Those voices began fading away until they could no longer be heard, as one moved farther in a certain direction within the void.
Although the void looked the same everywhere—shapeless and infinite—there were boundaries and territories defined within it.
Millions of years ago, a war had raged across this void among thousands of unfathomable beings, each of whom could be called a god, rulers of billions of lives.
The war resulted in casualties so immense that the universe's very energy was disturbed. The surviving gods were forced to mutually define territories and divide the remaining resources among themselves.
The various races and species that had participated in the war under the banners of these gods received their own planets and resources according to their contributions.
The strong enjoyed the spoils of war, while the weak were either devoured or enslaved, with no chance to recover.
The brutality of this war far exceeded the small internal strifes of any single race. Entire races were sometimes annihilated across the universe in countless genocides.
But all this massacre and destruction opened a gate—something no universe wishes to witness.
The Corrosion of Dark.The one reason all gods reconciled their grudges and stood together to fight.
This darkness was not an element belonging to the universe. It was nothingness itself—devouring entire universes and consuming their entities as fuel to grow.
Even gods could be devoured by it. Only the energy of life could fight it—the energy generated by living beings within a god's domain, which strengthened that god.
This made the gods value the lives under their protection and restrain themselves from causing unnecessary annihilation. Many lone-wolf gods, born from powerful races, had become overconfident and left their people in pursuit of omnipotence.
But they were devoured by the dark without even a sign of struggle.Thus it was concluded: nothing could kill or destroy the dark—it could only be contained once it entered a universe.
— PS —
In a vast territory somewhere in the void, countless living planets and galaxies populated the space.
Even hundreds of suns were unable to illuminate the entire domain.
Such a territory could only belong to a very powerful god, with numerous advanced races under her command. No ordinary god—or even the darkness—had been able to invade this territory for hundreds of centuries.
The planets and races here had lived in peace for ages.
But today, at an unknown moment in time, the silent void trembled.A streak of light tore through the emptiness, shattering space and time as it descended upon a Tier-2 planet on the outer edge of the territory.
This was a newborn world—its sun had formed only a few thousand years ago, and life on the planet was still in the early exploration stage.
The light, which had passed through young suns and outer galaxies, headed straight for the blue planet.
— PS —
At the center of the territory—unreachable to ordinary beings—within a white cloud of cosmic gases stood a golden palace.
The palace was so vast that entire small galaxies faded in comparison, and the golden radiance it emitted illuminated countless surrounding galaxies, overshadowing their own suns.
On the throne inside the grand hall sat an ethereal beauty.Her skin shone with a glow brimming with life, her incomparable beauty adorned by ornaments of immense power. Her presence was so overwhelming that the space around her bent under her pressure. Her muscles were so compact that a flick of her finger could destroy planets.
She was the protector and ruler of this territory—Amaya, the Goddess of Carnage.
She ruled her territory with an iron hand. She had walked over the corpses of countless gods and beings to sit upon that throne.
She had been meditating for an unknown period. Her throne room was filled with her high-ranking servants—rulers of their respective races, some even ruling multiple races.
Everyone's attention was on her. Her every movement determined the life and death of their civilizations.
Suddenly, she opened her eyes. Her blood-red pupils against matte-black eyeballs sent chills down the room.
A wave of divine power swept across the palace. Her vision pierced the palace walls, the galaxies, and reached the outer boundary of her territory. There, she saw a tiny hole punctured in the territorial wall by the power of the universe. It healed rapidly and closed within moments—yet the fact remained: something powerful enough to pierce her boundary had entered her territory.
She scanned the entire domain but found nothing—not even a trace of what it was.
She thought for a while, trying to make sense of the event, but even her eons of experience could not provide an answer.
"Asper," she called to one of her subordinates standing guard outside the throne room.
A tall knight adorned in silver-gold full-body armor made from an unknown material stepped inside. A long spear rested in his hand, a double-edged sword hung at his waist, and a knife was strapped beside it. Maintaining perfect discipline, he walked forward, ignoring every other entity present.
He knelt before the throne, lowering one knee in respect.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I will investigate immediately."
He had already sensed the anomaly in the outer ring and knew exactly what his master wanted.
"Go and eliminate whatever ugly thing has entered my territory before it dirties my space."
"With honor, Your Majesty."With that, he blurred through space, instantly appearing thousands of light-years away, moving rapidly toward the outer ring.
Every step he took carried him thousands of kilometers forward.