Completely invisible and undetectable to anyone in the ship's command centre, Evan walked past the crew scrambling toward the door Arthur had forced his way in.
Spotting the familiar captain, Evan teleported behind him and glanced at the console displaying the ship's navigation data.
'Two maps?'
He compared them to the star map Arthur had acquired, and a sigh escaped his lips as he noted both obvious similarities and troubling differences.
Just then, Arthur's loud voice echoed across the bridge.
"Hey, Evan! Was the map any different?"
With a sigh, Evan deactivated Lethe, his body materialising beside the main console, colouring the crewmen's faces with disbelief. They were clearly baffled at how he had gotten past them.
Naturally, Evan didn't bother explaining. He just held up the two maps and responded to Arthur.
"Well, for some reason, they had two maps. The one you had..."
He raised the familiar route map Arthur had shown earlier.
"...and here's a different one—the one we're actually following."
Shock rippled across the bridge, and the crewmen's expressions contorted.
But in that moment, Evan, still facing Arthur, saw the godslayer's expression shift from suspicion to shock… and then to something he never expected: fear.
'Fear??'
Evan had NEVER seen Arthur afraid.
Arthur—who'd casually stroll into a room full of Race Kings and treat them like neighbourhood uncles—was actually afraid.
And as if that fear was contagious, Evan's Danger Sense activated, screaming alarms in his head. He spun around at once, eyes scanning behind him to pinpoint whatever had triggered both Arthur's reaction and his skill.
He couldn't perceive Cosmic energy the same way Arthur could, but as someone in the Legendary Realm, attuned to law energies, he immediately sensed the staggering concentration of law energy building up just outside the ship.
It was dense, overwhelming, and they were heading straight for it.
Arthur's voice, normally calm and controlled, cracked with a rare mix of frustration and dread as he shouted,
"That is definitely not a fucking realm gate! What the hell do you think you're taking us toward?!"
The boy's ability to perceive Cosmic Energy was the reason for his alarm.
While Evan could sense an overwhelming concentration of law energy, Arthur saw the terrifying truth: a vortex of Cosmic energy forming directly ahead of the ship.
Enough cosmic energy to ignite a star!
The real danger lay in the fact that all that energy was being compressed into a space no larger than a basketball.
Imagine the force needed to create a star capable of giving life to dozens of planets, now forced into a sphere small enough to fit in one's hands.
That was a disaster waiting to happen.
Just as Evan reached into his subspace and grabbed something within, Arthur unleashed his aura, generating a powerful gravitational force that yanked Evan toward him.
Outside, arcs of Cosmic energy crackled violently in the void, lashing against the ship's shields.
Cracks began to spider across the shields as Arthur activated his Pseudo-Authorities, running rapid calculations to determine how long they had before the unstable singularity ahead of them detonated.
One Minute.
But as if the anomaly sensed he'd just made that calculation, the concentrated Cosmic energy suddenly ignited.
It happened too soon, far sooner than Arthur had predicted. Far sooner than it should have.
The energy detonated in a blinding, cataclysmic burst, ripping through space-time like fragile cloth.
At the epicentre of the blast, a singularity formed, born from the violent collapse of compressed cosmic energy.
The unleashed force rivalled the ignition of a star, carrying a magnitude of power that defied understanding.
A blinding, searing light flooded outward, consuming everything in its path, overwhelming all senses as the ship was swallowed in an instant.
The last thing Evan saw was reality itself fracturing, the explosion shattering the laws that governed the universe, just a fraction of a second before the light swallowed him whole.
And then—nothing.
◇ ◇ ◇
The ship was annihilated in an instant, disintegrated by the sheer magnitude of the Cosmic energy's eruption.
Every wall, every panel, was vaporised in a storm of destructive force.
The fabric of space twisted and tore as the unleashed Cosmic energy and the newly born singularity ripped through reality. Rifts split open, jagged and unstable, scarring the void.
The laws of space and time began to fail, no longer functioning properly as the singularity expanded outward, generating an immense suction force.
Everything nearby was dragged into the singularity's black maw, from the remnants of the ship to the fragments of the shattered space-time fabric.
But the disaster didn't end there.
As the laws of the universe had broken down, even the explosion itself behaved abnormally.
The singularity reversed its detonation, beginning to reabsorb the very energy it had just unleashed.
What followed was an implosion as violent as the blast, collapsing inward and consuming everything it had just destroyed.
In the aftermath, a circular ring of Cosmic dust formed, and waves of energy, gas, and light erupted from the singularity's core, spiralling around it.
Instantly, the System of the Universe flagged the anomaly, alarms blaring as its automated processes began detecting and recording the cascade of errors occurring.
|Error #?%95!! Space-Time Breakdown!!|
|Error Resolution Matrix Breakdown! |
The failsafe protocols built to manage such anomalies were malfunctioning, overwhelmed by the scale of Cosmic energy distortion.
|Central Processing Matrix Upgrading Error Situation. |
|Assuming Worst Case Scenario. Skipping all default protocols. Accessing Deadlock! |
With no other options, the system abandoned default procedures and entered full emergency override.
|Orithyia Galactic Sector System Collapse imminent! |
|Error Resolution Matrix Restarted! |
In a desperate move, the system attempted to restart its core resolution matrix.
|Energy Interference Detected|
The dense interference from the Cosmic energy surge only made things worse, rendering stabilisation attempts increasingly ineffective.
|Drawing Power from other Matrixes. |
To contain the escalating disaster, the system began diverting power from other Matrixes overseeing different Aspects of the Devour-Class System.
|Reattempting to Contain Error|
|Cosmic Energy Interference Detected|
Yet the interference remained too intense, every resolution attempt overridden by the singularity's overwhelming cosmic energy.
The system's efforts to resolve the crisis had nearly all failed. There was no simple solution, no containment capable of restraining the power of the freshly born singularity.
|Central Processing Matrix using Deadlock! |
|Error Code Changed|
|ERROR #?%97 Cosmic Singularity!|
The singularity's birth was now officially logged in the system.
|Containing Singularity…|
|No Suitable Containment Solution discovered! |
Containment was necessary, but no existing solution within the system's current framework was viable.
Something was actively impeding the framework's ability to respond.
|Reincarnation Matrix suggests containing within Vessel|
As a final resort, the Reincarnation Matrix—a subsystem tasked with overseeing the souls of the deceased and guiding them into new incarnations—proposed containing the singularity within a living vessel.
|Error Resolution Matrix Objects—such action would create an embodiment of ERROR #?%97!|
The Error Resolution Matrix objected, aware that placing such a universal system error into a vessel would create a living embodiment of the singularity itself—an incarnation of the error.
|Currently, there are three Grade 7s within the Orithyia Galactic Sector…any more would cause additional errors|
It was pretty obvious who these three Grade 7s were, their presence already maxing out the Galactic Sector's capacity for Singularity Entities.
|Central Processing Matrix…Approves|
Despite the objections, the Central Processing Matrix authorised the creation of a new vessel, reasoning that this one could never reach the scale of those three.
|Estimation…Grade 3|
|Error Code Changed|
|ERROR #?%100 SINGULARITY BIRTH!|
The error mutated once again.
|Reincarnation Matrix Finding Suitable Vessel… Detected|
The Reincarnation Matrix began searching for an appropriate vessel to contain this volatile force.
|Error Resolution Matrix Containing Error…Successful|
Against all odds, the error was sealed within a new vessel. A living incarnation of a singularity now existed in the universe.
|Logging Existence of New Singularity Existence in Orithyia Galactic Sector. |
The universe's records were updated. A new singularity, though ranked lower than Arthur, Evan, or Jamie, had come into existence.
◇ ◇ ◇
The observation chamber was unnervingly still, broken only by the nervous tremor of the man who had spoken.
"Sir… we've lost all contact…"
His voice, fragile and unsteady, seemed to echo in the oppressive silence, carrying the weight of a grim realisation.
It wasn't just the words themselves, but what they meant that filled the room with tension.
The Elders present were all frozen in silence.
They had seen it happen—the moment the ship exploded.
Even Jamie, usually all smiles, wore a deep frown. His carefree attitude had vanished, replaced by something far darker.
'That premature explosion that escalated the situation…'
Each Elder was lost in their own thoughts, but no one broke the silence, for there was nothing left to say.
And so, silence settled over them all.