"Cold winds sweep the Verminstar System, war-fires blaze to the sky as the Sieglin return.
At Soul-Rending Mountain the brain-worms weep, the mole crickets drift and settle, the locusts turn north."
Caelus's voice rang like struck metal on stone as he strode to the center of the command room.
"On the upstream river ten thousand bugs retreat, ten thousand tides no match for tears of laser light."
"Fate ordained by heaven decrees the conquest; civilizations repent, yet I repent not."
The cadence clanged like beating war-drums. Caelus swept his arm through the air, carrying the resolve of one who never turns back.
Every syllable was steeped in a will masquerading as Elation. It wasn't recitation so much as a psychic sledgehammer, slamming straight into Mitri's heart!
A violent tremor ran through Mitri. A scalding torrent surged from his chest to the crown of his head, and light blazed in his pupils as never before.
"BRAVO—!!!"
Mitri slammed a palm down on the console, the sound jarringly loud in the silent room. His voice was hoarse with excitement, yet brimming with rapture:
"What a poem! What a masterpiece!"
"Stirring to the soul! Utterly commanding!"
When the leader applauds, the officers around him could hardly beat their hands raw fast enough, proving that their aesthetic taste matched their leader's exactly.
"Navigator Caelus is a beast!"
"Absolute beast!"
The lowest-ranking soldiers put it more plainly. They didn't grasp much about literary flair; they only felt the poem set their blood boiling and their muscles buzzing with strength.
"Thank you, everyone. I'm humbled by such kind regard, truly undeserving~"
Caelus bowed with elegance, like a stage superstar taking a curtain call, a sunny yet scholarly smile playing at his lips, as if that poem had simply flowed from him on a whim:
"A trifling little piece. You flatter me far too much."
"Ah-ba…"
The Stelle-Asta fusion parted her lips, her eyes flickering with a fierce craving to "show off too."
But after ransacking her brain for ages, all that surfaced was:
"One two three four five, Dan Heng beats the Voidrangers alive. Two four six seven eight, Caelus-cub throws a silver rave~"
She silently swallowed this timeless masterpiece back down, her face wearing the gloom of a senior college student staring at a gaokao Chinese-lit question.
Mitri clasped his hands behind his back and stood before the great observation window, looking down upon the battlefield outside, alight with cannon fire.
His tone, though, was oddly gentle, carrying the ease of confiding in a friend:
"Navigator Caelus, tell me—in your view, across this vast Galaxy… who could truly be called a hero?"
At once a Xuande-style humility surfaced on Caelus's face. He inclined his head slightly, his voice clear and sincere:
"In all the world today, the only hero is you, General."
"Hahaha—! Well said! Beautifully said!"
Mitri spun around, roaring with laughter that echoed through the command room, full of the satisfaction of being understood:
"You really do understand me!"
He shot a glance at the soldiers around him, who still only knew how to bellow "beast" without being able to explain why, and felt a pang of feeling.
Talking with a cultured man like Navigator Caelus really was so much more pleasant!
"Hahaha~ you really do understand me!"
Raising his palm with refined grace, Mitri crooked his index finger, as if cradling an invisible sprite with the utmost care:
"You see, fate's thirst for knowledge is like this butterfly alighting on my fingertip…"
"And success and good fortune are its wings that never wither, forever circling at my side, letting me… do anything at all!"
Mitri's voice held a poet's lyrical rapture, yet his gaze was full of an unshakable, blind self-assurance.
The soldiers around him blazed with fervent worship in their eyes. From their eager, legend-tinted descriptions, Caelus pieced together a clear picture.
This guy was apparently an Innate General's Sacred Body?
Countless narrow escapes, impossible victories—all had lifted him onto a pedestal. It seemed Mitri could always seize success?
And yet, before long, the grand ambition on Mitri's face receded like an ebbing tide.
He waved a hand, dismissing every officer and soldier from the room.
In the vast command chamber, only he, Caelus, and the Stelle-Asta fusion remained.
"But you see…"
Mitri's voice suddenly sank low, as if plunging from the clouds into an abyss:
"Even after conquering one planet after another, building a colossal civilization spanning the star-seas, even when everything I want I can ultimately obtain…"
He turned back, once more gazing out at the flames of war:
"I still can't figure out what it is I actually want."
"Why is that?"
The Stelle-Asta fusion's ice-jade eyes, beautiful as though carved blade-stroke by blade-stroke, gave off a leisurely, drifting haze.
"Because I've contracted a strange affliction."
Mitri paused, as if chewing over this bitterness of fate.
"My memory… lasts only three days."
Caelus's brow twitched almost imperceptibly.
Chihiro Shindo from Wings of Eternity?
Kaori Fujimiya from One Week Friends?
The heck?!
This guy only has three days of memory?
Then how on earth did he ever become a General?!
Caelus and the Stelle-Asta fusion traded a glance, matching bewilderment in both their eyes.
Mitri ignored their confusion, lost in his own narration, his tone deep:
"Even the sense of accomplishment from conquering a planet turns into aimlessness three days later."
Oh~ got it.
He's a Paradox gamer.
Caelus felt a dawning understanding.
Forget conquering a single planet—even conquering an entire star system, grinding the enemy's face into the dirt, completing a doomsday ascension… doesn't all that triumph dwindle to dull, flavorless nothing two hours after you save and quit the game?
"But now, everything is different!"
Mitri's voice climbed abruptly, his eyes growing brighter and brighter:
"When I gazed upon the spectral star-chart of the Verminstar System… I felt a pure joy I had never known before!"
He tilted his head as if straining to hear whispers in the void: "I heard the murmurings of a god!"
"And—I finally deciphered half of those reversed syllables—"
Mitri drew a deep breath and pronounced each word like reading out a divine decree:
"'He launches conquest, he builds civilization, and in the end he finds the self he had lost.'"
"I believe!"
Mitri flung his arms wide, voice trembling with excitement: "This is the destined prophecy that belongs to me!"
Reversed murmurings?
Caelus's eyes flickered.
Terminus?
Or the God of Games?
Behind anything defying common sense, the suspicion of the God of Games sticking His hand in was always equally present.
Especially since He was right here in the Verminstar System now.
"And so!"
Mitri whirled toward Caelus, his fanatic gaze like flames given substance:
"I shall conquer the entire Galaxy and build the grandest civilization the cosmos has ever seen! And then—I shall reclaim the lost meaning of myself!"
He extended a hand of invitation toward Caelus, his bearing that of an emperor recruiting his chancellor:
"Caelus! I can share this supreme glory with you!"
"I hope you'll become my right hand! Become my… second brain!"
[—Then you'd best throw that brain of yours away!]
The Herta dumpling couldn't resist chiming in.
Of course, she was only heckling.
After all, this was the Simulated Universe, and she was happy to sit back and enjoy the show.
"I, Caelus, am willing to follow at the General's side!"
Caelus answered aloud almost without hesitation, his voice firm as iron.
After all, this was plenty of fun, wasn't it~?
Caelus's gaze turned wild and unrestrained. His left hand pressed to the seam of his trousers, his right hand shot up, freezing at a perfectly precise, slow, ceremony-laden forty-five-degree angle:
"Long live the General!"
The sound shook the roof tiles—full of momentum!
"If you come in the depth of winter~ trade me back a city of snow-white~ craving Cantonese cuisine?"
The Stelle-Asta fusion slid in seamlessly, providing hand-made background music with her ethereal voice.
Caelus held his salute, eyes blazing, voice booming:
"General, please issue your command!"
"I want you to remember the murmurings about the Verminstar, and spread them into every 'three days' to come."
Mitri instructed him with great solemnity.
"Yes! I guarantee the mission will be completed!"
Caelus's answer landed with a thud. His left eye spelled loyalty, his right eye spelled orange.
If this guy truly had only three days of memory, then whatever the god's murmurings supposedly said—wasn't that entirely up to him to decide?
"Hahaha! Good, good, good!"
Mitri let out a string of laughter straight from the heart, utterly, thoroughly satisfied with his capable new aide.
Flush with triumph, he turned once more to gaze out the window at the cruel battlefield, where cannon fire raged and insect carcasses tangled with molten steel, as if admiring a peerless masterpiece:
"Come, Caelus! Behold this magnificent sight alongside me!"
Mitri swept his great hand through the air, as if victory were already in the bag:
"Our opponents are nothing but lowly bugs. Before long, we'll seize this planet completely!"
Caelus nodded along, naturally.
Between bouts of slaughter, Mitri had also captured some amusing bugs to play with, and gifted a few to Caelus.
"Caelus-cub, want a taste?"
The Stelle-Asta fusion pointed at the Larnoli worm on the table—a soft-bodied, gorgeously radiant, colorful little worm that looked like a gummy candy.
"Try roasting it."
Caelus had the Stelle-Asta fusion summon the Flame of Preservation to grill the gummy worm.
Honestly speaking, if it weren't for the [Propagation] Path, just the bugs currently on this planet would be enough: back on the Shenzhou, you'd only need to put out word that they boost the kidneys, the blood, and the brain, and the ecosystem would bounce back to normal levels in no time.
The Larnoli worm was dead.
The Stelle-Asta fusion was heartbroken, tears streaming unstoppably from the corners of her mouth.
"That Fitzgerald worm—should we… never mind, it's too ugly."
Caelus looked at the jar on the table, which seemed to hold something inside.
The reason she could eat the Larnoli worm without the slightest hang-up was its good looks—no psychological burden at all.
The Fitzgerald worm, by contrast, looked rather safe, and was vicious by nature—assassins skilled at turning invisible, some of which seemed to reveal their true forms only under different lighting.
"Just give it a try~"
The Stelle-Asta fusion grabbed a Fitzgerald worm and refined it in an instant.
She'd inherited the constitution of a Stellaron spirit—an upgraded version, no less. What wouldn't she dare eat?
She'd even eat a bug raw.
"Pah, pah, pah~ blegh! A bit bitter! And seems poisonous too."
The Stelle-Asta fusion flung away the cooked worm in her hand, one bite taken out of it.
Caelus smacked his lips, sampling the flavor through their shared sensation. Tasting without actually eating was perfectly doable.
In his hand he toyed with a Behind-Back worm.
This bug was fascinating. It would never meet your eyes—like a touch-me-not mimosa, the moment you faced it head-on, it would dart around behind you.
"Why isn't it called the Han Li worm?"
"Pity that even if I command the army to wipe out the bugs, the kills don't count as mine. Do they really only count for points if I—or maybe the Stelle-Asta fusion—do the killing personally?"
As he played with the Behind-Back worm, Caelus pondered how to farm points.
In the end, he decided to first check out how his friend's gear looked, to squeeze the maximum value out of the limited support time.
Caelus opened the Simulated Universe's exclusive System interface and tapped Friend Support.
The friend list held a single lonely soul.
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