Ziye felt a pang of emotion thinking about Fia’s recent miserable state.

In interstellar competition, it was always survival of the fittest.

Fia, which was a major power just last year, had been utterly dismantled in the blink of an eye, a fragmentation that was inseparable from its internal conflicts.

A legion was not a mere club; once defeated, there was no opportunity to start over.

No matter what, this was a bloody lesson; perhaps she should commission a history of Fia to serve as a warning to the Wolf's Den.

As Ziye pondered this, Ilysia, the nominal head of Fia, was en route back to the Niya star system.

This time, coming out to solicit sponsorships—oh, no, partnerships—Ilysia had visited the Angelic Domain, the Wolf's Den, the Huaxia Legion, the Mo-Ke Legion, and the Se-Ji Family, finally reaching out to Carlu via the Hyper-Comms relay; yet, she had failed to secure cooperation from a single legion.

Ilysia understood that this situation was unlikely to end well; the Niya system was rife with protests, rampant murder, and had devolved into utter trash.

She had no choice but to abandon the path of seeking partnerships and return to Niya first to manage internal affairs.

It was much as she had anticipated; Niya was growing more chaotic.

Three direct descendants of the Fia family had already been killed.

Ilysia expressed fury at this outrageous conduct, though in her anger, she completely forgot that she herself had once personally executed the Queen of Fia...

Ilysia felt mostly lost.

Walking the streets of Niya, everywhere were people as lost and directionless as she was; the legion had suddenly collapsed, its backbone gone, its purpose for striving suddenly vanished.

The streets were filled with criminals—explosions, murders, and robberies occurred ceaselessly.

Ilysia didn't know what to do either.

In the past two decades of her life, she had only studied how to ascend to the throne, not how to rule it.

When trouble struck, her first instinct was to seek allies.

But now, she had none left.

Should she just concede defeat? Ilysia was unwilling.

She gazed at the two large characters, "Fia," carved on the plaque of the Crystal Palace.

Previously, dedicated robots meticulously dusted those characters every week, but now, they hadn't been wiped clean for a long time; the characters were dull, obscured by dust.

The only option left for her seemed to be packaging the legion for sale.

Selling the legion—who in the galaxy could possibly absorb it? Ilysia stared blankly at the plaque and whispered, "Peizhe, do I still have a chance?" Her voice was soft, almost to herself.

But Peizhe heard her clearly, responding with a blank expression, "No." Ilysia hadn't truly expected an answer from Peizhe.

Peizhe had been missing for a time; since they met again at the Coray Hotel, he had become a man of few words, speaking maybe once every ten days.

Ilysia asked him because she was truly out of anyone else to speak to.

Sometimes, she wondered if abandoning Peizhe had been a mistake, because when she fell from grace and hit rock bottom, he was the only one left standing beside her.

Ilysia couldn't help recalling the boy who was once so shy, so easily flustered.

Though his aura was completely different from the Peizhe before her now, he was the only thing she held in her heart.

She hadn't abandoned her initial affections; she had merely buried them deep down, presenting her most decisive, ruthless, and pragmatic side to seize power.

If life could be redone, perhaps she wouldn't have lost so miserably, but this path—she would have walked it regardless.

Ilysia had never learned the meaning of regret.

As Ilysia sank into her thoughts, she was suddenly seized by a sharp pain in her chest.

For an instant, she thought it was grief for the past twenty years, but then she froze in horror.

Because she saw a hand lifted before her chest, and clutched in its palm was a bloody heart.

Ilysia’s eyes widened.

Disbelievingly, she turned her head, but in that very moment of turning, the hand retracted.

Her front and back were pierced, leaving a fist-sized hole leaking blood. "Wh...

why?" Ilysia managed to choke out three words before falling straight backward onto the ground.

Blood surged across the floor, spreading rapidly, a gruesome sight.

Ilysia had calculated every variable, yet she never imagined that Peizhe, who was still willing to stay by her side even now, would kill her—and in such a brutal manner.

Peizhe—this was utterly unexpected. "I always wanted to see if your heart was as black as I imagined," Peizhe finally spoke a complete sentence.

Ilysia stared blankly up at the dome of the space station ceiling, her eyes filled with bewilderment.

All this time, she believed she understood Peizhe.

In her mind, he was still that young boy, willing to inject himself with poison needles again and again for her sake.

True, she had sensed the change in Peizhe after he became an anomaly, but she thought his love for her could conquer everything.

At least, Peizhe was still willing to stay by her side.

The one thing she never anticipated was that Peizhe would kill her.

When she asked why, she even formulated an excuse for him: did Peizhe intend to grant her a swift end, sparing her pain? Ilysia never considered the true reason.

Her face was deathly pale, sustained only by a resentful unwillingness to close her eyes. "Wh...

wh...

why?" It was the same question.

Ilysia simply could not comprehend.

Peizhe lowered his head, looking down at the woman lying on the ground.

Her snow-white dress was stained with crimson blossoms, strikingly beautiful, and devastatingly cold.

He gave a sudden, short laugh. "When I discovered I couldn't die, I kept wondering why you did this to me.

You knew those poison needles were lethal, so why force me to inject them again and again? Do you know the agony of that instant when the needle pierced my body?" Tears welled in Peizhe's eyes.

He hadn't possessed tears anymore. "Later, that doctor used me as a test subject.

When he realized my body had some resistance to the compounds, he wouldn't let me die.

Instead, he injected me daily with substances that drove me mad, that made me frenzied.

Every day, I was like a rabid dog." Ilysia stared at him blankly, unable to utter a single word. "At that time, I thought: if I ever manage to get out alive, I must see if his heart is truly black! If your heart is blacker than his!" Peizhe slowly knelt beside her, roughly gathering her upper body, and pressed his lips to her forehead. "Someone kidnapped me afterward and, upon realizing I hadn't lost my sanity, intended to dissect me.

I begged him to let me return for revenge.

I destroyed all your clones." Ilysia’s eyes snapped wide open! It was a deathbed rally, mingled with pure rage.

In the interstellar domain, to kill someone meant to kill their clones.

It turned out Peizhe had eliminated her copies long before she ever knew.

Ilysia died with her eyes wide open, utterly unappeased. "Ilysia, I still loved you." The last word spoken, Ilysia’s body went rigid in death.

Peizhe lifted Ilysia into his arms and walked through the streets of the Niya space station, unsure of where to go.

Emerging from the mad doctor's laboratory, Peizhe had only one obsession: to see how black Ilysia's heart was.

Now he had seen it, and discovered that her heart was just like everyone else's.

Perhaps what drives beings isn't the blackness of their heart, but the magnitude of their desire and the lowness of their moral floor.

Peizhe walked on in a daze.

The streets of Niya had completely descended into chaos.

He carried the corpse past, yet no one gave him a second glance, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

What would he do now? Peizhe thought dully.

He once dreamed of becoming the finest pilot, of living sweetly with Ilysia, raising one or two children, leading a simple, unremarkable life.

But that dream was impossible now.

The residue of the poison needles in his body tormented him daily, dragging him through living hell.

He no longer dared to chase any dreams.

Peizhe walked until he reached the entrance to the space station docking bay.

Perhaps the final destination for every star-faring soul was the vast, indifferent expanse of space.

Peizhe slowly boarded the shuttle that had brought Ilysia back, holding her body, and launched it out into space.

There was no longer any reason to exist...

Peizhe piloted the shuttle back to the star system where he had first appeared, stopped it at an orbital location with no nearby bodies, and pressed the shuttle's self-destruct key.

In the instant the licking flames consumed him, a faint smile finally touched the corner of his lips.

No one would ever disturb him again.

He and Ilysia would become a part of the void.

Farewell.

Fia’s situation was utterly disastrous.

Ilysia was dead, and Peizhe was gone, yet the people of the Niya system seemed unaware.

The chaos intensified.

People broke into the Crystal Palace, smashed the Queen's desk, looted inside...

No one could halt Fia’s decline.

Fia comprised thirty-three star systems in total: the Tang Clan seized two, the Teuton Mercenary Group took three, Carlu claimed one, the Angelic Domain took three, the Tama Pirates seized two, and the Mo-Ke Legion took one...

Fia had lost half its territory.

The stable post-war order was now teetering on the brink of renewed conflict as factions clashed over the seized lands, all because of Fia’s turmoil.

The Unification Authority could not stand by and sent troops to swiftly restore order in Fia.

The Independents could loot as they pleased; the lives and property of the Fia citizens were now under the jurisdiction of the Authority.

After a month of turmoil, Fia stabilized, but the lost systems were irrecoverable.

The Independents rushed to submit legion applications to the Authority...

The names were a messy assortment, varied and strange.

However, to the major interstellar legions, every new legion was a tempting piece of meat.

Small territory, limited population, weak defenses, low quality—these four characteristics were an open invitation for crime.

Three days after the legion applications were approved, government-affiliated legions raided the newly birthed small legions, daring the Authority’s cannon fire.

A single night of warfare severely strained the Authority and obliterated one of the new legions.

The Authority, helpless, convened a meeting for all newly registered small legions.

Stas’s objective was singular: the weak could not be protected forever.

You weak legions must band together or merge.

If all else fails, just package yourselves up and sell out.

-RS