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[Translator – Seraph]
[Proofreader – Draxx]
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Chapter 490
The Star Union, one of the three great superpowers of the universe.
Compared to the Cult Empire, gacorp, or other lesser factions, the Star Union has one particularly unusual trait:
Machines hold absolute dominion over intelligent life.
Every sector military, economy, security, healthcare, education—is monopolized by a twelve-mber Machine Council of androids. More than that, the council directly governs the lives of all who live under the Union.
From the mont a citizen is converted into a cyborg, their career and residence are assigned. Even hobbies and entertainnt belong to the sphere of control.
On the surface, this creates a perfectly ordered society. The Star Union has no beggars, no holess. Cri rates are drastically lower than in other superpowers.
But is the Star Union truly a paradise? Of course not.
Among the three great powers, it suffers the highest defection rate. Many cyborgs choose suicide, or else flee to beco pirates, unable to endure the suffocating surveillance and control.
One cyborg pirate once said:
“That place is a prison on a cosmic scale. Hell disguised as guaranteed survival.”
The Machine Council knew this well. They hated population instability, so to appease their citizens’ impulses and feed their suppressed desires, they created outlets.
One such outlet: the Beast Gladiator Arenas.
Captured beasts were thrown into the arenas, forced to battle to the death for entertainnt.
There, the citizens could indulge in things otherwise forbidden drugs, gambling, even raw violence. The arenas beca imnsely popular. On occasion, fights with especially famous monsters even drew spectators from gacorp and the Cult Empire.
The KOL Beast Arena
The KOL arena was one of the most infamous. A colossal colosseum where hundreds of thousands filled the stands. All eyes were fixed on the blood-soaked pit below.
“Kill him! Tear him apart!”
“Left! Dodge left!”
At the center, a wolf-like monstrosity battered a chanical horror known as a Screar. Both were already ravaged from combat. The wolf bled from countless wounds, while the Screar was missing half its chanical legs.
The wolf lunged again, its blade-like fangs slicing through yet another limb.
“Fuck yeah! Now crush the head!”
“Damn it! I told you, dodge left!”
The Screar bucked wildly, trying to throw its foe off, but in vain. The wolf relentlessly targeted its life-support core.
As the inevitable end drew near, the stands split into shrieks of joy and wails of despair. And then, in the final strike the wolf’s fangs pierced straight through the Screar’s skull.
｢Victory for Sharpnodon, the Bad Razor! As sharp and clean as its na!｣
Cheers and curses roared from the packed arena. Bets won and lost in a heartbeat.
｢But of course, all of this was just an appetizer for the battle to co! Prepare yourselves for our true champion!｣
The word champion made the entire colosseum quake. The roar of the crowd was deafening.
｢Who dares challenge the indomitable king of KOL? None other than the sensational rookie, a blood-soaked fairywing risen from hell itself ‘Bloody Brute’ cos for the throne!｣
The waves of excitent redoubled. Bets were gathered, drugs passed out one final break before blood would spill again.
A Watcher Among the Crowd
Cyborgs surged out from the stands into the outer plaza.
“Hey, Richlv, are you going for the drug handouts too?”
The one called Richlv laughed awkwardly and shook his head.
“No. Just want to see which side the crowd’s betting heavier on.”
“Man, you’re the dullest miner in the whole galaxy.”
The others clicked their tongues and left, leaving him behind.
The smile faded from Richlv’s face.
He was no miner.
He was an overseer, assigned to KOL under the pretense of a harmless worker. His real mission was surveillance.
“…….”
His sharp gaze swept over the crowd.
For this was one of the few spaces in the Star Union where limited freedom was permitted and it had to be watched more carefully than anywhere else.
Recently, across several planets, unauthorized and unidentified organizations had begun springing up all at once. No one understood how, but sohow these groups managed to increase their numbers while evading the Star Union’s watchful surveillance.
For the Union, whose motto was stability through control, the existence of such rogue elents was intolerable.
Richlv, a surveillance agent working under deep cover, felt this truth more keenly than anyone. He swore to uncover these conspirators and root them out.
‘The next match is the last one, isn’t it.’
Yet, despite his determination, he had uncovered no suspicious activity. Everyone his eyes passed over was rely doing the usual injecting themselves with the drugs provided by the arena, gambling furiously on the upcoming match, or gawking at the displays plastered across massive holoscreens.
‘Hm?’
Just as disappointnt began to creep in, he noticed them.
A group.
‘Coldbloods?’
Since the outbreak of war between gacorp and the Cult Empire, the number of Coldbloods migrating into the Star Union had risen sharply.
Cyborg augntations were originally invented for humans, so converting a Coldblood wholesale wasn’t possible. Even so, their hardy biology made partial augntations and the implantation of control devices feasible. A fair proportion of Coldblood refugees had thus been accepted into the Union.
In fact, tonight’s crowd probably included a tenth of them, though not enough to be strange.
Among them, Richlv sighted two Coldblood cyborgs engaged in conversation. Nobody paid them much mind. But sothing in them tugged at his instincts.
The first, a male, spoke with fervor. His narrow, snake-like eyes glead not with intoxicated pleasure like the other addicts around them, but with sothing else entirely: madness.
The other was an old Coldblood, listening in silence. Yet his expression was one of fear, shrunken and hesitant.
Madness and terror. Neither emotion belonged in the revelry of the arena.
‘Let’s take a closer look.’
The cara mounted in Richlv’s chanical eye shifted to focus on the speaker’s mouth. Lips stretching unnaturally over sharp fangs, word-shapes beca clear.
‘Voltek… mid… faith… recruits... more joining… wait. Don’t tell —’
Richlv’s eyes narrowed.
‘Vortex One cultists.’
The Vortex One Cult was infamous far beyond its ho in the Cult Empire a fanatical, blood-stained organization so vicious that even the Union’s law enforcent tracked their movents.
‘Could they really have co here because of the war?’
It wasn’t impossible. Even criminals needed a stable environnt to lay roots.
He weighed his options.
“Excuse .”
The Coldbloods stiffened instantly, their hoods shifting as their eyes darted toward him with suspicion.
Richlv paused.
He could reveal himself now, expose his identity as an overseer, and arrest them imdiately. But that would drive the rest into deeper hiding, making them even harder to catch.
Better, far better, was to trace the infection to its source follow this thread to the cult’s hidden root.
“Uh… where’s the restroom?”
“…Straight down to the right, past the holoboard.”
“Thanks.”
As he left, his cybernetic eye clicked softly quietly capturing detailed images of their faces. Through their implants and registrations, their identities, workplaces, and addresses would be found soon enough. A line into the organization had been drawn.
Then, the announcer’s triumphant voice thundered across the arena, drowning all else:
｢Ladies and gentlen! The Bloody Brute versus the Champion! Tonight we witness the rise or fall of a new king!｣
The crowd exploded into rapture.
Richlv turned on his heel, ignoring the roar. His business was done. As the bloodthirsty cheers reverberated behind him, he slipped from the colosseum’s gates into the night.
***
｢Work shift ended. All personnel, cease operations and return ho.｣
KOL’s Bio–Gas Production Plant No. 35.
As the announcent echoed, the workers hastily prepared to leave. One after another, they returned their tools back to the android attendants and stread out of the factory like a receding tide.
But not everyone left.
“……”
A handful of Coldbloods exchanged a aningful glance. Quietly, they pulled out thin chips from their pockets and inserted them into the terminals implanted on their wrists.
“Departure confird.”
“Departure confird.”
The patrolling androids, moving through the workshop to check attendance and departures, registered them as having gone. None noticed they had stayed.
｢Closing facility.｣
When even the androids left and the lights dimd, only then did the Coldbloods finally move.
“This way.”
The one with snake-like, cunning eyes raised a flashlight and beckoned. Unlike his sharp and confident deanor, the rest—gaunt, thin, and sickly—huddled toward him hesitantly.
“Co. Follow .”
He guided them deeper into the factory until they reached the section where the bags of organic matter for gas production were stacked.
The older Coldblood among them coughed harshly.
“Cough why… why here?”
Instead of answering, the snake-eyed man began dragging away the stack of sacks pressed against the wall. Behind them, a small hidden door ca into view.
Creak.
When opened, it revealed a narrow staircase descending into blackness.
“Down. This is the place. Go first.”
The old man and the frail Coldbloods hesitated, glancing at one another, then slowly began to descend.
Below, the air changed completely.
The hidden space was scarcely larger than a storage room, lit dimly by flickering candles. Yet the sight that awaited them was like a demonic sanctuary.
Blasphemous symbols drawn in blood sared across walls and floor. At the center lay the mutilated body of a Coldblood woman, her corpse cruelly hacked apart.
Surrounding her were young Coldblood fanatics, their feral eyes glinting with hunger and madness, glaring at the new arrivals like predators sizing up prey.
“Wh—what is this?!”
“It is a ritual.”
The snake-eyed man calmly stepped down the last stair. He locked the door behind him with a tallic click.
“The One desires that we be truly free—from laws, from morality, from order, from every shackle. Only through release can we enter His embrace.”
One of the younger zealots handed him a ritual dagger, its blade already crusted with old stains.
“Before we return to Him, we must prove we have shed our chains—through blood, through flesh, through pain.”
“Through blood. Through flesh. Through pain.”
“Through blood. Through flesh. Through pain.”
The cultists chanted solemnly, their voices low and chilling.
Clutching the dagger, the snake-eyed man approached the frail Coldbloods who had followed in ignorance.
Their footsteps echoed closer, the knife gleaming faintly in candlelight.
At that mont, the ritual was about to begin.
“Let even our kin have a chance to prove themselves. Offer the blood of the weak to Him.”
There was no need to clarify who the weak were ant to be.
“Just one question.”
The old Coldblood fixed his gaze grimly on the mutilated corpse of the woman.
“If we do sothing like this beneath the factory, won’t it be discovered quickly? How do you hide it?”
“You’re wondering about that now?”
“Yes.”
The older man was destined to be torn apart anyway, so the cultist saw no harm in answering casually.
“We hacked the factory’s central computer and internal map, covering up this chamber’s very existence. As for bodies, toss them into organic fuel sacks for processing—easy disposal.”
“Hacking…?”
“Our order exists in many places. We help each other when needed.”
He said no more. Instead he raised the dagger high.
“Enough. Brothers, decide now!”
The younger cultists unsheathed their own blades. The threat was obvious: refusal ant being slaughtered as sacrifices.
“If you refuse, you’ll join the offerings… wha—?”
But the reaction he saw wasn’t the terror he expected.
A mont before, the gaunt Coldbloods had trembled like prey before a predator. Now their eyes were resolute, filled not with fear, but with searing contempt.
“Truly, our kind’s darkness runs deep, It is shaful to call you kin.”
“…What?! Don’t tell … Star Union sent you?”
“Star Union? We serve a power far greater. Not a petty demon commanding such filth as this, but a force imasurably vast.”
“You dare—?!”
And then it happened.
One of the supposed weaklings standing behind the old man suddenly opened his jaws unnaturally wide. A torrent of black fluid spewed forth, pouring like a waterfall onto the stone floor.
“But even so, our Great One will put this to use.”
“What… what is this?!”
“The Apostle of the Great One has spoken: offer forth the rock you have polished.”
Others rushed to support the one vomiting the black tide.
On the ground, that liquid writhed like a living thing. Shapes erged, indescribable horrors birthing themselves from the seething ooze.
“T-That… what is THAT?!”
“Run! Run, all of y—aaaghh!”
“You bastards, what have you...urrraaahhhck!”
The sanctum dissolved into chaos in seconds. Cultists scread as the eldritch monstrosities tore into them.
At the center, the elder spoke with quiet finality, like a judge announcing a verdict.
“This altar belongs henceforth to the Great One.”
Outside, the factory lay silent in the dead of night.
There was no one left alive to hear the last cries.
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[Translator – Seraph]
[Proofreader – Draxx]
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