Honestly, in their earlier collaborative research, Herta had never quite understood Ruan Mei's intense fascination with Tayzzyronth.
Maybe it was because the Swarm Disaster this Aeon spawned made such an enormous racket?
It was genuinely staggering, no denying that.
But that was the extent of it.
This Sand King was unlike any of the other Aeons. Forget world-shaking wisdom—it might not even possess the intelligence of an ordinary human.
Its mind was utterly empty save for one thing: Propagation. Nothing else lived in there at all.
Just Propagation, Propagation, and more damned Propagation!
The countless swarm offspring it had set upon the Path of Propagation shared the same thought pattern, like clumsy carbon copies, almost never generating any complex thought that transcended the single core directive of propagating.
And yet, watching the terrifying evolution unfolding across the Verminstar right now—an evolution born from its ascension and the Path of Propagation it had opened—Herta was forced to admit, with reluctant admiration:
It was precisely this absolute, single-threaded thinking that had carried Tayzzyronth to the very pinnacle of the Path of Propagation.
It didn't even have to try. A single shudder of its body was enough to plunge every insect in the universe into an endless, frenzied, never-ceasing self-replication.
"Uuu… so, so many bugs!"
Because she had inherited the memories of the Stelle-Asta fusion, Asta felt no confusion about the situation before her.
But without Stelle's abstract-thought filter to cushion the blow, facing the sky choked wall-to-wall with a swarm dense enough to strike any trypophobe stone dead on the spot, she was overwhelmed, the color draining from her little face in an instant.
Under the influence of the lingering dependence carried over from the Stelle-Asta fusion, she all but instinctively shrank into Caelus's arms and clung to him tightly.
"Whoa!"
In stark contrast to Asta's terror, Stelle stood beside them smacking her lips, savoring the strange taste of roasted rainbow-candy grubs from the Stelle-Asta fusion's memories, gazing out at this ocean of protein vast enough to burst the stomachs of countless humans.
"This… you couldn't finish it, no way you could finish all of this!"
The swarm-tide surged, breeding in a frenzy!
Every action served a single goal: reproduction at maximum efficiency and maximum scale!
They didn't even need the usual exchange of matter and energy—the power of the Path of Propagation alone let them multiply out of thin air.
But in pursuit of ever greater speed and efficiency, they still greedily devoured everything in their path—energy, matter… nothing was spared!
Stelle watched a vast, thriving grassland get wiped away in the mere seconds it took the swarm to pass, as though erased by an invisible eraser, leaving nothing but dead yellow sand.
The last trace of gourmet fantasy vanished from her face, her small features turning deadly serious, even tinged with a hint of dread:
"My suggestion is that we run. Fast."
This absolutely could not be eaten.
They'd be the ones getting eaten!
"Then what the hell are you still standing here for?"
Caelus kicked Stelle in the backside with the top of his foot, scooped Asta up, and broke into a full-on sprint, shooting like an arrow off the string toward the nearest Sieglin warship docking zone.
Mitri, in his search for the "meaning of the self," had already sunk into a half-mad state and would never order the army to withdraw, still steeped in his delusional dream of conquering all and founding a civilization.
As one of General Caelus's right-hand men, it was easy enough to seize control of a non-combat starship. He deliberately picked a model that was small in size, with the strongest engine thrust and equipped with a basic point-defense fire-control system.
Engines roaring, thrusters spewing a ghostly blue ion stream, Caelus piloted the small starship and ripped up off the Verminstar's surface like a moth tearing free of a spider's web.
During the brief passage out of the Verminstar's atmosphere, Caelus didn't forget to use the ship's fire-control system to loose a few casual shots down into the churning swarm-tide below.
Fwoosh—!
Boom!
The flash of explosions blossomed within the swarm, clearing a small patch in an instant—but before even a second had passed, it was filled right back in.
"Just as I thought…"
Caelus glanced at the point tally on the System interface, the corner of his mouth curving up.
"Killing these bugs that have walked the Path of Propagation gives way more points than the ordinary bugs on the Verminstar."
Asta stood at Caelus's side, her pink eyes reflecting the apocalyptic scene beyond the viewport.
The land of the Verminstar was being blanketed by a living carpet that writhed and proliferated without end.
"So this… this is just the tip of the iceberg of the Swarm Disaster recorded in history?"
The pink-haired girl murmured softly, her voice brimming with emotions beyond words:
"This is truly… so utterly overwhelming!"
"In the past, researchers on the space station submitted study proposals on the Swarm Disaster. I reviewed their reports and simulation projections too…"
Asta gave a faint shake of her head, her fingertips unconsciously brushing the cold viewport.
"But those cold words and charts couldn't convey even one ten-thousandth of the despair and madness of what I'm seeing now."
Perhaps it was the shock of this grand, cognition-shattering spectacle before her, or perhaps it was the habit and dependence carried over from the Stelle-Asta fusion's memories.
Asta was completely unaware of just how close she was standing to Caelus at that moment.
Her slender hand pressed against the glass, her pupils mirroring the planet below.
Countless alien insects burst up from the soil, hatching grounds where they crushed against one another; rolling mountains and rivers were smothered and gnawed by the writhing swarm-tide, until only jagged skeletons remained.
"I never imagined…"
Asta's voice carried a trace of a survivor's relief, but when she remembered this was the Simulated Universe and grasped the academic value of the scene, her fear was overtaken by a scholar's excitement:
"That one day I'd witness the embryonic form of the Swarm Disaster with my own eyes! That I'd even be lucky enough to glimpse the very moment an Aeon was born!"
Something struck her then, and she whipped her head around, scanning the deep starry expanse anxiously while unconsciously grabbing the wrist of the Caelus beside her:
"Caelus! Caelus! Did you see it?"
"Tayzzyronth—where is it?!"
"No."
Caelus's gaze was searching the sea of stars all the same. He shook his head.
He had seen that bug break through the smoke and fly off into deep space, then vanish without a trace.
After all, this time he didn't have Akivili's identity template.
"Relax. With those three around, where's the Swarm King going to run to?"
Caelus raised a hand and pointed at the three floating Genius dumplings.
"It has left the Verminstar, but it has not vanished!"
The Herta dumpling's voice carried a joy she couldn't suppress:
"Its existence is more brilliant than a newborn star—its Path-energy has already rippled through the foundation of the Simulated Universe."
"On the planet where it has descended, I've set up teleport anchor points. You can go there through them."
"But—you may not be able to look upon its true body yet. Even so, you still have to go."
The whole point behind Herta and the others casting the Star Rail into this historical node was to model and derive Tayzzyronth.
Being able to observe its birth firsthand just now was inseparable from the things Caelus had done beforehand. To take the modeling of Propagation a step further, Caelus would need to do more.
Herta didn't know what he should do either… Caelus could just improvise.
"Come on. Let's go take a look."
Caelus piloted the small starship and used the teleport anchor point to make the jump.
"An unfamiliar ceiling."
After the trans-spatial transfer, Stelle gazed up at the sky and murmured.
"You'll get familiar with it soon enough," Caelus picked up after her.
"By the time it's buried under the swarm-tide."
"…"
Asta thought that joke was a bit too dark.
This was the first world Propagation had descended upon after flying off—a planet called Dalabor Star.
The three of them made landfall on a small island that looked utterly cut off from the world: Mandalay Island.
"I know why Tayzzyronth came here now."
Half a day later, sitting in a rest area formed of tree stumps, Stelle propped her cheek on one hand, her expression wistful and full of sighs.
The people living on Mandalay Island had one distinctive trait—they loved having children. They used the birth of new life to fight off their fear of loneliness and death.
"You could call it a natural hotbed for Propagation."
Right up her professional alley, this.
Caelus could hear what sounded like the cries of infants drifting from the hospital on Mandalay Island.
When Propagation descended, the number of "newborns" on Mandalay Island reached an all-time peak.
Only a few days later, those newborns burst out from the isolated island, and swarm-tides began to appear in the skies across every region of Dalabor Star.
"People actually gave birth to bugs…"
Asta's pretty face was pale as paper, ghastly to look at, and even Stelle's features twisted up.
"Propagation ending up as the thing everyone wants dead—honestly, no one's to blame for that."
On the twenty-first day since the swarm-tide began, all of Dalabor Star fell, and a distress call went out for interstellar aid. The transports arrived fairly quickly, all things considered.
Caelus saw a mad woman who refused to leave her house.
When Tayzzyronth descended on this planet, her "child" had flown away, and she wanted to wait for her "child" to come back.
"There's only one ending for Tayzzyronth: death."
Even a narrow Path, once carried to its extreme, was unspeakably terrifying!
Caelus had witnessed the power of Propagation.
Wherever the Swarm King was, as long as you reproduced, the offspring you bore would inevitably be insects—that was the horror of Propagation for mortals!
When the Swarm King invoked the Path of Propagation, even a screw churned out by a factory, meeting the concept of "production" that fell under propagation, would be assimilated into an insect!
If Propagation like this were left to survive, not a single living being in the Galaxy could survive.
"We should go."
Caelus led Asta and Stelle away from Dalabor Star.
From here, the swarm-tide began to spread across the entire universe.
Caelus didn't keep following Tayzzyronth. All he needed to do now was wait—wait for the swarm-tide to blanket the whole Simulated Universe!
To kill some time, Caelus teleported back to the Verminstar for a look.
After the swarm-tide had swept through, the place was strewn with corpses and bones.
"There's actually a fairly intact body left here?"
Stelle stared in surprise at the corpse on the ground.
The bugs had actually left the flesh behind?
"Ah, sorry."
Having accidentally kicked the corpse, Stelle apologized politely.
The next second, Asta went white as a sheet, screamed and lunged into Caelus's arms, burying her head hard against his chest. Caelus could clearly feel two soft mounds and the sensation of their tips pressing into him.
Yet he felt not the slightest flicker of anything suggestive.
Because that shattered head had suddenly sprung up!
He was still alive!
"Holy shit!"
Even Caelus was startled.
"You can still be alive in a state like that?"
Stelle jumped too.
"What the hell is this guy?"
It was a man, scruffy and unshaven, ankles twisted, barely a scrap of cloth left on him, his hair gone white, locking eyes with Caelus.
"He looks awfully familiar?"
Caelus knitted his brows.
"Thank you for waking me."
The man broke into a smile terrifying enough to scare a person to death.
Just as Caelus was pulling out his Masked-Fool-grade acting to prop up a smile and say "you're welcome," the man launched without warning into a stream of curses.
"[Sieglin expletive] Fake! It's all fake!"
"[Sieglin expletive] Liars! The ones who spread the Ravings are damned liars! Don't [Sieglin expletive] let me catch them! I'll [Sieglin expletive]!"
The man spat his fragrant words in a hoarse, broken voice.
Asta and Stelle both froze, staring at the man in shock, then slowly turned their heads toward Caelus.
"Holy shit!"
Isn't that my fine General?
Mitri?
You're actually still alive?
"What are you looking at me for?"
Meeting Asta and Stelle's questioning gazes, Caelus raised both hands to signal it had nothing to do with him.
He had indeed deceived Mitri, but he'd never actually altered the plan behind the Ravings.
And it had even less to do with the fact that Mitri could still be alive like this.
The Sieglin army had been all but wiped out, killed and wounded down to the last man, leaving only Mitri alive—a general with no soldiers left.
Cursing and grumbling, Mitri set the half of his skull that Stelle had kicked off back into place.
Caelus suddenly looked up and to the side.
A bug flew swiftly past, laughing uproariously. Mitri seemed to remember something. He turned, strode forward, and resumed his own path of conquest.
"A self-annihilator of Nihility?"
Caelus watched the laughing bug and Mitri recede into the distance, something dawning on him.
"No wonder the bugs didn't devour him completely."
Even Nihility, the bugs would eat—and be infected right along with it.
"Get ready. Time—is about to accelerate."
Herta's voice came through.
The swarm needed only the faintest beat of its wings to turn into a tidal wave.
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