Chapter 1032 - 14: I Thought You Were a Friend...

Chapter 1032: Chapter 14: I Thought You Were a Friend...

Solar System.

The entire star system, the entire world, had already fallen silent; everything had shattered and come apart.

The Sun had gone out, all light and heat stripped away; the gravitational balance that sustained the star system was broken, and the order that had lasted for countless ages crumbled to dust.

The planets and their satellites, the dwarf planets, asteroids, comets and so on—the whole system bound together by the Sun’s gravity, the entire material Star System—were now like a string of beads whose thread had snapped, scattering one after another into the depths of the pitch‑black void.

Only the Earth was not among them—

While the many other celestial bodies, having lost the pull and constraint of the star’s gravity, flew straight off their orbital paths under inertia and began drifting into the boundless interstellar space as wanderers, this blue planet did not even manage to escape; it was denied the fate of becoming the Wandering Earth.

A thunderous rumble, heaven and earth overturned.

As immense gravity stretched, tugged, shifted...

Whether the cities upon the surface, or the ranges of mountains, the winding rivers and streams, or even the very continents that bore all these things... first the continental shelves tore, then the plates shifted, and finally enormous slabs of land slowly rose. Even at the farthest horizon one could see whole swathes of ocean heaving up in billows to crash toward the sky...

And seen from this collapsing world, apart from the upheaval of heaven and earth, the inversion of up and down, the terrifying spectacle of continental plates and the oceans themselves all falling upward into the sky...

There was also that vast shadow in the heavens...

"What on earth is that..."

Murmuring in disbelief, the Blond Maiden lifted her gaze to the firmament.

In those beautiful eyes of hers, as splendid as blue Gemstones, there was in this moment nothing but emotion written full‑measure in shock and incredulity.

For all that she could be called well‑traveled and knowledgeable, in all her life she had truly never encountered such a thing. Even in her own world, the most science‑fictional scene she had ever seen was the path walked by those people on the Moon Surface, yet even theirs had never been so outlandish.

It was the ring‑shaped megastructure girdling a celestial sphere–scale hyper‑spatial fortress, vast enough to rival a stellar system, like an ageless wall in the emptiness of space.

—The immense ring band seemed to extend all the way to the end of the cosmos, without limit or end.

—It completely covered everything within the field of view, like an iron firmament.

It was magnitude beyond imagination, a contour that seemed even larger than a star—so much so that the reflection in the maiden’s bright eyes bore the unique vastness and immensity of astronomical units.

On the giant ring band she saw, its surface was extremely flat in structure—of course, only flat on the macroscopic level, flat in the sense of astronomical scale. In truth there were still many lines and markings on the ring’s surface, like some profound and intricate patterns...

Or like interlocking modules, their heights rising and falling in jagged relief; it was merely that the whole was too enormous, so that each became no more than a fine, threadlike texture...

After all, this was a superstructure with a diameter of several hundred million kilometers; naturally its surface area was beyond all imagining, and it bore upon it a device akin to a main cannon, bearing the name "Pupil of Chaos."

What looked like a simple Attack mode was only the most basic part of the vast Divine Function that the device possessed.

It could also interfere with spacetime, manipulate gravity, disassemble spiritons, even seize coordinates in the Outer Universe, convert matter and Energy, and so on and so forth; all these capacities were the terrifying Power wielded by the Pupil of Chaos, utterly transcending the Human Realm—truly Divine Function!

For this was not only the main cannon of the celestial‑sphere hyper‑spatial fortress, but also its propulsion unit, Teleportation Engine, superluminal component and sensor array...

In this very moment, that cold Eye of God hung above, its lofty pressure bearing down upon the shattered planet, gazing down on everything below.

It was so close, so enormous, that it covered the entire field of vision; an ordinary person could not even discern its specific outline at all, could by no means guess what it was. The Blond Maiden likewise felt a shock in her heart, her thoughts involuntarily falling into blankness.

"..."

"..."

Cold, indifferent.

For it was not a true eye at all, but a mechanical device, and thus could not be said to possess emotion. Yet precisely because of this it seemed all the more ghastly: that suffocating, icy majesty was a forceful presence that towered far above the mortal world.

Time itself seemed to freeze in that instant.

The world, burned to ashes, became mere backdrop.

In that gaze that was either so long and dead still as to drive one to despair, or so brief that it left no time to react, the Blond Maiden suddenly felt a tightness at her wrist.

"Come with me, I’ll take you away from here..."

A faint, familiar voice, brooking no refusal, reached her.

"Yakumo Zi?"

Seeing the graceful figure emerging with her upper body from a pitch‑black rift, the Blond Maiden blurted out, "Why are you here too?!"

"Probably for the same reason as you, Alice. I just woke up from a nap and found myself over here..." The Demon Sage answered, reaching out to pull Alice into the gap; yet sensing the maiden’s instinctive resistance, she lifted an eyebrow, pretended not to notice, and without leaving a trace simply exerted force.

Even if she was not a Demon renowned for physical prowess, she was in the end an extremely powerful Great Demon; her physical weakness was only in comparison to martial artists like Kazami Yuuka and Ibuki Suika.