“The so-called Yonruk race must have originated within a nebula where quality, density, and temperature were all pushed to their extreme limits.

  Moreover, the Ether activity in such a nebula must have been extraordinarily high as well.”

  As Seraphine carefully wove a false Spirituality—one of submissive nature—into the depths of Cadelon’s soul, a construct repeatedly optimized and refined by the Mind Suppression Seal, she mused to herself:

  “Because the key constituent at the microscopic level of such life forms—【Naturally Stable Nuclear Elements】—demands such punishing conditions to form, a mere High-Ether class Sector could never suffice.

  From this inference, there must exist a region within this galaxy where Ether activity far surpasses even that of a High-Ether class Sector.

  And if we push the inference further, then within a Sector able to sustain a Super-High-Ether state for ages, it would be inevitable for entire races of immense power to arise…”

  Pondering this, Seraphine smiled.

  “In other words, the six galactic core races Cadelon vaguely recalled within her shattered memories… the Yonruk should be one of them.

  Galactic core, was it? That alone suggests that this so-called Super-High-Ether class Sector lies at the very center of the Milky Way.”

  Having reached that point, she attempted to activate the false Spirituality—patiently woven and perfected under the Mind Suppression Seal—within Cadelon’s soul, hoping to unseal the vast store of memories locked inside her blazing plasma brain.

  “……”

  There was no response, no ripple of movement.

  Deep within Cadelon’s brain—burning at over a hundred million degrees Celsius—those ancient memory fragments, recorded unceasingly for tens of thousands of years, remained utterly unmoved.

  “Failure, but expected,” Seraphine murmured, casting Cadelon a faint smile. “It seems the Civilization behind you has also advanced far in their research of Spirituality. Their defenses are formidable indeed—locking memories this tightly.”

  At that very instant—

  Though in Seraphine’s eyes the false Spirituality had already been fully woven and perfected, Cadelon’s demeanor suddenly shifted.

  “Master!”

  She slowly lifted her sturdy frame from the seat, took a step forward, and then—knelt with a heavy thud. Bowing her head low, she declared with solemn reverence:

  “Your loyal servant Cadelon vows to serve you without reservation!”

  “Very good.”

  Seraphine gave a faint nod. “Subduing a powerful and capable subordinate is no small gain. Rise.”

  “Yes!”

  Cadelon’s deep voice rang out as she straightened to her full height once more.

  “The matter is decided. Let us visit Zciya City.”

  With her memories and information fully claimed, Seraphine’s form blurred, shimmering into a phantom streak of light. She swept up the silent Cadelon beside her, ignored the countless barriers within the flagship, and in a single instant stepped out of the near-collapsing colossal vessel—soaring tens of thousands of miles away in a flash.

  Standing within the endless vacuum of space, she tilted slightly, glancing back.

  There floated the massive, spike-studded flagship, shaped like a monstrous shuttle, suspended in the void like a jagged mountain range. It was now grotesquely warped and broken, its hull riddled with deep fissures that spewed torrents of searing blue flame into the void—like maddened serpents lashing wildly in all directions.

  Those blazing azure fire-streams, born from the ruptured core energy system, carried staggering power. Even the starship’s tough alloy armor, when licked by those unrelenting flames, rapidly melted and vaporized, crumbling into warped fragments of metal that scattered across the endless cosmos.

  From this alone it was clear: the total collapse of that colossal starship was only a matter of time.

  Yet Seraphine had already claimed it as her possession, and naturally, she would never allow it to explode and be ruined.

  For anything that belonged to her could only be destroyed by her own hand.

  “So…”

  “Astralglow Reversal.”

  Buzz—

  In an instant, a vast, mysterious power surged out of nothingness, enveloping a thousand-mile radius centered on the starship.

  Time itself immediately began to run backward.

  The massive, jet-black flagship of the Mercury fleet unraveled like a reel of film in reverse—within seconds restored to its pristine state, as if the destruction had never occurred, as though all of it had been no more than an illusion.

  With a flick of her sleeve, Seraphine drew the colossal flagship—along with the other 599 Mercury starships—into her Dimensional Pocket across the void.

  Then, turning once more, her figure flashed forward. In a blaze of light, she seized Cadelon and surged toward the slowly rotating planet of Drugana, 100,000 kilometers away.

  Behind her, a trail of warped space unfurled in an instant, spiraling with dazzling white radiance—speed so overwhelming it could leave onlookers dumbstruck.

  As she advanced, the looming planet swelled swiftly in her vision. Its atmosphere of mingled purple and rose-pink gradually emerged in clear, vivid detail.

  Above the endless ocean of clouds blanketing Drugana’s surface floated a colossal city shaped like a three-leaf clover, spanning like a miniature continent suspended in midair.

  From afar, the city appeared to rest on nothing but a single slender, pearly-white pillar rising from the storm-tossed sea of purple-and-pink clouds below—like a child’s toy delicately propped up, utterly lacking any visible mechanical support.

  Its posture was precarious, reminiscent of Korin’s Tower in Dragon Ball.

  Yet a closer look revealed the truth: the vast city, stretching across thousands of miles, was enveloped in a shimmering anti-gravity field and girded by hundreds of thousands of radiant tractor beams, each one brighter than sunlight.

  The entire cityscape glowed with a translucent, pristine white light, suspended in the boundless sky without anchor or foundation.

  It was utterly secure—and breathtakingly magnificent, like a celestial paradise.

  But now, descending from the lofty outer skies into this Heavenly Kingdom, one would discover it had fallen into an uncanny silence.

  Atop the massive docking platform in the eastern district—usually alive with bustle and clamor—every sound had vanished.

  Starships of every shape and size lay silently moored in place, like barren, solitary mountains adrift in the void.

  Even the medium and small craft—each designed in rich, elaborate styles, their hulls carved with vibrant, intricate patterns—had become nothing more than exquisite lifeless ornaments, motionless and still.

  Following the heavy alloy panels of the docking platform downward—descending thousands of meters into the vast commercial district spanning levels one through fifteen—one would find only silence.

  There, the once-busy avenues and plazas now carried no traffic, no voices, no trace of activity.

  The three-dimensional neon brilliance running across the facades of thousand-meter skyscrapers still gleamed in dazzling color. The colossal soft-alloy statues still moved in their programmed, grandiose dances. The towering 3D projection billboards floating above every bustling intersection still streamed grotesque characters and flamboyant patterns in flawless sequence.

  Yet beneath these monumental displays, the shops, hotels, restaurants, and entertainment halls that lined the main streets and alleys all stood in a state of eerie desolation.

  As if, in an instant, every living being and every ongoing event within this sprawling metropolis had been erased—leaving behind only endless silence.

  No—no, the people had not vanished.

  Look closer.

  Countless alien lifeforms of every shape and kind—once shopping, trading, working, and conversing—were still there. They stood, sat, or lingered across every level, in rooms, bars, and streets alike.

  Only now, their eyes were dulled, hazy, and lifeless. They resembled machines—automatons condemned to wait endlessly until death without ever receiving a command—hollow shells stripped of vitality.

  And not just in this vast commercial quarter. Across every single level of the orbital districts spanning the eastern inner city—more than a hundred in total—every resident had fallen into the same vacant stupor, as if the entire city had collapsed into catatonia.

  Even Governor Panei, ruler of Zciya City, was no exception. Within his mansion, he sat as blank and silent as his subjects, reduced to nothing more than the bare instincts of eating and resting—utterly inert, utterly subdued.

  “The situation is even more severe than I imagined.”

  Seraphine and Cadelon moved like phantoms. They strode forward unhindered, slipping through walls, structures, and towering shapes of the eastern district as if they were nothing but illusions.

  “Previously, when Abram’s Spirituality was suppressed by the Suppression Seal, he became somewhat dull and detached, but he could still speak, still act. His basic skills remained intact—and with a clear mind, he even performed slightly better in some respects.

  But these countless resurrected beings of this city-state… after losing their Root Spirituality, they are far worse. They’ve all become living husks—breathing vegetables.

  It seems the collapse of Spirituality itself is far more devastating than suppression, assimilation, or replacement.”

  The scenery warped and shifted in strange succession as Seraphine advanced unhindered across dimensions, her stride never faltering until she reached the Governor’s mansion. There she halted, standing before the enormous alien lobster, Panei, who sat frozen in vacant silence.

  Buzz—

  With a sweep of her Divine Will, Seraphine pierced through Panei’s towering, mountain-like form.

  In an instant, detailed biological data surfaced before her inner sight, and one small detail made her raise an eyebrow.

  It wasn’t his strength—no matter how formidable, it was nothing before Seraphine.

  Her surprise lay instead in the peculiar structure of his alien body.

  “Ponret people… lobster-like in appearance, and yes, some traits match the resemblance.”

  She gave a soft laugh, her eyes flashing. Instantly, the dense, hybrid shell of machinery and biology encasing Panei’s body disintegrated into fundamental particles, unveiling his true form: a shell-less leviathan of a lobster, three hundred meters tall, stretching five to six hundred meters from head to tail.

  Yet to call it a lobster was imprecise—he resembled more a colossal heap of peeled, snow-white shrimp.

  At a glance, there was no reddish vascular network, no shadow of a purplish-black neural web.

  His flesh gleamed clean and translucent, pristine to the point of resembling a pure, exquisite delicacy—already prepared for the pot.

  Of course, it was only the appearance.

  Given the extraordinary heat resistance of his body, it was estimated that not even the surface of the sun could roast him to death.

  Hiss hiss hiss hiss hiss—

  A dense chorus of slicing and tearing sounds abruptly filled the fortress air.

  In an instant, Seraphine, wielding her Divine Will like a surgeon’s blade, sliced Panei’s snow-white, shrimp-like body into hundreds of thousands of pieces.

  Each glowing shard of flesh hovered weightlessly in the fortress, every fragment cleansed of residual Divine Will power, then meticulously dissected and examined.

  Seraphine, possessed by a demonic fondness for mischief, harbored an intense curiosity toward anything unlike herself.

  This was curiosity in its purest form—untethered from utility or gain.

  Thus, she resolved to study the physiology of Panei’s race down to its smallest detail: the cellular functions, the biological structures, the most fundamental genetic traits.

  At the same time, Panei’s memories were pried open by the vast sweep of Divine Will and poured directly into Seraphine’s mind.

  Indeed—

  Like Cadelon, his memories were locked. The underlying locking methods and patterns were strikingly similar.

  From this, Seraphine deduced that the so-called Ponret people were either themselves one of the six galactic core races, or else had deep entanglements with the galactic core Civilization.

  Ten minutes later, with streams of data flickering across her eyes, Seraphine—having stripped Panei to his essence—finally spoke, her tone edged with satisfaction:

  “What a truly… fascinating species.”

  Within the depths of her Ocean of Knowledge, Seraphine confirmed from the fragmented memories pulled from Cadelon’s core that Panei, this Ponret being, was roughly his own age—about fifty thousand years old.

  Yet in strength, the two stood universes apart, the gap at least a billionfold.

  “Such a vast disparity… and yet, they were friends.”

  Her gaze drifted to the countless fragments of snow-white flesh suspended in the air. Stroking her smooth chin, she murmured with curiosity:

  “I wonder what those two went through together.”

  Still, her research revealed something unexpected: this species, the Ponret, were not adept at direct combat at all.

  Their evolutionary path and power system were entirely distinct from those of the Yonruk people.

  For the Ponret, their primary evolutionary goals—or rather, the three great pillars of their development—were:

  Life force, mental power, and lifespan.

  First, life force.

  In her recent dissection, Seraphine discovered that Ponret cells were largely built from natural Ether-Crystalline carbon and Ether-Crystalline silicon.

  This unusual composition and structure proved exceptionally efficient at storing and channeling massive reserves of life force.

  As a result, the Ponret possessed a self-healing ability so overwhelming it left Wolverine far behind.

  Their cells, naturally immune to countless toxins, could also withstand temperatures near absolute zero as well as searing heat in the tens of thousands of degrees Celsius. On top of that, they demonstrated a formidable capacity to absorb and convert high-level electrical currents, magnetic fields, and radiation.

  By contrast, human cells differentiate into a wide variety: epithelial, cardiomyocytes, kidney, lymphatic, neurons, red blood, reproductive, astrocytes for neural transmission, and countless more.

  The colossal bodies of the Ponret, however, were made of just one single cell type.

  A universal, omnipotent cell.

  In this design, they required no specific organs, no skeleton, no neurons, no brain.

  Each cell itself was heart, liver, spleen, lung, and kidney; each was also brain and neuron.

  This meant the Ponret body, in essence, had no vital points and no exploitable weaknesses.

  By Seraphine’s calculations, even if more than half of their massive form were obliterated, as long as at least 1% of the original mass remained, those surviving Ether-Crystalline cells could serve as “base stations,” drawing in and interacting with external Ether to rapidly regenerate the entire body to perfection.

  As Panei demonstrated now, restoring a physique from merely 1% of its mass back to a flawless state would take no longer than half a minute.

  Of course, if the damage was so catastrophic that it destroyed the minimum threshold required to sustain the Ponret’s conscious thought structure and complete memory imprint, then that individual would suffer true and irreversible death.

  Second, mental power.

  Since the entire Ponret body could be described as a vast network of brain cells, their natural mental power was immense. They were acutely sensitive to the fluctuations and surges of their own brainwaves as well as those of others.

  Yet, just as Seraphine had observed earlier, the mental power of these towering alien lobsters was deeply skewed.

  The Ponret’s mental power leaned heavily toward telepathy, control, empathy, transmission, and similar domains. However, they were far less capable when it came to telekinetic force—the direct manipulation of external matter.

  According to Seraphine’s cellular analysis, a Ponret newborn should already wield terrifying mental power, enough to instantly seize control of hundreds of millions of living beings within a thousand-mile radius.

  Had such a newborn landed on Earth before the resurgence of Ether, human civilization itself would, within a short span, have been forced into submission at his feet.

  As for one like Panei, standing at Transcendent Stage Ten, he could all but erase the entire framework of Earth society with ease.

  Figures such as Monroe, Mycenae, the King of Aurora, or even the Primordial Demon would stand no chance against a single sweep of his mind.

  This was because Ponret mental control operated directly upon the material plane of the brain.

  Unless one’s consciousness transcended material constraints altogether, no martial will, no forged soul of steel, no absolute faith could resist its grip.

  Finally, lifespan.

  Most species enter life in a stage of constant growth until maturity, after which growth halts and begins the slow, monotonous passage toward death.

  Meanwhile, most cells must replicate in order to fuel growth, yet their replication is not infinite. Each line eventually strikes its division limit, aging until it collapses into death.

  But the Ponret were an exception.

  From birth, they grew ceaselessly, their bodies enlarging throughout the entire course of life.

  Because of this, they could not afford to form the rigid exoskeletons that should have shielded their soft bodies.

  Once their bodies expanded enough, the confined space within any hardened shell would choke them, suffocating them to death unless they broke free and shed it.

  The shedding process was torturous and cumbersome, and as their mass increased, so too did the difficulty of casting off the old exoskeleton—rising at an exponential rate.

  Through countless generations of natural selection, the Ponret ultimately lost the ability to grow such shells at all.

  Instead, to better defend themselves and adapt to survival, they came to rely on armor—crafted suits designed to envelop their entire forms.

  Just as Panei did now.

  His full-body armor—half-mechanical, half-biological—was equipped with an array of intricate systems.

  It contained modules that could convert his immense internal life force into usable power, alongside force-field generators for control and defense, and an arsenal of high-energy optical lasers, magnetic weapons, and physical armaments of every kind.

  In theory, if a Ponret lived a long life without catastrophic accidents or damage beyond recovery, thier body would never cease to grow—expanding larger and larger until the structure itself collapsed, igniting into a blazing, high-temperature star.

  Only then could one say they had truly died of old age.

  By Seraphine’s estimate, such a span would fall somewhere between one hundred million and one billion years.

  Drugana.

  On the vast upper landing platform of Zciya City, a rectangular starship—barely a hundred meters long, radiating dark green light—descended slowly.

  As the anti-gravity drives beneath its hull gave off a low hum, the air across the platform churned into chaos.

  Whoosh, whoosh—

  Once the ship settled into its moorings, an oval hatch on the hull split open. From it emerged a tall, slender alien, cloaked in heavy black robes, standing nearly five meters in height.

  Trailing behind the figure, a long, whip-like tail swayed with liquid grace—its surface lined with electric-blue exposed nerves that pulsed in regular patterns.

  With deliberate ease, the black-robed alien lowered the hood, unveiling a towering head adorned on either side with green spiral markings. A slender, glass-like neck stretched beneath, leading to a sharp face studded with dozens of crystalline black eyes—cold, unblinking, gleaming with hard light.

  “Ah… I can smell it—the damp, supple fragrance of my dear kin. And also…”

  The alien’s gait was unhurried, his steps neither rushed nor restrained, moving without apparent aim or urgency.

  As he strolled across the vast, plain-like landing platform, the dozens of jet-black eyes jutting from his face rotated ceaselessly in all directions, each gaze gleaming with memories laced with mockery and cruelty.

  “And the weak, forcibly ‘orderly’ stench of rot that festers when they gather together…”

  “Heh… heh heh heh.”

  The black-robed figure laughed low, voice cutting through the air.

  “I, Swetha—once Child of the Sea Clan, the untamed outlaw of Zciya.

  After a thousand years wandering the spiral arm of the Milky Way, I have finally returned to my homeland… for one reason alone.”

  His words faltered. He dipped his head slightly, as though seeing through the heavy deck beneath his feet, probing deeper still.

  “For you, Panei. For you alone. To crush you, this revolting mass of soft flesh!

  I, Swetha, who have crossed life and death, have at last found the weapon to resist your vile brain-control power. Just wait—wait until I carve you to pieces and cast you to the fish.”

  After venting the bitterness in his mind, Swetha’s steps grew lighter.

  Yet after several thousand meters, unease began to creep in.

  “Too quiet.”

  His cold voice muttered into the still air.

  “Disgustingly quiet. What happened here? This place was always so full of life… why has it become like this?

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Something’s wrong. Something must have happened.”

  Years of drifting through perilous star systems had honed Swetha’s vigilance razor-sharp.

  He halted. His body shuddered faintly as a subtle mental net unfurled around her—hidden to the utmost, careful not to stir attention—while he slipped silently toward another sector of the colossal platform.

  Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—

  The lattice-shaped mental wave swept outward, mapping the entire platform within seconds.

  Yet when Swetha saw the scene—scores of stunned Zciya City staff and hundreds of starships docked, poised for disembarkation but frozen inexplicably before the hangar doors—the countless eyes scattered across her face twitched all at once.

  “Something… something has definitely happened here.”

  At that thought, his faint, spectral mental power sank downward, plunging through thousands of meters until it reached the vast commercial district beneath the platform.

  Buzz—

  His phantom-like, ethereal mind-force coalesced midair into a whip hundreds of miles long, lashing silently across the enormous urban sprawl.

  In a single sweep, every lucid soul within those towering buildings was dragged into Swetha’s perception. Though still visibly present, every one of them stood frozen like statues—sentient beings turned into lifeless husks.

  The sight was so grotesque that the eyes covering his face began to spin wildly in all directions.

  “I have to uncover what happened here… or this danger gnawing at me will only grow.”

  His figure blurred, accelerating in a flash—one stride spanning tens of thousands of meters—until she stood before a colossal spherical starship, massive as a stadium.

  Lifting his hand—scaled like a dead fish, with membranous gray fins between four long, slender fingers—he brushed lightly across the ship’s frozen hull.

  At his touch, he began to chant, sharp and shrill as glass cutting steel:

  “…To capture evil, with the Great Eye…”

  “…To hook the immeasurable rope…”

  “…To burn away karma, birthing the dead anew…”

  “…To bind the half-dead to the vast Source of the mortal realm…”

  “…To reveal all… to know all…”

  “…Awaken… awaken…”

  Buzz—

  Under the strange, piercing incantation, the spherical spaceship suddenly began to tremble.

  Its smooth metallic shell quivered with high-frequency vibrations, rippling like a distorted tide, before grotesquely sprouting countless purplish-red blood vessels—some thin, some thick.

  The newly grown vessels crawled rapidly across the ship’s vast surface. As they writhed and pulsed, they converged into a dense spiderweb pattern at the section directly before the black-robed figure.

  At the heart of this web, the vessels knotted together, swelling into a large, throbbing blood sac.

  Meanwhile, deep within the Governor’s mansion beneath the platform—

  “Still, theory is only theory. If one truly lives for a hundred million years, then no matter how useless they are, they should be able to perfect their genetic flaws. Otherwise, they have no right to complain about dying—they’re simply fools.”

  Seraphine shook her head and clapped her hands.

  Bang!

  Astralglow Reversal activated.

  In an instant, the countless snow-white chunks of flesh, previously scattered and hovering within the fortress, reversed their course as though time itself had been rewound. They surged back from every direction, reassembling in mere seconds into Panei’s perfectly restored, massive body.

  At that same moment, a dark and heavy power erupted within Panei’s dazed, childlike soul, quickly weaving together into a false Spirituality.

  “Hm…”

  The six rod-shaped pupils on Panei’s head twitched before his abdomen’s many jointed legs propelled his body forward. He scuttled rapidly up to Seraphine, bowed his nimble head, and declared reverently:

  “Master, Panei vows to serve you without reserve!”

  “For now, I have no need of your death.”

  Seraphine’s voice was calm, her expression steady. “Attend to your duties as Governor first.”

  Panei bowed again, his tone deferential. “As you command.”

  From the unbearable fragments of memory that spilled from Cadelon, Seraphine had unearthed another natural gift of the Ponret people—their extraordinary ability in governance, administration, and strategic coordination.

  Though this giant lobster’s combat ability was meager, incapable of even collapsing a single planet, he was a capable political asset, especially adept in brain control.

  A useful tool. To discard him outright would be wasteful.

  Buzz—

  Seraphine’s phantom-like figure, radiating streaks of magnificent ethereal light, vanished within the massive fortress, carrying along the silent Cadelon at her side.

  Her form dissolved into a brilliant golden glow—like a condensed sun—that streaked swiftly toward the grand cluster of celestial bodies in deep space, surrounded by hundreds of stars. At the same time, she fragmented into hundreds of millions of faint, illusory lights that scattered across Zciya City.

  “Lives stripped of Spirituality cannot grant me sparks of wisdom, nor can they serve any reproductive purpose.”

  “But to simply leave these soulless beings abandoned like this… would be far too wasteful.”

  The faint lights drifted across districts of the city, weaving through alien architecture utterly unlike Earth’s, glancing down upon silicon-based, carbon-based, and other organic intelligent species. A cold, regret-tinged voice echoed through them all:

  “Very well. How could I, so compassionate and merciful, abandon you like this?

  Let me, then… be your salvation.”

  As the voice faded, the countless faint lights hovering across Zciya City suddenly froze. Then, in unison, they shifted course. With a sharp whoosh, they shot skyward, ignoring walls and layers of bedrock alike. In an instant, they broke free from the colossal airborne city, converging into a single divine brilliance outside its perimeter, and then surged rapidly into the boundless heavens.

  The divine light flared once and vanished, but its brief radiance was enough to startle Swetha atop the city’s highest platform.

  “So bright! Something just flew up from below?!”

  He quickly raised his gaze, but saw only purple and pink currents of cloud dispersing in the sky.

  Shaking his head, Swetha dismissed the thought and turned his many eyes back toward the swelling, sac-like bladder before him.

  Puchu!

  The blood sac ruptured, revealing a massive eye, purplish-black, large as a doorway.

  It trembled faintly, swelling as it gazed out with a dull, childlike innocence at the black-robed alien cloaked in a chilling aura.

  “Tell me…”

  Swetha tilted his head slightly, his many eyes locking onto the colossal eye.

  “Tell me… what happened here?”

  The purplish-black pupil quivered at his words—then split open.

  With faint, mournful wails and a surge of foul, clotted blood, a long, slender claw pushed through the torn pupil. Mold spots marred its surface, and its grip clenched tightly around something.

  Without hesitation, Swetha seized the claw by the wrist, wrenched apart its iron-hard nails, and tore free a leather scroll dripping with purplish-black blood from its broken palm.

  Swish!

  He unfurled the scroll. Upon it, a crooked line of his native script—letters like drifting seaweed—floated across the hide:

  [The descent of a deity shattered the City of Boundary; a billion lives perished in a single morning. Yet as the city fell, the deity absorbed every trace of corruption, restoring the mortal world to the time before the great calamity. But the dead remain gone, their intellects unrecoverable; all beings are left utterly vacant, stripped to idiocy.]

  “This…”

  Swetha’s eyes trembled wildly across his face.

  “A deity? The Great Source itself calls that being a deity?!

  Everyone… dead?!

  And then… reversing time, restoring the world to how it was before the arrival?! Impossible! Not even a Milky Way Overlord could wield such power! Who—who in the stars is this great existence?!”

  Even as terror consumed him, the heavens erupted.

  A blazing screen of boundless light unfurled across the ten-thousand-mile sky, drowning all in its radiance.

  “What—what’s happening?! What is this?!”

  Panic-stricken, Swetha craned his gaze upward.

  There—looming above the city—stood a colossal figure of divine light, not merely an illusion but a being of near-substance.

  The sheer weight of its mental presence nearly crushed Swetha’s soul into dust.

  He stiffened, staring up at that unfathomable face—indistinct yet agonizingly clear—its every line radiating an endless divine aura. His cry tore from his throat, raw with grief and fear:

  “Great Eyes! Who is this magnificent being?!

  How… how could a wretch like me stumble upon it?!

  I only wanted revenge… why must I encounter such a supreme existence?!

  This… this isn’t fair!”

  As despair swallowed him, the magnificent divine figure—already blotting out half the sky above—began to move.

  No—this being did not merely fill the sky over the city. Pull back the vantage point, widen the view to the extreme, and one would see that, in the boundless void beyond the slowly rotating Drugana, a divine figure so vast—comparable in scale to a planet itself—stood in silent majesty.

  Before this colossus, seemingly condensed from endless light, even the blazing rays of distant stars felt dim and pale. It was as if this being were the true Great Sun of the mortal realm, while the far-off suns scattered beyond the starfield were crude, childlike sketches made with a crayon.

  That was exactly how Swetha experienced it: the radiance pressed on him like a new cosmic sun. The prolonged presence of this figure made the sky and the endless cloudsea around Zciya City churn and boil with fresh violence. His body and soul felt themselves being drawn toward irreversible collapse, remade and assimilated by an influence beyond comprehension.

  Then, with an almost casual motion, the supreme figure in the vast cosmos raised a palm—fingers splayed—and reached slowly toward Drugana.

  From that palm, endless radiance burst forth. The light boiled and swirled, condensing into a magnificent spiral of fire and brilliance—an enormous vortex made of countless translucent white streaks. This colossal spiral, rivaling gaseous giant planets in size, hurtled toward Drugana with unstoppable momentum.

  “Ah—ah—ah—ah—ah!!!”

  On the Zciya City landing platform, Swetha dropped to his knees and craned his face up, glaring at the heavenly apparition. The dozens of eyes on his cheeks spun in frantic focus; each gaze had frozen into a rapt, fanatical reverence.

  Any lingering fear, any thought of flight, withered and vanished, replaced by something absolute.

  At the same moment, a divine voice—vast, majestic, and unapologetically commanding—broke into the minds of every sentient being inside and beyond Drugana:

  “I am Eon!

  From this day forth, you are my eternal slaves, dwelling within this chaotic world!

  From this day forth, I am the ultimate meaning of your existence in the vast universe!

  I am your mother, your lord, your eternal redeemer!”

  That far-reaching proclamation, tangible as a physical imprint, drove a false Spirituality deep into the souls of countless beings across Drugana. It sank into thought and will, rewiring cognition, activating obedience.

  Not just the billion souls of Zciya City—down to the hydro-ailen tribes in the liquid-hydrogen ocean below—were utterly dominated. They were irrevocably bound to Seraphine, transformed into her eternal servants.

  And that vortex in space, within mere seconds, swallowed the planet whole—wrenching Drugana from its original orbit and hurling it across the void. It surged toward a colossal stellar cluster hundreds of millions of kilometers away, where a blazing sun lay at the center.

  Boom—rumble rumble!!

  Drugana spun violently, wrapped in the radiant spiral of cosmic light. Within it, Zciya City quaked as every inhabitant’s life force ignited. Their eyes, once vacant, now flickered with a cold and sharp intelligence.

  From every building, every floor, they poured out—billions of figures tilting their heads upward to behold the divine figure no wall or cloud could conceal. In perfect unison, they dropped to their knees, foreheads pressed to the ground, voices thundering across the city:

  “Long live Her Imperial Majesty!”

  And on the highest landing platform, Swetha—once filled with vengeance—felt the last threads of resistance inside him shatter. His body trembled violently as he raised his head high, and with breaking voice screamed:

  “Her Imperial Majesty... Long live Her Imperial Majesty!”

  Once Drugana was fully converted, the planet seemed to return to its bustling, vibrant rhythm almost instantly.

  Beneath, in the boundless hydrogen oceans, the hydro-human tribes resumed their eternal cycles—patrolling vast waters, hunting wild leviathans, reproducing as always. Yet in every tribe, from the greatest clans to the smallest villages, something had fundamentally changed.

  The ancient totems once raised upon high platforms had been torn down. In their place stood new idols—some crude, some exquisitely wrought—all carved in the likeness of Seraphine.

  Around each statue, translucent fish-bodied worshippers gathered. Led by their elder priests, they knelt with unshakable reverence, voices trembling with pious fire:

  “...Our mother, our lord, our savior...”

  The chants echoed through every ritual, swelling with fervor. And as their voices rose, the ocean itself seemed to tremble with awe. Every prayer carried a single truth: the hydro-tribes, body and soul, now belonged to their Mother-God, their Sovereign, their Eternal Redeemer.

  The fish-people chanted their creed with voices brimming with raw sincerity, murmuring words of reverence and adoration.

  Their simple, devout prayers filled the entire sacrificial ground with a solemn and sacred atmosphere.

  They believed, without question, that their deity would bless, guide, and shield them—protecting both their homeland and their race.

  Similar chants rose throughout Zciya City, thousands of kilometers above the liquid hydrogen seas.

  From the liquid-state districts to the gaseous-state spires, from the lofty eastern commercial towers to the crowded ports and civilian tiers buried dozens or even hundreds of kilometers below, over a billion intelligent beings—of shapes strange and varied—knelt as one, devoutly offering their faith to Seraphine, distant yet omnipresent.

  Among them, only Swetha, kneeling on the high landing platform, managed to project his mind outward—reaching Seraphine’s true form at the living core of the Solar System. From him, strands of his precious wisdom flames flowed, a tribute of loyalty and submission.

  Through the strange and unfathomable bond of Spirituality, Seraphine gazed from the vast starry void and effortlessly touched upon the memories of this aquatic devotee—once the prince of the Sea-Eyed race.

  According to the archives of Governor Panei, the Sea-Eyed, who now thrived in the liquid-state districts, hailed from a frigid ocean world some 3,500 light-years from this sector.

  Roughly twenty-five thousand years ago, that planet—once sealed beneath an endless crust of ice—was ravaged by successive interstellar wars. Its oceans drained, its crust fractured, its core destabilized, until it became nothing but a blazing ruin, uninhabitable and broken beyond recovery.

  When the Sea-Eyed King of that era realized his people stood on the brink of annihilation, he refused to accept extinction. Instead, he vowed to lead the surviving tens of millions in a desperate act of self-salvation—fleeing into the void in search of a new home.

  He gathered his people into a colossal exodus fleet: over a hundred vast colony vessels, escorted by a countless armada of frigates, interceptors, and patrol craft.

  Before their dying world’s core collapsed beyond return, the great fleet launched into the endless expanse, vanishing into the unknown.

  The cosmos was boundless—mysterious, perilous, and unforgiving.

  For more than a century, the Sea-Eyed roamed the stars, frantically searching for another ocean world. Yet their quest ended in bitter failure. In his despair and fury, the Sea-Eyed King abandoned hope of peaceful migration and turned to conquest.

  His vast fleet descended into madness, launching brutal invasions on every oceanic civilization near his Sentience Realm Hallway. Planet after planet fell beneath his wrath, his sole aim to carve out a sanctuary for his dying race.

  But most wars are wars of attrition.

  Against a fully developed civilization backed by an entire planet, a lone wandering fleet had no hope of triumph—no chance of victory at all.

  Every civilization that reached the space age was equally cunning, equally ruthless. The Sea-Eyed raids were always detected, their offensives swiftly answered by overwhelming counterattacks.

  Outmatched at every turn, the Sea-Eyed could only endure cycles of disastrous assaults, desperate breakouts, and forced retreats.

  After suffering one unprecedented defeat, the first-generation Sea-Eyed King fell in battle. In haste, his heir was enthroned, and the second-generation King gathered the shattered remnants—barely a million souls—and led them once more into the void, gambling everything on the search for a new home.

  They journeyed across the Sentience Realm Hallway, passing system after system, nebula after nebula—celestial wonders flashing past like waypoints in an endless exile.

  At last, through an accidental deviation, the Sea-Eyed stumbled into the Sector of Drugana.

  There they first laid eyes upon Zciya City.

  The colossal, radiant metropolis enthralled them. The second-generation King, weary of endless wandering, resolved that here his people would remain. Eagerly, the Sea-Eyed bent themselves to Zciya’s culture, seeking belonging and survival.

  At that time, the Elder Council of the gaseous lifeforms welcomed them warmly, assigning them residence in the Ocean Satellite City—the forerunner of today’s liquid-state districts.

  Two other aquatic species had already long made their homes there. To the Elder Council, it seemed natural: these ocean-born wanderers would thrive in a familiar habitat, and in time would grow into a valuable new force for Zciya’s construction and prosperity.

  The gaseous nobles had never feared excess population—only the lack of it. For to them, population was wealth.

  And indeed, so it proved.

  The Sea-Eyed, scarred by interstellar exile, fell instantly in love with the anti-gravity satellite city, a brilliant ring that orbited Zciya’s core.

  However, the second-generation Sea-Eyed King, inheriting the will of the first, was not satisfied with mere survival.

  Upon arriving in Zciya City, a fierce ambition ignited within her heart.

  She sought to seize dominance over Zciya, to completely take control of this colossal city-state.

  The second generation knew such ambition would bring immense pressure and peril, yet she clung to her belief, willing to strive ceaselessly to see it realized.

  She longed to be a true sovereign, to rule this city-state.

  But for now, it was only ambition. Aware of her own lack of strength, the second-generation Sea-Eyed King maintained a gentle and benevolent fa?ade before outsiders.

  After all, compared to the gaseous lifeforms who made up more than half of Zciya’s population, the Sea-Eyed, even when joined by the other two great aquatic races, amounted to less than a tenth.

  And in contrast to the gaseous lifeforms, who held the city’s dominant position, the number of Transcendents within the Sea-Eyed race was pitifully small.

  Thus, the second generation restrained her rising ambition. While secretly weaving countless schemes to one day grasp power, she also set forth a survival doctrine for her people—one that might have to endure for a thousand years.

  【No matter what they encounter, they must not resist. Every mistake, no matter how great, must be borne as their own fault. Their character must remain gentle and kind, their manner warm and benevolent.】

  Through this doctrine, the Sea-Eyed came to be seen as humble and agreeable among the races of Zciya. Yet this also meant surrendering the chance to compete for greater resources, forcing them to endure constant oppression and bullying from others.

  And this was precisely the outcome the second generation desired.

  Under her rule, through the passage of years, the Sea-Eyed were always assigned vast numbers of menial tasks.

  Arduous labor became their racial hallmark.

  All of it was by the second-generation Sea-Eyed King’s design, a deliberate effort to cast her people to the outside world as meek, incapable of resistance, and wholly without ambition.

  It was this series of measures that, over time, caused the other races—including the gaseous lifeforms—to gradually lower their guard, coming to see the Sea-Eyed as a useful component of the Zciya City system, filling its gaps in low-level labor.

  Noticing this shift, the second-generation Sea-Eyed King launched a new phase of action.

  Internally, she worked tirelessly to refine the race’s unique liquid-state technology system, perfect their evolving force-manipulation methods, and cultivate Transcendents within her clan, raising both their numbers and their strength.

  Externally, she strove with equal vigor to weave connections with other races, seizing every chance for cooperation.

  The two closest aquatic species became the primary targets of her diplomacy.

  She placed the Sea-Eyed’s singular mastery—Ether-Crystalline elemental seed cultivation technology—at the heart of her bargaining. Using the natural camaraderie of aquatic kinship as her foundation, she spent a full century forging a highly integrated yet inseparable stellar-state elemental seed production system together with Zciya City’s two ancient aquatic clans.

  At the same time, guided by mutual interests, the second generation led the three tribes in forming a strategic alliance:

  【Aquatic Species Advance and Retreat Together, Aquatic Species Support Each Other】.

  This alliance deepened their trust and cooperation, spurred the production and trade of stellar-state elemental seeds, and opened far wider channels for their distribution.

  As decades rolled on, the second-generation Sea-Eyed King relentlessly pursued new markets. She introduced Ether-Crystalline seed jewelry and ornaments—widely beloved in the market—elevating them into one of Zciya City’s core exports. These exquisite products spread across the stars, finding buyers on countless distant worlds.

  Renowned for their purity and masterful craftsmanship, the goods swiftly earned a sterling reputation in interstellar trade, becoming the emblematic contribution of the Sea-Eyed to Zciya’s commerce.

  Through decades of tireless effort, the second generation ultimately succeeded in turning stellar-state elemental seeds into the second great cultural hallmark of this famed interstellar hub—Zciya City—second only to its cheap Ether-Crystalline liquid hydrogen fuel.

  And when all of this was finally accomplished, the second-generation Sea-Eyed King had already grown old and frail.

  She passed down her ambition, along with the 【Key Points of the Zciya City Power-Seizure Plan】, to the third-generation Sea-Eyed King.

  Upon inheriting the legacy, the third generation, after long deliberation, resolutely chose to maintain the race’s “hibernation” state—a policy carried over from the second generation—outwardly preserving an image of “all is well with everyone.”

  But in secret, he began to quietly implement a decisive strategy outlined within the 【Dominance Key Points】.

  Using a revised account of the Sea-Eyed people’s interstellar escape as his core material, he willingly sacrificed large portions of stellar-state elemental seed production. Instead, he gathered countless kin of cultural talent and, under strict guidance, directed them to mass-produce and sell at low prices a flood of cultural works centered on the Sea-Eyed’s history of “hardship.”

  These works spanned novels, music, film and television, games—across genres both sentimental and serious, solemn and heartrending.

  Every piece not only depicted the hardships and ordeals endured during the interstellar exodus but also revealed the race’s unyielding, courageous, and resolute spirit.

  The intent behind this cultural offensive was simple: to ceaselessly highlight a “tragic” image, until it became inseparable from the Sea-Eyed identity itself—an identity stamped with the mark of victimhood.

  Through this widespread cultural dissemination, the Sea-Eyed also seized a share of Zciya City’s public opinion.

  Thus, the third generation’s strategy acquired even greater weight.

  Indeed, centuries later, beneath the empathetic and sympathetic gazes of Zciya’s other races, the Sea-Eyed completed a profound transformation of identity. They had successfully recast themselves, outwardly, as a vulnerable people—a race long oppressed, scarred by suffering, and desperately in need of protection and support from every quarter.

  With this full metamorphosis, the Sea-Eyed became untouchable, shielded by sympathy, and at the same time seized a share of Zciya City’s moral high ground.

  And it must be remembered: where there is no overwhelming superiority, often no blood need be spilled at all—for simply seizing the absolute moral high ground is enough to cripple one’s enemies.

  After long days of fierce deliberation within the clan’s council of wisdom, the third generation, once he had confirmed this identity-shift was complete, signed into being a detailed and meticulous plan for a “staged accident.”

  And soon thereafter, he unleashed it without hesitation.

  The plan itself was deceptively simple.

  Beginning from points of ideology, skin color, clan, wealth, diet, and daily custom, the Sea-Eyed mobilized their elderly, their children, and their disabled. Over long years they orchestrated countless staged “accidents” against the young, healthy, and vigorous of other terrestrial species (excluding the gaseous). These took the form of traffic collisions, neighborhood quarrels, verbal spats, and other such encounters.

  In every incident, the Sea-Eyed deliberately conceded, allowing themselves to appear the losers. The intent was clear: to steadily and unceasingly reinforce their identity, in the eyes of bystanders and society at large, as a “vulnerable group.” This was the preparation for the next step—or rather, the weapon they would wield from behind this veil.

  That weapon was: reproduction.

  Or more precisely, species replacement.

  Measured against conventional warfare, the might of species replacement was immeasurable—and infinitely safer.

  For conventional war drew condemnation, incurred crushing costs, and most often ended in failure.

  But reproduction allowed one’s descendants to openly infiltrate another people’s homeland, while leaving the enemy powerless to resist. Any attempt to push back would be instantly branded as “racial discrimination,” “populism,” or some other moral crime.

  In the end, once the numbers of a single race in a given land surpassed those of the ruling race, absolute dominance would follow, and the land itself would pass naturally into their hands.

  Thus reproduction could rightly be called the lowest-cost, most potent, most defensive, and most enduring weapon of all.

  And this grand design of population expansion was carried out with absolute zeal under the rule of the fourth-generation Sea-Eyed King.

  The people willingly cast aside comforts, lowering their own quality of life for the sake of birthing more children. They abandoned other branches of technology, investing solely into reproductive science.

  So the plan of population ascendance endured—century after century.

  By the time the fifth-generation Sea-Eyed King ascended the throne, the population of the Sea-Eyed had multiplied severalfold, swelling to nearly one-third the number of the gaseous lifeforms.

  That year marked precisely one thousand years since the Sea-Eyed had first set foot in Zciya City.

  And in that year, the fifth generation at last resolved to overturn the millennia-old survival strategy of their people.

  They could no longer endure a life of beasts. They longed to turn the page and become masters of their own fate.

  Thus, the Sea-Eyed began—step by step, with a new air of entitlement—to demand greater benefits and resources from the other races, most of all from the gaseous.

  For in their eyes, they had given Zciya City a thousand years of sweat and blood. Without them, the city could never have risen to such heights of prosperity.

  By then, nearly every Sea-Eyed believed the same: this city owed them a debt beyond measure.

  And then it happened.

  During what began as an ordinary traffic accident—whether by chance or by hidden design—a gaseous lifeform, drawing on a millennium of ingrained habit, acted in the usual way. Though clearly at fault, she bullied the opposing Sea-Eyed, assuming as always that her victim would bow in silence and accept the blame.

  But this time was different. The Sea-Eyed resisted.

  The gaseous lifeform, a noble of Zciya City, was enraged. In her fury, she struck—and killed the Sea-Eyed.

  Unbeknownst to her, other Sea-Eyed had lain in wait, concealed in the crowd, recording the entire incident from start to finish. The footage, raw and unedited, was soon hurled onto the public networks—accompanied by a flood of incendiary articles designed to stir sympathy and outrage.

  The video, capturing in stark detail the bullying and the final killing blow, ignited the entire net the moment the fifth-generation Sea-Eyed King unleashed the full weight of public opinion and media power.

  Their allies were quick to act. The two aquatic races, bound by centuries of strategic alliance, rose first in righteous indignation, demanding justice for the slain Sea-Eyed.

  Soon after, terrestrial species too—moved by sympathy—lent their voices in support, swelling the tide of public opinion behind the Sea-Eyed cause.

  At last, even passing interstellar merchants and foreign fleets began to take notice of the upheaval in Zciya City.

  Not only did they issue statements of sympathy for the slain Sea-Eyed, they also carried word of the incident into neighboring civilizations, spreading the story far beyond the city’s borders.

  For a time, Zciya City became the subject of what could only be called “foreign astonishment.” Alien vessels grew fewer, trade slowed, and fewer customers came to purchase stellar-grade liquid hydrogen fuel.

  The ruling gaseous elders were enraged. But the evidence was too perfect, the story too airtight—leaving even the long-dominant gaseous race without an argument to make in their defense.

  Thus, after more than ten thousand years of idle arrogance, the gaseous lifeforms suddenly found themselves caught in an unprecedented storm of public opinion. They stumbled, panicked, and flailed—every desperate move only deepening the crisis.

  One of their most drastic measures was the decree of strict reproductive control over the Sea-Eyed.

  In truth, the Elder Council had already sensed, long before, the rising threat the Sea-Eyed posed. Their order laid it bare: the uniform removal of reproductive organs, compulsory reliance on artificial breeding chambers, an outright ban on private procreation. Violators would be punished severely, and every detail of the Sea-Eyed people’s reproductive rights—population numbers, timing of births, even the count of offspring—would henceforth be dictated by the Council.

  It was tyrannical. It was brutal.

  And it lit the fuse of a great equal-rights movement.

  Under the banner 【Sea-Eyed People: Important as Well】, fury swept the city-state like wildfire.

  What was strikingly silent was that many others—including not a few of the gaseous themselves—shared the same conviction: Zciya City truly owed the Sea-Eyed.

  In this climate of public opinion, the Sea-Eyed—who had prepared for a full millennium—finally moved. Under the leadership of the Fifth Sea-Eyed King, they joined hands with the other two great aquatic races to deliver a silent challenge to the city’s true rulers.

  Thus began a war without smoke or fire, but rich with schemes and calculation.

  As conflict between the gaseous and the aquatic grew ever sharper, the terrestrial races—numerous in kind but lacking both total numbers and sufficient Transcendents—adopted a pragmatic creed: support whoever pays more. They drifted like opportunists, playing both sides of the fence.

  Time marched on.

  Across centuries of this smoke-free war—more a “peaceful evolution” than open combat—the Sea-Eyed pressed forward step by step, while the gaseous retreated. Even within the Elder Council, once an exclusive bastion of the gaseous, Sea-Eyed elders began to take seats of power. And those Sea-Eyed elders quickly came into open contention with their gaseous counterparts.

  At last, the gaseous elders could endure no more. They resolved to act: a sweeping suppression, military in nature, aimed at erasing the Sea-Eyed problem in material terms.

  The plan was simple and ruthless: to all but annihilate the Sea-Eyed race.

  They would accept the price—economic collapse, social paralysis, urban devastation, mass casualties, civil strife among the races, and the horrified eyes of neighboring star systems.

  They would accept even that.

  The gaseous lifeforms believed they had no other choice. Only the most direct means—genocidal slaughter—could resolve the crisis.

  After all, Zciya City had been painstakingly founded by their ancestors. How could it be allowed to fall into foreign hands?

  But what the gaseous did not realize was that, by this point, the Sea-Eyed people had grown nearly equal to them in both total population and number of Transcendents.

  Thus, when the overconfident gaseous army stormed into the oceanic satellite city, expecting an easy purge, they instead marched into a trap. There, the long-prepared Sea-Eyed—together with their two aquatic allies—struck. The gaseous forces were not victorious; they were annihilated.

  From then on, war raged ceaselessly around the massive anti-gravity city. The struggle between the two races shook the very foundations of Zciya, even threatening to send the city-state crashing down from the skies.

  At last, after years of bitter conflict, the Sea-Eyed emerged victorious.

  Sixteen centuries after their first landing, the Seventh Sea-Eyed King—fulfilling the legacy of the Second—took full control of the great city.

  The Elder Council, once the absolute seat of gaseous authority, was dissolved. In its place, the Seventh Sea-Eyed King named herself the first Governor, marking the dawn of an aquatic dominion over Zciya City.

  Her first decree was swift and merciless: more than half of the gaseous were expelled into the shattered, war-scarred anti-gravity satellite orbiting nearby. Its harsh, unstable environment was barely habitable, fit only for losers and exiles.

  The most unyielding of the gaseous—the old enemies who had resisted the Sea-Eyed for generations—were driven even further, cast out into the raw atmosphere beyond Zciya’s protection.

  For a people long accustomed to luxury and ease, the fall was brutal. Exposed to Drugana’s storms and left to fend for themselves, more than half perished within a short time.

  Only a scattered few managed to survive—by clawing their way through tempests, evading predators, and hunting the gaseous wild beasts that roamed the endless skies.

  At the same time, some courageous gaseous lifeforms hurled themselves into the liquid hydrogen ocean below.

  Many perished. A few, by fortune, survived.

  Over time, under the pressure of the environment and the constant stimulation of Ether, these brave ones vanished into the boundless ocean—only for their descendants to emerge in new form.

  These former gaseous lifeforms shed all memory of their ancient technology and civilization. They took on the barbaric shapes of hydro-based fishfolk, forming tribes deep within the endless liquid hydrogen sea, carving out survival against all odds.

  Thus, a branch of the original founders of Zciya City became nothing more than a legend whispered among the common people at the city’s lowest levels.

  And so, the river of time coursed through Drugana’s clouds for ten thousand years.

  During those ten millennia, the Sea-Eyed people held the Governor’s seat without interruption, passing it through twenty-two generations, their grip on power absolute.

  Across those ages, the Sea-Eyed shed the gentleness and benevolence of their early days.

  They imposed their rule with ruthless methods, crushing every race within the city—including the two aquatic peoples who had once stood at their side.

  Economy, industry, public opinion, military—every lever of power was monopolized by the Sea-Eyed, leaving nothing to others.

  Non-Sea-Eyed races were reduced to lowly workers, condemned to filthy, exhausting, backbreaking labor.

  The Sea-Eyed even reshaped Zciya itself, raising an immense ring-shaped oceanic district around the central ventilation shaft—larger than the eastern city in its entirety.

  The fringes, the corners, the margins—these were cast to the lesser races for their dwellings.

  All were ground down by oppression, yet none could escape.

  For every starship was under Sea-Eyed control, and the highest landing platform was reserved for their kind alone.

  It was at this moment—when every race but the Sea-Eyed languished in despair and numbness—that a starship from the depths of the Milky Way crossed the void and descended upon Zciya’s platform.

  The hatch opened. From its hold emerged a giant lobster encased in half-mechanical, half-organic exoskeleton armor… and beside it, a one-eyed warrior clad in black alloy.