"They... why did they stop fighting?"
Bronya looked at the observations from the Seed of Sumeru with confusion. From her perspective, it looked like the 'Great Light Sphere' had enveloped the curvaceous 'Sa,' and then the two entities suddenly fell silent.
"I don't know either. What is he doing?"
Kiana was also very confused. She knew who the Great Light Sphere was, of course, but Sa's form struck her as a bit strange.
"What is he doing, enveloping the enemy? Is he trying to control them?"
Durandal didn't overthink it. She thought Noldrei was simply trying to control Sa to prevent her from escaping.
"Mmm... is it possible that something we can't see is happening inside the light sphere? Maybe Noldrei has already prepared his tentacles to 'discipline' the opponent?"
Although Rita believed that wasn't the case, it didn't stop her from making a wild guess to see everyone's reaction.
"Really? But we didn't see any tentacles."
Kiana wondered if there was something wrong with her eyes. She looked left and right but didn't see any tentacles coming out of the Great Light Sphere.
"Kiana, you just don't get it, do you? Do you think a tentacle of light would be visible within a sphere of light? Of course not. Maybe it's even an 'invisible man' kind of discipline."
Rita's answer shocked Kiana. It was clear Kiana had also seen the "Invisible Man" series.
Where did you guys learn about these things? Durandal's head was full of question marks. She didn't understand why everyone here was practicing with tentacles.
Among everyone present, Durandal was now the one with the purest mind.
Unfortunately, things hadn't gotten that ridiculous, and Noldrei had no intention of 'disciplining' anyone from the Sea of Quanta.
His questions had sent Sa into a state of emotional distress.
Sa had truthfully told him about her civilization's past, how she had replaced an entire civilization in an attempt to accumulate quantum power to defeat the "Abyss."
The moment Noldrei heard "Abyss," he knew it was the Honkai.
He fell silent. He felt like he was looking at a baby who had just left Earth. He thought Earth's evolution was already abstract enough, but he never expected there to be an even more extreme case.
"Pardon my frankness, but I have to ask... why didn't you engage in self-reproduction? That is, create more lifeforms with the same form as yourself. Ah, you might not understand what I'm saying. I mean, create a second Sa, a third Sa. With your current abilities, you can definitely create your own kind."
"Wouldn't your civilization have recovered much faster that way? Unless..."
Noldrei suddenly realized something, and even the information he transmitted carried a hint of killing intent.
"Could it be that, for the sake of your own rule, you refused the revival of your civilization? You only wanted to turn civilization into a tool for your own rule?"
'That's right! That's exactly what I was thinking!'
In her heart, Sa indeed confirmed Noldrei's speculation. She could have created her own kind to restore her civilization. But she deliberately only created enslaved agents under her control, with no intention of creating a new civilized ecosystem.
No matter how much Sa boasted about her power or the painful past she carried, she couldn't deny her true nature as a slave-owning ruler.
"The past civilization held on for so long, and all you could think about was your own rule? You're a purely living monster!"
Even Noldrei himself knew to create his own kind immediately after arriving in the past to increase the fault tolerance of civilization's succession. He was already so strong, yet he still adhered to these social relationships.
If he hadn't been unable to create another version of himself, Noldrei would have started replicating and expanding himself long ago.
Noldrei was truly impressed by this kind of person.
The Previous Era's demise was somewhat unjust; it was normal that they couldn't seize control of the ruling power right away. It wasn't something easily obtained, and the people of the Previous Era weren't particularly power-hungry.
But the death of Sa's civilization was monstrous.
It had survived, but what survived was just a slave owner with no intention of advancing the relationships between lives within the civilization.
A pure, living monster, utterly disgusting!
Noldrei wouldn't even deign to associate with such a being.
Even he knew not to directly create androids with the same conscious activity as humans when constructing them, to ensure they wouldn't develop human life consciousness. But Sa couldn't even be bothered to use androids; she just kept domesticating more slave lifeforms, not even bothering with life creation.
Compared to a 'humanoid' lifeform like Sa, Noldrei felt he was more like the 'Mother of Humanity.'
The battle was somewhat absurd. Sa currently had no ability to escape; she could only remain frozen, bound in the ocean of photons.
"To the victor go the spoils. What do you plan to do to me?"
Sa had nothing more to say. She was just unwilling to lose.
Noldrei thought for a moment and said, "Then you can be a slave!"
'Then what was the point of lecturing me so much? Aren't you looking for slaves too?'
Sa was speechless. She couldn't even comprehend what Noldrei meant by 'slave.'
"You won't be my personal slave. I'll just make you work without compensation. With your current lifeform, you shouldn't have any shortage of material basis. And I'm not asking you to do anything bad, just using you for experiments."
"'Slave' is just a special class under our power structure here. I'm not making you a tool with personal dependency."
"I don't need your service. You should use your abilities to serve the development of human civilization! Be a good tool for the progress of human civilization!"
Noldrei explained the composition of 'slavery,' stating that Sa would be an experimental combat subject for Herrschers, allowing Durandal to better master the abilities of the Herrscher of Origin.
For the first time, Sa had the thought that she was actually one of those people in the Bubble Universes.
She had thought she was invincible, roaming the Sea of Quanta.
She never expected the native world to have an even stronger master, who tricked her, beat her down, and enslaved her.
Sa now regretted it.
She should have listened to Noldrei and created her own kind, building a new civilization. That way, even if she were captured by Noldrei, the Venusian civilization wouldn't be completely cut off and terminated.
But the pride and arrogance from her billions of years of life had made her forget how to maintain and create the correct life relationships between civilizations, how to reproduce the equal relationships between lives.
Before, Sa could proudly say she was the final result of the Venusian civilization, the perfect tool created by life. But this perfect tool hadn't even made a backup of itself.
Like a nation whose history has been wiped out, the very foundation of her civilization had been thoroughly erased from history.