The universe bled into chaos.
Burning stars blurred the boundary between night and day. Water evaporated, settling into pitch-black shadows, and in the vast expanse beyond the sky, what had once been land scattered like dust.
Minjun withdrew his satisfied gaze and looked back at the 'door'.
Beyond it lay his suffering people. Those who still slumbered.
Ironically, they felt no pain right now, but their bodies and souls were undoubtedly decaying, slowly boiling like frogs in a warming pot.
'Before the blocked vessels damage the heart.'
He reached out his hand again. Now, no one could interfere with him.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. The Talent within his soul boiled, and the stagnant blood deep beyond the breached door reacted.
The obstruction was a spiritual body, hardened into a blood clot.
Minjun was certain.
'You too are my kin, and my people.'
The king extended a hand of salvation to them all.
*
Aboard the Order Command Ship.
To reduce mass, they had detached most of their cargo bays and jettisoned them into space.
However, the essential 'cargo' had naturally been moved to a safe location within the hull beforehand.
One such vital piece of freight was currently shedding tears in the dark.
=No. The people... my kin!=
The room was extremely narrow and dark. There was only one piece of cargo loaded inside.
Such an environment was a courtesy from the shipper to the freight—so that it wouldn't be distracted by its surroundings and could only see what it was meant to see.
Some might consider it an excessive measure. But even if he had been mixed in with other cargo under bright lights, he was already in a state where he couldn't turn his head or roll his eyes anyway.
He wasn't even granted the freedom to blink.
=Ah... Ah!=
That mental wave emanated from a mass of interwoven pale pink strands.
Viscous fluids still oozed from the spots pruned right before the battle. Bugs smaller than grains of rice swarmed over those sticky cross-sections, weaving new vines.
Much like worker bees constantly layering wax to build a hive, the proteins regurgitated by the bugs intricately sculpted nerves, muscles, and blood vessels. Throughout the entire process of new nerve strands sprouting and fusing with the old, the host suffered agony fierce enough to make him faint.
People often mistakenly believe that repeated exposure to similar pain breeds numbness. However, most species could never grow accustomed to agony that exceeded a certain threshold. Instead, they only grew more sensitive to it.
Because of this, the one who had once represented the Kavite felt an ever-increasing torment.
A flesh-shredding agony.
=Please, stop it already!=
Furthermore, what tormented him wasn't limited to physical torture.
A large screen had appeared in the cargo hold, which had been pitch-black just yesterday. It displayed the battle raging outside.
The fanatics' fleet and the Ancient Race battleships had collided head-on.
The sheer volume of missiles unleashed per second wasn't even comparable. It was inevitable that the Committee's forces would be pushed back.
Moreover, as both sides entered Photon Cannon range, the tide of battle tilted even more sharply. Huge smears of light and energy bloomed across the screen. It was the sight of a Space Mothership, its engines blown away, oxidizing in the dark.
The Committee was rapidly losing its warships.
As gaps appeared in their strongest defensive line, showers of Photon Cannon fire pierced all the way down to the surface of the Headquarters Planet. Whenever a streak of bombardment struck the ground, entire city centers could be seen evaporating instantly.
From up here, they merely looked like blindingly scattered beads of light, but the Kavite could easily imagine the hellscape within them.
The image of his kin screaming as they were swept up alive by firestorms was vivid in his mind. A single flash would snuff out tens of thousands of lives at minimum.
A disparity in military strength that left no room for hope.
Despair and horror chased each other in his mind until, eventually, an ominous sense of wrongness sprouted.
=Why aren't they blowing up the entire planet at once?=
With that level of firepower, it should be entirely possible to focus the Photon Cannons and obliterate the planet.
The enemy's movements showed they were aiming for a war of occupation.
Could Asif-666 be showing mercy? A benevolence that refused to slaughter civilians, even the enemy's?
=No, that can't be!=
Just looking at his own current state was enough to feel Asif-666's profound malice.
Just what was that monster planning to do after conquering their planet?
Along with that deep anxiety, the Kavite felt a wave of self-reproach.
A suspicion that perhaps all of this stemmed from his own wrong choices.
=...No!=
Even in his current condition—reduced to a bug incubator that could be defined as neither plant nor animal—
The Kavite still muttered to himself that his past choices had been right.
=I had no choice. There was no other way!=
Even if they hadn't betrayed the primordial race and had helped each other instead.
The outcome wouldn't have been any different, he muttered as if trying to convince himself.
Because coexistence without a balance of power was meaningless.
Even if it started peacefully, the moment the primordial race suddenly thought, 'Huh... those bugs are starting to become an eyesore,'
White lightning would have immediately struck down from beyond the atmosphere just like now, and a perfectly fine star would have crashed into their home.
Entities capable of defining and forcing how sentient beings lived and died, from beginning to end. Could getting tangled up with such beings truly be called living?
What use was free will to a race forced to live only within imposed limits?
I only sought a dignified life.
=That was not my mistake.=
The Kavite's true sin lay elsewhere.
He recalled the distant past. The moment he first discovered Asif-666, fresh from his slumber.
That mummy-like appearance, leaving him unable to understand how the creature was even still alive.
That body, looking so defenseless and vulnerable.
He lamented, spewing out mental waves.
=My mistake was not killing the helpless Asif-666 the moment I found him! My sin was not snapping that frail, bark-like neck in an instant!=
The Kavite realized that he had committed an unforgivable sin.
Why hadn't he killed him?
The fact that a god thought like a mortal was entirely too dangerous.
But at the same time, it had also seemed like a divine 'weakness.'
He believed that by exploiting that flaw, he could use a god as leverage to reach much higher, much further. He thought he could grasp eternal life and perfection.
That thirsty craving was what invited this catastrophe.
Amidst the dreadful sensation of his internal organs melting down (which they actually were), he asked.
=Ah, my kin. What of your fate? What on earth will become of you all now!=
The cargo in the dark wept endlessly. Whenever moisture flooded his eyes, bugs burst through his corneas, sucking up the tears and clearing his vision.
The cosmos, blanketed in flames and heat waves, reflected in his pupils. Steeped in remorse, the Kavite stared at the approaching end.
The 'end' bore colors so fiercely bright they stung the eyes.
*
Emerging from the darkness, Asiph-1's fleet closed the distance in an instant.
Before the Headquarters Planet could even verify its appearance with the naked eye, tens of thousands of streaks of light had already thoroughly ravaged their air defense systems and Space Motherships.
The Committee's warships continued to explode under the onslaught, while the Ancient Race crew members were shredded into fireballs tangled with debris. As a result, a faint new stratum formed in the vacuum of planetary orbit. It was a fog made of finely pulverized organic and inorganic matter mixed together.
Piercing through it, the order's fleet breached the planet's atmosphere.
Unlike the Kavite and Todd, who had lost their lives early on, the planetary citizens targeted at this point could see exactly what was coming.
The exterior of the enemy warships was nearly identical to their own. Therefore, even the citizens who knew that Asif-666 had hijacked the ships failed to recognize them as enemies at first. They simply couldn't imagine the enemy accessing the mainland this easily.
Some were even optimistic enough to wonder if the war was already over, thinking this was the triumphant return parade of their victorious forces.
And that optimism shattered the moment they saw the white lightning pouring from the warships.
Boom!
BOOM!
After closing in to a range that permitted precision targeting, Asiph-1 began systematically obliterating the planet's infrastructure.
The primary targets were the grid system transmitting magic power across the globe and the aviation bases used to launch aircraft out of the atmosphere.
Some of these had been disclosed by Dell beforehand, but the secret locations even she didn't know about were plucked from the memories of the 'meat bonsai' in the cargo hold.
Citizens near the strike zones couldn't escape the Photon Cannon strikes even if they evacuated to bunkers. Given enough time, this attack could blow away the entire planet; their shields were completely useless against it. Most were incinerated before they could even scream for their lives.
Though it severely ate into the engines' lifespans, distances within a planet's atmosphere felt like a backyard to warships originally built to cover star systems. It took less than a few minutes for the major targets to vanish into firestorms.
Once the massive targets had all been cleared.
Vooong!
"Launch Assault Ships!"
Bam!
Like giant fireworks going off, beams of light burst from the belly of each warship.
Drawing long tails as they plummeted toward the earth, they scattered across the planet like a meteor shower.
Deafening roars and shockwaves echoed along their paths.
Crash!
CRASH!
The ground convulsed madly at the impact zones, carving out massive craters.
Hsssss!
At every impact site.
Upon the earth melting from frictional heat, the Assault Ships—originally built by the Committee for planetary invasions—revealed themselves, glowing red-hot.
Like seeds scattered by the wind, these hulks of iron planted themselves across the globe at regular intervals.
Screeech!
Cracks formed on their surfaces as the doors opened.
And from beyond that darkness.
"Advance! Advance!"
"Infinite glory to God! My life for the avatar!"
"At last, within your dream, we dream of you!"
"Go! Bring punishment down upon those cursed heretics!"
The three-eyed ones, covered head-to-toe in combat gear, surged out like a tidal wave. Bizarre roars, blurring the line between prayers and battle cries, rang out simultaneously.
The priests erupted with boiling Divine Power as they tore into the key facilities of the Ancient Race.
In their eyes, the enemy's crimes went far beyond simple disbelief in God or committing acts of heresy.
Those beasts had attacked God.
A sin of treason against the divine, far deeper than mere disbelief.
The priests occupying the land in a black swarm mercilessly slaughtered any defending infantry in their path. Confirming God's existence with their own two eyes and having the honor to participate in a holy war commanded by him had pushed their fervor to its absolute peak.
And their Divine Power amplified in direct proportion to the depth of their faith.
Their momentum was terrifying enough to send chills down the spines of the thousand-odd former prisoners mixed into the assault forces.
*
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'...!'
Inside Elahu Praga.
'He' focused on the reverberation calling out to him.
'This is?!'
It was incomprehensible.
'Who is it? Everyone else is asleep but me.'
Soon, even that thought felt awkward.
To begin with, he could no longer clearly define what the concept of 'I' even meant. Though the absorption had been halted at the last minute, they had already become far too blended together.
He no longer knew where the fence separating himself and others was drawn, or if crossing it was truly forbidden.
What percentage of 'me' did I have to retain to still be 'me'? At what point would I stop absorbing them, and instead, let them absorb me?
Amidst this agonizing confusion, that call sounded incredibly alluring.
It was a voice laden with immense power.
It was saying that it would help him.
'Maybe.'
It might be okay to answer that call.
The moment he thought that—
THUMP!
'Ugh!'
Beyond the narrow space he had been blocking.
A torrent of light battered him mercilessly in time with the pulse. It was as if it were telling him to stop acting like an obstacle and get out of the way.
As if declaring that it was finally ready to let him out of this place.
'Wait, that hurts too much!'
In the end, rather than holding out any longer, he tried to submit to the flow.
He attempted to move his lump of a spiritual body in the direction the pulsation was hammering him.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The shocks repeated with enough force to crush his very existence.
'Ugh!'
—!
Craaaack!
Like ultra-high-pressure water jets carving into rock.
The swollen borders of his spiritual body shattered and crumbled, steadily shrinking its overall size.
Then, the instant he felt as though his outline had separated from the blood vessel.
'Huh... Huh?!'
Talent began to flow once more through the previously blocked vessel.
And at the same time.
BAM!
'Aaaargh!'
The sensation of being sucked into an endless abyss overwhelmed him.
It was a reaction faster and more violent than all the shocks he had suffered thus far combined.
The pressure of the Talent pulsing from upstream fused with the spiritual energy he had generated by trying to move himself.
That combined force launched his spiritual body fiercely downstream, like a bullet fired from a gun.
'AAAAAAAGH!'
At a blistering speed impossible to replicate in the material world.
*
Standing before the door, Minjun smiled.
'It's clear.'
Rejoicing, he spoke toward the seething presence in the distance.
=Come!=
And so, it became exactly as the god willed.
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