The vast cosmos—dark, remote, and empty.

  Countless starlights crisscross the void, weaving through the radiant expanse of the universe.

  Within the immense Milky Way, truly warlike interstellar civilizations are not the majority.

  Yet, under the weight of countless external and internal pressures, most non-warlike but insufficiently strong civilizations have long since vanished into the river of time, leaving no trace behind.

  What remains are, for the most part, civilizations born for war.

  Among them, a rare few are races inherently belligerent—cruel and bloodthirsty, poisoning the neighboring stellar realms, malignant growths festering across the cosmos.

  Such was the Mercury Race.

  In the Golden Bough Civilization Zone, spanning six thousand light-years, there exists a sword-shaped Sector cluster. Within it, two narrow Sectors stretch for hundreds of light-years, running roughly parallel—sometimes tens, sometimes hundreds of light-years apart. Each gave rise to a race inherently bent on war.

  The first: Driphoran, known as the Mercury Race.

  The second: Namoran, known as the Agate Clan.

  As the territories of these two civilizations extended, winding endlessly toward the distant stars, there emerged a twisted overlap—a sharply angled convergence, a tangled frontier where they collided.

  Within this intermingling zone, the two mid-level Sentience Realm Hallways—core frameworks of their respective Sectors, each meant to reach into its own infinity—clung together for nearly one-fifth of a light-year before finally diverging, flowing south to north into their separate skies.

  The “narrow” interstellar corridor born of this merging spanned half a light-year in length, three trillion kilometers at its widest, and only one hundred billion kilometers at its narrowest.

  Thus, at the dawn of interstellar navigation, both races discovered each other almost simultaneously through this fragile passage.

  And as two cold-blooded races bred for war, neither could abide a rival so close, nor ignore the lure of a fertile and boundless Sector.

  From the standpoint of survival and gain, neither race ever had a reason to let the other live.

  Coincidentally, within this “narrow” battlefield stretched a vast cylindrical nebula, dark blue in hue, trillions of kilometers in diameter, drifting through in a seamless “tail-to-head” sweep.

  Its “lower” reaches extended toward some unreachable, unfathomably distant horizon; its “upper” reaches also vanished into remoteness beyond measure.

  For hundreds of millions of years, this interstellar corridor had been smothered beneath the dark-blue veil of its star-clouds. Within it seethed an ocean of bone-chilling cosmic dust, dense and boundless. It also cradled more than a dozen nascent, still-forming stars; hundreds of thousands of stellar graveyards long since fallen into silence; and countless shattered meteors scattered through the dark.

  The environment was chaotic, treacherous, and labyrinthine—a true killing ground.

  Thus this contested frontier became the ultimate battlefield between the two races.

  After endless wars, the region—strewn with wreckage of starships of every scale, husks scarred and broken—was finally granted an official name, one echoing its desolation:

  The Dark Void Battlefield.

  Whoosh—

  A colossal interstellar fleet emerged: more than a hundred black, spiked, shuttle-shaped starships, their forms sheathed in phantom radiance, drifting slowly out from the Symbolic Domain. Space-time rippled as they broke into the endless cosmos.

  Several thousand kilometers ahead stretched a nebula of dark green and violet, vast and immeasurable, filling all four cardinal directions of the stellar realm. It loomed like an alien world, unfathomable and immense, lying silent before the fleet—a stark contrast to the black universe behind, faint starlight pricking its depths.

  The Mercury fleet did not pause. Once every starship had stabilized in real space, they began their slow, inevitable advance into the nebula.

  As they advanced, the dense nebula—glowing with ghostly blue light—loomed ever larger, making the fleet seem vanishingly small in comparison.

  Yet the innately fierce and arrogant soldiers of the Mercury Race felt no fear.

  Their unmatched power and technology gave them the confidence to face even this mysterious, beautiful expanse head-on.

  Whoosh—

  Silently, the fleet tore through the hazy boundary between open space and the nebula, surging deep into its heart.

  As they flew at high speed, the sharp black spikes bristling from the hulls of their warships slashed through countless ring-shaped dust clouds, large and small, shattering them into sprays of faintly glowing, dark-hued stardust.

  The scattered iridescence refracted off the gleaming black alloy of the Mercury ships, breaking into streaks of icy blue and deep violet, casting an otherworldly brilliance upon the dust clouds further within.

  Time flowed. The fleet pressed onward for several hundred million kilometers until they reached the periphery of a radiant zone.

  There they paused to regroup. From within the starships, Mercury soldiers peered through the portholes at the blindingly luminous region ahead.

  The further their gaze reached, the brighter the glow became—until, at the heart of that blazing realm, they saw it.

  A colossal blue “eye” burned fiercely, radiating a brilliance that pierced the void.

  The Mercury soldiers, versed in basic astronomy, recognized it instantly: a protostar in gestation.

  Though no larger than a typical gas giant, in several hundred million years it would ignite fully, maturing into a true star.

  Their gazes withdrew, drifting instead to the dark-blue dust clouds curling around the portholes like slow-drifting mist.

  Under the piercing rays shining from every direction, those dust clouds shimmered, constantly shifting in color, weaving a dreamlike, almost illusory atmosphere.

  But the soldiers of the Mercury Race did not see beauty in it. To them, these nebulous veils—impenetrable to scans—were nothing but a cloak for deadly threats.

  By now, the fleet had finished regrouping, ready to push further into the nebula toward the combat zone where their main forces awaited.

  But at that moment—

  The fleet’s outermost scout ship suddenly flared with alarm—its hyper-sensitive Sentience Realm radar broadcasting a fierce warning across every channel:

  [Warning! Enemy traces detected at bearing 35.04.27]

  [Warning! Enemy traces detected at bearing 35.04.27]

  [Warning! Enemy traces detected at bearing 35.04.27]

  Instantly, the entire Mercury fleet snapped into hot-activation. Under the system’s direction, weapons swiveled in unison, locking on to the designated coordinates—150,000 kilometers ahead—before unleashing a storm of fire.

  Within a heartbeat, the vast swath of nebula—hundreds of thousands of kilometers across—was ripped apart, vaporized in an instant beneath torrents of supercharged plasma and spears of blinding energy.

  Nearby meteors, caught in the storm, disintegrated instantly, bursting into fragments as they vomited out titanic waves of heat and light.

  And then, erupting from that chaos—over a hundred warships emerged. Dark-black hulls bristled with crimson, spear-like spires spiraling around their crowns, surging forward in a furious counterattack against the Mercury fleet.

  These ships were grotesque. Their hulls elongated like serpentine bodies, surfaces woven from writhing, organic fibers. At their tails swelled scarlet, honeycomb-shaped orbs glowing with sinister light.

  Their base color was a deep, sickly brown, but along their surfaces crawled irregular patterns of phosphorescent green, unmistakably alien compared to the polished silver and black alloys of conventional warships.

  At first glance, they looked like a plague of monstrous beetles, black shells buzzing through space—a sight that provoked instinctive fear and revulsion.

  They were the Agatian bioships.

  Starships not forged but grown, vessels more insect than machine.

  From their bodies erupted streams of noxious green energy. Along their backs unfolded pairs of colossal, translucent wings, shimmering like butterfly glass. Lances of light pulsed through their organic hulls, and in the next instant, the whole structure flickered with shifting, prismatic glow—terrifying and mesmerizing all at once.

  And when that pulsating radiance reached its peak, it detonated outward, cocooning each vessel in a writhing aura. The living shields quivered and flexed, hungrily swallowing incoming plasma fire and energy beams, devouring them whole until they vanished without a trace.

  The Mercury fleet’s response was immediate.

  The moment their opponents activated what resembled defensive systems, the Mercuries cut off their blazing optical weapons, switching instead to kinetic firepower.

  Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

  A thunderous volley.

  Thousands of antimatter projectiles, each brimming with apocalyptic destructive force, were unleashed in a storm at near-light velocity.

  Encased in Ether-Crystalline nanomaterials, the antimatter rounds traced blazing arcs across the void, converging upon the insectoid bioships cloaked within their strange, pulsating light-fields.

  Boom! Rumble—rumble—rumble!!!

  The unleashed power was enough to incinerate a moon-sized world into molten slag within seconds. The blasts ripped through tens of thousands of miles of dust cloud, whipping the surrounding dark-blue star-fields into a raging vortex of energy.

  Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—!

  The newborn vortex shrieked outward, releasing torrents of violet-blue pulses—radiance more dazzling even than the protostar glimpsed before—flooding into the cosmos.

  The perspective pulled sharply back—

  A billion kilometers.

  Ten billion.

  A hundred billion.

  A trillion...

  Across the entirety of the Dark Void Battlefield, no fewer than a thousand such eruptions of supercharged light flared simultaneously, each a scar seared into the nebular sea.

  Dozens—hundreds of thousands—of warships, whether of cold-forged metal or writhing bio-organic flesh, carved burning trails through the nebula. They advanced and collided, stirring the dark-blue star-clouds into violent billows and swelling storms.

  The battle between the two races was merciless, absolute.

  Every vessel drove its firepower and maneuverability to their utmost limits, each maneuver a strike meant to annihilate.

  And it was not only warships.

  Countless swarms of smaller fighters spewed forth from their carriers, darting into the boundless dark-blue haze like flocks of birds—seeking death, dealing death—vanishing into the infinite storm.

  As soon as these massive numbers of fighters emerged, they plunged into combat with lightning-fast maneuvers, clashing head-on while maintaining strict formations.

  Energy weapons flashed relentlessly, beams tearing through the void, exploding into dazzling fireballs as fighters were struck down.

  Meanwhile, the starships—with their far greater destructive power—advanced in tight clusters, surging deeper into the nebula, widening their sphere of control as they went.

  High-energy lasers, plasma blasts, and anti-matter cannons fired without pause.

  Starlight and dust collided in violent bursts across the Dark Void Battlefield.

  Amidst the chaos, both fleets wove through a storm of attack and counterattack, feint and retaliation.

  The desolate stellar graveyards surrounding them—silent witnesses to countless ancient wars—were now scarred anew, set ablaze by the warships’ fire.

  Shattered wrecks of fighters and starships drifted endlessly like corpses in the nebula, flashes of dying light still clinging to their broken forms.

  The entire nebula now pulsed with energy so dense, it felt as though thousands of planets were exploding at once.

  Deep within the Dark Void Battlefield—

  Around a glowing red dwarf star—

  Inside a fortress shaped like a colossal meat-grinder, stretching hundreds of kilometers—

  Three admirals of the Mercury Empire convened in secrecy.

  Within the thousand-meter-wide chamber, Grand Marshal Bahnka of the Mercury Empire sat rigid upon a spherical swivel chair, radiating a subtle yet oppressive Overlord-class aura. His finger tapped lightly against the conference table as he asked coldly:

  "How far has the central Dark Void relic been deciphered?"

  A towering Mercury general, over forty meters tall, bowed slightly from his place at Bahnka’s right and rumbled in a deep voice:

  "Reporting, Marshal. The archaeological team has reached the third level. They are expected to break into the fourth—the critical level—within three hours."

  Bahnka’s expression hardened.

  "The speed is too slow. Akasone, press them. They must accelerate the deciphering within all permissible limits."

  Akasone bowed lower, speaking with strain:

  "Marshal, I will urge them, but the relic’s script is four-dimensional. The data density is overwhelming, and meanings shift with each translation. Three hours is already the limit."

  "Urge them again. And again."

  Bahnka exhaled slowly.

  "I know it’s difficult. But the campaign has already lasted an hour and a half. The longer this drags on, the greater the chance the Agatians will notice something. If they uncover our true purpose here… then we will be in serious trouble."

  His gaze shifted to the Mercury general seated on his left. His voice cut like steel:

  "Sadorgar, you are the overall commander of this battle. You must hold the line until after three hours—no, extend it to four. That would be safer."

  "Hoo…"

  Sadorgar rubbed his temple, pained.

  "Respected Marshal, under normal conditions, imperial engagements with the Agatians rarely last beyond two hours. My staff and I deliberated extensively before drafting a strategy to prolong it to five—but even that is already at the breaking point. If we stretch it further, the battlefront may collapse, and casualties will skyrocket."

  "Casualties are irrelevant," Bahnka cut in coldly.

  "No matter the cost, the relic’s deciphering must remain concealed. The safe extraction of what lies within takes precedence over everything. Even if we burn through every warship under our command—it does not matter."

  "This…"

  Sadorgar’s pupils shrank, the weight of the words sinking in. He hadn’t expected the Empire to prize whatever lay in that relic so highly. Regaining his composure, he answered:

  "Then I will do everything in my power. But… what if the Agatians turn their planet-killer weapons on the relic itself?"

  "With me present, you need not fear," Bahnka said, his voice deep as thunder.

  "I will intervene if the relic itself is threatened. That is one of the reasons I was dispatched here. But remember this: unless they strike at the relic, I will not reveal myself. If the Agatians discover I am here, they will immediately suspect the truth."

  "Understood."

  Sadorgar bowed his head but hesitated, then ventured:

  "Marshal… if I may. Could you reveal, even a little—what exactly is hidden in that relic that warrants such sacrifice?"

  At this, Akasone—silent until now—subtly straightened, ears keen.

  For an “ancient artifact” buried within an ancient ruin, the Empire was mobilizing fleets, sacrificing soldiers, and risking everything.

  Even for the Empire, which possessed only three Overlords, one had been dispatched to personally oversee this campaign.

  It was enough to make anyone wonder—what could possibly be so precious that the Empire would go to such lengths?

  "Hmm…"

  Bahnka lowered his head slightly, pausing in thought before speaking.

  "You both should already know—when it comes to upgrading and breaking through the Etheric Battleform, the key lies not in technology, but in biological materials."

  The two generals exchanged a glance, then nodded in unison.

  "Yes, of course, Marshal. We know."

  Bahnka studied them, then allowed a faint smile.

  "According to ancient records deciphered long ago from the Ordinatron relic, this world holds… something beyond an Overlord."

  "Beyond… Overlord?!"

  The generals’ eyes widened, locking on one another before snapping back to Bahnka.

  "Marshal—could it be that within this relic…"

  Bahnka nodded slowly, smiling.

  "The Empire’s Ancient History Research Institute is confident that the relic contains the remains of something above Overlord."

  "Remains… beyond Overlord?!"

  Akasone and Sadorgar turned to each other again, shock written plainly in their eyes.

  If such remains could be refined into a biological plug-in, what tier of weapon would it become?

  If an Etheric Battleform were directly forged from those remains—wouldn’t that be… unthinkable?

  Gripped by this thought, Sadorgar leaned forward urgently.

  "Marshal! If we obtain those remains… could the Empire defeat Yuro?"

  "Uncertain."

  Bahnka’s tone cut off their spiraling imaginations. He shook his head.

  "In technical matters, absolutes do not exist. I merely said—there is a possibility."

  He let the word linger, then added coldly:

  "But even the faintest possibility is reason enough for the Empire to commit its full strength and launch a campaign of this scale."

  His expression hardened, voice sinking lower.

  "At present, the Empire possesses only three Overlords—His Majesty, myself, and the Grand Elder of the Royal Family, Landonelon. Of the three, only His Majesty has reached Stage Three. Both the Grand Elder and I remain at Stage One."

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  Bahnka’s gaze grew grave, his words falling heavy as stone.

  "According to intelligence gathered by Imperial agents, and corroborated by the predictions of our grand diviners… Yuro’s combat strength is at least Stage Seven—possibly higher."

  A silence fell, thick with weight, before he concluded:

  "In other words… to truly defeat him, or even suppress him, one would need the power of an Overlord at Stage Eight."

  “Overlord Stage Seven…”

  Sadorgar’s voice carried a note of fear. “That’s… the power to completely annihilate a gas giant tens of thousands of kilometers across with a single strike!

  No wonder… no wonder the Empire treats him with such reverence.”

  “Yes—reverence…”

  Akasone sneered twice before speaking heavily. “To put it bluntly, with that level of mobility, if he truly wished to exterminate our entire Mercury Race, he could sweep through the Driphor Sector along the mid-level corridor from one end to the other. It would take him only a few days.”

  “Alas… a tragedy.”

  Sadorgar shook his head and sighed, then continued in a cold tone:

  “The Order Vortex is the foundation of our civilization. It was with these ten ancient divine artifacts that the Mercury Race clawed its way from a barren, merciless homeworld into an interstellar power. And yet today, we find ourselves strangled by one damnable madman—forced to yield to whatever he demands.

  In our race’s fifteen-thousand-Glacurn-long history, this is the first time we have been brought so low by a single lifeform.”

  At that, his mind drifted back to Yuro’s descent into the Driphor Sector. Without a word, the man had destroyed a thriving imperial world—only afterward did he speak with the Empire’s high command.

  The memory of that tragedy still gnawed at him: a billion Mercury citizens, instantly vaporized into endless mercury mist by the casual sweep of a single hand. Sadorgar’s entire body shuddered.

  Beside him, Akasone raised his head, his voice filled with doubt:

  “There’s one thing this subordinate cannot understand. That Yuro—he clearly isn’t a native lifeform of the Fidd Popenif, the Golden Bough Civilization Zone.

  So how would an outsider even know of the Order Vortex?

  Even if, by some chance, he were a native, the Empire’s intelligence blockade surrounding the Vortex is airtight. There’s no reason he should have been able to find our Mercury Empire the very moment he arrived here.

  I cannot fathom how he learned that our race holds the entire Celestial Key.

  Unless… there’s an internal traitor?!”

  At these words, Bahnka, seated at the head of the conference table, fell silent for a moment, lost in thought. Then he replied calmly:

  “In truth, certain intelligence has not been released—not because it cannot be released, but because it would crush the fighting spirit of our people.

  But now, I can tell you a little. After all, you are high-ranking officials of the Empire.”

  The two Mercury generals immediately straightened in their seats, listening with utmost attention.

  Bahnka glanced at their grave expressions, nodded in satisfaction, and began to speak slowly:

  “You should already know this: the Driphor Sector—our Mercury Empire’s domain, containing one hundred and fifty-seven star systems—accounts for only one percent of the Fidd Popenif Civilization Zone, correct?”

  The two Mercury generals answered in unison: “Naturally, we understand.”

  “Then,” Bahnka continued, “do you know… what lies beyond this Civilization Zone?”

  The two exchanged a glance and shook their heads.

  Seeing their response, Bahnka smiled faintly and went on:

  “In truth, this world is vast—unimaginably vast.

  The entire Orion Arm, stretching from one end to the other, holds not just our Civilization Zone, but four others of comparable scale.”

  “Four?! That many!” Akasone and Sadorgar turned to each other, eyes wide.

  “Indeed—exactly that many.”

  Bahnka tapped the surface of the conference table with a measured rhythm and continued:

  “Beyond our Fidd Popenif Civilization Zone, there are also Sabachbar, Cobroltaton, Gadon Rodales, and Didrogutin—situated at the very edge of the Orion Arm, extending into the Milky Way’s dark matter halo. In total, five great Civilization Zones.”

  “The central regions of the Orion Arm are not especially remarkable. Like Fidd Popenif, they are mixed realms where countless civilizations coexist. Some are powerful, yes, but none has ever claimed sole dominion.

  But Didrogutin is… different.”

  At this point, Bahnka raised his head, his gaze piercing the two generals.

  “Within that Civilization Zone exists only one civilization. And it bears the same name: Didrogutin.”

  “Only one civilization?!”

  Akasone muttered in shock, “Then that means… the entire Civilization Zone—dozens, even hundreds of Sectors, thousands upon thousands of star systems—are all ruled by a single civilization?!”

  Sadorgar, equally stunned, added: “Then… just how strong is this Didrogutin?”

  Bahnka’s lips curved into a thin smile.

  “How strong? Incredibly strong.

  The Didrogutians, who built such a civilization, are carbon-based lifeforms. More precisely, a race of D-amino acid carbon-based life.”

  “What? Impossible!” Akasone’s disbelief burst out at once. “Carbon-based lifeforms are notoriously fragile—their flesh, their brains, all feeble. Their survival window is absurdly narrow; a trivial shift in temperature can destroy them.

  And their lifespans! Rarely exceeding fifty Glacurn. Even the elites of their civilizations, who extend life through artificial means, remain short-lived compared to… to even my household organic dog. Because of this, the continuity of knowledge is broken. Their systems stagnate; the transfer of wisdom from past to present is painfully inefficient. In the end, even maintaining stability is almost impossible.”

  “Indeed,” Sadorgar added, his tone carrying skepticism. “For such a flimsy carbon-based race, even reaching the threshold to leave their cradle-world of Yuno and step into the space age is already a monumental struggle. To say nothing of conquering an entire Sector—or completely dominating an entire Civilization Zone.”

  Clearly, even faced with Grand Marshal Bahnka’s assertion, the two generals remained unconvinced.

  “Your grasp of cosmic sentient life’s academic framework is not without merit. Yes—ordinary carbon-based races are indeed as fragile as cosmic energy-absorbing bacteria. But that is ordinary. If there is the conventional, then naturally there is the unconventional.”

  Bahnka chuckled, lifting his head slightly as though looking back across ages.

  “A long time ago… yes, roughly four hundred and thirty Glacurn past. At that time, I was only at the Transcendent tier. His Majesty had not yet inherited the throne.

  Together, we spent more than one hundred Glacurn wandering the breadth of the Orion Arm.”

  “Four hundred and thirty Glacurn… a voyage through the universe lasting over one hundred Glacurn…”

  The two Mercury generals exchanged uneasy glances, calculating in silence: By that reckoning, His Majesty returned… more than three hundred Glacurn ago. Such a time point…

  Bahnka seemed to read their thoughts and spoke plainly:

  “Indeed. At that time, the former king passed away. His Majesty received the news during our travels, and upon his return to the Empire, he immediately faced a conflict on Mercury Star—one instigated by the late Ninth Prince.

  You know the rest. His Majesty ascended the throne successfully, while the Ninth Prince fled with a portion of Order Vortex Number Five.

  His Majesty has never concealed these matters. There is no need for concern.”

  Both generals exhaled, relief on their faces, and nodded vigorously. “Yes… yes.”

  Bahnka went on:

  “On that journey through the five great Civilization Zones of the Orion Arm, His Majesty and I beheld hundreds of civilizations in every imaginable form.

  Organic, carbon-based, hydro-based, chitin-based, iron-based, silicon-based—an endless variety of complex life. It was… truly a revelation.

  Most of these lifeforms, of course, served as excellent biological materials, making remarkable contributions to the enhancement of His Majesty’s and my own Battleforms.

  That venture only deepened my conviction that the Mercury Race is a divinely chosen race. Across the entire spiral arm, no other race possesses our combination of raw physical might and intelligence. Even the vexing Agatians only surpass our Empire by a single tier in matters of soul.

  Until… we reached Didrogutin.”

  His expression grew solemn at once:

  “Though they are carbon-based in outward form, their strength, speed, endurance, vitality—even their soul structures—surpass the Mercury Race. Nearly every individual we encountered was Transcendent-tier or higher.

  And more than that: the carbon-based body is only a shell. At their core… the Didrogutians are dark matter lifeforms.”

  “Dark matter… life?!”

  The two Mercury generals were struck dumb.

  Dark matter, in its conventional sense, is divided by velocity into hot dark matter, warm dark matter, and cold dark matter.

  At its root, dark matter is matter that does not participate in electromagnetic interaction.

  Nor does it obey the strong or weak nuclear forces. It stands apart—outside the three realms, beyond the five elements.

  It is untouched by all things, and all things pass through it.

  It is, in essence, invisible.

  In practice, the influence of dark matter upon the visible universe can only be measured statistically, at vast cosmological scales.

  At ordinary scales, its effect is negligible—irrelevant, almost nonexistent.

  And yet… dark matter, which interacts with nothing, has given rise to life?

  To intelligent life?

  What unfathomable abilities could such beings possibly possess?

  Sadorgar, riddled with doubt, asked hesitantly:

  “If the Didrogutians are composed of dark matter particles, then by the properties of dark matter, their forms should be immense in mass yet diffuse, sluggish, indistinct—should they not?”

  “Exactly as I said before.”

  Bahnka inclined his head. “The carbon-based body is merely an exterior. Their true essence is the life-structure of dark matter itself.

  How the two layers fuse, how such a system functions—we do not know.

  After all, His Majesty and I merely passed through. We did not have the chance to probe deeply into the mysteries of this formidable race.”

  At this moment, Akasone suddenly spoke up:

  “Respected Marshal, you’ve revealed so much about Didrogutin… Could it be that Yuro is actually a Didrogutian?!”

  Bahnka, hearing this, glanced at him and admitted calmly:

  “Indeed. Yuro is a Didrogutian—and not just any, but a Royal.”

  He slowly rose, walked toward the floor-to-ceiling porthole at the edge of the conference chamber, gazed at the red dwarf star burning several million kilometers away, and sighed:

  “Yuro—the famed interstellar hunter, the collector of Keys of Heaven.

  Though barely known within the Fidd Popenif civilization, in truth, he is notorious throughout the other Civilization Zones of the Orion Arm.”

  Turning back toward the table, Bahnka continued:

  “In his possession… are at least several complete Keys of Heaven.”

  “Complete Keys of Heaven?”

  Akasone frowned, puzzled. “Does Yuro truly believe in something as vague and illusory as the so-called Divine Trial?”

  “How is it vague or illusory?” Sadorgar cut in sharply. “If there are no gods, then tell me—where did the Order Vortex’s miraculous gene-fusion ability come from?”

  “Ha!” Akasone shot him a glance. “When primitive aboriginals first saw a chemical rocket ascend, they too thought it a miracle. Yet to us, versed in spaceflight, such rockets are laughably crude.”

  “So you would claim there are no miracles in the universe—only cold physical parameters, with ‘low’ and ‘high’ technology as their hierarchy?”

  Sadorgar shook his head. “What a pitifully mechanistic, materialist stance. Then how do you explain the Ether phenomenon? Across countless long-term studies by advanced civilizations, even with picometer-scale instruments, Ether reveals nothing. At the sub-atomic level, no material structure, no mechanical model—nothing. And yet it undeniably exists. How do you explain that?”

  “Why can’t it be explained? You’re simply ignorant.”

  Akasone shot back,

  “The Ether Research Institute of the Imperial Academy of Sciences has long since defined Ether: an absolute, non-dissipative superfluid that exists only in theory—zero compressibility, zero viscosity, and non-fixed mass.”

  “That’s still speculation,” Sadorgar retorted coldly. “If it comes to that, I could invent ten or eight such so-called definitions in minutes.”

  “Then go ahead and invent them!”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Enough. No need to quarrel.”

  Bahnka, seated to one side, rapped the conference table sharply, cutting through the sudden argument. Turning, he fixed his gaze on Akasone, who looked faintly dissatisfied, and asked:

  “Has the fleet under the Twelfth Prince reached the Sector containing Order Vortex Number 5?”

  Akasone nodded.

  “According to the plan when deployment was decided, the fleet should already have departed Drugana. At their cruising speed, they’ll reach the Broken Sector where Number 5 lies in about 0.167 to 0.168 Glacurns.”

  “Good.” Bahnka inclined his head. “For now, to safeguard the Empire, we must continue our diplomatic games with Yuro—using fragments of the Key of Heaven as leverage.”

  “Frankly,” Sadorgar interjected, “there’s no need to dispatch such a starship to that so-called ‘Earth’ mentioned in the info capsule. It’s just a newly promoted High-Ether Sector—home to nothing more than a primitive civilization of carbon-based apes. Hardly a place to expect formidable beings. If it were up to me, a destroyer with a single Transcendent combat squad would suffice.”

  “No. Caution is wiser.” Akasone shook his head. “The data on Earth’s combat potential, just like the Wormhole records, has mysteriously become almost structurally blank. That in itself suggests something.

  Consider it: if there were no Transcendent-level natives, how could the Empire’s entire scout fleet vanish there without leaving a trace?

  My conclusion is that Earth must harbor a powerful native lifeform—at least Transcendent Stage Five, perhaps even Stage Six.”

  “Arrange it however you like. It isn’t my responsibility anyway.”

  Sadorgar sneered—and was about to add another jab—

  Suddenly!

  Buzz—

  That vast stretch of void, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, shrouded beneath the dim crimson glow of a red dwarf, suddenly began to twist violently.

  From within that immense distortion—almost comparable to a star in size—there faintly emerged a blazing, colossal pillar of light.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  Inside the war fortress where Bahnka and the other two were stationed, the Sentience Realm radar network’s alarms shrieked in frenzy:

  [Major Event: The high-level main corridor of the Fidd Popenif Civilization Zone has, for unknown reasons, abruptly sprouted a branch leading into the Dark Void Battlefield.]

  “Why… why would such an anomaly occur?!”

  Tentacles writhing, Bahnka’s expression twisted with shock and doubt as he instantly conjured a phantom screen before him. Vast streams of data flickered across it, accompanied by urgent beeping tones.

  “The Hyper-dimensional Channel has lengthened again. Such an abnormality has only ever been recorded once in the Empire’s history… and that time was 1,429 Glacurns ago.” Bahnka muttered, eyes fixed on the data streaming before him.

  This flood of intelligence came directly from the Mercury Race’s deployed Sentience Realm radars.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  Flashes of light swept violently across the phantom screen.

  The pulses came too fast, the frequency too high, the intensity too sharp—so much so that they actually warmed the air inside the chamber.

  On either side of the long conference table, Akasone and Sadorgar unfolded their own phantom screens, their faces grim as they parsed the radar’s precise readouts.

  Then, just as abruptly, the colossal distorted zone hundreds of thousands of kilometers away began to collapse, vanishing into nothingness.

  The void returned to its usual stillness, as though nothing had ever happened.

  But inside the war fortress, the three high-ranking officials of the Mercury Race could feel it—an unshakable sense of crisis swelling in their chests, surging without end.

  Somewhere deep in their instincts, they knew: an unprecedented catastrophe was looming.

  “Marshal, Your Excellency.”

  Sadorgar turned to Bahnka, his tone grave. “Should we… retreat first?”

  “Indeed.” Akasone, standing to the side, added, “I suspect the Agatians… may have activated some dangerous weapon tied to the Sentience Realm or the spatial level. They excel at fabricating bizarre, twisted, and frankly revolting contraptions.”

  “No!”

  Bahnka slashed his hand through the air, voice sharp and commanding. “The deciphering of the ancient relic is at hand—how could we flee now, at the final moment? I must remain here to guard it, lest those repulsive Agatians sense something amiss and move in with their main forces to seize it!”

  At his words, the two Mercury generals exchanged a reluctant glance before answering in unison: “As you command, Marshal, Your Excellency.”

  Though their hearts leaned toward retreat, the supreme battlefield commander had spoken. Once he had made his stance clear, none of them dared raise the notion again.

  Inside the Mercury fortress, the three high-ranking officials wrestled with unease and vigilance, their thoughts swirling in endless complexity.

  But eight hundred billion kilometers away, deep within the sapphire clouds of a dark-blue nebula, the Agatian high command was engaged in its own debate over the course of battle.

  In contrast to the Mercury Race’s massive space fortress, the Agate Clan’s central command post stood upon a low-mass planet, scarcely twelve hundred kilometers in diameter.

  Bathed in the seductive glow of that endless nebula, the reddish-brown, slightly oblong planet was encrusted with vast layers of titanic silver-black machinery, interlaced with massive brown chitin. These structures soared tens of thousands of meters into the sky and burrowed tens of thousands more into the planet’s crust, forming skeletal frameworks and pipeline lattices like the ridges of epic mountain ranges.

  From a distant vantage in space, one could see it clearly: hundreds, even thousands of silver-black and brown “ranges” sprawled across the planet’s surface like a twisted spiderweb. They climbed and coiled across vast regions, ultimately converging at the planet’s poles.

  There, they fused and jutted upward into two colossal, pale “brains,” each spanning tens to hundreds of kilometers across, sculpted from the fusion of hyper-complex machinery and pulsating biological matter.

  These two colossal super-brains, slightly oversized yet fully exposed to the vacuum, throbbed and pulsed in relentless rhythm.

  With every violent convulsion—waves of fluctuation spanning tens, even hundreds of meters—their titanic force birthed two vast torrents of telekinetic energy, each more than a hundred kilometers wide. One surged upward, the other downward, overlapping as they swept across the 100,000-kilometer span of nebula space.

  Any enemy daring to trespass into that range would be obliterated without hesitation. These fields, powerful enough to pulverize the entire Himalaya Range or grind the continent of Eliondra into dust, would crush intruders into incandescent plasma, flaring like a second sun against the surrounding gloom.

  At the very core of this monstrous artificial giant—its scale beyond the imagination of lesser civilizations—a hall stretched a thousand meters in length, breadth, and height. Within that dim expanse, torrents of high-density information surged and pulsed like storm currents.

  Carved into ceiling, floor, and walls were countless grotesque patterns and cryptic lines, each etched with spiritual manipulative power. A single glance from an ordinary mind would induce madness, collapse, or worse.

  Hovering amidst those patterns floated three spherical nerve-clusters, each tens of meters across, composed of hundreds of thousands of luminous, writhing filaments. They crackled with constant electrical exchange, communicating in streams of raw thought.

  These were the eternal enemies of the Mercury Race—the Agate Clan.

  Beneath each of the three nerve-masses lay a dark-brown chitin platform, serving as a bed.

  And upon each platform stretched the body of a sturdy carbon-based ape-man, roughly two meters tall.

  Horrifyingly, every ape-man’s skull had been cleanly excised, leaving their pallid brains exposed—yellowish-white folds threaded with green-black neural nets and glistening blood vessels.

  The Agate beings floated silently overhead. From each nerve-cluster extended a bundle of hardened filaments—denser than titanium alloy—that plunged mercilessly into the raw, vulnerable brains of the ape-men below.

  Gulp, gulp, gulp!

  With chilling, wet sucking sounds, the ape-men convulsed violently as their brain matter was consumed, siphoned away bite by bite through those predatory nerves.

  As the feeding continued, their bodies shook uncontrollably, their eyes rolled back, and their pale faces twisted into feral, demonic masks of pain.

  Gulp, gulp, gulp!

  Then, with a sudden wrench, one ape-man’s brain was drained completely dry. His skull, now half-collapsed, dissolved into vapor with a hiss of bloody steam.

  Clatter, clatter, clatter!

  The platform beneath the corpse split apart, swallowing the body whole in a mechanical snap.

  Thump, thump, thump—

  Before long, another unconscious ape-man was wriggled forth from the smooth, organic tunnel beneath the crack. The body slid onto the chitinous bed-platform, the opening sealing shut behind it with a wet snap.

  Once the ape-man lay in place, two biological tentacles—fused with jagged mechanical components—extended swiftly from the edges of the platform. At their tips gleamed blades and circular saws, which immediately went to work.

  Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle!

  In only seconds, the skull was cleanly carved away, exposing the yellowish-white folds of a slightly hollow brain.

  The Agate entities, floating motionless in mid-air, lowered fresh bundles of nerves and stabbed them directly into the exposed matter, beginning yet another cycle of grisly consumption.

  Within this horrific, blood-soaked spectacle—though to the Agate Clan, it was nothing more than a light snack at tea hour—one of the hovering nerve-clusters, its neural web flickering with murky yellow light, pulsed out waves of electrical signals:

  “According to battle reports from the front line, the situation of this engagement remains unclear.”

  The Agate individual to the left, its body faintly glowing green, responded:

  “The scale of this clash far surpasses the past. We’ve lost one million spiral-class shock ships, more than 8,000 hunter-class interceptors, over 370 phantom-class patrol craft, and even eighty-three luminous-class main battleships.

  Hoo… the losses are staggering. What exactly are those Mercury vermin scheming?”

  The largest of the Agate beings, spanning over a hundred meters in diameter, radiated an unmistakable Overlord’s aura. Its body burned with dazzling crimson light as it spoke, dark and detached:

  “Abnormal events do not occur without cause. The Mercury octopi have escalated this confrontation to such a scale—there must be a reason.

  My over-time self-perception tells me this: the Mercury Race is undertaking something profoundly dangerous to us. If they succeed, the Agate Clan could be dragged into an abyss from which there is no return.”

  With that, it plunged its nerve-bundle deep into the ape-man’s brain, sucking fiercely until the organ collapsed. Then, swaying its massive form in apparent satisfaction, it asked coolly:

  “Palinon… did your earlier intelligence patrol orders uncover any trace?”

  Palinon’s neural-web body flickered with a muted yellow glow as he transmitted, voice respectful:

  “Respected General Gemino, as per your orders, one hour ago I dispatched fifteen hundred dream-investigation teams. They infiltrated multiple sectors of the Dark Void Battlefield through the Sentience Realm Symbolic Domain to carry out covert probing.

  By sifting meticulously through torrents of soul fragments left behind by countless fallen Mercury beings and collecting vast amounts of data, this subordinate has found no trace of abnormal activity from those mercury maggots.”

  “My over-time self-perception is rarely wrong. Its error margin is only seven parts in ten thousand,” Gemino replied coldly. “Therefore, the flaw lies elsewhere. It is highly probable… the Mercury Race has devised some form of shielding technology to blind our investigation teams.”

  Perhaps irritated, he abruptly twisted the massive nerve bundle buried in the ape-man’s exposed brain.

  Grind, grind, grind—

  With only a few violent turns, over half the ape-man’s body was churned into a slurry of blood and pulp. His two furred legs spasmed violently, then fell limp as life fled his form.

  Having vented his temper, Gemino’s vast body pulsed once more with streams of electrical signals as he issued fresh orders to the green-glowing Agate beside him:

  “Admiral Kleron, how many thought-parasites does the Empire still have embedded within the Mercury Race’s military? How many are currently deployed in the Dark Void Battlefield?”

  Upon hearing the question, Kleron’s neural-network body pulsed with a green phosphorescent glow.

  “Respected General Gemino—across the Mercury Race’s military, from headquarters to each planet and down to the Dark Void Battlefield—the current estimated number of surviving parasites is 728,043. Of those, 92,540 remain on the Dark Void Battlefield.”

  “Hmm…” Gemino murmured. “That’s less than half compared to a century ago, isn’t it?”

  Kleron replied, a trace of helplessness in his tone: “The Mercury Race’s reconnaissance and personality-mask penetration tech has grown markedly more sophisticated; its accuracy improves daily. The seers of the Wisdom Temple prophesize that within the next hundred years the Mercury Race will pierce the thought parasites’ disguises one by one, and personality-mask technology will likely become obsolete.”

  Then his expression brightened. “However—the simulated Soul-Bearer conversion technology, thanks to intensified research and debate among the Academy of Sciences’ scholars, has matured rapidly. It’s expected to seamlessly fill the void the parasites will leave, preserving the Empire’s intelligence network from collapse and even—”

  “I don’t care about tech that can’t be applied right now.”

  Gemino cut him off curtly. “Just tell me how many parasites I can deploy on the Dark Void Battlefield.”

  

  “Uh…” Kleron hesitated. “Your Excellency, General—with your authority, you can command no more than fifty-five thousand at most.”

  “Then fifty-five thousand it is,” Gemino rumbled. “Issue the death order. Have them all initiate large-scale personality conversion and push to uncover any irregular movement within the Mercury Race’s forces. I refuse to believe those mercury vermin can conceal everything so tightly—there must be traces left behind!”

  Buzz—

  The Sentience Realm radar monitoring network suddenly transmitted a new alert to the three Agate Clan members present:

  [Major Event: The high-level hallway main road of the Fidd Popenif Civilization Zone has, for unknown reasons, abruptly sprouted a branching path leading into the Dark Void Battlefield.]

  “What?!”

  Gemino instantly launched a surge of mental power, threading his fluctuations into the base’s information network. Palinon and Kleron followed suit.

  Cross-referencing the Sentience Realm radar’s data, the three quickly pinpointed the anomaly’s coordinates.

  It lay 800 billion kilometers away—within a nebula barely 250,000 kilometers from the Mercury Race’s space fortress.

  “The Sentience Realm radar the Empire deployed in the Symbolic Domain transmits at ten-thousand times the speed of light,” Kleron said gravely. “At that velocity, a signal from 800 billion kilometers requires four Shards of time to reach command.”

  “In other words,” Gemino muttered coldly, confusion flickering in his gaze, “the unknown disturbance occurred four Shards ago. Could this be… the Mercury Race’s handiwork?!”

  Palinon nodded. “Very likely. The Mercury Race excels at conjuring all manner of strange and uncanny creations. This could well be a new and dangerous weapon of theirs.”

  Even as suspicion deepened between the two races, near a red dwarf star several million kilometers from the Mercury Race space fortress—

  Whoosh—

  In an instant, the surrounding tens of millions of kilometers of chaotic nebula began to distort and blur. From the void, a surge of immense energy erupted—vast as a supernova—violently tearing through the fabric of space.

  The outburst was apocalyptic. So overwhelming that the nearby red dwarf star was directly “blown apart”: its magnetic field collapsed entirely, and the trembling star spewed forth solar flares tens of thousands of kilometers long in a frenzy.

  The disturbance immediately jolted the three high-ranking Mercury Race officials. Bahnka reacted first, snapping the fortress’s reconnaissance arrays toward the source of the surge.

  And then they saw it—an unparalleled spectacle, beyond anything they had ever witnessed or even conceived.

  Within the dark, eerie reaches of the nebula, a blazing star—fully a million kilometers in diameter, dwarfing the red dwarf—tore open the barrier between reality and the Sentience Realm. Out of nothingness, amid the deep blue starclouds, it emerged like a living colossus.

  It unfurled spiraling arms at sub-light velocity, each coil dragging planets into alignment—planet with planet, moon with moon—shaping a vast, angled helix across the gulf of the cosmos. Ordered, precise, yet alive—like a cosmic serpent rising from the abyss of the universe itself.

  So magnificent. So terrifyingly beautiful.

  The sight struck the three Mercury officials dumb. Frozen in place, they could only stare—shocked into rigid silence, utterly without words.

  “This… this thing is emerging from the Sentience Realm? With such mass… how could that even be possible?!”

  “Beyond imagination!”

  “Cosmic will—is this a dream?!”

  Before their shock could settle, a shrill alarm tore through the command hall.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  [Alert! Deep-space Sentience Realm detector has identified an Overlord Stage Ten lifeform. Extreme vigilance required!]

  “Overlord… Stage Ten?” Sadorgar echoed blankly.

  Akasone’s rigid frame trembled. “With a single strike… it could annihilate an entire star-class powerhouse…”

  Bahnka’s expression hardened, his face strained.

  One Yuro alone was already nearly unmanageable—yet now something even stronger? And those countless stars… a Stage Ten Overlord shouldn’t be able to drag such mass across reality. Then how…?

  Before the thought could fully form, the deep-space Sentience Realm detector shrieked again.

  [Warning! Error! Error! Target’s combat strength far exceeds Overlord Stage Ten—tenfold… twentyfold… thirtyfold… fortyfold… Unable to calculate… unable to—]

  Bang!!

  To the wide, disbelieving eyes of Bahnka and the others, the combat power analyzer simply—exploded.