While Luna was casually chatting earlier, she had already exercised her authority to investigate.
She pulled every recording of Star City from that period, extracting fragments from Binggeer and Jessitz's conversation.
Binggeer had taken the item—and he was also the one secretly seeking a buyer.
So it seemed.
What even Jessitz never realized was that Binggeer intended to pocket the money entirely for himself.
He was searching for a buyer, and once he found one, he would board a capital ship without hesitation, abandoning Jessitz and the rest.
In the face of profit, no one could fully restrain their desires.
In modern society, people might shrug at 100 Energy Credits, 1000, even 10,000.
Such sums could be earned in just a few decades—hardly worth taking reckless risks.
For beings with endless lifespans, decades were nothing more than a blink.
But—
The value of this item was astronomical.
Their estimate: 10 million Energy Credits.
That alone represented tens of thousands of years of toil.
Yet Luna knew the truth. If the right buyer surfaced, it could sell for 1 billion, even 10 billion.
And if its technology were unlocked, its applications could easily be worth over a trillion.
Jessitz remained oblivious to the 10 million valuation. Binggeer, meanwhile, had barely made contact with the very first buyer when an offer of 200 million Energy Credits landed on the table.
That figure was staggering.
In modern human civilization, tens or even hundreds of thousands of credits bought little.
But past a certain threshold, money itself became a weapon—money that could breed more money.
As in Earth's age: a man with mere tens or hundreds of thousands in savings was still just ordinary. But with hundreds of millions, he could simply deposit it in a bank, buy bonds, and reap a lifetime's worth of wealth without ever lifting a hand.
Split among dozens, 10 million meant only a few hundred thousand per head.
But with a personal fortune crossing the hundred-million mark, Binggeer's mindset shifted violently, reshaping everything.
All of this, Luna pieced together after analyzing the communication between Jessitz and Binggeer.
Binggeer had relayed information to Jessitz, which allowed Luna to pinpoint his location. She then transmitted a secret key to his ship—an injection straight into the DataNode—that forced it to dump every shred of data back to her.
Now Luna had Binggeer's exact coordinates.
After finishing with Jessitz, she turned her gaze to the soldiers scattered on the ground.
"It's fine. Restore order here. I'll return later, and I expect no chaos."
"If there is, the blame will fall squarely on you soldiers."
These soldiers had their own independent internal system, much like the Eternal Cycle Star Nation.
Thus, when Reid died, the news instantly spread to all of them.
Hearing Luna's warning now, they immediately fell in line, obediently moving to stabilize the situation.
Luna rose into the air, flew straight to the spaceport, discarded her gene-pool body, boarded her starship, and set course for Binggeer.
Deep space.
Not far from Star City Farm, a capital ship drifted silently.
Binggeer, a Waterfolk, reclined inside. Though not submerged, modern biotech allowed his kind to survive perfectly well without water.
He was receiving troubling news from Star City Farm.
Supernova Technology's sudden arrival was unexpected. More troubling still, they were demanding the very creature he had acquired.
He had sent Jessitz to eliminate the target, though he doubted she could contain the situation.
In the Rusty Star Nation, Supernova Technology was everywhere.
It was precisely this awareness that drove him to flee. To return would be to walk willingly into a snare.
Soon, Supernova's ships would surely lock down every surrounding sector. Those vessels could duel warships head-on; there would be no escape.
As for Jessitz and the others—
He couldn't care less.
"Jessitz is a fool. Perhaps she'll stall them for a while."
"But even if she fails, it doesn't matter. They'll never find me."
Binggeer lounged in a private swimming pool inside his capital ship.
Though Waterfolk could live comfortably without water—just as many species could now endure long stretches away from gas—they still preferred their native element.
Without water, unease gnawed at him. Immersed in it, he felt at peace.
Just then, a voice rang out from the capital ship's speakers.
"Is that so?"
Startled, Binggeer shot out of the water, scanned his surroundings, and finally fixed his gaze on the speaker.
"Who are you?"
The speaker answered without flinching.
"Didn't you just order Jessitz to kill me?"
"Have you forgotten so quickly?"
Supernova Technology Corporation's CEO—Luna.
Binggeer froze, stunned beyond belief.
"Aren't you supposed to be in Star City?"
How could she possibly be here? They were hundreds of millions of kilometers from Star City.
"Handling the Star City issue didn't take long. Besides, I didn't need to chase you down."
Binggeer couldn't parse Luna's meaning at first. Then he pulled up the ship's external feed and saw the truth.
His ship wasn't fleeing Star City Farm—it was heading straight toward it.
When?
His ship's course had been hijacked.
On the radar, a starship sat a few million kilometers away; both vessels were closing fast. They'd meet in mere minutes.
"Damn."
Binggeer scrambled to bring up his weapons and open fire on the incoming ship.
But the weapons refused to activate.
In that instant he understood how Jessitz had failed.
Supernova Technology's power exceeded anything they'd imagined—they exerted terrifying control across the Rusty Star Nation. They had been operating under these people's shadow the whole time.
"You want that thing? I'll hand it over—just let me go."
Realizing his disadvantage, Binggeer blurted a surrender.
Luna's reply was cold. "You have no right to bargain."
Binggeer bristled, insulted at being dismissed. Luna dared to look down on him.
"Don't forget— that thing is in my hands. I can destroy it."
The threat hung in the air.
To Luna, it barely registered as a gesture; she found it almost laughably impotent.
"It's not in your hands. You can't even leave your room—how would you destroy it?"
Luna's amused tone jolted Binggeer back to reality. He tried the door, only to confirm what she'd said.
Useless.
As an ordinary being, he was nothing more than an insect before Luna.
And not even Luna in her role as supreme leader of human civilization—just Luna, CEO of Supernova Technology Corporation.
Yet that alone was enough. Within the Rusty Star Nation, her authority extended everywhere, just as it did throughout human civilization itself. Strictly speaking, both identities carried the same weight here.
Against such power, someone like Binggeer had no chance of resistance.
Minutes later, Luna's starship closed in on the capital ship.
She was about to board when she suddenly froze. Her gaze lingered on the vessel, and in the next instant, she felt it—a wild beast crouched inside, and herself reduced to a fragile rabbit.
A surge of danger prickled her senses, halting her every instinct.
The capital ship was changing.
Not from within outward, but all at once—small to large, every part shifting simultaneously.
Even with full authority, Luna could not penetrate the ship's systems to see what was happening.
"It seems even little things have tempers."
She didn't need to guess. The disturbance came from the object she sought.
It was no easy creature to bind. Binggeer and his cohorts had spent enormous effort capturing it, using every method available, sedating it before forcing it aboard.
But the sedation had worn off.
Now the ship itself writhed.
Not from some outside grip, but as though its every component twisted at once. Its once-smooth hull bulged and warped, vents hissing gases that whipped into violent gusts against Luna's ship.
Then—
The capital ship began to thin.
Not shrink—thin.
A steel plate once a centimeter thick stretched into a fragile millimeter, though the ship's size remained unchanged.
The vessel mutated chaotically, reshaping with no logic.
Luna read it for what it was: a display, a threat.
An attempt to scare her off.
"Interesting," she murmured. "The data never mentioned you had intelligence."
"Judging by this, it must be comparable to certain animals."
"Formidable power coupled with measurable intellect… that already makes you a promising evolutionary leap, doesn't it?"
Luna's eyes lit with excitement.
Biology was her greatest passion.
And the emergence of a new species was to her what a new chapter update was to a devoted reader of serialized fiction—especially when that chapter promised brilliance.
"Highly positive mutation" was a technical term. Most mutations were destructive—radiation being the classic trigger. Out of hundreds of millions, perhaps a single case would prove beneficial.
That was why, in nuclear-radiation incidents, only microbes had ever shown reliable successful mutations. Once an organism grew beyond the microbial scale—shrimp, plankton, or higher—successful mutation became nearly impossible.
If the mutation was negative, the end was always the same: genetic collapse and death.
In rare cases, perhaps one in ten thousand, the subject survived—but at a cost. A missing hand. A ruined eye. A damaged organ. A shortened lifespan.
Even so-called positive mutations weren't guaranteed to be useful.
By definition, any mutation that didn't cripple the body was classified "positive."
If, for example, a mutation left your skin coarse and bristling with hair—ugly, but functional—the academy still deemed it a positive outcome.
A step higher were trivial enhancements: resistance to 220V electricity, the ability to hold your breath for twenty minutes, or enduring cold and heat without discomfort. Technically positive, but largely worthless.
True useful changes—such as running speed surpassing human limits, or genetic shifts that shattered the natural boundary of lifespan—were called super-positive mutations.
And beyond even that lay the extremely positive mutations.
These were multifaceted, with every alteration beneficial, and no side effects.
At times, these bordered on the terrifying: a mutation yielding not just enhancements, but outright superpowers.
Luna was convinced the creature before her was one of these extremely positive cases.
Mutation in this age was particularly dangerous, because every organism carried mind-bogglingly complex genetic codes.
They weren't natural lifeforms at all—they were artificial creations.
She had once heard of a rabbit mutating to a body length of 100 kilometers, still moving freely without any collapse of structure or loss of agility.
Super-abilities had become common in this era. Not only in engineered lifeforms—humans themselves were prone to developing them.
Some mutated creatures had even proven capable of challenging entire gene pools.
Luna felt the creature's menace pressing against her, yet she had no thought of retreat.
Instead, she advanced on the capital ship.
Her body was already sheathed in a layer of mech-armor.
Behind her, her starship fired a beam of searing laser, punching a vast hole through the capital ship's hull.
Inside: only darkness.
Luna stepped through without hesitation.
The moment she stepped inside, a searing wrongness slammed into her — as if her body were being torn into pieces.
No.
It wasn't even a sensation.
This was reality.
Her mech had failed to protect her; her body was literally split into separate parts.
Even her internal organs had been dislodged.
"This is... really unpleasant."
"Don't worry. I won't hurt you. You just need to come with me."
"I don't want a conflict."
Luna muttered under her breath.
She had no way of knowing whether the creature understood.
Its reply was simple: it split her into more pieces.
At that moment Luna could not feel any of her parts.
And yet, excitement swelled inside her.
"What an ability."
"Those old so-called superpowers — despite the name — were basically unusable. They only worked with mechanical augmentation."
"And you… you can directly command the surrounding quantum particles."
"How did you gain this? I'm fascinated."
Even Luna, with something as taboo as Metacellular, required mechanical reinforcement; without it she would quickly collapse.
Many gene pools were the same.
Without external support, the colossal mass of those gene pools would implode without an energy supply. At best they could last a few minutes; some not even a few seconds.
Called genes, they were in truth technology — machinery.
And Luna was certain the creature before her had no mechanical aid at all.
It didn't control flame, nor freeze water into ice — it controlled quantum particles.
It could influence quantum particles directly, shaping them however it wished.
Luna didn't understand the mechanism, but she understood one thing: if this creature could be mass-produced, it would solve countless problems.
Especially in the quantum domain, human civilization still poured massive resources into exploration; this creature's own energy needs seemed low. To reach that level it must be leveraging something.
The fragments of Luna, torn apart, had become dozens of Lunas.
Dozens of Lunas continued deeper into the capital ship.
The creature panicked and cut those dozens down again. They multiplied into tens of thousands, until the capital ship felt too small.
Luna advanced, step by step.
This was deep space; the creature had nowhere to run.
In the end, it was still only a lifeform—dependent on countless external factors to survive.
It was repeatedly torn apart, cell by cell, as new Lunas kept forming.
Until finally, she reached a door.
Luna rapped her knuckles against it.
She gauged its thickness—at least thirty centimeters.
"In a sealed chamber like this, you can still sense me, still touch me."
"Come with me, little one!"
With that, she sank both hands into the door and, drawing on her mech's strength, forced it open.
There was still breathable gas inside—that was why the creature had chosen to remain here.
Once the door gave way, Luna found herself staring into a massive chamber, no less than ten standard football fields in scale.
And all of it existed for a single being.
The so-called "little one" whose body stretched well over a hundred meters.
Luna clapped her hands, and another version of herself nearby ignited.
The flames washed the chamber in light, revealing more of the creature's form.
It bore no resemblance to anything of Earth. Its design was primitive, alien, utterly unlike known biology.
The lower body bent in a J-shape, plated in a metallic, glimmering exoskeleton.
Prismatic, smooth as polished glass.
The upper body rose from it, six slender limbs like the legs of a spider. No head, only an abdominal core with a retractable tubular siphon. Its back was carpeted with tens of thousands of twitching appendages—not soft tentacles, but hook-like growths.
Taken alone, one might have made a brutal whip. Together, writhing in endless motion, they were unsettling in the extreme.
The creature's flesh was a patchwork of pale grey-white and dark grey, a dim crimson glow pulsing faintly near its respiratory tract.
It had nothing of beauty about it; strange and stranger still, that was all it was.
"Bigger than the reports suggested," Luna mused.
"But… not much combat ability."
Her gaze lingered, methodical.
She saw no eyes.
Perhaps it had none—only that peculiar sense with which it touched the world.
As Luna studied it, it studied her in turn.
And it recoiled with unease.
Because Luna was something it could not kill.
The open door vented the chamber's air. The creature had entered the slow suffocation stage—capable of holding its breath for a long time, but not forever.
"Surrender, and I'll let you live."
Luna's voice rang out across the chamber.
But she was met only with the creature's rage.
It struck at Luna again.
As before, the attack did nothing.
"It does have intelligence," Luna noted, "but only at the most primitive level."
"It can wield its power in one crude fashion—and the effect is already weakening."
Switching to X-ray vision, she peered inside its body. With every use of its ability, the creature's reserves collapsed further.
Its inner flesh was wasting away.
The exoskeleton measured five meters across, but the living core inside was barely two.
Like a crab: broad shell, but crack it open and there's only the thinnest scrap of meat.
Emaciated.
Its power burned enormous energy, and no ability—no matter how extraordinary—could escape the laws of physics.
"Pointless resistance."
Natural organisms carried too many flaws.
Even if such beings wielded frightening gifts, they could never unleash their full strength.
Luna bit her own finger, then flicked it toward the creature.
On contact, the severed finger melted into a slick pool of blood. The blood crept into its tissues, riding the creature's bloodstream straight to its brain.
Metacellular seized its nervous system.
The creature was already finished.
No surprises.
"I had planned to bring it back intact," she murmured, "but this capital ship is a wreck. And I still need to haul it home."
Towing a capital ship with a starship would cripple her speed.
Even a "small" capital ship stretched a thousand meters; this one spanned two thousand.
Luna sealed the chamber behind her and moved on.
"Come out!"
Her eyes cut toward a shadowed corner.
From it, a Waterfolk lunged, clutching a nullification weapon. He fired point-blank.
Luna's body collapsed.
Binggeer exhaled in relief.
"Finally… she's dead!"
"I must clean this up fast."
But as he spoke, a voice sounded from behind him.
"You're not very honest."
"Or did you really think you could kill me?"
Binggeer turned. Luna stood before him, face calm.
A cold dread ran down his spine.
Wasn't she dead? Why was she standing here?
From every direction, another Luna appeared. Hundreds. Thousands.
Binggeer's panic flared.
"You're alive because I want something from you: who's the buyer you contacted?"
Binggeer had used a code to reach the buyer. Luna could have traced it, but with the buyer present, she preferred to ask directly.
"The buyer…" Binggeer faltered. "If I tell you, you have to let me go."
Hope still clung to him.
Luna tilted her head once. "No. If you tell me, I'll let you die more… mercifully."
Her nature was volatile and bloodthirsty. War had scarred her; life was grass beneath her boots.
Why such cold resolve? When the Olive Branch Civilization tried to crush the Federation, she chose to die with the Federation—not for one person, but for the whole of humanity. The individual and the collective were different in her eyes. She would die with all of them.
"You…" Binggeer stammered, thrown by her bluntness and lack of pretense.
"Come to Hell with me; maybe I'll tell you."
He meant to self-destruct. But his body gave no sign of responding.
To "self-destruct" required detonating the energy core embedded in his body.
"Don't forget—the energy core in your body was manufactured by Supernova Technology," Luna reminded him.
That was the kind of authority corporations wielded in this era.
You couldn't even die if you wished to.
"You don't want to talk?"
"I'll make you. Even if you self-destruct, it doesn't matter. Your consciousness will remain. I only need to capture it—then I can torment you."
"A hundred years. A thousand. Ten thousand. However long it takes."
"When you defy me, you should be ready for that."
Luna's voice was steady, untouched by emotion, as if nothing in existence could disturb her.
For the first time, Binggeer felt the crushing weight of another person's presence.
He had thought such pressure impossible.
How could one human exert it? Without equipment, without technology?
And yet here it was—real, undeniable—delivered through nothing but words.
"I'll tell you," Binggeer whispered, "but you must promise not to torment me."
He was pleading now, begging for the mercy of death.
"Once you've given me the answer, you'll have no further value," Luna replied. "I won't need to kill you."
"Tell me… was the buyer the Lange Star Nation royal family?"
The question made Binggeer shudder, his whole body trembling. He felt mocked, toyed with.
She already knew.
Everything he had was already in her grasp.
But he could only endure. Anger meant nothing here.
"Yes," he admitted at last. "The Lange Star Nation royal family. They're the ones I've been dealing with. The transaction site is already agreed."
In truth, Luna hadn't known—she had been guessing.
There had been traces, and the deduction wasn't difficult.
She only needed his confirmation.
His words would serve as her bargaining chip.