The three Star-Gods hurled themselves at Roya in a frenzy.
They abandoned all defense, pouring every ounce of power into sheer speed and raw force.
The half-man mammoth lowered his massive shoulders and neck, driving forward with the half-meter horn atop his head, aiming to smash into the cockpit where Roya sat within the Ancient Saint Mecha.
The half-man lion was not to be outdone. He lunged diagonally, twisted mid-stride, then opened his massive jaws—large enough to swallow a table whole—snapping them down toward the mecha's left leg joint.
Above, the half-man roc carved a half-circle through the void, sweeping around to Roya's rear. With wings as sharp as blades, he scythed downward, slashing savagely at the mecha's back.
Every motion carried a force equivalent to five stellar detonations.
One could well imagine that if even a single strike landed, the Ancient Saint Mecha—even with all its resilience—would seize up, its systems locked in momentary paralysis. From there, the relentless assaults from three directions would smother it, grinding away until its defenses failed and it was torn apart.
And yet, facing this vicious encirclement, a strange smile touched Roya's lips.
For within his psychic scan and predictive calculus, the path was clear: so long as he advanced, striking first rather than waiting in defense, none of these seemingly unstoppable attacks would ever fall upon the Ancient Saint Mecha.
"So… it seems you three haven't been idle these past weeks."
Without hesitation, Roya cut off all entanglement with the Star-Gods. The mecha's thrusters roared to full, blasting him clear of their encirclement. He shot directly toward the Silent King, standing proud upon his necrodragon's head.
"You worthless traitors!"
The Silent King's roar was thunderous. Beneath him, the necrodragon, needing no command, beat its wings with titanic force. A surge of psychic shockwaves cascaded outward, a storm meant to halt Roya's charge.
At the same time, the Silent King lashed the reins in his hand.
A foul, dark-green psychic essence poured along their length. It split into three streams, each striking toward one of the Star-Gods.
The instant Roya's spirit brushed against this energy, he felt it—the suffocating density of wrath, hatred so thick it threatened to stain his very soul.
In the blink of an eye, the emotion latched onto his probing spirit, carried its corruption back along the psychic channel, and lunged toward the core of his psyche.
Startled, Roya severed the link just in time, cutting off the spread of pollution.
But the fragment of his spirit he had extended could not be recalled. It was devoured whole by that dark-green tide.
Perilous though it was, the encounter gave him clarity. He unraveled its true nature.
"The Collective Will… of the Fearless Ones!"
Countless revelations cascaded through his mind. At last, the missing key to the Fearless Dynasty's so-called ascension was laid bare.
The truth of the Silent King's trump card stood revealed.
When the Fearless race ascended as one, they learned too late of the Star-Gods' deception. That so-called "eternal life" was nothing but a lie.
In truth, their consciousnesses had been stripped away by the Star-Gods' warp-forged sorcery, reduced to models of thought like programs, installed into body after body of forged living metal.
Not immortality—death in disguise. Each mind was reduced to a slave routine.
Their bodies became fodder, raw material to forge yet more living metal. Their souls—their most precious essence—were consumed by the Star-Gods themselves.
Only the Silent King survived. By offering his own people as sacrifice to the Star-Gods, he alone received a fragment of their true inheritance. Flooded with warp energy, his soul was remade, rendered eternal.
But for the tens of billions of Fearless lives devoured, only one thing remained—a vast ocean of wrath, resentment so pure that even the Star-Gods would not touch it.
And the Silent King… had not spared even this. He refined the last vestige of his people's will, binding it into his own psychic arsenal, forging it into a weapon against the Star-Gods.
Now, with the three Star-Gods breaking his control and failing to assault Roya as ordered, he was forced to unleash this hidden weapon prematurely, strengthening his chains over the three bodies he had so carefully crafted.
The moment that twisted psychic force lashed into their vessels, the three Star-Gods' true souls could no longer remain hidden. They manifested fully within this starfield where warp and realspace interwove.
The half-man roc screeched:
"Silent! You heartless wretch! You even devoured the last remnants of your people's will?!"
"You didn't think we had no answer to such a trick, did you?!"
The half-man mammoth bellowed to Loya:
"Roya! We'll hold him! We'll buy you the time you need—strike now, kill the Silent King!"
The half-man lion roared in turn:
"Yes! End him! Free us at last! From this moment, you shall be our ally—anointed and protected by the Star-Gods!"
The three raged, their spirits thrumming violently.
In this barren starfield, devoid of warp energy, the sudden convulsions shook both void and immaterium alike. The cosmos itself seemed to quake as if struck by a magnitude ten earthquake.
The tremors rippled outward, warping space.
Even the Silent King's foul green essence faltered under the shockwaves, held at bay midway along his chains, unable to advance.
The three bodies of the Star-Gods went slack, drifting lifelessly like derelict wreckage in the void.
"You… miserable… wretches!"
Their betrayal at such a moment ignited the Silent King's wrath beyond measure.
"Shudder… in the Yellow Springs!"
His roar split the silence. Beneath him, the necrodragon opened its maw and loosed a soundless bellow.
From its throat spewed a tide of murky gray-brown miasma. With one beat of its wings, the deathly haze billowed outward, sweeping toward Roya.
There was no time to probe it with spirit-sense, but even at a glance Roya knew its nature. That miasma was despair itself—like the final screams of countless dying throats, like the wide, unblinking eyes of those who could not rest in death.
No one would willingly touch such a thing.
Roya immediately broke off his charge, veering sharply aside to escape its path.
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