"Reverently welcome Lord Roya!"
Controlling the supply ship, Roya had just entered the atmosphere of Oceanus when a squad of mecha warriors came rushing toward him. The moment they recognized Roya, they shouted from the heart with resounding cries and immediately transmitted news of his arrival back to the ground base.
The descent of Savior Roya instantly transformed the entire Oceanus into a sea of jubilant celebration.
While the common folk reveled, Nuwa's successor, Fuxi, had already led the core members of the Pangeae Council into the Pangeae Grand Hall to pay homage to Roya.
After calmly accepting the devout prostrations of Fuxi and the others, Roya finally spoke:
"The corruption of Chaos has already begun to appear within the star domain. Resisting that corruption will be your eternal and foremost duty from this day on!"
"The Four Gods of Chaos will never relent so long as they endure. They will not spare a single sentient being—for perhaps our very birth and death, our joys and sorrows, are their fountain of spiritual sustenance…"
As his spiritual perception continued to expand, more and more knowledge revived within Roya's consciousness. His understanding of the Four Gods of Chaos grew ever clearer.
"The corruption of the Four Gods often hides behind the guise of religions, eroding faith and flesh alike by subtle substitution and deception."
"The only force capable of resisting these cults is the true and orthodox church! Therefore, Fuxi, I command you to immediately launch a deification movement here on Oceanus!"
At these words, Fuxi's spirit leapt. He had long since realized that after Roya's mighty descent—rescuing the people of Oceanus from the merciless plundering of the Space Undead Reapers and the deceit of the Star Dragons—many primitive cults worshipping Roya as a god had already arisen among the people.
Now, with Lord Roya's personal edict as foundation, unifying and systematizing these fledgling cults would be the most natural course.
It was both the goal Fuxi had pursued all along and the necessary safeguard against infiltration by heresies.
Perceiving Fuxi's thoughts in their entirety, Roya nodded with satisfaction, then projected into Fuxi's mind the specifications and blueprints for constructing the Holy Cathedral.
"This cathedral shall serve as a vital anchor for my spirit. So long as it stands, I may descend in spirit at any moment to purge all corruption!"
Only then did Fuxi grasp the true weight of the Holy Cathedral. He bowed low and declared:
"Rest assured, my lord! I will see to its construction with all my strength. Once complete, I shall guard it personally! No heretical filth shall take even half a step within its walls!"
Roya nodded in approval. "Excellent. From this moment forth, you are the High Priest of the Oceanus Star Domain, entrusted with full authority over all affairs of the divine church!"
Thrilled, Fuxi prostrated again: "I will not fail the trust you place in me, my lord!"
Oceanus, though in revelry, now also began operating at full capacity.
The siting and construction of the Holy Cathedral commenced in meticulous order.
At last, Roya allowed himself a faint breath of relief.
The corruption of the Four Gods was insidious and inescapable. Not only common folk—even stalwarts like Whitebeard and Kaido, whose iron wills could resist most corruption—were still liable to be deceived, led astray into obsessive dead-ends of thought, and ultimately fall into becoming warriors of Chaos.
Now, with the Holy Cathedral completed on Pirate Star, and with Oceanus not yet showing signs of corruption while its own cathedral sped toward completion, the progress of resisting corruption had at last caught up.
"The native star-folk possess strong spiritual resistance and resilience against corruption. So long as the Four Gods themselves do not personally act, they should endure for a long time."
"Next, I need only remain on Oceanus until the cathedral is finished and the primitive sects are unified. Then I can safely depart for the Primal Star."
As Roya was planning his next steps, a sudden tremor struck his heart.
In the warp, vast waves of energy rolled forth like ceaseless tides, one after another, battering the link between Roya and his spiritual projection.
Never before had Roya encountered such dense warp tides. Instinctively, he sank the bulk of his awareness into them, seeking to parse this abrupt anomaly.
What he discovered shocked him. Within each surge of energy were mingled countless fragments of despair—the final, annihilating despair of souls at the moment of their obliteration.
"These tides… they are born of innumerable beings perishing simultaneously, each spirit's terminal despair erupting in its last instant of annihilation!"
"Each soul may be as insignificant as an ant—but an endless heap of ants' corpses still forms a corpse-tide!"
As he discerned the source of these energy tides, Roya was dumbfounded. His spiritual perception had already traced their origin: only a single star system away from Oceanus.
And from there, those tides gushed forth in waves unending, their frequency mounting the closer one drew.
Genocide of life. The extinction of worlds!
"Such swift, massive annihilation of life can only be wrought by the main force of a space undead overlord in full harvest. Could it be—there remains an organized, battle-ready undead army in the galaxy?"
At that thought, Roya could no longer sit idly as Oceanus's guardian.
"Oceanus shows no sign of corruption yet. Better to rush there at once and save this neighboring star system!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Roya made his decision. His spiritual sense surged, enveloping his entire being, and in an instant he became a stream of gentle white radiance, projecting out of the Pangeae Grand Hall and into the distant void.
"I must—as before—enter the interstice between the material world and the warp itself, if I am to reach that star system before it is utterly annihilated!"
Even as he accelerated, Roya recalled and unraveled the experience of being struck into the spatial rift by the Hive Mind's blow.
After several attempts, at last he succeeded in entering the interstice once more.
"The pressure here is immense! My spiritual energy is draining rapidly. Before it runs dry, I must reemerge into the material realm—or be crushed to dust by the space itself!"
"So then, that Hive Mind's strike must have left me with a protective shield of psychic force—that is why I felt none of this dreadful pressure before!"
Parsing information even as he hurtled forward, Roya locked firmly onto the source of the tides. Within mere breaths, he had arrived.
With a sudden shift, his spiritual sense reversed from acceleration into deceleration. His body slowed below critical velocity and he fell from the interstice back into material space.
Unerringly, he emerged above an immense, majestic planet—at least five times the size of Pirate Star.
Behind him blazed a blazing golden sun, its radiance casting Roya's near-perfect form as a sharp silhouette upon the planetary surface below.