Cocolia whipped her head around and immediately saw several unfamiliar figures who had appeared behind her at some unknown time.
They weren't the trailblazers from before, but faces she had never seen.
"Who are you? How dare you trespass in the Supreme Guardian's room? Do you seek to make an enemy of all of Belobog?" she threatened instinctively.
As the supreme leader of this planet, she naturally possessed the air of a superior. Although she was slightly wary of travelers from beyond the stars, Stelle and March 7th hadn't displayed any particularly extraordinary strength earlier.
Therefore, in her eyes, even if a few more people came, they couldn't possibly defeat the entire army of Belobog single-handedly.
Faced with this fierce but inwardly weak questioning, Su Mo didn't even bother to respond, completely ignoring her.
Topaz, on the other hand, wore an amused expression.
"An enemy of all of Belobog? Madam Supreme Guardian Cocolia, are you perhaps referring to yourself?"
"Insolence!" Cocolia immediately reprimanded, refusing to admit it.
Topaz, however, crossed her arms and took a powerful step forward, pressing, "Madam Cocolia, why don't you raise your voice? Wouldn't it be better to call in all the Silvermane Guards to handle the problem?"
"With such a furious expression, are you angry, or are you afraid?"
Faced with Topaz's pressure, Cocolia couldn't help but take a step back.
Seeing her like this, Topaz sneered, "Madam Cocolia, you wouldn't want the truth to be exposed, for people to know that you've sided with the Stellaron and betrayed the trust of all the people of Belobog, would you?"
For some reason, ever since she started working with Su Mo, Topaz felt that her lines in this department had improved considerably.
She felt like a landlord's lackey.
"..."
Hearing this blatant threat, Cocolia's face twisted with humiliation.
This was the first time she had been treated this way.
"You think I wouldn't dare? Even if the Silvermane Guards came in, do you think they would believe me, the Supreme Guardian, or you, dangerous outsiders holding a Stellaron?!" she answered coldly.
With her prestige, let alone the Stellaron being in someone else's hands, even if it were in her own, she had ten thousand reasons to explain it.
The Silvermane Guards were her subordinates. As long as they didn't see her betraying Belobog with their own eyes, they wouldn't doubt her will.
Indeed, her words were not wrong.
March 7th and Stelle had fallen for this very reason.
However…
"That makes sense. So why don't you call them? Are you afraid to?" Topaz pressed on.
"..."
Glancing at Su Mo, who was playing with the Stellaron, Cocolia's lip twitched. She was furious but dared not speak.
She really didn't dare.
Although she didn't think Su Mo's strength could defeat the Silvermane Guards, he had indeed demonstrated the ability to communicate with and even control the Stellaron.
Given the scale of the disaster the Stellaron had previously caused, even if Su Mo could only borrow a small part of its power, it was not something Belobog could handle.
More importantly, the Stellaron was her vital tool for creating a new world. If this thing were taken away, she would lose all hope completely.
"Give me back the Stellaron! We can negotiate anything you want!" Cocolia said after a few seconds of thought, feeling extremely aggrieved.
At this point, the most important thing was to know the other party's objective and to get the Stellaron under her control.
Although she didn't know the purpose of these otherworldly visitors, as long as the Stellaron was in her hands, everything was negotiable.
Even if they couldn't negotiate, she could use the power of the Stellaron to flip the table.
As for the possibility that the other party wanted nothing, Cocolia had never considered it.
After all, if they didn't have some design on Belobog, why would they specifically sneak into her room to threaten her, the Supreme Guardian?
Thinking of this, she calmed down a little. As long as the other party wanted something, she had a chance to turn the tables.
After all, she was the one chosen by the Stellaron.
After her mental gymnastics, Cocolia regained her confidence and looked at Su Mo with a firm gaze.
However, Su Mo had no intention of answering her question.
"As a colorless aggregate of Imaginary Energy, the Stellaron possesses Imaginary Energy spanning all frequencies. This energy can be converted into the energy of any specific Path at any time. From an energy supply perspective, it truly is the legendary Panacea."
As he spoke these conclusions, he handed the Stellaron in his hand to a purple-haired girl with puppet-like joints.
"A Holy Grail? Although I don't know what you're talking about, the Stellaron can indeed be tuned at will to supply Path energy of different attributes. According to this characteristic, that Stellaron kid should also be able to master the power of multiple Paths simultaneously."
The Herta puppet examined the Stellaron before her and then exchanged research findings with Su Mo.
"A Holy Grail is a degraded wish-granting machine made of a large amount of energy. If you want to study it, I can whip one up for you later, but let's not discuss that now."
"In short, the purity of the Stellaron's power indicates that it may be closer to the origin than Path energy. Path energy is actually a specifically differentiated form of Imaginary Energy," Su Mo added.
"Just as a Holy Grail responds to the wishes of specific life forms, the frequency within a Stellaron can also synchronize with the mental frequency of an intelligent life form. It is then influenced by the will of that intelligent life, creating the illusion of responding to their wishes."
The Stellaron itself had no self-awareness. The reason it appeared to have one was because it was merely a mirror reflecting the consciousness of its holder.
Hearing Su Mo's words, Cocolia's eyes widened in surprise. She had always thought of the Stellaron as a wish-granting machine and had never heard of its internal mechanism.
So, the voice she heard wasn't from the Stellaron's will, but simply because she had wished for its guidance, and the Stellaron had passively fulfilled her wish?
If that was the case, wasn't her previous speculation correct?
If the Stellaron really was a wish-granting machine, then couldn't her plan truly save Belobog?
Thinking of this, she immediately looked at Su Mo.
Before she could speak, Herta asked with great interest, "You said the Stellaron fulfills the illusion of a wish?"
"It's less about fulfilling a wish and more about fulfilling the entirety of one's thoughts."
"The manifestation of the Stellaron's power is only related to the mental frequency of the intelligent life. That is to say, if it truly could fulfill wishes, it would only fulfill the thoughts in the depths of the heart."
"However, humans cannot control their subconscious."
"Given the complexity of the human heart, without training in the spiritual domain, without reaching a level of enlightenment, the wishes existing in the subconscious will often deviate from the owner's own thoughts."
The Stellaron was less like the Holy Grail or the Black Grail from the Nasuverse and more like the Hōgyoku from Bleach.
If the master possessed a very pure belief and an unshakable will, the Stellaron could be like the most obedient tool, becoming the master's power and never turning against them.
But if the master's belief was not pure, and they themselves didn't believe in the wish they made, then huge problems would often arise.
"If one wishes to eliminate a disaster, but subconsciously doesn't believe the disaster can be eliminated so easily, then the final result will be the pyrrhic victory that the wisher deems most reasonable... They themselves might suffer greatly from this pyrrhic victory, but it won't change the fact that their subconscious finds this outcome more reasonable."
Su Mo glanced at Cocolia and then continued, "The human will itself is twisted and conflicting. Influenced by the outside world, the desire to achieve a goal and the belief that one can absolutely not achieve it can coexist in the same mind."
"Under this premise, the power of the Stellaron will follow all conflicting thoughts, achieving construction through destruction, rebirth through death, loyalty through betrayal, and salvation through self-destruction."
Hearing these words, Cocolia was struck by lightning, frozen on the spot.
Whether it was the wish of the first Supreme Guardian, Alisa, to the Stellaron, or her own wish, they all seemed to perfectly fit Su Mo's description.
They hoped for a miracle, yet they dared not believe in it, ultimately achieving their wishes only through destruction.
Just like how the Great Freeze destroyed the Antimatter Legion while also nearly wiping out the planet, and just like how she wanted to use destruction to let the entire civilization be reborn.
Her fears, her cowardice, her doubts... were all laid bare by Su Mo with pinpoint accuracy!
Herta didn't pay attention to Cocolia's expression. After hearing Su Mo's words, she nodded with great interest.
"So, it's not the Stellaron that twists the wish, but the mortal's wish itself is twisted?"
"Hearing you say that, I'm suddenly more interested in the Stellaron. After you're done with this thing, can I borrow it? Or you could lend me your Stellaron Sprite daughter!"
Hearing her words, Su Mo shook his head.
"You don't need to ask me about Stelle. Give her some money and she'll probably agree. But the Stellaron inside her is very stable, so for safety reasons, we can't conduct too many extreme tests."
"This masterless Stellaron is different. I called you over this time to help me adjust and test the limits of the Stellaron, to completely understand its fundamental material structure. There's no need to explore the specific implementation of its internal structure; I just need the physical model."
"Testing is no problem, but... a physical structure model?"
Hearing this request, Herta was slightly taken aback.
She opened her mouth, and thinking of the Ex-Machina legion now equipped with antimatter and dark matter engines, she suddenly had a very bold guess.
"Wait? You're not thinking of creating a Stellaron yourself, are you?!"
"To be precise, mass-producing Stellarons," Su Mo corrected.
"..."
Herta was stunned on the spot.
Even the Aeon of Destruction paid close attention to the Stellaron. Many people wanted to study it, but not even Herta or the Interastral Peace Corporation had ever considered mass-producing them.
Because it was simply impossible.
Exploring the structural model of a Stellaron was already extremely difficult, but that was still within the realm of what could be overcome. The Corporation, which could even master Memokeepers, had its own foundations.
But the problem was, knowing the structure of a Stellaron and knowing how to achieve that structure were two things separated by a chasm.
Just as everyone knows the elemental composition of the sun, but almost no one can actually create one, many naturally occurring things require millions of times more resources to be artificially mass-produced.
Theoretically possible and practically possible could be separated by a hundred Amber Eras.
According to common sense, Herta could never have imagined this possibility.
But with her understanding of Su Mo, he had already performed similar miracles.
The dark matter engines that could only be built from the fragments of the Twilight Beast should have been purely consumable items. Each one required a fragment, and without the raw materials, they couldn't be mass-produced.
However, not long after meeting Nous, he had somehow managed to mass-produce antimatter and anti-energy engines, successfully replacing the original power systems of the Ex-Machina and upgrading the legion to a level where each one could destroy a star.
With this precedent, theoretically, Herta judged that Su Mo could indeed mass-produce Stellarons.
But rationally, she found it hard to accept.
"To create something on the level of a Stellaron with just a material structure model... not even an Aeon is this absurd... Su Mo, tell me honestly, are you some newly born Aeon who's just here to mess with me?"
The puppet girl looked at Su Mo with a serious expression, suspecting that this guy was an incarnation of Aha, the Aeon of Elation.
As a scientist, the abilities Su Mo displayed were a hundred times more absurd than hand-crafting a four-nanometer process chip. She couldn't help but be concerned.
To Herta's questioning, Su Mo immediately shook his head.
"I'm not that bored. Besides, didn't I say from the beginning... I won't become an Aeon."
"That's true, but it still feels very suspicious..." Herta nodded, then muttered under her breath.
According to common sense, no Aeon could do this, but in reality, there was an Aeon who could. This made her unable to trust her own judgment one hundred percent.
Hearing their conversation as if she weren't there, and realizing that neither of them seemed to regard her, the Supreme Guardian, with any importance, and that the content of their words was enough to make a secluded native like her tremble with fear...
Cocolia hesitated for a long time. Only when the two temporarily stopped communicating did she hesitantly raise a hand and say tentatively, "You two, is it possible that this Stellaron is not masterless, that it has its own master?"
Hearing this, both of them turned their gazes to Cocolia's face, their expressions synchronously blank.
"Hmm?" x2.
Hearing this highly threatening sound and seeing the Stellaron being tossed back and forth between them, Cocolia swallowed hard, mustered her courage, and looked down at her toes.
"No, nothing. This is a masterless Stellaron. Please, help yourselves."
Failing to see her own toes, she chose to back down on the spot.
Can't afford to provoke them, can't afford to provoke them.