Three-Body World
Thomas Wade stood before the towering floor-to-ceiling window; the cigar in his hand had burned to the end and scorched his fingers, yet he felt nothing.
There was no fear in his eyes—only a near-greedy fervor, like a traveler who had groped through darkness for countless years finally seeing a clear map, even if it was drawn in blood.
"So that's how it is…" Wade murmured, voice hoarse but trembling with chilling excitement. "This… is the ultimate picture."
"We always thought the Universe was a dark forest, every civilization a hunter with a gun, moving cautiously, firing the instant they spot another."
"But we were wrong—or rather, our vision was too narrow."
Wade spun round, staring fixedly at Cheng Xin's deathly pale face, the corner of his mouth lifting in a cruel smirk.
"Cheng Xin, do you see? Our Universe is quiet because the hunters are still lying in wait."
"And that Universe—its dark forest was burned clean sixty million years ago!"
"That thing called the 'War in Heaven'… it wasn't a war, it was the annihilation of cosmic law itself."
Wade pointed at the seething Warp on the screen, at the stars being devoured by C'tan.
"The Old Ones—the 'Resetters' or 'god-tier civilization' of that Universe—tried to sow life, tried to establish Order."
"The result? They were wiped out by 'bugs' (the Necrontyr) who only wanted to survive."
"To live, the Necrontyr sold their souls to devils and turned themselves into machines. To win, the Old Ones turned the Warp into hell and bred living weapons that knew only slaughter."
"That is the price of survival! That is the ultimate deduction of cosmic sociology!"
Wade roared like a fanatical preacher.
"In this Universe, if you don't exterminate your foe, your foe will return as undying metal skeletons bent on revenge!"
"If you don't pollute the environment (the Warp) to the extreme, you can't defeat those incarnations of physical law (the C'tan)!"
"Love? Morality? The dignity of civilization… before the absolute imperative of survival, they're less than a fart!"
"The Necrontyr did right! The Silent King did right! Were I him, to let my race endure I'd turn myself into metal—or even a pile of shit—without hesitation!"
Cheng Xin trembled, covering her ears to shut out Wade's demonic whisper.
"No… that's wrong… without a soul, without love, what meaning does such survival have? It's walking Death!"
"Meaning?"
Luo Ji, silent until now, slowly raised his head.
In the eyes of this Wallfacer was the weariness of one who has seen through Eternity's long night.
"Cheng Xin, meaning is a luxury discussed by the living. The dead have no right to speak of it."
Luo Ji gazed at the Necrons slumbering in their tomb-Worlds, his look complicated.
He sighed, tapping the ground lightly with his cane.
"This Warhammer Universe shows us the next stage of dark forest theory—when the forest is burned, when hunters become monsters, when physical law and the spiritual realm are both weaponized… only eternal, silent, yet unresting… ruins remain."
"Compared with that, our Trisolarans… are as adorable as children."
—Super Gene Universe—
[Death Song Academy] *Karl, a scholar who had devoted himself to studying the 'Void' and 'Death,' was in unprecedented academic ecstasy.
The quill in his hand flew through the air, recording every data fragment parsed from the screen.
To him, the contents of this chapter were a feast of universal truth.
"Perfect… utterly perfect."
Karl's voice remained calm, but his pace quickened noticeably.
"I've always puzzled over the boundary between the 'Void' and matter. I believed only through Death—by abandoning the flesh and becoming a phantom—could one touch higher-dimensional truth."
"But this 'War in Heaven' shows me another possibility."
Karl studied those C'tan.
"incarnations of physical law, gods of realspace. They need no faith, no dark data; they are gravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics."
"And more interestingly… they feed on souls."
Karl paused his pen; beneath his hood, twin eyes glowed bluish.
"Gods of matter (C'tan) devour spirit (soul); gods of spirit (Old Ones/Psykers) interfere with matter—a perfect, closed energy-predation system."
"And those Necrons… biotransference…"
Karl exclaimed at the sight of those soulless metal shells.
"Is this not another form of 'Void Ascension'? Only they carried it further."
They stripped the emotive part of 'consciousness,' kept only pure logic and memory data, and uploaded them into an eternal vessel."
"Morgana seeks the freedom of decadence, Keisha the Order of Justice. And in that Universe, the Silent King sought… eternal stasis."
"No pain, no aging, no variables. Is that not the ultimate form of the 'God of Death'?"
[Sky-Blade VII]
Unlike Karl's admiration, Holy Keisha's brows were tightly knit.
As the supreme ruler of the known Universe's highest civilization, she saw not truth, but—runaway.
"This is a textbook case of technological civilization gone wrong."
"This is technology unconstrained by the Order of Justice."
Keisha's voice was majestic and icy. "When technology outstrips a civilization's moral control, when warfare knows no bottom line, what is destroyed is not merely the enemy, but the Universe itself."
"Look at that Warp. Once a calm ocean, it was boiled into a poisonous brew by these so-called higher civilizations through millions of years of war and hatred!"
"And in our Universe…"
Keisha glanced toward the distant starscape
"Karl is doing the exact same thing. He studies the Void, unleashing horrors he can't control. If this continues, our Universe will become another Warhammer—a hell where even the air you breathe is poison."
"That Silent King…" Yan hesitated. "To save his people, he chose to become a machine. Does that count as… a sacrifice?"
"No, Yan."
Keisha cut her off flatly. "That was escape. Life's value lies in the union of its finitude and its possibilities."
"When they cast aside flesh and soul to become eternal machines, they were already dead."
"All that remains are lines of code executing vengeance."
"Justice requires life to carry it out. The dead know no justice."
Hellsing World
"This… this is what I wanted to see!!!"
The Major was almost pressed against the huge screen, his obese body shaking with excitement, palms slapping the glass like a mad drum.
"Do you see them?! Necrons!!!"
"No souls! No pain! No fear! Not even a self!"
"Pure, perfect War Machines cast from metal! They don't eat, don't sleep, don't write home, and never hesitate for some idiotic notion of honor!"
The Major spun around, face flushed with sick rapture, shouting at his soldiers.
"For our Millennium 'Last Battalion' we used Vampire blood, cyber grafts—"
"—but beside them… we're primitive!"
"That Silent King—he's the true artist! To win the war he sacrificed his entire race, turning every citizen into bullets, into cannons, into concepts that exist only to kill!"
"So what if they lost their souls? So what if they became slaves to monsters?"
"As long as we win! As long as we drag those lofty Old Ones off their thrones! As long as we shatter those arrogant Star- Gods!"
The Major laughed like a man possessed, eyes blazing with worship of absolute annihilation.
"That is war! Not for survival, not for land, but to obliterate the other side—even if the price is your own extinction."
"Deicide! What a beautiful word!"
"The Necrons were duped by gods and made slaves. Yet they didn't weep or beg; the moment the Outsiders were beaten they turned their guns and butchered their own gods—turned them into batteries!"
"Hahaha! That's the spine humans—no, all sapient beings—should have! If a god is merciless, turn it into a tool! If the soul is in the way, throw it away!"
"Alucard? Hellsing? Before the Silent King their hand-wringing over 'humanity' versus 'monster' is child's play!"
"I love this species! I love these Necrons! If I could, I'd hurl myself into that Biotransference Furnace—become a nameless iron frame, just to join that sixty-million-year war eternal!"
—Land of Light—
[Intergalactic Defense Force Headquarters]
The air was so heavy it seemed to choke.
To the Ultra warriors of the Land of Light, this chapter was more terrifying than any before.
They too were a race of hyper-evolution; they too had faced the choice of transformation.
"The Plasma Spark Tower…" Father of Ultra gazed at the green Biotransference Furnace on the screen, voice low. "When our Sun died we built the tower to survive, gaining bodies of light."
"We and the Necrontyr stood at the same abyss."
"But…" Seven clenched his fist, "we gained light—power to protect others. They were cheated of their souls and became demons' slaves."
"It wasn't luck."
Zoffy stated coolly, "It was the difference in our hearts."
"Before conversion the Necrontyr hearts were already filled with envy, hatred, terror of Death. They waged war, massacred Old Ones; their civilization was dark. When power came, it magnified that darkness."
"The Deceiver Star-Gods merely exploited their greed. A race whose hearts hold light would never accept a bargain that forfeits the soul."
Mebius watched the Old Orks and Eldar used as battlefield fodder, sorrow in his eyes.
"And the Old Ones… called creators, called gods. Yet for victory they manufactured life as weapons."
"Making thinking tools without guidance, only instinct to kill—that isn't creation, it's sin."
"It was the Old Ones' arrogance that tainted the Warp."
Mother of Ultra sighed. "The sea of souls was once clear; the grudges of countless engineered War-Beasts, the malice born purely for slaughter, poisoned the dimension."
"We say power itself is neither good nor evil—only its user matters."
"But the Warhammer Universe shows: abuse power, win at any cost, and the power itself becomes corrupted, turning to devour everything."
"There is no Land of Light in that Universe."
"Because sixty million years ago," Father of Ultra concluded, voice heavy with regret, "the 'light' of that cosmos—the Old Ones—extinguished their own mercy to defeat darkness, and became a different darkness."
"It is a Universe rotten from the very source."