Two breaths later, Lei Ting realized something was wrong. Compared to Instructor Kingsley, who practically lived in her academy uniform, this mangled corpse found within the Devourer’s core wore a white dress of incredibly fine fabric. Her skin was excessively pale, and her slightly wavy, snow-white hair lacked the reflective quality of a normal human’s connective tissue. It looked...
It looked just like a Comist sub-strain.
"This is..." Lei Ting’s brow furrowed. He leaned in to examine the body, but in the next instant, he suddenly struck out to the side. His blade-like fingers, wreathed in brilliant golden light, tore through the darkness with a silent sonic boom. The strike caused a newly emerged, ethereal phantom to flicker, her form becoming even more translucent.
Then, the phantom fully manifested from the darkness—a beautiful woman with a gentle gaze.
She stood nearly four meters tall, her figure transparent. She had black hair, red eyes, and wore white robes that were simple yet sophisticated in design. With her hands clasped in front of her, she gave a slight nod to the four uninvited guests and began to speak.
Though she was "speaking," the others only saw her lips moving to produce a string of sounds they couldn't understand. "...?"
The phantom: "..."
She fell silent for a moment, composedly brushing past the minor awkwardness. Switching to the current Galactic Union’s common tongue, she said, "...Greetings. I am Atlin Heather..."
"The 211th Scion of the Galactic Empire, the 'Devourer'?" Lei Ting interjected.
At the same time, the four of them exchanged glances. None of them sensed any malice from this phantom—which was why they hadn't vaporized her immediately.
"As expected, you are referring to me," Atlin Heather said with a smile. "Young gentleman... I can feel that your energy level is very high. You are extremely powerful."
She then nodded to Iron Blade and Dragon Slasher. "It has been a long time, old friends."
"A long time indeed... Our last meeting was fifty years ago, wasn't it?" Iron Blade chuckled. "Also, this man here is the strongest in the galaxy today—'Solaris'!"
Dragon Slasher remained silent, her arms crossed as she watched the lady with a calm gaze.
"'Solaris'?" Heather pondered the title, offering a soft compliment. "A fine name. But... there are at least five other superpowered individuals in the Milky Way who share the 'Crown' rank with him..."
"'Crown'?" Lei Ting was puzzled. Was that the Galactic Empire’s term for Double-S rank?
"You don't seem surprised that you aren't without rivals?" Heather’s phantom said with a faint smile.
"The universe is vast," Lei Ting replied composedly. "Now, 'Devourer,' let’s talk business. I need an explanation regarding the 'Sublimation' and 'Boiling' viruses that have spread through the galaxy over the last century, the mutations of the Comists and the Gahe, the issues in the Perseus Arm... as well as the actions of your brother, Atlin Ebon, and this corpse."
As he spoke, Iron Blade, Dragon Slasher, and the silent Evanheiler all looked toward Heather in unison.
Heather...
She fell silent for a moment, let out a long sigh, and said, "I must admit, all of this is steeped in my sins."
...
...
Atlin Heather disclosed almost everything they wanted to know.
According to her, the corpse inside her massive core—large enough to hold three or four people—was not an ordinary creature. It was the "Comist Progenitor."
Yes, the "brain" of those fungal people.
"She... is not yet dead, but she no longer has a consciousness of her own," Heather said softly, her eyes tender as she gazed at the humanoid fungal strain. "She was a good child..."
"Why do you say that?" Starflow asked in a low voice.
He remembered fighting a certain cluster of her sub-strains back in the day... and he didn't think it was "good" in the slightest!
"Over a hundred years ago, she suffered severe 'pollution'."
Heather narrated softly. She didn't specify what kind of pollution it was, but everyone present knew exactly what she meant.
"Ethereal Pollution." It could only be that.
"We were friends long ago. She grew up in my laboratory..." Heather said, suddenly laughing. "It’s hard to understand, isn't it? A mushroom you plucked from beyond the galaxy, growing day by day under your watch, until one day it mimics your form and becomes a 'person-plant'..."
"Some pet owners on the Star-Net might be envious," Dragon Slasher remarked sharply. "They even try to get their little animals to turn into humans in the comments of my hunting videos."
"..." Heather was momentarily stunned. Were the current residents of the galaxy really into that sort of thing?
However... "Star-Net," she sighed softly, "another name from long ago. In the years before the Empire fell, we discussed whether to allow its base station system into the galaxy... Back then, we thought our voice mattered. But as it turns out, compared to a technological achievement so deeply rooted in the lives of the people, the lifespan of an interstellar empire can be so brief that the news of its founding might not even reach the nearest galaxy with a spacefaring civilization."
As a "fragment" newly awakened from the "core," Heather was clearly overwhelmed by the past. But she didn't dwell on it for long, quickly steering the conversation back. "As the Comist Progenitor, she had no name of her own. She simply inherited that identity and title the moment she awakened."
"So," Iron Blade’s expression turned strange, "essentially, all those mushroom clusters I saw back then were actually this person?"
"And you even became friends with this humanoid mushroom cluster," the Devourer said, spreading her hands. "Though your bond wasn't exceptionally deep, she did tell you when she was 'polluted' back then, didn't she?"
"Yeah, she asked me to look after her sub-strains in the future," Iron Blade said. "I was confused at the time... but thinking back, she was basically entrusting her children to me."
"She always wanted to be a normal organism, so she even mimicked a biological structure similar to an Imperial citizen within her own body," Heather said softly. "Therefore, she always viewed the sub-strains she instinctively produced as sisters or children, rather than 'extensions of my will'..."
Beside them, Starflow crossed his arms, remaining silent.
"When she was on the verge of losing control completely, I 'devoured' her," Heather said, her gaze calm. "At that time, I had already gone mad—a malice-driven insanity. I spread viruses, conducted biological experiments that violated every moral and legal standard, and destroyed normal planets I once seemed to love as an Imperial Scion... including the Gahe, the Ga, and most of the anomalous races in the Perseus Arm. They were all my test subjects, and they were all my mistakes. Although I was indeed suffering from a profound degree of 'pollution' at the time, I don't want to categorize the problem as mere 'pollution,' because it was my own 'evil.' I bear a great responsibility for the galaxy becoming what it is today."
"As I thought..."
The four fell into a heavy silence, waiting for her to continue.
They all knew that even if Atlin Heather was now just a fragment left behind after the consciousness of the true "Fallen Scion Heather" had died, they could not let her be. They could not let her survive this day.
She belonged to no political entity, and her crimes were directed at the entire galaxy.
She had to die!
Heather herself knew this, but she made no attempt to escape. She simply said, "Because of her 'survival,' the current Comists cannot give birth to a new Progenitor. And because of her 'loss of self,' the current Comists are leaderless. Although before she died, she said there was a sub-strain most synchronized with her who was the designated new Progenitor, at some point, the connection between her and that sub-strain became blurred... and that sub-strain seemingly didn't want to return to the fungal colony, as she never took the initiative to contact her."
—Kingsley. It was definitely Instructor Kingsley.
Lei Ting remained silent.
He hadn't realized it then, but thinking back...
A handsome woman with white hair, white eyes, and a slender build; a superpowered individual with high intelligence. Kingsley fit almost every physical standard of the Comists.
However, compared to other sub-strains, her life form was extremely biased toward the "normal organism" the Progenitor had longed for all her life. She had a heartbeat, a pulse, warmth, and blood pressure. The lenses in her eyes could refract light, and when she counseled him, she was exactly like any responsible human professional.
Though he didn't know what Kingsley was truly thinking, she... she must have really liked being a human.
And the "Recorder" must have had His reasons for letting her stay in that magnificent illusion of the *Solaris*.
—Perhaps that illusion was what had hidden Kingsley’s existence from the outside world and masked her link with the Progenitor.
"I think Comist didn't want to die. Survival and reproduction are biological instincts, even for a fungus," Heather sighed softly. "But before she lost control, she actively sought me out to fight, allowing the 'me' who was then at the peak of madness to devour her..."
She suddenly gave a bitter laugh.
"It’s ridiculous, isn't it? A rational, ordered life form lost all reason, while the mimetic organism raised by that person became the key to awakening her final shred of conscience. If not for her choice, the 'me' of today might still be alive, and I would have 'polluted' more than half the galaxy..."
She murmured, "She had a soul too. I should have known... Back in that lab, I mocked her, saying her biological structure couldn't produce a soul or love. Now it seems I was dead wrong!"
"..." Everyone was silent.
Perhaps to an ordinary person, this was a cliché and incomprehensible story: a tale of "sacrifice" and "awakening" occurring between two massive entities that ran contrary to the mainstream organisms of interstellar society.
But to those who lived through it... it was the soul-searing disaster of their seemingly long yet fleeting lives.
Heather, who had recounted all this, closed her eyes, not looking at the humanoid fungal life in her core.
Perhaps she didn't dare to look, or perhaps she was long used to it. Oh... if she were truly used to it, truly at peace, why would this villainous princess have followed Comist’s wishes and kept her in this state forever?
Well, now, there would be no more answers to that question.
To someone like Heather, a conscience was a lethal poison.
And a white mushroom had used life and death to administer the final dose.
"...After that, my 'pollution' began to spiral out of control, and the instinct of my 'Devour' ability began to manipulate me. Before the total mutation and the complete collapse of my reason, I threw myself into a space ruin belonging to the 'Star' civilization, binding myself within it. I carved out the 'me' you see now—a pathetic fragment with memories but no control and not a shred of the original body’s power," Heather said solemnly.
"At the same time, the life-filled mycelium was infecting me, using my corpse as nutrients to grow a new strain. A Comist that does not belong to the 'mycelial mat' network. She has white hair and white eyes, and her name is Sisa. She bears a high resemblance to me and possesses my genes. If she were to disguise herself, she could even take over my identity as a Loyalist from back then, opening almost every research base belonging to the Galactic Empire."
As she spoke, the phantom princess’s brow furrowed.
"And now, she is mixed up with a bunch of Heteromorphs..." She gritted her teeth slightly. "And their leader is my dear brother, the one who led the way in inviting the wolves into our home and betraying our father—Atlin Ebon!"
***
