"This guy!"
The tiny Herta dumpling stared at the maid-outfit Herta puppet Aha had just tossed over, and the pixel-built corners of her mouth twisted into a frantic, glitching spasm.
"Tch! Not one moment of peace… He's the ultimate stir-the-pot menace!"
That Aha could drag her automaton puppet AI into the Simulated Universe didn't surprise her in the slightest.
After all, for ease of debugging, every puppet she used regularly came preloaded with the Simulated Universe interface program.
But did He really think that highly of her puppet AI?
Right then, Herta finally understood the frazzled state of mind Asta beside her was in.
Forget Starbreaker bugs — an ordinary mini-Herta AI and Asta together would struggle against a pack of True Stingbugs. And He wanted them fighting in a war of Aeons?
What left her with too many complaints to voice was this: Aha had been helping Tayzzyronth tank Ena and Qlipoth not one minute ago, and now He'd flipped sides?
Does switching faces really not cost Him a single bean?
"He turned traitor without a shred of hesitation! Hachi-Aha! You absolute—"
Stelle jammed one hand on her hip and leveled a finger at Aha, indignation written all over her small face as she tried to activate her sow-discord skill: "You're a total weathervane! Concrete-pouring old man! Cesium-Sexy Big Sis! Are you two seriously going to accept this?!"
"I saw Him punching a hole in the concrete-pouring old man's wall during the chaos just now! And He swiped a fragment of your body too, big sis!"
"Slander! He's slandering me!!!"
Aha instantly wore the face of someone wronged worse than Dou E in the old opera, and shot back in fury.
"We are fa-mi-ly!"
He flung both arms wide, making as if to embrace the mountain-vast Qlipoth and the shimmering, light-woven Xipe.
At the same time He struck a pose of truly theatrical affectation and spoke in the sweet, poisonous tones of a green-tea manipulator: "Oh, fake Akivili, Aha knows you envy our great Aeon family, our 'Family Loving Each Other' — but framing people is bad."
"Aha would love to bring you along, but you haven't even put on the Akivili suit yet~ So unprofessional!"
A tone of regret, as though His hands were tied.
"Besides, Aha is everyone's favorite friend!"
His voice brimmed with 'sincere' warmth: "How could anyone bear to turn down an Aha this adorable?"
Reality, however, was bony and unkind.
Faced with the hand of friendship Aha stretched out so eagerly, Xipe's triple visage — composed of countless harmonized notes — offered a gentle smile, a kindly smile, and a perfect smile.
Then He slid elegantly sideways and out of reach.
The motion was smooth and effortless.
Qlipoth was more direct.
That colossal arm, forged as though from a thousand molten worlds, shifted a fraction, and the great hammer gathering the starlight of all creation came down with a thunderous clang, knocking Aha's outstretched arm aside.
In fairness, within the Aeon circle Aha's social standing was actually pretty decent.
Or rather, He was the only being who could exchange a couple of words with every single Aeon.
Though usually it was Him talking while the others chased Him down to beat Him, or dodged Him like a plaster stuck to their skin.
Precisely because He was Aha, Qlipoth and Xipe paid no real mind to this child's-play defection of His.
They understood [Elation] far too well.
His joining the extermination squad against Propagation this instant might well be entirely genuine.
But the moment a funnier, more subversive script appeared, He'd flip again without hesitation, swing the barrel around and hit His own teammates where it hurt.
Never trust Aha's allegiance — and that, precisely, was the part of Aha you could most "rely" on.
That was Aha!
The only credit rating in the entire universe built on the foundation of "absolutely untrustworthy"~
"Caelus-cub! What do we do now?!"
Stelle came trotting back to Caelus's side on that faintly ridiculous little plastic white horse, clip-clop-clop, poked a finger into his side, and dropped her voice into an urgent hiss: "He looks serious about it! How about… we surrender too?"
"Dame~ dame yo~!"
Before Caelus could answer, Aha across from them crossed both arms into an enormous X and shook His head like a rattle-drum: "This side's full! Not taking applications!"
And somewhere along the way His pitch-black, chaotic silhouette had pulled on a pair of overalls. He raised one finger, and a basketball spun into a blurring whirl on its tip.
Then His wrist flicked, and the ball rolled up His arm like a living thing to His shoulder, whereupon He snapped into a shoulder-shrug iron-mountain slam — the motion flowing like water, yet carrying an indescribably abstract, staccato swagger.
"Kun-kun-kun-kun~! The Kun Style Fist has such nimble forms~?"
He even hummed His own background music.
Aha swung a leg into a backward hop-step, one hand yanking at the collar of His overalls, the other splayed open and beckoning Caelus and the rest to come at Him.
"Hahaha~ Come on! Friends~! Let the Elation come down harder!"
That ultimate-abstract combo routine of Aha's split a hairline crack straight through the grim, murderous pressure of the Aeons' presence.
Qlipoth, Xipe, bot-Akivili, and HooH lurking in the dark all fell silent before the sheer absurdity of it.
By unspoken agreement, the Aeons declined to acknowledge Him.
Only the tiny Herta dumpling had an eerie light flickering in her pixel eyes. She stared hard at Aha's routine, then whipped her head around to look at Caelus.
She remembered!
Caelus had done that exact absurd routine.
This Aha bastard… learned it from Caelus?
"My gege's already getting whitewashed by the PR team, and you're still over here throwing shade!"
Caelus fired commands through the biological neural network at blistering speed, directing the mount-bug — trembling under the crushing pressure of the Aeons — to carry Stelle and Asta forward until they hovered before Tayzzyronth's immense body: "Remember to bring your basketball to the trial."
He planted himself in front of the god of Propagation and shouted up at Aha, chin high: "You call yourselves a Family Loving Each Other? Then where does that leave my Boss?"
"Ganging up to beat down my Boss — what kind of Family Loving Each Other is that?!"
And in that same razor-thin window, while the Aeons' attention was fixed on Aha and Caelus—
Caelus's consciousness sent violent ripples through the Swarm network. Almost the instant those ripples of command spread out, an unimaginably vast Swarm welled up out of nothing again, cautiously refilling the stretch of cosmos the Aeons' power had briefly swept clean.
Every additional bug was one more point Caelus had eked out of a hopeless corner!
Aha's betrayal had been within Caelus's expectations.
This guy might not know what trump card Caelus was hiding, but it was exactly the not-knowing that made it fun!
That was why He'd kindly helped Caelus grow the Swarm early on, then thoughtfully detonated a full-blown Aeon brawl to buy the Swarm time to propagate — all of it to build an even bigger stage for the fun.
Put in His position, Caelus would have played it the same way.
Aha might be more erratic in the details, but the broad strokes were identical.
Every word being spoken right now existed to hold the Aeons' attention, to make them too bored to squash the Swarm immediately, to buy the Swarm those hair's-breadth seconds of growth.
A true veteran aerial-splits janitor squeezes every last point out of nothing!
"You want to hurt my family's l0li mama? Then you'll have to step over my corpse first!"
Caelus's voice rang out flat and final, carrying a resolve that bordered on the tragic.
He stepped forward and spread his arms wide, like the male lead in some hackneyed drama taking a blade for the heroine, planting himself squarely before Tayzzyronth's towering silhouette: "You'll have to step over my corpse first!"
The words landed like someone had hit the universe's mute button.
Screwllum: "…?"
The elegant mechanical gentleman suffered a rare logic short-circuit.
Ruan Mei: "…??"
Herta: "Jaw on the floor!!"
"Listen, you've already taken this job well beyond expectations."
Herta couldn't contain her shock, yet didn't dare raise her voice — there were five full Aeons standing across from them!
To restate it once more: the Simulated Universe is a real universe. Being killed by another data-lifeform might come cheaper, but the simulated Aeons are wired straight into the real Paths!
You could call them the genuine Aeons' alt accounts.
Getting hammered might genuinely kill you!
"I'm trying to assign the Akivili template to you all, but the operation's being heavily jammed by [Elation] — it's that bastard Aha! He's blocking it!"
"My living ancestor, I'm begging you, quit stirring the pot!"
This was far too much stimulation!
"Urgent: I am attempting to suspend and shut down the Simulated Universe… operation failed. The overlaid Aeon protocols forbid it."
Even Screwllum's unfailingly courteous voice had turned grave.
"Darling, what exactly are you trying to do?"
Ruan Mei's brow furrowed.
Neither she nor Herta nor Screwllum could make sense of Caelus helping Tayzzyronth breed a Swarm. If it had started as play, or as a way of testing something, fine.
But now, facing five Aeons, he was still standing in front of a Propagation destined to be surrounded and exterminated. Even splitting her mind into tens of thousands of parallel threads, she couldn't work out what Caelus was after.
Caelus's behavior wasn't only overloading the geniuses' CPUs — it had hooked the attention of the Aeons opposite as well.
The geniuses weren't the only ones baffled; every Aeon across from him had eyes on Caelus.
Qlipoth's gaze settled on Stelle and Caelus. He knew these two — they'd once driven a car straight through His wall of Preservation and wrecked it.
Xipe's gaze, woven from ten thousand harmonic echoes, carried pure curiosity; it was His first time meeting the pair.
Their degrees of familiarity differed, but from the exchange between Aha and Caelus, both had picked up on the special way Aha treated the human.
It was hardly just because he was Propagation's Emanator, Tayzzyronth's foremost favored general.
To pick this side at this moment — did [Elation] believe that human could hold off five Aeons?
"I've talked you up this far. Aren't you going to give me a little transformation?"
Caelus turned his head toward Tayzzyronth.
"█hisss… ██... █hisss..."
"Haah. Propagation!"
Caelus let out a long sigh — and then, under the astonished eyes of every human and every Aeon present, he channeled the full power of the Path of Propagation and punched clean through Tayzzyronth's body.
In the earlier fighting, the Swarm King had received Aha's help, but with Ena, Xipe and Qlipoth pressing in and HooH working knives in the shadows, His condition was already dire.
Caelus's strike only added frost to the battered Swarm King's snow — misfortune upon misfortune.
"Aha, do me a favor. Put some makeup on my Boss."
Because he'd taken MVP in match after match, Tayzzyronth had handed nearly all authority over the Path of Propagation to Caelus — much as Aha had once granted the entire power of the Elation Path to a single bug.
Caelus could probably contend with that bug for the title of strongest Emanator now.
Mid-way through a military combat routine, Aha froze for a beat, then burst out laughing.
"Lol~"
"My man! I'll do your l0li mama's makeup right this second!"
He raced over to the wounded Tayzzyronth at light speed, rummaging through His things the whole way — basketball, mask, toy pigeon, all flung aside — until He produced cosmetics of unidentifiable origin.
After a flurry of manipulations no human eye could follow, Tayzzyronth had genuinely become a white-haired, red-eyed l0li with a baby face and enormous b○obs.
Calling her a l0li referred only to the relative cuteness of her outward appearance; her frame was the same as a colossal Stellaron spirit's — celestial-body scale.
Right now, that little l0li, hundreds of times larger than Ultraman, gazed at Caelus with brimming, glimmering red eyes, disbelief all over her, as though she hadn't processed any of it.
"She was already a dummy and you went and tricked her~!"
Aha, who moments ago had been applying makeup with tireless delight, was back in the five-man squad, wearing a different face, now pointing the accusation at Caelus.
"Much easier on the eyes," Caelus said, patting the white-haired little l0li on the head.
The whole field remained sunk in stunned silence.
The Herta dumpling hovering at Caelus's shoulder wore an equally bizarre expression.
Anyone could see it: the Swarm King was Caelus's one and only hope of standing against five Aeons.
And the one who had personally strangled that hope wasn't Aha — it was Caelus himself.
Had he lost his mind?
To actually do something like this!
What on earth was he trying to accomplish?
The Aeon of Preservation turned His gaze on Caelus.
One of Xipe's faces knitted its brows and said nothing, pondering.
They watched Caelus calmly, unhurriedly drive the Path of Propagation onward, expanding the bug tide until it filled the greater part of the War of the Aeons' battlefield.
Stelle broke the silence first, shredding her throat with the shout: "Caelus-cub, what the hell did you just do?!"
"Without Lord Swarm King, how are we supposed to fight five Aeons!?" Stelle stamped her foot, demanding an answer.
"Hahahaha~"
Caelus gave a small smile. "Simple."
"I'll just become a god myself."
Across the vast Galaxy, mortals and gods alike stood dumbfounded — and then they heard him lift his voice in song.
"In youth I learned the world runs hard and cold,
yet turned to Caelus-light to roam the void.
All down the Trailblaze road, a drifting seed,
alone through every rise and fall of Path.
Ten thousand perils bred a sea of bugs,
heart wrung and mind spent raising Vermin-Thralls.
Today I break the parasite of Order —
break the bugs, break the gods, then break the sky."
In that moment, the Trailblazer who took pride in shattering rules finally stopped restraining the impulse inside him.
Caelus's thought tapped the System interface.
LV560, Honkai Girl, Friend Support — come!
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