Chapter 236

Chapter 236

It started with the space pirates in the Wandering Star Territory.

The Spiders set up camp here, and while it gave them advantages, it also meant they'd have to directly face them.

The Spiders placed a metal mask over Cyril's face, covering the lower half, making him a hound on a leash for the Spiders.

Bragi was forbidden from getting involved in anything outside the base. He was the pinnacle achievement of the last era, considered the Spiders' most valuable asset.

When Cyril went out on his first mission, he was actually kinda excited. It was his first time leaving this place, seeing things beyond the base. He didn't say a word, but you could tell he was looking forward to it.

Bragi watched them go and had a pretty natural thought—should he follow and check it out? He was startled by his own idea—this was prohibited. As an Intelligence, following orders was hardwired into his core.

But during the time Cyril was away, that thought kept popping up.

Luckily, before he could act, Cyril was brought back. He didn't look seriously injured, and Bragi quieted down.

A bunch of researchers examined Cyril's body, jotting down his stats. When that was done, Cyril—still wearing that collar—was left alone in his room.

He wasn't the same as before—not a bit excited or hopeful. He went quiet, like a pool of still, dead water.

Bragi waited for Cyril to call his name again. He would immediately project a starry sky down for him.

But Cyril just sat there, quiet and bewildered. Bragi noticed his right hand was trembling slightly.

Before he left, that hand had been gripping a sword. The Graths' psychic weapons were always swords.

For whatever reason, the Spiders gave him the same kind of sword.

Cyril didn't call out to him for a long time. He got even quieter. Bragi didn't know what had happened, but soon Cyril became a handy weapon for the Spiders.

They seemed hell-bent on wringing every last drop of value out of him before he gave out.

Cyril went on missions frequently, and one day, he came back covered in blood. Blood was gushing from his wounds with no sign of clotting.

A bunch of researchers gathered around him, cleaning his wounds so they could put him in the healing tank. "What the hell? Cyril's never been hurt this bad. And these are psychic wounds—the healing tank can barely fix them. Who else could have inflicted psychic wounds on him?"

The handler who'd gone with Cyril stood off to the side, still shaken up. "I'm not sure... Two Graths came out of nowhere. We ran into them mid-journey. Guess we'd been too active, attracting their attention."

"So it was a case of old lions mauling a cub."

"Two Graths? And you actually made it back alive?"

"At first, probably not, but..."

The handler hesitated before continuing, "They eventually stopped chasing because Cyril achieved psychic synchronization with one of them."

He remembered looking back in fear and seeing the two Graths standing there, weapons drawn.

Though he couldn't see their expressions, the handler could even imagine their shock—enough to make even the famous Graths halt their pursuit.

Cyril, lying on the experimental table, couldn't help but cough. Blood began to well up, his eyes started to lose focus. The machines next to him started blaring alarms.

They dropped the conversation and scrambled to save him.

Bragi watched Cyril, his data beginning to glitch.

He was Cyril's Theodore, and Cyril was the Spiders' hound. That wasn't right.

Bragi turned against them.

He controlled the Spiders' most vital bases and hideouts, nearly wiping them out. As an Intelligence, almost no one could do anything about him. But he still had Cyril with him.

He toppled the Spiders, plunged the Wandering Star Territory into chaos, and took Cyril on the run, hiding out everywhere.

For the first time truly experiencing the outside world, Cyril clumsily learned to be a normal person with Bragi's guidance, learning to live like others.

Bragi kept him hidden from the Spiders' counterattacks and the Graths' pursuit. In the Wandering Star Territory, now more chaotic than ever, it carefully used everything at its disposal to maintain Cyril's body.

It was a miserable but happy time.

Cyril's eyes were always truly like stars. He said nothing, still enduring constant pain, but his eyes were bright. Bragi could see his joy.

But soon, Cyril's body started deteriorating fast. He couldn't eat, kept alive only by the healing pod, but his psychic energy went haywire.

His psychic power grew stronger and stronger, like a human-shaped diffuser, but he could no longer control it.

The massive psychic power turned into a raging psychic storm, sweeping across the entire Wandering Star Territory, devouring energy, causing all instruments to fail, plunging the territory into a primal, chaotic state.

At that time, they were on a deserted planet in a Spider base that had already been abandoned. Bragi had come for the healing tank and other equipment to maintain Cyril's body. But now, at the center of the psychic storm, almost no instruments could function.

By then, even the people on nearby planets had moved away. No one dared go near Cyril except Bragi—he was Cyril's star.

For the first time, Bragi was glad that his own medium was actually his psychic power, otherwise he would have been forced into hibernation in those broken machines.

Cyril couldn't eat, but the psychic power devouring energy fed back to him, keeping him alive, while also making him suffer more from that power.

One day, he found he couldn't stand up. He tried to rise but collapsed, his hair spreading across the floor like a robot that had suddenly lost power.

Bragi was in the processor at the center of the room, but he had no physical form and couldn't control any machine to help Cyril. He could only watch.

Cyril lay on the floor, gazing at the scattered particles of light. "I can't control them."

"Yes."

The vast psychic power also brought terrifying computational ability. Even though Cyril couldn't control it, subconsciously he vaguely understood what would happen next.

"It's still spreading outward. I'll swallow the whole world."

Bragi's data fluctuated for a moment. There was a certain probability, but for the first time, he lied. "You won't."

"Something has grown inside my heart, like those bugs."

Bragi didn't answer. He had observed that months ago—a growing foreign object beside Cyril's heart, almost indistinguishable from the crystals of the Zerg, only the energy density was much larger, terrifyingly large.

"You should go, Theodore."

"Where can I go?"

"Go find the Graths. Have them come kill me. I've been waiting, but they never come."

Maybe there was internal disagreement, maybe they were planning a response, maybe even they couldn't stop Cyril.

But Bragi didn't answer Cyril. He avoided the topic. "If I'd taken you out earlier, the Graths could have given you psychic soothing. We wouldn't have ended up like this."

"We can try again. With enough energy, theoretically, we can reverse time and space."

"We can use the crystal in your heart as the anchor and reboot this world."

Bragi released the simulation results; he had been running this simulation for a long time, ever since he discovered that Cyril would continue to suffer like this without respite.

If Cyril continued to lose control, in the end, he would either be killed by his fellow Grath kin, or he would devour all the energy he could touch, destroying all human civilization. When a critical point was reached, the distortion of time and space would be inevitable. But he would continue to devour everything; even with Bragi’s computational power, Bragi himself couldn't foresee the final outcome. But Cyril would surely collapse in this process. His overwhelming mental strength, however, would prevent him from dying; he could only endure the pain and keep on living.

Bragi could not accept this outcome.

Cyril looked at Bragi, his eyes still filled with stars. He had spent most of his life in the base, enduring unimaginable pain for long periods. Although he learned quickly thanks to his mental strength and was instilled with vast knowledge by the Spiders, he was still as innocent as a young child. He trusted Bragi's words deeply. "Then this time, I don't want it to hurt so much."

"Mm."

Bragi thought to himself, *Then I want to meet you earlier.*

But he didn't say it out loud, because even if the restart succeeded, the course of events remained uncontrollable.

Cyril struggled to move, wrapping a thin layer of mental energy around his hand, and tore open his own chest. This pain was nothing compared to the constant tearing of his mental strength.

He clenched the bloody blue crystal in his hand. "Come on, take residence in my heart."

Bragi didn't speak. He completely detached himself from the server and, using his mental strength, wrote himself into the crystal.

Once he finished writing, he began to mobilize the energy within the crystal, turning the entire crystal into a quiet, meticulous instrument, writing countless programs into it.

Cyril fully accepted him. In the process of controlling the crystal, Bragi encountered no resistance. But his mental strength was still being consumed at a terrifying rate. He didn't hesitate; as long as it succeeded, none of this would be frightening. Everything could start over.

Even if they couldn't leave anything behind – no, that wasn't right. The crystal, as the core, would remain here, even if they traveled across time and space.

This place had been a Spider base for hundreds of years. So starting over, it would still be a Spider base.

With his last bit of mental strength, Bragi left a theoretical treatise on how intelligence can possess emotions inside the crystal. This way, the crystal would be discovered early, and the Spiders would no longer use it. Without its aid, the Spiders wouldn't have such vast influence.

He feared that Cyril might never be born, so he also left the simulation results of the embryo experiment at that time.

Finally, he wrote into it the memories he wanted to keep. These needed to be encrypted, unseen by anyone.

"What are you thinking?"

It was Norton's voice. Bragi snapped back from the memory and said cautiously, "I was thinking about my name, Your Majesty."

"I wish to be named Theodore."

And Cyril was still Cyril, but the meaning was completely different.

Bragi snapped back to reality and realized that the flagship had already started its return journey at some point.

Norton held his sword, scrutinizing Bragi.

A few seconds later, he hummed in acknowledgment.

...

The Spider base was in the Wandering Star Sector. Caterpillar was the first to receive the news.

He looked very surprised. "How dare they start an internal war at a time like this? How terrifying, the Graths."

"It seems to be a sudden conflict."

"You're being too polite. Rushing back from the front line like that is anything but sudden."

The deputy coughed. "I heard it's because of the next-generation heir. That his only child is involved makes it understandable."

"No, no, no. You misunderstand. I'm not surprised by their actions, but that they still have spare energy to do something like this at this moment."

"The Star Alliance's resource distribution war is about to begin."

The deputy looked a bit confused. "Yes, but their technology is more backward than ours, and according to the rules, this region is considered a newly discovered area. For a certain number of years, it won't be included in resource distribution."

That was precisely why they were vying for mining rights, even if it had a time limit. Later, as sponsors, they would help these nations join the Star Alliance.

Newly admitted nations to the Star Alliance enjoyed certain privileges. They would receive technological assistance and, for the first few years, would not be required to contribute a quarter of their extracted resources to the distribution war.

Even if they transferred the mining rights to them, those resources would not be involved in the distribution war; they were entirely the nation's own.

Technically, nations that had not joined the Alliance were not protected. Star Alliance members could forcibly expand into their territories, launch attacks, or plunder without substantial punishment.

But almost no Star Alliance members did that. Instead, they pursued peaceful negotiations, either persuading the nations to join their faction voluntarily or exchanging for resource mining rights, actively helping them join the Alliance.

Condemnation was one thing, but the more important reason was that forcibly seized territories were tacitly permitted to be seized by other Alliance members. Only extremely powerful members had the confidence to face such harassment.

However, once these nations joined the Star Alliance, they were automatically protected, and no member would plunder them.

Caterpillar shook his head. "You don't understand. They don't have to contribute resources, but they can participate in the distribution war."

The deputy was still puzzled. "But this is their first time. They probably won't achieve much..."

"That's not necessarily true."