Ten thousand voices were weeping to him.
A hundred thousand voices were accusing him.
A million voices were roaring at him.
Ten million voices screamed, a hundred million cursed, and more... more...
—"Destroyer!" —"Slayer!" —"Executioner!" —"For a future that has yet to manifest, you have betrayed our trust and our present!"
Those voices were mingled with other sounds; he heard the rush of energy, howling like an overloaded wind tunnel, while unrecognizable, shrill shrieks echoed in his mind.
He saw people dying; he saw people dead. Perhaps at this very moment, new lives were being born. Hundreds of billions of births, hundreds of billions of deaths—the life and extinction within the starry sea were always this cold and indifferent. A single spark of warmth from a living being was not enough to let even a sliver of light penetrate the darkness of the universe.
But... "...It doesn't matter," Lei Ting whispered. He knew that in his world, skyscrapers were collapsing, but just as he had to convince himself every time that all the sacrifice was necessary—"It doesn't matter," he said, "soon..."
...Soon, the culprit behind all of this would die.
And this disaster, having finished its fermentation, would reach its conclusion here, before it could truly erupt...
...Its end would begin.
The avatar of the 'Silver Star' shattered behind the colossus mecha, ground into nothingness amidst screams by the tide of the corona and golden radiance. But shortly after, uniform, massive figures emerged upon the scattered sections of the Ringworld. They wore identical white robes and identical masks, letting out identical roars at him.
"Death is not the end, Solar Star!" That synchronized, grand voice echoed. "We are one with the galaxy; this path has no end!"
No one answered those words. Not even with irony.
The massive mecha swung its sword. It simply swung its sword.
With inexpressible fury, it struck.
*BOOM—!!!*
The outer wall of the Ringworld once again endured a massive impact. A staggering force surged forward like a tsunami, knocking a sequence of nearly twenty sectors out of alignment and leaving behind a colossal crater.
From the inside, the presentation of these concave damages varied: some appeared as doomsday scenes of a shattering sky, while others manifested as distortions of darkness and even deeper shadows.
Structures twisted, reinforced walls cracked...
This time, the crisis was brought not only by blood-like crimson but also by a blinding, piercing gold.
"Die." —A thought commanded. He wanted them dead, no matter the cost.
Only at this moment did shock and panic appear within the 'Silver Star.' Their long history and duration of existence gave them the confidence to face almost any emergency in the current universe, but the situation before them was truly making them lose their grip.
A Limit-Breaker had seized the physical entity they relied upon for existence, and since he couldn't kill them instantly, he was simply beating them to death.
"You're insane!" the Silver Star roared in unison. "Don't you know? Solar Star, you will kill them—everyone!"
"Not as many as you have killed."
Lei Ting spoke coldly. With a casual flick of his heavy sword, he transformed it into a one-handed longsword amidst a shockwave capable of extinguishing stars, standing silently within the crimson waves.
"You are afraid. That is good..." The golden light in the mecha's visor flickered as he whispered softly, waiting with a chilling calm: "...No, you have always been afraid. The crisis from the other end of history scared the courage out of you long ago. Just thinking that the weapon has already been activated, you..."
*Zheng—!!*
A flash of golden light streaked past.
It was a sword strike of extreme coldness and severity—precise, ruthless, and devoid of any wasted movement amidst the passionate flames.
"...You are afraid of your own destruction," he said. "A foreseeable crisis awaits you in the future... but," he chose not to use insulting or derogatory terms, simply stating: "You flinched."
"At least a hundred and sixty thousand years—such a long time, and you flinched." He narrated this fact, standing firm amidst the energy constantly battering him. "Just as the 'All-Stars' used you for experiments, you repeated the very behavior you once loathed. You chose all the worst options... Don't try to hide it from me. I can see."
Yes, he could see, and he could hear.
The perception of a 'Limit-Breaker' was in itself a powerful super-ability that transcended common imagination.
Shimmering phantoms wavered as they reformed; the Silver Stars emerged restlessly. This time, they were no longer composed and unified; instead, several different voices rang out simultaneously: "Fear is meaningless to us." / "This is precisely our path." / "Do you intend to debate us on a battlefield, within a weapon of destruction?"
"Who said I wanted to debate?" Lei Ting raised his hand and tossed his sword lightly, golden spray splashing up from the blood-colored energy. "I was just..."
*Chak!*
In an instant, dozens of star-beasts that were quietly approaching exploded into fragments, their soft violet light vanishing into the sea of blood.
As for those abominations... Ha, what creature could survive in such an environment?
"Don't be in a hurry, we still have some time..."
The colossus mecha raised its longsword. Its voice, seemingly low and soft, was thunderous as it repelled the waves of bloody light.
"...You will die, here and now," he said. "Go ahead and be reborn... If I can kill you once or twice, I can kill you countless times. Be happy; you won't be eliminated by the weapon targeting the 'All-Stars' anymore... because before that happens, I will kill you. Every single time, until you... have no more deaths to give!"
"Only by transcending death can one achieve rebirth."
The grand voice of the Silver Star echoed. Under the threat of terrifying external force, they seemed to reach a brief consensus, and their once-fluent speech grew faster and faster: "Our existence is built upon the Ringworld, and Caligan's weapon targets all civilizations, histories, cultures, bloodlines, and social structures similar to the 'All-Stars'...
"In the current galaxy, seventy percent of carbon-based civilizations meet the criteria for a strike. The first among them is the Orion Arm Human Federation.
"4473-3920, we have a common enemy."
...As expected.
Lei Ting had originally thought that the social structure and culture of the Orion people remained largely unchanged simply due to historical inertia.
In an interstellar era where genetic cultivation technology could infinitely reduce the connection between bloodlines, the fact that things like 'families' still existed was also... the inertia of human nature.
—As long as humans still held the concepts of 'inheritance' and 'bloodline,' so-called 'families' would inevitably exist; the only difference was the tightness of internal relations. This was built upon the human nature of huddling together for profit.
But now it seemed...
"...No wonder. Despite being nurtured by different astronomical and geographical conditions, similar civilizations appeared..." Lei Ting said softly, his already angry expression turning increasingly ferocious. "...You have been deliberately maintaining the commonalities between galactic civilizations and the 'All-Stars,' haven't you? You have been... creating decoy flares for your own escape."
The Silver Star fell into a sudden silence.
That silence made Lei Ting take a sharp, sudden breath. He felt his head burning, the blood vessels in his brain throbbing.
An impulse like a volcanic eruption, or an urge to scream and roar, was suppressed in his chest. His heart operated at an unprecedented power, the sound of its pumping like a mountain-sized heavy machine driving a river into the sea.
"You must die here," he murmured, raising his longsword, his eyes filled with a terrifying obsession. "You... must die here.
"No matter what, you. Must. Die. Here.
"Because... you deserve to die!
"—You! Deserve! To! Die!!!"
At the same time, in a certain sector of the Ringworld, white fungi had completely taken over everything.
While 'Fire Wine' watched all of this solemnly from the distant void, a tiny red glob of slime crawled out from under the thick carpet of white fungi and quietly hid in a crevice that had not yet been eroded.
***
Evanheiler moved through the city.
The strange, empty city was now undergoing changes: buildings collapsed, foundations shifted, and different components randomly appeared and disappeared. He could see a giant advertising screen embedded in the ground on a street corner, or a refrigerator hanging from a utility pole next to a shop...
This city from centuries ago now looked like an old game with modeling errors.
And Evanheiler, a tall and handsome blonde man, ran through it, evading the waves of shadows sweeping in from all directions. A faint gold shimmered in his eyes as he ran, always sticking to the sunlight spilling through the gaps in the fleet above. But occasionally, when an object suddenly appeared overhead and cast a shadow, darkness would follow...
"Hah!"
The man leaped, nimbly avoiding a dozen hands reaching out from the shadows.
He darted into a plaza. There hadn't been much change here yet, and with direct sunlight, he was safe.
Well, safe—Evanheiler didn't actually care about that... Rather than saying all of this was dangerous, it was more accurate to say it finally allowed him to stretch his limbs.
What he was more worried about was the current state of the illusion's master, the one called 'Lei Ting.'
...No, that wasn't right.
After careful discernment, Evanheiler realized that the illusion had already collapsed. He seemed to have returned to the surface layer of the other's mental domain...
Still not right. The true 'surface' should be that fire-like golden light at the outermost layer of the zenith. Otherwise, even without Lei Ting's permission, he should have recovered his memories by now.
Under the sunlight, Evanheiler pinched the bridge of his nose. With every movement, a cold mist of light and silver stardust fell, carrying a faint warmth.
For that illusion to run stably for so long and then suddenly collapse, and for this mental domain to undergo such massive, inexplicable changes, something must have gone wrong with the person supporting it.
In that case...
"...Lei Ting?" He opened his mouth, attempting to call that name. "Lei Ting? Are you alright? What happened to you?"
A long silence.
Aside from the surge of energy and the sound of 'models' collapsing, Evanheiler could hear nothing.
At the same time, the sunlight grew more cruel; when it hit him, it actually carried a burning sensation of pain.
Regarding this sensation, Evanheiler pursed his lips. He did not hide, but simply frowned and called out again: "Lei Ting!"
*RUMBLE!!!*
The zenith seemed to suffer a brief collapse, and golden flames spewed from it. Evanheiler almost reflexively leaped to fly out from there—he could do it—but he managed to control himself just in time.
—If he didn't resolve the issue of Lei Ting's attitude toward him, he was certain that no matter how many times he ran, he would surely be caught and brought back.
"Lei Ting!"
Evanheiler shouted the name loudly, allowing the stinging pain like searing fire to spread across his skin. He clearly saw the phantom skin of his mental body; in these few short breaths, the outermost layer was erased by the golden radiance, revealing the essence beneath—a mass of silver-white light mist.
The stinging pain of a damaged mental body was so familiar; even having lost his memories, he vaguely remembered this kind of agony.
It was a pain that would make an ordinary person scream.
However, although Evanheiler could control himself not to make a sound, he did not intend to do so. Instead, he expressionlessly allowed the injuries to spread.
A moment later, he gathered his strength and sent out his 'shout' once more.
It was a mental message like a bolt of lightning. It sliced straight through the currently chaotic and burning sky, leaving a trail of dissipating mist and starlight in Lei Ting's mind.
—"Lei Ting!" Evanheiler roared. "Are you going to kill me?!"
"...!!"
In the gap between the folded surfaces of the Ringworld, Lei Ting, who had just shattered a cross-star emblem with a single sword strike, suddenly jerked to a halt.
This pause gave the 'Silver Star' an opportunity. They acted decisively, erupting a massive surge of energy from the opposite cross-star socket that sent him flying, slamming him like a bullet straight into the metallic defense layer of the sector.
But Lei Ting did not actually crash into the interior. In the blink of an eye, he halted his momentum with the support of 'Immovability,' neutralizing his kinetic energy at the cost of a large amount of energy.
At this moment, he briefly paused his movements, scanning the molten metal around him for a second.
He could hear many people screaming behind him, separated from him by hundreds of meters of solid partitions... But even if those voices seemed tiny under the impact of the energy flow after being filtered through all that, at this moment, without the isolation of a vacuum, he could hear those screams.
He was jolted awake, as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over his head. He subconsciously altered his super-power field, directly carving out a massive amount of energy and the concept of 'Immovability' to reinforce the surrounding thousands of Ringworld sectors and the strengthening chitin shell defense currently being woven. Then, he charged out with even greater fury!
Meanwhile, in the world of the mind, a figure in black armor abruptly appeared beside Evanheiler, wrapped in a heavy aura of slaughter and violent rage.
...Evanheiler blinked.
Less than a millisecond later, he used his super-power to give himself a harsh blow and decisively collapsed.
