should have been utterly impossible.

  “This…” Marie’s expression hardened at once, her eyes flashing with a murderous chill.

  “That’s a long story. A mere nuclear wasteland was not enough to extinguish humanity—three Ether recoveries had forged us too strong for that. The true reason we were forced to abandon Earth… was the Mercury Race.”

  “The Mercury Race, hm.”

  Seraphine mused aloud.

  “So this timeline does have a Mercury Civilization.”

  She rose to her feet.

  “Very well. Take me to Earth. I want to see with my own eyes what could drive humanity to abandon her.”

  Marie set her pillow aside and nodded.

  “Alright. I’ll arrange a spaceship—”

  “No need.”

  Seraphine lifted her hand, pointing idly into the air beside them.

  Buzz ——

  At once, a spatial vortex tore open, swallowing the two of them whole.

  Hundreds of thousands of kilometers away—

  Buzz ——

  The vortex reappeared. Seraphine stepped out with effortless composure, one arm wrapped protectively around Marie.

  Marie’s eyes went wide, her lips parting in awe. She turned her head quickly—toward the blazing sun behind them, then back to the vast Dyson Sphere. From this distance it looked thinner, yet still unimaginably vast, its countless layers stacked like a mechanical cosmos.

  For a long moment she stared at Seraphine in astonishment.

  “Father… how could you travel so far in an instant? Is this a space-type ability? How can it cover such distance?”

  Seraphine merely flicked her sleeve with calm indifference.

  “Just a small trick. Now then—let’s return to Earth.”

  “Mm!” Marie’s face lit with joy, her smile radiant.

  “I’ll follow you, Father.”

  Seraphine nodded, then immediately activated a warp bubble that enveloped them in an instant.

  Whoosh ——

  Once formed, the bubble — under Seraphine’s god-like, let-no-detail-escape gaze — picked a clear corridor free of starships, and large meteoroids, then thundered toward Earth at ten times the speed of light.

  Why weave and dodge? Because the negative energy at the bubble’s front is lethally corrosive; once engaged, whatever lies in its path—even a planet of Vibranium—would be instantaneously ?burned? through.

  This was Marie’s civilization, and Seraphine had no wish to needlessly scar it.

  Swoosh ——

  Inside the warp bubble, Marie watched the rippling, twisted strata of space and, eyes wide, asked:

  “Father, is this another one of your ‘small tricks’?”

  “Hmm.” Seraphine stood calm, hands folded. “Everything I’ve discovered and mastered counts as a small trick to me.”

  Marie shot a thumbs-up and giggled: “Father is awesome!”

  Seraphine then changed the subject. “Right—Kael was the Federation’s first leader. When did he step down, and when did he leave?”

  Marie stared out at the universe, which warped grotesquely at their speed, and answered:

  “Uncle Kael… after he rose to Milky Way Overlord when I was five, he left the Solar System alone through the Oort Wormhole. No one knew his destination. A few years later the remaining pockets of the Mercury Race in the Solar System were annihilated; their main base never sent another soldier or fleet to invade again.”

  Seraphine smiled softly. “So Kael either crippled or utterly destroyed the Mercury Civilization.”

  “Hmph.” Marie’s laugh was cold with hatred. “Those Mercury vermin deserved nothing less.”

  She added: “Uncle Kael never came back after he left. He sent only one sealed message to the Solar System — inside the Mercury Race’s fastest, top-tier Sentience Realm information pod.”

  Seraphine asked, “What did it say?”

  Marie recalled: “His first message read: ‘The path of martial arts has reached its limit; there are no higher realms. I must search for a new way.’

  Eight years later another pod arrived with a second message. He said: ‘I have reached Overlord Stage Three, but cannot advance further. I have slaughtered across one hundred seventy-three planets of the Mercury territories and collected ten sets of Order Vortexes. I have condensed a Key of Heaven and intend to go to the Divine trial to seek a new path in martial arts. With your exceptional talent, you should by now be at Overlord level. If you wish, come to the Mercury homeworld. I will wait there for three years.’ And then…”

  Marie sighed. “Uncle Kael’s prediction wasn’t wrong. Father had already stepped into the Overlord level half a year earlier — and likewise, he could no longer advance.

  So he resolutely set out for the Mercury homeworld. Mother insisted on following, and Father couldn’t dissuade her… so he brought her along.”

  “Order Vortex… Order… Final Order.” Seraphine, who had been quietly absorbing the girl’s long account, furrowed her brows in thought.

  “It seems that so-called trial of the gods — and the oath made to them — cannot be mere exaggeration. Even if not truly omnipotent, its value must be extraordinary.”

  Time slipped by.

  Barely over a minute later, the warp bubble decelerated at a point one hundred thousand kilometers above Earth.

  Buzz ——

  The warped bubble collapsed, and Seraphine with Marie stood suspended in space.

  Only at this distance did Seraphine perceive the truth: Earth’s familiar blue was drowned beneath a suffocating crimson haze veiling the entire atmosphere.

  Whoosh ——

  Breaking through the thick, congealed mercury clouds, a radiant light fell, descending slowly until it came to rest above an endless mercury ocean.

  As the glow dispersed, two figures revealed themselves: Seraphine and Marie.

  Whoosh —— Whoosh —— Whoosh ——

  The mercury waves — spanning ten thousand miles — surged and heaved, ceaselessly bubbling and boiling, at times belching forth towering plumes of poisonous mercury vapor.

  Her eyes sank lower. The vast mercury ocean, ten thousand meters deep and swallowing what had once been the Beaconreach Continent, could not withstand Seraphine’s cold, piercing gaze.

  She saw, buried in the blackened abyssal floor of that ocean, dense upon dense, countless upon countless — tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions — of immense molten vents rending through the heavy crust and boring straight into the blazing mantle.

  Those vents spewed torrents of searing magma every instant, surging upward like the Earth’s wrath, madly disgorging the planet’s hoarded heat of untold millennia into the suffocating, oppressive, infinite mercury sea.

  This monstrous, boundless thermal energy churned the vast ocean into perpetual, violent, hellish boiling — second after second, without end.

  The suffocating vapor rising from the boiling mercury sea coalesced mid-air into thick bundles, then tangled with the scorching gales raging between sky and ocean. Roaring, rumbling, it spread outward in layers, becoming vast canopies of reddish-brown to black clouds that boiled and churned, finally dissolving into the infinite darkness above, pressing the heavens heavier still.

  Rumble!

  Rumble!

  Ten thousand meters over the furious mercury ocean, dense and turbid thunderheads clashed and ground against one another. Within their collisions, thunder rolled without pause.

  Now and then, lightning too fierce to be contained lanced down through the mercury shroud, scouring the poisoned atmosphere for an instant of clarity.

  But when hundreds, thousands — even tens of thousands — of bolts erupted at once, they drew to one another like iron filings to a magnet, merging in an instant into a grid of pure lightning that stretched across half the dim heavens, casting light over ten thousand miles of ruined earth.

  Crackle crackle crackle!!

  Snap! Snap!

  Rumble!!

  Within the hazy, venomous air lit by that violent electric glare, Seraphine lifted her gaze. Her all-seeing eyes pierced to the horizon with a cold edge of killing intent.

  There — where sea and sky became one.

  The mercury haze made the heavens darker than ink, painting everything below in somber, stagnant tones: turbid, cold, lifeless, the very hue of death.

  Indeed.

  Under the sweep of her Divine Will, Seraphine detected nothing but alien, mercury-born organisms: strange element-based lifeforms, simple microbial colonies.

  Earth’s native biosphere was gone. Utterly.

  For this ocean — endlessly boiling, hellish and vast — had already surpassed the planet’s ability to nurture life.

  Truthfully, even the Aurora clan themselves might not endure such a nightmare realm.

  At that moment, Marie’s voice trembled with memory:

  “The Mercury Race came without warning. They didn’t speak, didn’t send a signal. On the very day they arrived, they struck from the upper atmosphere, bombarding the surface with their weapons. In just one minute, over ten million humans were slaughtered.

  Uncle Kael, Father, and countless Earth experts rose to fight. With grievous losses, they shot down the Mercury Race’s reconnaissance ship.

  But that vessel was nothing. A probe, a fragment — insignificant compared to the true deep-space fleet that had drifted, by chance, into the Solar System.

  Soon after, the Mercury Race fleet deployed thousands of matter-conversion devices. They pierced Earth’s core itself, intent on reshaping the planet from the inside out into an ecosystem suitable for their kind.

  Hoo ——

  Thousands upon thousands of years of history, of myths and legends... billions of people... countless nations... heroes and conquerors, saints and villains, love and hatred alike — all of it was drowned beneath the endless tide of mercury!”

  Her eyes went cold. She raised two fingers, then swept them forward with ruthless precision.

  Boom!!!

  In that instant, a blade of sword qi shot out, so sharp it tore sky and sea alike, ripping open the horizon ten thousand meters away.

  Rumble rumble rumble!!

  The strike was so fast, so merciless, that even the endless mercury tides could not close the hundred-meter-wide gash. For a long time, the world itself seemed split in two.

  Yet this savage, world-rending attack was nothing more than a casual flick of Marie’s hand.

  For her — whose combat strength had already reached Transcendent Stage Ten — such destruction was effortless.

  If she unleashed her full power, she could sever the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, its width a thousand kilometers.

  And with Kael’s battle sword amplifying her energy, Marie fully charged could, in just three strikes, sweep away the moon itself — a sphere over three thousand kilometers across.

  Hoo ——

  Exhaling softly, Marie let her gaze fall upon the ceaselessly boiling mercury ocean. Her voice grew deep and solemn:

  “It was only when Uncle Kael and Father both ascended to the Transcendent stage — and, with their supreme talent, could leap multiple sub-realms even at the very beginning of that rank — that, after skirting death and sacrificing most of Earth’s champions, they finally crushed and annihilated that fleet…

  And that fleet was nothing more than an unofficial exploratory force of the Mercury Race.”

  At this point, the girl lowered her head, her voice heavy with grief:

  “But by then, the oceans and continents had already been half-destroyed in a short span by the Mercury fleet’s brutal ‘Environmental Modification,’ and humanity’s numbers had fallen below two hundred million.”

  “So…”

  Seraphine’s tone was quiet, deliberate.

  “What happened when the Mercury Race’s main army finally arrived?”

  Marie shook her head.

  “Humanity was nearly annihilated. Earth was completely taken. Uncle Kael and Father… with only a few hundred thousand survivors left, scrambled aboard five starships, hastily cobbled together from the wreckage of Mercury vessels during those brief, empty years. They fled into the far corners of the Solar System, surviving by a thread.”

  Her eyes dimmed.

  “It wasn’t until Uncle Kael rose to Milky Way Overlord, purged and slaughtered every last Mercury mongrel infesting the Solar System, and then carved his way into the Mercury Empire’s own domain… that this long war was finally brought to an end.”

  Seraphine, hands calmly clasped behind her back, gave a slight nod.

  “This timeline’s Earth civilization… truly tragic.”

  Her gaze hardened.

  “Very well. I shall grant creation.”

  She lifted a single finger and pointed down at the endless, boiling mercury sea.

  Buzz ——

  In that instant, where her fingertip vaguely indicated, the surging tides of molten mercury—stretching across one hundred thousand meters—suddenly collapsed, warped, and reshaped.

  In their place came roaring waves of pure, rushing blue seawater.

  Marie froze mid-breath. The distant sorrow in her eyes shattered into wide-eyed shock.

  “This! This is… matter conversion!”

  Whoosh ——

  Before her shock could fade, the converting tide, with an overwhelming force that swept across the sea, instantly surged into the countless billions of tons of boiling mercury, the blazing mercury vapors, and the boundless crimson burning clouds that cloaked the hazy sky in all directions.

  In barely a second, the world-shattering transformation unleashed by Seraphine from a single point spread across the ten-thousand-mile mercury ocean and the vast sky above.

  All the turbidity, suffocating pressure, and heavy gloom were replaced by clarity, lightness, and vitality.

  The entire Earth—surface, atmosphere, crust, underground, and even the core—was thoroughly, effortlessly remade by Seraphine.

  From a higher vantage, far outside the atmosphere, one could see the miracle unfold.

  The Earth, which had once appeared as a hellish realm drowned in murky ink, now pulsed with a radiance erupting from a single point in the boundless mercury sea, once poisoned by rampant miasma. In an instant, this brilliance swept outward, cleansing the world and the cosmos, pouring untamed vitality into the grand expanse.

  At that very moment, beyond the atmosphere, aboard a massive space station in Earth’s geosynchronous orbit, the crew responsible for planetary monitoring witnessed it all.

  Every person in the vast station stood frozen, overwhelmed by the cataclysmic transformation of Earth.

  Originally, they had only been running routine scans with specialized instruments.

  None of them could have imagined they would behold a scene of heaven-and-earth reversal, the stuff of childhood myths and half-remembered dreams.

  “Am I dreaming?!” one cried out, doubting reality.

  “This, this, this… How did the entire planet change? This defies science!” another gasped, their worldview collapsing.

  “That figure standing beside the leader! That is a god! She is a god!” shouted someone, trembling with awe.

  “Wuwuwu! Our homeland is finally back!” wailed another, tears streaming.

  Some, unable to contain the flood of emotion, even activated the space station’s recording system. They captured Seraphine’s casual single-finger act of world-creation, cut it into a compressed file, and transmitted it at once toward the Sun.

  Not long after, the hundreds of trillions of humans dwelling within the layered Dyson Sphere around the Sun’s outer shell witnessed Earth’s rebirth.

  Countless beings were shaken to their core—yet filled with uncontainable joy.