Stelle and Caelus were already special existences within the Simulated Universe. Even without loading Akivili's identity template, in this universe they were both Innate Path-Opening Sacred Bodies.
This made it far easier for them to step onto a new Path inside the Simulated Universe. By contrast, Asta, a practitioner who had joined the same activity, never received a glance from Propagation.
Perhaps it was because Stelle and Caelus had thrown themselves, body and soul and without the slightest reservation, into an active interpretation of the concept of "Propagation," whereas Asta…
She didn't quite seem able to cut loose?
Stepping onto a Path within the Simulated Universe wasn't entirely real.
Of course, not-entirely-real ≠ fake.
Under normal circumstances, Caelus would at most step onto the Path of Propagation—so what the hell was this, becoming an Emanator of Propagation?
Herta was dumbfounded. Ruan Mei fell silent.
"Hey! What exactly did you do?!"
The holographic screens swirling around the Herta dumpling refreshed in a frenzy, streams of baffling data scrolling past. She looked a little stunned.
She clearly hadn't handed Caelus any modifier at all.
How had this guy opened one up all by himself?
Caelus slowly turned around, his gray hair stirring without any wind, his expression solemn and grave, his voice like an oracle proclaimed within a cosmic temple:
"We, joined in flesh and blood!"
"We, fused into one!"
"Obsession, yearning, devotion!"
"The galaxy at arm's reach—Propagation is everywhere!"
The Herta dumpling wobbled faintly in the air, as if simulating a deep breath, then emitted an utterly emotionless electronic tone:
"Speak plainly, please."
"Oh."
Caelus switched instantly into dead-fish-eye mode, his tone as flat as if he were discussing what to have for dinner tonight:
"We were just doing it around Tayzzyronth, that's all."
"Oh, doing it, huh…"
Herta's voice at first carried the detachment of a scientist observing lifeforms engaged in inefficient reproductive behavior under the influence of hormones. But after a delay of just a single processor clock cycle—
"—Wait! What did you say?! Where?!"
The purple dumpling leapt straight up, its pitch shooting up an octave:
"What did you just say… next to whom?!"
"Around Tayzzyronth, of course."
Stelle calmly added from the side.
Herta: "Bruh."
Ruan Mei: "…"
Screwllum: "…"
In theory, an ordinary carbon-based lifeform doing it once at such close range to the Aeon of Propagation would have a conception rate of a solid one thousand percent.
If that were all, He could perhaps have become the most hardcore fertility deity in the Galaxy Universe, the eternal gospel for the infertile—provided the parents didn't mind their child possibly carrying a teeny-tiny bit of arthropod traits.
Stelle scratched her fair, soft, delicately toned little belly, the one with those crisp lines and a perfect abdominal V that anyone could tell would feel amazing for March to run a hand over—flat as ever—and a hint of confusion surfaced on her small face:
"So, here's the question… why am I not pregnant?"
Stelle certainly didn't want bugs, but Caelus-cub had said that sort of thing wouldn't happen.
The number of times Caelus-cub had come inside easily ran into the hundreds of thousands, and there wasn't even the slightest reaction?
"You actually want to give it a try?"
Caelus shot the Stellaron spirit a sidelong glare.
Honestly, he had no objection to Stelle becoming the Venerable One of Give-It-a-Try—as long as it didn't splash over onto him, since the empathy link connected them.
Caelus had no desire to experience what pregnancy felt like just yet.
"Aiya, it's the Simulated Universe anyway~"
Stelle whistled a tuneless little tune, arranging her small face into a picture of harmless innocence, though a subtle trace of disappointment at missing out on the novelty of pregnancy still lurked at the bottom of her eyes.
"That is not the point at all!"
The Herta dumpling's voice carried a frantic edge, its pixel-formed eyes locking dead onto Caelus and Stelle, as if to scan and Analyze them thoroughly from the data layer up.
"The key is—how did you do it?"
The Ruan Mei dumpling also revealed a focused, probing look.
The two dumplings circled Caelus and Stelle and launched into a full song-and-dance routine.
During the phase of time-leap acceleration, even the three developers—Herta, Ruan Mei, and Screwllum—couldn't directly observe the specifics happening inside.
Even pulling the underlying data afterward couldn't reconstruct the visual-level actions; they could only capture some traces of data fluctuation.
Herta had two questions.
First, doing that sort of thing near Tayzzyronth—even if Stelle and Caelus's special nature let Stelle avoid ending up with bugs in her belly, conception itself should be an unavoidable outcome, no?
Why had Stelle come through completely unscathed?
Herta stared fixedly at Stelle's belly.
Stelle blinked, then suddenly hopped backward, leaving Herta briefly stumped.
The gray-haired girl, red-faced and flustered, shouted at Caelus:
"Careful, the Propagation Gu must not be touched directly!"
"Otherwise, you'll be drowned by the endless power of Propagation!"
Stelle spread her hands: "I've already prepared a condom for you, all you need to—"
"There's no need for that."
With that, his face perfectly calm, Caelus reached out and grabbed both Stelle and Asta.
Instant refinement!
"…It's related to the directionality of my dear one's Path as an Emanator of Propagation."
Ruan Mei's cool, clear voice rang out.
Herta looked over in shock.
How the hell did you understand that?
Ruan Mei shook her head. She hadn't understood Stelle and Caelus's cryptic words, but her depth of understanding of the Path of Propagation did indeed far surpass Herta's and Screwllum's.
Her slender data stream brushed lightly across the Path-echoes dissipating around Caelus, and she sank into thought.
The power of a Path was never uniform or generic.
It was like a prism, able to be refracted by its holder into different spectra.
A Path could be made targeted. Among the Lord Ravagers, for instance, Irontomb's aim was to silence Harmony into muteness, while Kalpagni was pointedly attuned to dissolving Elation.
The Propagation that Caelus wielded—its core concept seemed to be highly focused and made manifest in the very process of "multiplying": pure and frequent doing.
He could use this power to precisely sidestep the "raising" and "conceiving" within Propagation.
"Then, before he became an Emanator of Propagation, how did he keep Stelle and Asta from conceiving?"
Herta raised the question.
Ruan Mei was equally puzzled.
Caelus gave no answer, only shrugged.
The answer was Divine Awakening: Jizo Mitama.
In the real world, he definitely wouldn't have dared to play with fire like this.
But this was the Simulated Universe. Even though the God Jizo Mitama's erosion authority still couldn't shake the data of the entire universe, nor confront the mighty power of a Path head-on…
within a limited range, performing a subtle conceptual deflection… was in fact feasible!
He had cleverly diverted the Propagation that pervaded the cramped space of the starship, the Propagation originating from Tayzzyronth.
He shifted the conception-laden "raising" away and channeled the kinetic energy representing the "multiplying" behavior more heavily onto himself, concentrating it there.
By purely practicing the "multiplying" aspect for a long time near the Aeon, Caelus finally succeeded in drawing the Swarm King's gaze, becoming an Emanator who practiced Its concept of "multiplying."
Seeing Caelus's demeanor, it was obvious he had no intention of explaining, so Herta filed the question away for now.
"Hold on, just doing this kind of low-level thing is enough to become an Emanator of Propagation?"
Herta was baffled.
An Emanator of the Path of Propagation was way too easy to become, wasn't it?
"Correction: an entire Amber Era has already passed in Simulated Universe time."
Screwllum reminded Herta.
Even taking the minimum value of an Amber Era at 76 years, it meant that from the perspective of the Path of Propagation, these two had been going at it for a full 76 years, with an upper bound of as much as 240.
This kind of male among males, this dominator among men—if he wasn't an Emanator of Propagation, who could be?
Herta: "…"
Badass.
Ruan Mei: "…"
What could they even say?
All they could say was that it figured, this was Stelle and Caelus—who'd have thought they'd solve it with a method like this?
Truly incredible… my ass!
This was way too ridiculous!
"Every dog has its day."
Caelus abruptly threw his head back and squared his chest, an air of stern majesty welling up from him.
"Tsss~ what scheme are you cooking up this time?"
The pixels forming the Herta dumpling's brow shifted.
"From this day forth, I am the Heavenly Emperor of the Swarm! I shall subjugate every foe in all the cosmos!"
Caelus stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his back to all living things and the sea of stars, his voice powerful and resounding.
With that, Caelus took a single step—arriving in the starship's control room, his fingers flying across the control panel as he set course toward the planet where Tayzzyronth resided.
"Boss~ boss~ it's f***ing me, Layla!"
"The hell are you… wait!"
Caelus's outrageous move nearly caused Herta's processor to stall.
In a flash of lightning, a thought split through her unpreparedness like a bolt: with Caelus's current identity as an Emanator of Propagation, he might actually be able to meet Tayzzyronth.
This was a once-in-a-lifetime experimental observation opportunity!
What surprised Herta even more was that Caelus—who always let go the instant his playful streak took over—actually stopped at the sound of her shout.
Caelus slowly turned around, sizing up the Herta dumpling floating in the air with an extremely subtle gaze, one carrying scrutiny and… some indescribable sense of appraisal.
"…?"
Herta felt somewhat uncomfortable under that stare:
"What's with that look?"
Her tone carried obvious displeasure.
Caelus stroked his chin, offering his verdict with a perfectly serious expression: "Even though your current form looks kind of like a Fleshlight…"
He paused, then his tone turned magnanimous:
"But then again, considering it's your consciousness personally operating this image, I suppose it's not out of the question? Come on then!"
So saying, Caelus sprawled across the pilot's seat in an utterly relaxed, thoroughly punchable spread-eagle pose, opened his arms wide toward the tiny Herta dumpling, his face plastered with "I'm ready, don't be shy, come at me head-on."
"??"
The Herta dumpling's facial display glitched out.
Somehow, the memory of the sensation and the flutter of Bronita kissing Caelus came back to her, vivid as if it were replaying from yesterday.
"Propagation's gone to your brain, hasn't it? Oh, it really has…"
Herta let out a shriek mixing frenzy and speechlessness:
"Hurry up and get your ass over to see Tayzzyronth!"
At the same time, an unseen data stream kicked the starship system hard, launching the jump program.
"This much data is more than enough for us to deduce Tayzzyronth!"
Herta quickly regained her composure, seeming to carry a hint of excitement about what was to come.
"Mm, that's right."
A fervor rose in the Ruan Mei dumpling's eyes.
Screwllum focused intently.
The first sound to ring out was a strange, uncanny wailing—the infant worm's first suckle at the air.
Along with it came the syllables of the crimson butterflies greedily sipping at lilies. The sky seemed to break into rain, or perhaps a lake, mingling with the varied scents of oranges, blood, or tropical fruit—that was a bug the size of a planet.
The wing-dust ringing dazzling across the heavens could even induce hallucinations in silicon-based lifeforms. That figure was being thronged by countless tottering yellow butterflies, ant-vermin, meteor-nest worms, and stinging vermin of every size.
"That is—Tayzzyronth!"
Herta was ecstatic.
Although Caelus pulled off some absurd stunt every time he tested the Simulated Universe, each time yielded no small harvest!
Perhaps because his embodiment of the Path of Propagation leaned lopsidedly toward one aspect, even though Caelus had become an Emanator of Propagation, he was among the weakest of the Emanators—the kind that sat at the same table as Phantylia and Jing Yuan.
Still, combat strength didn't matter at all.
Caelus becoming an Emanator of Propagation was only to make the Swarm recognize him as one of their own, a companion of Propagation.
"Boss! Hand the army over to me! Let me lead the fam to spread the glory of Propagation across the Galaxy, to fill the entire universe with our companions, so that we'll never be alone again!
Trust me, I will never give you up, never let you down, never desert you, never hurt you with a lie!"
Just as Herta had said, Tayzzyronth—this thing was both timid and dull-witted, an Aeon with no worldly knowledge whatsoever, nothing in Its head but Propagation.
But look at it from another angle: if the Swarm Dynasty had a role like a General or a Prime Minister, then the Swarm King was such a fine Emperor to have!
A foolish and ignorant Emperor needs only a bit of guidance.
"Ssss~ Prop██aga██tion██"
Voices began to surface in Caelus's mind, and along with them, a portion of the Swarm's control authority.
The corner of Caelus's mouth curled up as he gave the Emperor an elegant bow.
"I am the Swarm."
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