After completing her arrangements, Luna departed the star system.
She spent another 102 years journeying back to headquarters, where she used Supernova Technology Corporation's largest computational server to refine the Information Rift technology, then transmitted the results to Ayla.
With that done, Luna left Yūgao and Uzuki behind. She personally piloted her starship into deep space.
Only sixteen years later, she brought the vessel to a halt in the void.
All around her stretched emptiness—nothing seemed to exist.
Yet the instant she stepped off the ship, her feet found solid ground.
In that moment, her body vanished from the cosmos, hidden from every gaze.
Before her eyes unfolded a vast, intricate world. She stood within a spaceport, where millions of robots bustled endlessly back and forth.
And this was only one sector—there were countless more stretching into the distance.
This was a Star City, more than 14,000 kilometers in diameter. Construction had begun some six centuries earlier, and it remained unfinished even now.
Everywhere Luna looked, the tireless robots labored to build it.
"It's coming together more and more," she murmured.
"A Star City built from evasion-class materials… If the civilization that developed this substance uses it in the same way, then long-range detection would be utterly impossible."
From the first time she encountered this material, Luna had envisioned not only warships, but also a Star City.
The challenge of building a Star City was in fact lower than constructing a warship.
But the sheer scale made progress painfully slow—and unlike warships, a Star City yielded little direct profit.
Its greatest advantage lay in concealment.
For now, humanity's focus was on defending against enemy assaults. But if a Star City—and everyone within it—could never be locked onto in the first place, the need for costly defensive research would shrink dramatically.
It could even become invisible within the cosmos.
With the rapid expansion of human civilization, it was already believed that every civilization within a radius of 10,000 light-years knew of humanity's presence.
Luna always kept watch on the affairs of the surrounding star nations.
Rumors sometimes spoke of newly discovered races; some civilizations even reached out to communicate with humanity.
They truly knew no fear.
If they ever encountered a power like the Purple Thorns Civilization, they would be annihilated and enslaved outright.
Fortunately, long ago the Federation and the star nations had signed the Human Civilization Convention.
This accord decreed that humanity must preserve civilizational diversity, accept lower-level civilizations, and guide them to become part of humanity.
Though the terms left much room for interpretation, the convention still restrained the destruction and enslavement of entire peoples.
The most zealous adherent of this convention was not humanity itself—but the Swarm.
According to records, the Swarm now numbered more than 100 octillion, their armies relentlessly expanding the reach of human civilization.
Every thousand years, the Swarm Star Nation's Public Domain submitted reports of its "exploration zones" to human civilization.
In truth, those zones were territorial claims.
By the last millennium, the Swarm Star Nation's domain already spanned 8.7 trillion cubic light-years—about 1.38% of the Milky Way's total volume.
When Luna first heard that figure, she was left stunned.
The scale was beyond comprehension.
She had assumed it would take at least another 200,000 years to bring such an expanse under control.
But in truth, it was already done.
This was the entire Milky Way.
For scale: the volume of a single solar system doesn't even reach one cubic light-year.
At present, most races encountered by humanity were discovered within Swarm territory.
According to records, across that vast span there existed 581 low-tier civilizations, 7 Type I or above, and 14 Type II civilizations.
It sounds like much—nearly six hundred.
But statistically, that equals just one civilization per 14.5 billion cubic light-years.
In other words, within a region spanning more than two thousand light-years across, only one civilization existed.
Sparse, almost empty.
The number of civilizations was vanishingly small.
The nearly six hundred newly discovered groups had all been cataloged by humanity and classified as minority races.
For comparison: within the Federation, the Warbeasts alone already numbered in the hundreds of quadrillions. Those other civilizations barely scraped by with populations of millions, tens of millions, or—at most—a few hundred million.
As human civilization continued to expand, Luna felt the weight of pressure mounting.
At this stage, humanity actually encountered more Type II civilizations than Type I. This was, in fact, normal.
Type II civilizations rarely collapsed by chance, while Type I civilizations were fragile—easy prey. Countless Type I civilizations had been obliterated by higher-tier races in their ascent.
As for sub-Type I groups, Type II civilizations typically ignored them altogether.
Integration carried both promise and peril: it risked shaking the very foundations of belief.
Take Earth for example—had it survived intact, and humanity developed as a single race, then met alien peoples and tried to integrate them, the shock would have been enormous.
You would have to accept an entirely foreign species—one that might even repel you, perhaps even hunger for human flesh.
Racial conflict would ignite instantly.
Unless one race became dominant, the other subordinate—enslaved.
But even then, the shadow of rebellion would never vanish.
The rise of humanity in its current form was pure accident.
Luna called it "American-style integration." "America," of course, referred to a nation of Earth's past. Before the discovery of the New World, no state tolerated racial mixing; yet in the Americas, racial mixing became reality.
The Federation mirrored this process.
Only because Earth was destroyed, and Luna herself designed an entirely new civilizational framework, could humanity expand to embrace many races.
The other Type II civilizations nearby had never passed through such a phase.
Thus they refused integration; their methods were blunt and merciless: extermination and enslavement.
Among them, some were formidable Type II powers—comparable even to humanity itself, or to the Flyer Civilization.
But the gulf of distance was vast, and only the Swarm had made contact. No conflict had yet flared.
Yet one day, it inevitably would.
Humanity's sphere of influence had grown far too vast—so vast that every civilization was now watching.
Even those powerful empires at the galactic core chose to conceal themselves.
Not that they feared the Dark Forest principle outright, but still—hiding was always safer than exposure.
Human civilization, by contrast, had charged into the cosmic ocean like a reckless fool.
Only then did Luna fully realize the necessity of concealment. Evasion-class materials would be the key.
Building upon them, Luna engineered a new substance.
It could still be classified as evasion-type, yet it was distinct: this material allowed a being to slip free from the grasp of electromagnetic force, while the other fundamental forces remained perceptible.
The earlier evasion materials could blunt all four fundamental forces, but only partially, never absolutely.
What Luna and her peers created was simpler, cheaper, and—most importantly—practical for constructing Star Cities.
The Star City she now stood within was the first prototype, her experimental project. In time, she intended to propagate this model across all of human civilization.
The initiative bore a name—Stillness.
Stepping out of the spaceport, Luna entered the Star City proper.
What greeted her vision was an endless field of blue.
It seemed at first as though this entire world existed only in blue light. But in truth, it was not light at all—for she had not even opened her eyes.
Because the Star City nullified all electromagnetic forces, anyone who entered—including Luna herself—was assimilated into an evasion-state existence. Naturally, "light" could no longer be perceived. Without light, there were no colors.
The hues Luna perceived were in fact an imposed construct: a form of neurological coercion, crafted through reactions with other forces to trick the flesh-and-blood brain.
In simple terms, the material directly rewired the optic nerves.
Luna had poured immense effort into making this possible.
For as everyone knew, life itself depended on electromagnetic force. Without it, how could any organism survive?
Therefore, a trace of electromagnetic force was deliberately retained here. This residual field existed only as microscopic phenomena, carefully allowed to persist within limits.
The same applied to the robots.
But even this faint remnant could, in theory, be detected. To counter this, the Star City carried an electromagnetic regulation system—disguised as a drifting asteroid.
It continuously analyzed the city's residual electromagnetic profile and then released a carefully tuned signal, simulating and masking the emissions.
It was like shining a flashlight through a mesh screen: the beam weakened—yet with a fill light positioned behind the net, the brightness appeared whole again.
The reason Luna now perceived everything as pure blue was that the system was still incomplete. Only a narrow portion of her senses could be stimulated, producing a crude, monochromatic illusion.
Later, the spectrum would expand.
But the process would take time.
Because biological vision was not limited to seven colors—it demanded over ten billion distinct hues before the brain would cease feeling distorted.
To approach true fidelity, the system would need to simulate over a trillion colors.
"It's still far too blue," Luna muttered.
Even she found the endless azure unbearable.
After a moment, she shut her mind against the intrusive electromagnetic cues.
Darkness swallowed everything. She moved forward guided only by navigational signals.
At last she arrived at the heart of the Transparent City.
This was its core power source.
A sphere nearly 2,700 kilometers in diameter, brimming with unimaginable energy.
"The Kinetic Heart," Luna murmured. "Once the Information Rift is perfected, even this will be obsolete."
The Kinetic Heart was a technology developed within the past two millennia. It did more than store vast reserves of power—it wielded terrifying capacity for transmission and reception.
Where once a Star City required multiple reactor-cores to sustain its consumption, a single Kinetic Heart was enough.
This was revolutionary progress.
Luna had come to test the Kinetic Heart's parameters.
Only after stabilizing those parameters could she attempt modifications.
If she retained only the external transmission-and-reception system, while replacing the internal storage system with an Information Rift, what would its overall stability be?
Most critically, the device itself was constructed from evasion-type material. Light entering the black hole would be directly absorbed, causing destabilization.
Luna absolutely had to prevent such an outcome.
After eight years of measurement, she finally locked onto a parameter. She now had a rough grasp of how to proceed with improvements, and how to systematically integrate the Information Rift.
"What needed to be done is done. Send the data back."
Luna transmitted the information to Yūgao, instructing her to make the necessary arrangements.
She herself then departed Transparent City, setting course for the nearest star system.
This system contained only one small Star City, still in its early stages of development. It did not belong to Supernova Technology Corporation but rather to the royal family of the Rusty Star Nation.
The Star City had been constructed at the edge of a massive gas giant, encircling it like a ring.
A true circle of the Great Star City.
Its ring resembled a colossal CD. The upper half served as the residential zone, while the opposite side—facing the gas giant—stretched more than 150,000 kilometers in circumference, far surpassing the bounds of what could be called a small Star City.
Yet this Star City was unique: most of its territory was farmland.
Its overall structure resembled a miniature train, divided into two distinct sections.
The lower part formed a continuous CD-shaped ring, while the upper part was an arc-shaped Star City that revolved around the lower ring.
The lower Star City was split into a front and back. The front section served for harvesting—using anti-gravity to lift the soil into midair, then applying an interstellar filtering system to select biological matter.
The rear section was devoted to sowing, dispersing vast quantities of plant seeds and animal larvae.
These plants and animals formed the biological goods traded throughout the star nation, and even with neighboring nations.
The upper Star City completed one full orbit around the ring every 100 years. Theoretically, the growth cycle of all lifeforms here matched that span—100 years.
In practice, it could be extended to 200 years, 500 years, or more.
Yet longer cycles were not always more profitable; a century was the ideal economic interval.
Luna's starship descended onto the upper Star City.
It looked no different from other Star Cities—towering buildings, no sky overhead, only shifting iridescent lights shining down.
But from the edge of the Star City, one could look down and see the farmland forests below.
These forests were not green, but dazzlingly multicolored. They were biological materials too complex to synthesize cheaply.
"Difficult to synthesize" did not mean impossible—only costly. For example, creating one cubic meter of such biological material by synthesis might cost 10 Energy Credits, while farm-grown material required only 1 Energy Credit to produce. Even with transport factored in, the price was still under 5.
Shipped to other star systems or star nations, each cubic meter yielded a profit of 3 to 5 Energy Credits, with margins shrinking the farther it traveled.
The reason Luna had come here was simple:
A mutated creature had appeared.
And it was terrifying.
Star City Farm.
That was its name.
Unlike residential Star Cities, this one was purely functional—a working Star City.
Most people here lived by farming, earning what they could. Many didn't even have permanent homes; they were here solely to make money.
The Federation provided welfare in many forms.
Ayla even went so far as to reduce robotic labor to ensure humans had job opportunities.
But star nations did not bother with such thankless policies.
Which meant that humans surviving inside a star nation were desperate—hungry for work, with few chances to find it.
At this moment Luna walked the streets.
In such a vast city, the lights burned bright and the crowds surged.
Some people paraded in luxurious clothing, riding in high-end vehicles, radiating privilege.
Others gathered along the roadside—ragged, destitute, staring with envy at the passersby, begging for scraps of money.
These were the people who had once flocked here, dreaming of job opportunities.
But in truth, the jobs were already taken.
A few families, having arrived early, seized the advantage. They bred endlessly, producing hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of descendants, and monopolized the available work.
On paper they were only workers, at the bottom.
But in practice, they stood firmly at the top here. Influence ruled. Whoever had the stronger hand, the bigger fist, claimed the right to speak.
The fate of those begging on the roadside lay entirely at their mercy.
A star nation was cruel.
Especially in a small nation like Rusty, where the laws were incomplete.
Here, even murder could often be smoothed over with money and connections; human lives were cheap.
Some great star nations—the Federation, the Eternal Cycle, the Twenty-Eight Nations Covenant—still made a show of caring for ordinary people. But here, everything was laid bare.
Luna had no time to concern herself with such things.
Filth was, in its own way, one of civilization's constant themes.
Just like a symphony—it could not be all high notes. It required low and mid tones, different instruments, interweaving to form something rich.
It wasn't that Luna condoned such actions. It was that she could not stop them.
The more perfect a place, the deeper its rot.
If the real world were shaped into paradise, then the virtual world would be forced to grow its own hell, just to keep the balance.
Her gaze drifted over those slumped on the streets, some so starved they were little more than skin and bone.
It was hard to believe such sights could exist within an advanced civilization.
And they weren't rare. Not one or two, but thousands, tens of thousands, piled up like refuse along the streets.
Luna walked on.
She reached the core of the city—its wealthy district.
Here there were no homeless. The entire zone was sealed off by a high-energy wall, ensuring that no trace of hardship could spill inside. Only those with worker identification could pass through.
Naturally, Luna encountered no difficulty.
Inside, it wasn't drastically different from the outer city—just cleaner, more orderly.
The people here, too, were different. Not stiff, grim, and desperate like outside, but relaxed, smiling, chatting with one another.
Entertainment facilities dotted the district.
Luna noticed that the very ground beneath her feet was a vast screen, displaying layers of information and seamlessly linking with augmented-reality overlays.
She activated her enhanced display. A silvery film spread across her pupils.
And then the invisible became visible—
Virtual pets flitted about at people's feet, and in some cases, entire virtual companions followed them through the streets.
Those companions normally lived on the far side of the city, but once activated it looked as if two people were strolling together. Everyone accepted the interaction as normal.
Luna clapped once, and a person folded into being beside her.
An Iridescents woman, startled to see Luna.
"You are—no, are you the CEO of Supernova Technology?" she asked, a stock expression of surprise.
Luna inclined her head once. "I came looking for Binggeer. He isn't here."
"I heard you found a new kind of creature. I think we can make a deal." The woman's face shifted at Luna's words, and, almost imperceptibly, she transmitted a packet of information.
Luna watched her. The woman shook her head. "I'm sorry, Miss Luna. I've never heard of anything like that."
The information was classified.
Luna understood: they intended to sell the specimen—for a price that could buy this whole Star City. That was the scale of its value. Those who trafficked in biological materials knew its worth better than anyone.
But this market had already been cornered—by Luna.
"I don't think so, Miss. You don't want to die, do you?" the woman said.
"Supernova Technology Corporation represents the might of the entire Rusty Star Nation. That thing will go either to me or to the royal family. In the end, it's still going to be ours."
"So the outcome is the same."
Luna fixed her with a steady look. "Are you planning to sell it to another star nation?" she asked.
"And let that nation grow powerful enough to steamroll Rusty?"
This was not a threat to Luna—only a fact.
The other woman was already drenched in sweat. Too nervous to respond, she finally stammered, "I'm truly sorry—I don't know what that thing is."
"If you wish to meet Mr. Binggeer, I can arrange an introduction."
She chose to deflect.
A wise move.
"I need to see him today."
Luna pressed harder, leaving no room to maneuver.
The woman agreed immediately, then vanished from Luna's sight.
After ending the call, Jessitz exhaled a shaky breath.
The pressure from Luna was suffocating. She hadn't expected her side's secrets to leak—who could have betrayed them?
No matter the cause, that thing could never fall into the hands of Supernova Technology.
Everyone in the star nation knew what Supernova really was: a bandit corporation. Anything worth hundreds of millions would be written off for a mere tens of thousands of credits.
This time would be no exception.
Jessitz paced her room, restless, before finally sending a message to Binggeer.
Binggeer was one of Star City's top executives.
Despite its name, Star City wasn't truly a city at all but a corporation—there was no city lord, only high-ranking managers.
Binggeer had just left the City, though not far. He was searching for a buyer.
To do that, he had to avoid Star City's networks, ensuring no one could eavesdrop.
The precaution proved necessary.
More than three hours passed before his message received a reply.
Jessitz was nearly consumed by anticipation.
But after reading it, her heart twisted with conflict.
"Does it really have to come to this?"
She checked Luna's vessel and discovered it wasn't a capital ship but only a starship.
And it seemed Luna was the only one aboard.
Theoretically, she had come alone.
"She's just a senior manager of Supernova Technology. We'll take care of it. After all, how could Star City not already know our business? Once it's done, we just need to leave Rusty."
Her resolve hardened, and her expression turned cold and ruthless.
Meanwhile, Luna was still wandering the streets, quietly taking in the local customs.
In truth, every Star City across human civilization was trending toward the same state—homogenization.
Everything was an industrial product.
And what defined industrial products?
They were the cheapest, most perfected technologies available—off-the-shelf and ready to use.
Conversely, developing one's own unique systems was extremely difficult.
The construction of a Star City demanded enormous investment in design: ground structures, underground conduits, energy distribution, information networks, waste treatment—all of it had to be efficient and cost-effective.
These were specialized skills, far beyond the reach of ordinary people.
After all, Star Cities were vast beyond comprehension. Many stretched across hundreds of millions, even billions, of square meters—several times, even dozens of times, larger than the surface of a planet.
Each was a continuous urban mass, where no part could be neglected.
As a result, Star Cities inevitably drifted toward industrial sameness.
Here, the local customs were much like any other Star City's. Only by observing closely could one notice subtle distinctions.
Compared to this polished core district, however, Luna found herself drawn to the outskirts.
The outskirts were more diverse.
She left the district once more, making her way to the outskirts.
There, she sat down beside a cluster of homeless people.
Her gleaming silver mech stood out starkly against the grim surroundings.
In a natural tone, she asked one of them, "Where are you from?"
The man glanced at her, hesitated in silence, then shifted uneasily, glancing around several times before finally answering.
"Tnp Lp. A small place."
Luna smiled faintly. "Tnp Lp—I've been there. It's not small."
"I liked that Star City. In its center was a sea of flowers. I heard it was once vast, but when I visited, only tens of thousands of square kilometers remained."
The man blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected her to truly know the place. "Has it changed in other ways?" he asked, as though it had been many years since he'd seen it.
"I don't know the details," Luna replied, "but I can tell you what I saw."
Her voice flowed like the telling of an old tale.
The man listened with quiet intensity, and soon the others around them leaned in as well.
One by one, they asked Luna about their own hometowns, and to each, she offered an answer.
For a moment, harmony settled over the ragged circle.
But it did not last.
From every direction, figures suddenly converged.
Their leader stopped a few dozen meters away, eyes locking on Luna.
"So, here you are! You've saved us the trouble of searching!"
As he shouted, he leveled his weapon, aiming straight at her.
The vagrants around Luna scattered the instant they saw the weapon, fleeing to avoid being caught in the crossfire.
Luna, however, rose slowly to her feet.
"It seems you remain dishonest—still intent on betraying the star nation."
"This place clearly needs correction. If the royal family cannot manage it, then Supernova Technology will."
She hadn't even bothered to use her surveillance authority on Jessitz.
There was no need.
Jessitz had only two paths: surrender it, or not.
No surveillance was required.
Luna had come here for one purpose only—to wait. To wait for Jessitz to make the right choice.
But unfortunately…
"As expected of the CEO of Supernova Technology, your arrogance is boundless. Let's see if you still have that tongue once you're dead."
At his signal, the encircling men raised their weapons, training every barrel on Luna, cutting off all escape.
Then came the order.
"Fire!"
A storm of laser beams erupted, hundreds streaking toward her in an instant.
At such close range, no physical body could possibly dodge.
Luna's form was shredded in a heartbeat.
Her body was riddled with holes, torn apart like a sponge. Barely five percent of her flesh and blood remained intact.
"To come here alone—I can't tell if it's sheer foolishness or pure arrogance."
"This so-called legendary CEO, spoken of so highly, is now nothing more than a corpse."
"Finish it."
The leader slung his laser weapon back, ready to leave.
But then, a voice stopped him.
"Actually, I truly wished you would be a little more sensible."
"As citizens of the Rusty Star Nation, you should bear its glory on your very bodies."
The leader froze, then snapped around.
Luna was still there. Her figure stood whole, only fragments of her body still knitting back together.
"The stronger the star nation, the richer you become. If you can't even grasp that most basic truth, then there's no reason for you to keep living."
She finished speaking.
The leader snarled and opened fire again.
Fresh holes ripped through Luna's flesh—yet each wound sealed almost instantly.
Dozens, then hundreds, of laser beams rained down. Her body was torn apart again and again, only to reassemble without pause.
A ripple of unease spread through the attackers. Events were slipping out of their control.
"How is she not dead yet?"
The surrounding onlookers were thinking the same thing. Under such firepower, any ordinary person would have long since perished. What kind of being was this woman?
Luna herself was irritated.
The lasers could shred her body, yes—but they could not kill her.
And Star City seemed to possess no greater weapons.
Each blast that struck her, she captured—absorbing and storing that energy for herself.
Then she erupted.
A blinding light burst from her body as her form swelled, reshaping into a colossal figure more than a thousand meters tall.
[Supreme Being]
Luna thrust her palm forward. Countless arcs of electricity crackled between her fingers, lashing through the Star City's air and slamming into her enemies.
This was no ordinary lightning. Its voltage was hundreds of times greater than natural thunderbolts—nearly on par with standard laser weaponry.
The flickering serpents of light struck the attackers. They raised their mechs in defense.
They managed to block the first strikes, but these bolts did not vanish in an instant—they sustained.
Pinned down by the relentless current, they found themselves trapped, unable to move. The rising heat from the continuous discharge seared their flesh, leaving them writhing.
The leader tore himself free, activating his gene pool. His body warped grotesquely—arms elongating into blades, his lower half twisting into the spiral of a giant screw. His torso retained a human shape, but his head split into the form of a double-edged axe.
For a fleeting moment, those bound in the lightning dared to hope.
But then Luna extended her hand once more. From her palm surged a concentrated beam of light, which pierced directly into the core of the leader's gene pool.
It collapsed instantly—rotting into foul, decayed flesh that splattered across the ground.
Without pause, Luna intensified the current and, with a single command of authority, shut down the mechs of the remaining attackers.
One by one, they were reduced to smoldering charcoal.
When the last body fell, Luna did not immediately return to her smaller form.
Instead, she strode toward the Star City's core district.
Sirens wailed across the city. Soldiers massed in the streets, weapons locked on her towering figure.
These were troops of the Rusty Star Nation.
Though the Nation had long since lost its grip here, a Star City still required garrisons—and these men answered that duty.
But Luna knew better. The officers stationed here had deep ties to the city's power structure, sharing interests with Binggeer and his faction.
"I am with Supernova Technology," Luna declared, her voice booming across the city. "Some among you have betrayed the Rusty Star Nation. If you don't wish to die as traitors alongside them, then the wisest choice is to step aside—and watch."
Her words reverberated like thunder, echoing through every street of the Star City.
The oppressive aura she radiated made the people of Star City quake.
"Where are the capital ships? Bring them—get them here and kill her!"
Jessitz was on the verge of hysteria. She hadn't expected Luna to wield such terrifying gene pool power, outright wiping out every operative she'd sent. Luna had come, clearly, to ruin her plan. She could not be allowed to live.
Star City lacked battleships, but it did possess capital ships. Their combat capability ranged from high-level to top-tier gene pools depending on class: warships above 5,000 meters demanded top-level gene pools to stand a chance; anything past 8,000 meters required supreme gene pools.
"They're at the spaceport. We've alerted them, but they replied that…" one of Jessitz's subordinates reported.
"What did they say?" Jessitz snapped.
"The capital ships can't be activated. They say they're locked."
The words hit Jessitz like ice. She realized, with a chill, that within the Rusty Star Nation the real power wasn't the royal family—it was Supernova Technology Corporation. Supernova effectively monopolized everything here. Their authority was absolute. Most capital ships in the nation were Supernova-made; locking a capital ship at the CEO's command was as simple as a single gesture.
"Then stop her! The Star City must still have defensive systems—use them!"
Jessitz already had the thought of fleeing—she had gravely underestimated the situation.
But the voice on the other end replied, "Impossible. The entire Star City was constructed by a subsidiary of Supernova Technology Corporation. All authority remains in their hands."
A superpower corporation's strength did not lie in its own walls.
Its power came from the fact that it controlled everything.
It was like a multinational conglomerate in Earth's old era. On paper, it might show only a few hundred billion in market value, with perhaps tens of thousands of direct employees. Yet no nation would dare move against it lightly.
Why? Because such a company's reach was everywhere.
It might hold shares in hundreds, even thousands of firms, indirectly generating hundreds of thousands—or millions—of jobs. Factor in service industries and partner businesses, and it was no exaggeration to say that a corporation valued in the hundreds of billions could dictate the job security of millions in one country, and the livelihoods of tens of millions worldwide.
That is why such giants were called commercial empires.
And Supernova Technology Corporation was the greatest of them.
In the Rusty Star Nation, over 90% of industry, finance, and even population livelihoods were tied to Supernova. There was simply no escaping its grip. Here, Supernova was monarch.
"The inner city's defenses are completely useless against her. She has even sealed the entire zone, no one can escape."
Those words struck Jessitz with brutal clarity. For the first time, she realized she was like a mantis trying to block a chariot.
But there were still opportunists.
She opened a channel to the stationed officer.
"Reid, succeed in this, and you'll get 30% of the profits from that thing." Her first words betrayed her desperation.
The officer—Reid—grinned. "I want 50%."
"You—!"
Jessitz loathed his brazen demand, but she knew she had no choice.
"…Fine! Fifty percent. I'll convince Binggeer—just let me get out of here."
Reid was ecstatic. He'd been slated for twenty percent; now, because of one deal, his cut ballooned by thirty. With that money he could live like a lord anywhere—even in the Twenty-Eight Nations Covenant. Better to enjoy life in a powerhouse than scrape by in a collapsing star nation.
Rusty Star Nation could fall at any moment; this place wasn't safe.
As he schemed, a laser bolt slammed into the high-rise where he stood. White light engulfed him; his mech deployed to absorb the hit, but the blast still hurled him backward with brutal force.
He was flung millions of kilometers before he finally stabilized—already in open space.
From the distance, Luna glanced his way. Her look felt like it cut through him. His limbs trembled; he tried to trigger his gene pool.
Then his mech contracted suddenly, squeezing him tighter and tighter until he felt as if he would burst.
No—he did burst.
He became a puddle of flesh and blood.
Luna lifted her gaze and fixed it on another building.
Jessitz was mid-call with Reid when the line went silent. She barked into the channel. "Hey—say something, you bastard! Why is there no sound? You—"
Her curses died on her tongue. Then Luna's voice came over the feed: "Stop shouting. He's dead."
"You'll be next!" Luna added.
Jessitz shook all over. Beyond the window she saw Luna—her head alone visible against the skyline—turning to look straight at her.
In an instant, Luna's small form expanded into a white, two-headed giant dragon.
A simulated gene pool: a mythical gene pool.
Mythical gene pools sounded terrifying—dragons, phoenixes, titans—but in practice they were low-to-mid tier. They looked dramatic but rarely matched top-tier power.
Jessitz tried to flee.
Against a Supreme Being, it was laughable.
Luna's colossal bulk shimmered and moved; in the blink of an eye she was in front of Jessitz, closing at speeds over 4,000 kilometers per second.
The Supreme Being encompassed everything—strength, regeneration, and velocity.
Jessitz's Ice Dragon was only mid-tier; its best speed topped out at about twenty kilometers per second. They weren't even on the same playing field.
Size told the story.
Luna cradled the trembling Ice Dragon like a trapped sparrow.
"Let me go! I'll take you to it!" Jessitz wailed.
"No need," Luna replied coolly. "I already know where it is."
Then she crushed her.