Welt Adjusted His Glasses. Things Weren't So Simple

Welt's fingers froze halfway to his glasses.

Through the edge of the lens, his fingertips felt the chill of a mechanical creation.

The VIP Lounge was eerily quiet.

The virtual logs in the holographic fireplace glowed orange-red.

The flickering flames cast the shadows of everyone in the room into shifting light and darkness.

The screams and explosions outside in the corridor seemed cut off by an invisible wall.

Su Chen straightened his back.

He sat upright on the edge of the black leather sofa.

The hem of his black-and-gold robe spilled onto the velvet carpet.

The slender heels of his high-heeled boots dug deep into the soft pile.

Aching throbbed through the soles of his feet in wave after wave.

But he could only grit his teeth and keep even his breathing as steady as possible.

He had to maintain that air of looking down on all creation.

Welt's throat went dry.

It felt as though he had swallowed a fistful of coarse sandpaper.

The Herrscher of Reason's core smoldered deep in his chest, trembling with something close to instinctive fear.

"Imaginary."

Those two words, spoken by the woman before him, struck like a sledgehammer and shattered everything he had taken for granted.

In Welt's homeland, the universe was, in essence, a magnificent tree.

The Imaginary Tree.

Countless parallel worlds, the rise and fall of countless civilizations, were no more than leaves that grew and withered upon it.

The Sea of Quanta surged beneath the tree, devouring every fallen remnant.

It was a dimension even the highest-ranking Herrschers could not easily touch—the ultimate truth of the multiverse.

And the woman before him had said the organization behind her was called the Imaginary Divine Court.

The Divine Court.

A divine court that stood above the Imaginary, ruling and judging all things?

Welt's chest heaved sharply.

Severing the branches of Paths.

Erasing star systems.

Containing rules.

Those claims unleashed a tidal wave in Welt's mind.

At first, he had thought she was exaggerating.

But within everything he knew, what if those "branches of Paths" referred to the great boughs of the Imaginary Tree?

What if pruning parallel universes was, to her, no harder than plucking off an unsightly leaf?

Welt gripped his cane tightly.

Its metal tip pressed a visible dent through the carpet into the hardwood floor below.

Cold, clammy sweat coated his palm.

It left the wooden handle so slick he could barely hold on.

He had traveled through many star systems and witnessed the monumental deeds of the Aeons.

Destruction, Preservation, Erudition.

But most of those Aeons were bound by the rules of the Paths they followed.

This Imaginary Divine Court was different.

They did not even regard rules as worthy of notice.

They trampled the universe's underlying logic beneath their feet and treated lofty Aeons as beings that could be "observed" and "contained."

Welt swallowed.

He took another look at the woman on the sofa, holding a white porcelain teacup.

She was certainly no Aeon's Emanator.

An Emanator merely borrowed an Aeon's power. She was a source of power in her own right.

She had formed the Falling Star meteorite with her bare hands and solidified pure elemental energy into a spatial cage.

Her presence had left a war machine like the Doomsday Beast too terrified to resist.

None of it belonged to any energy system known in this universe.

[Ding!]

[Welt Yang's speculation detected. Shock Points +3,500!]

[Welt Yang's worldview is being reshaped. Shock Points +4,000!]

[System notice: This individual remains in a state of mental shock. Shock Points will continue to overflow.]

Rows of translucent blue pop-ups flashed wildly across Su Chen's vision.

The text was painfully bright.

Su Chen kept his face rigidly impassive.

His mouth almost twitched.

Good grief.

How many cross-dimensional sci-fi epics has this bespectacled uncle played out in his head?

I made up a couple of mystical-sounding lies, and the points are rising faster than I could rob a bank.

Welt slowly lowered his hand from his glasses.

His black frames hid the turmoil and fear in his eyes.

He turned his head slightly toward Himeko, who stood beside the coffee table.

They had worked together for a long time. Often, they needed no words.

Welt held Himeko's gaze.

His eyes were as heavy as a slab of raw iron.

He gave the slightest, most restrained shake of his head.

Then he shifted his cane half an inch in front of himself, placing it between Himeko and the sofa.

It was the Astral Express's highest-level red-alert signal.

It meant: abandon any attempt to test her defenses, give up all bargaining chips, and under no circumstances provoke her.

Himeko's hand stopped abruptly on the Copper Kettle.

The lingering warmth of its handle passed through her leather glove, but it did nothing for her icy fingertips.

Her knuckles had gone pale from gripping it too hard.

Himeko understood Welt's warning.

For Welt—always composed, always keeping a contingency in reserve—to fear someone this much...

Himeko's breath caught for an instant.

She lowered her head and quickly looked away from the Female Lord's breathtaking, forbidding face.

She did not dare look again.

She gently set the Copper Kettle back on the coffee table.

Even with a cork trivet underneath it, she deliberately slowed the movement as it touched down.

It made not the slightest sound.

She feared the smallest noise might be taken as a provocation.

Watching their reactions, Su Chen finally felt the weight lift from his chest.

They bought it.

And from how terrified they look, they practically think I'm a walking catastrophe who could blow up the universe at any moment.

But he now faced an enormous practical problem.

The muscles along the outside of his thighs had begun to ache on their own, trembling in waves.

These stiletto-heeled boots were inhuman.

In his previous life, Su Chen had rarely even worn dress shoes. He had never suffered anything like this.

His toes were crammed into the rigid, metal-edged tips, and his arches ached as though they had cramped.

He wanted to shift into a more comfortable position.

He wanted to stretch out his legs, or simply collapse against the soft leather sofa and rub his ankles.

But he could not.

How could an aloof deity loosen up and shake his legs in front of everyone?

If his Female Lord persona fell apart, the thousands of Shock Points he had earned would probably vanish on the spot.

Su Chen could only endure it.

He quietly drew on a trace of Geo within his body.

Hidden beneath the hem of his robe, pale golden light wound around his calves.

Like an invisible cast, it forcibly held his stiff, trembling muscles in place.

All the while, he had to maintain an icy expression of utter indifference to everything around him.

The tension in the VIP Lounge was suffocating.

Himeko stood beside the coffee table like a red-haired wax figure.

Welt leaned on his cane, taut as a steel wire on the verge of snapping.

Both kept their heads lowered, hardly daring to breathe deeply.

They were waiting.

Waiting for the Fourth Seat's next instruction.

The deathly silence made Su Chen uncomfortable all over.

The room was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat quickening as he endured the pain.

He searched for an excuse.

He had to stand up and walk a little, or simply order them to leave.

Tap.

A sudden, sharp sound broke the skin-crawling silence.

Tap. Tap.

Hard high heels were striking the metal-grate floor of the corridor.

The sound came from beyond the VIP Lounge's sealed airtight door.

The pace was unhurried.

It was accompanied by the scrape of some metal object turning back and forth in a hand.

Against the space station's faint background alarms, the footsteps sounded especially piercing.

Welt snapped his head toward the door.

His cane lifted half an inch off the floor.

Himeko's back stiffened at once, and her free hand instinctively reached for the portable cutting gun at her waist.

Someone was approaching.

Anyone who could stroll along while the Antimatter Legion ran rampant was no panicked researcher.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

A chill from the corridor seemed to seep through the gap beneath it.

Then—

A woman's light, teasing laugh came through the heavy metal door.

Her voice was languid and husky, enough to send a shiver down the spine.

It was like a feather slowly brushing the rim of a glass.

There was no hiding the amusement in it.

"Well, well. Looks like there's a guest here even more dangerous than the Stellaron."