In the depths of countless universes, a mysterious existence—the Forum—quietly appeared.
Like a kaleidoscope, it displayed the strange and diverse stories of different universes to all living beings.
Within the space it projected, people watched as the persistence and ideals of those from different universes were revealed to the world.
Every story had its own soul; people marveled at Fujimaru Ritsuka's heroic epic of a journey to save the world, or admired Himeya Jun's indomitable bravery and the divinity and humanity of the Land of Light.
But the story that followed was a suffocating one. It contained beauty, ugliness, tragedy, and majesty, yet possessed a beauty like a dream.
This was a story heavy enough to crush life, a story of protecting the spark of hope in the midst of despair.
Accompanied by a burst of heavy and majestic music, a golden double-headed eagle appeared on the screens of people across all worlds. Like a beacon in the darkness, its radiance illuminated everything.
Beneath the double-headed eagle was a pile of white bones, and upon those bones, countless hands held the eagle aloft.
Flames burned at the edges of the radiance, creating a scene that was brilliant, majestic, and yet eerie.
Then, a strong, burly man clad in golden armor and wielding a giant sword burning with flames appeared on the screen alongside an old man in black robes.
Before the audience could voice their questions, the man in golden armor spoke first.
[What will you give for me?]
[My life.]
[You have already given that.]
[My death, if you wish to be pedantic.]
[And your soul?]
[You said such things did not exist.]
[We have little time; allow me a bit of metaphysical shorthand. What value has your soul to you?]
On the Rhodes Island landship, a little donkey (rabbit) looked at the woman beside her with a pale face and whispered, "Dr. Kal'tsit, what kind of existences are those two? Why do their emotions make me feel so... so..."
"So sad, right, Amiya?" Dr. Kal'tsit replied softly.
"I don't know what kind of story this is, but I can feel that their suffering will far exceed that of this land."
"A world even more full of suffering than ours?" Amiya whispered to herself, staring at the screen on the Forum.
In the Land of Light of Nebula M78 in the Ultraman world, the Father of Ultra turned to Zoffy beside him and asked, "Zoffy, do you feel anything from this?"
"Commander, it is a very sorrowful emotion. I do not know why such an existence would be so sad," Zoffy replied.
"Is that so!" the Father of Ultra exclaimed.
"I feel the same; I didn't know a being like the Father of Ultra could be so sorrowful!"
On the Schicksal Floating Island in the Honkai world, Otto Apocalypse, the Overseer of Schicksal, fell into deep thought: "I wonder what kind of existence this will be? But from their words, it seems their world possesses things like souls. I wonder if they have the technology to resurrect the dead."
Countless questions filled the Forum; they did not understand what could make such powerful beings feel sad.
Fortunately, the Forum did not make them wait long.
A line of text then appeared on the screen.
Chaos may have nearly gained everything they plotted for.
But the Emperor of Mankind, through his own magnificent sacrifice, tore a faint rift in the dead end of the Void, and peering within, one can find a dim light that shines to this day.
Every person who praises the God-Emperor's might faces varying degrees of despair, yet they fill the wounds of this devastated hopelessness.
Only a small glimmer of hope is needed to continue the struggle, just to bring one's soul and will closer to that golden figure of the past... To the Emperor of Mankind, who once stood alone against a despair and darkness known to none and spoken to nowhere.
Yet he still attempted to ignite another future with a heart full of the fires of hope, and this flame has been rekindled into a cold sun, spanning another ten thousand years, until the next ten thousand years!
"Ten thousand years!"
"It can't be... No, that's impossible. Even the most powerful civilizations only last ten thousand years. How could there be a being that has existed for tens of thousands of years?"
Commotion spread across countless worlds; after all, a being that had existed for tens of thousands of years seemed far too shocking to them.
As people engaged in heated discussions about the events on the Forum, some powerful beings noticed the enemy mentioned in the text.
[Chaos]
Was it this thing called Chaos that forced the Emperor of Mankind, who has existed for ten thousand years, into such a state?
The story continues.
An ancient, azure planet just like Earth appeared on the screen.
Hundreds of nations fought incessantly on the planet. One nation after another disappeared into the river of time.
It seems that in this universe, Earth-Terra spent a long time before obtaining the treasure known as 'peace.'
Since humanity was born on Terra, they have been looking up at the stars. Birth and death, salvation and slaughter, creation and destruction have always accompanied humanity; even after the 40th millennium, they still trouble the souls of men.
War broke out after war, and civilizations vanished one by one. Perhaps this is human nature, and the price for leading the human species toward emptiness.
Regardless, by the 15th millennium, human technology was capable of manufacturing spacecraft that flew through the universe at sub-light speeds, and they slowly moved out of the Sol System.
Ship after ship, carrying hibernating humans, flew toward designated targets on star charts under computer control. Humanity began to leave their homeworld of Terra, gradually scattering the seeds of human civilization across the various planets of the Sol System.
Celestial bodies near Terra, Mars, Jupiter, all nine planets, and their surrounding moons all had facilities built by humans.
Super factories for extracting planetary resources, space ports—every facility imaginable was there.
Hundreds of years passed. Soon, years flowed by and eras changed—
Later, in the 18th millennium, Warp engines were developed. These advanced and powerful machines could tear a 'rift' in the physical universe, allowing ships to sail within the Warp.
The Warp is a world of pure energy, acting like a reflection of the material universe.
Although it is influenced by real space, it possesses different dimensions of time and space, and physical laws cannot be used to explain its movements.
Unpredictable, complex energies and other issues make the space dangerous.
However, those spacecraft equipped with Warp engines could also utilize the instability of time and space within that dimension for faster-than-light travel.
Voyages that previously took hundreds of years now only took a few months.
This epoch-making technology greatly accelerated the speed of human expansion among the stars.
Colonies that were previously unreachable due to technical reasons also began to engage in close exchanges of technology with people on other planets.
Technology developed rapidly during this period; people invented convenient production technology called Standard Template Constructs, or STC for short, and powerful artificial intelligence to support space colonization.
Every human emigrant would carry STC data loaded with endless knowledge and various factory design blueprints.
As if playing Red Alert, whatever building was needed, one only had to click on a blueprint, and powerful artificial intelligence would quickly build it day and night without rest.
Creating a city or a planet-scale nation was just like playing a game—click the blueprint and select the map.
Then, after waiting for a period of time, sci-fi style steel forests would rise from the ground.
Where it once took several years to build a single bridge, the same amount of time now brought humanity a world with a complete industrial system.
This was the most magnificent and astonishingly developed human civilization shown on the screen.
A superpower of the universe that no one had ever seen—the Human Federation, centered around humanity's original home—was born.
Commotion spread through countless worlds; after all, an empire that occupied an entire galaxy was far too distant for most worlds.
Although they had witnessed the existence of top-tier cosmic civilizations when watching the Land of Light and the Super God World,
the territory occupied by these civilizations was far too small compared to the Imperium of Man shown on the screen.
Furthermore, the Galaxy in any universe is usually diverse in races; it is virtually impossible for a single civilization or a single race to occupy an entire galaxy.
(The Land of Light suppressing the universe with just one planet is still too brutal.)
Even the Angel Civilization in Super God World only existed as an arbiter.
Although their influence in the universe was not small, many of those were vassals of the Angel Civilization; there were not many planets actually occupied by the Angels themselves.
Many leaders of civilizations saw several issues from the scope of human power on the screen. There couldn't be only humans in the Milky Way, so where did they go?
"It is less a federation and more an empire."
Keisha, the leader of the Angel Civilization, had already realized from the human territory that this so-called Human Federation was not as good as it appeared.
The so-called federation was merely an alliance with their internal factions; those alien races that were different from them were not included in their sphere of influence.
This so-called federation was merely a fig leaf for a xenophobic military empire.
However, Keisha, who had lived for a very long time, did not expect that the Human Federation of this period was already the kindest powerful civilization in this universe.
The video continues.
But behind the development of civilization, most people did not realize the true danger and its true face.
From within the mirror, several pairs of eyes were silently watching the growth of the human race.
In the 22nd millennium, more and more Psykers appeared among the population. Psykers are a mutation of humanity who can feel the existence of the Warp and use its energy through mental power.
Although the existence of these Psykers was scientifically proven for the first time, they were not unique individuals.
Long before humanity reached space, they had already learned and mastered this unique skill.
After human scientists confirmed the unique existence of 'Psykers,' various departments of the human world began to conduct research on their history.
With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a set of accurate data was compiled.
Later, this generation of Mutants was known as Navigators. It was precisely because of their appearance that the speed of human colonization in space increased greatly.
With the help of technology, these Navigators could guide ships precisely to their destinations through the energy tides within the Warp.