“…… Of course, we have to thank the Planetary Governor of Jesstal, Ms. Jesmine Deville, for her wise leadership......"

Raj Hasting's voice was converted into an electronic signal, which was then heard from the global broadcast. Perhaps because of the inevitable loss of the acoustic signal during this transformation, his voice sounded with a strange and sharp distortion, like some kind of high-pitched birdsong.

Jaystar didn't have a bird, and many workers who were born and raised in Sri didn't understand what a bird was, but the concept naturally came to the mind of everyone who was listening to the radio; It's not normal to say anything, it's not normal to suddenly understand a concept that doesn't exist, or it's not normal to say that everyone is listening to the radio, but in reality no one cares.

This was the speech that was supposed to be delivered by Hastings Technoon in the square in front of the ancient ruins after the parade at noon on the ninth day of the celebration. However, for some unnamed "security concern", the march itself was canceled, and the speech was hastily brought forward to the night of the eighth day. It stands to reason that the almost complete absence of nightlife on Jestal should make the vast majority of people drowsy at this point near midnight, but no.

Everyone listened intently to the radio at this point in time when they should have slept, with a peaceful, eerie smile on their faces. Even as midnight approached, the sentences on the radio began to fade into obscurity, and Raj Hastin's voice grew chaotic and profane.

A subtle and subtle fluctuation rushed across the planet with the sound of the radio, and the existence behind the curtain gathered with joy.

I'm here...... Do......?

Sevita thought drowsily.

It took him some time to realize that something was wrong with him, and another time to realize that something was wrong with everyone. The time he spent on both things was long, very long – maybe hours. Even for a mortal to take such a long time to realize something so obvious, it is enough to call it "dull".

But it must also be taken into account that under the same conditions, it is impossible for a mortal to realize that something is wrong here.

Alita was still beside him, holding her small jar of food rations. Old Hank was farther away, curled up with his "blue-grey" limbs, and sat casually on the steps.

They would have ...... What are you doing...... Coming?

In order to think about this problem, Sevita unconsciously spent more than ten minutes. He had even made up his mind once again to keep his feet on the ground and face his fate once more—if he had been able to think normally, he would have laughed at himself in retrospect, what a ridiculous ambition he had had.

But he couldn't, so he thought only to his own end.

Sevita's sluggish mind was still running slowly, but it was much faster than before. In other circumstances, of course, this is not a commendable thing, but at the moment, he is better than the vast majority of people on this planet: at least he can think.

He didn't know that he had been immersed in a large planetary chaos ritual for a long time, and he didn't realize that he had been exposed to trace amounts of subspace radiation in the ten years he had been on this planet, or nine local years. Like the 60 million humans living on this planet, under the influence of chaotic energy on his mind, he had no way of realizing that this was the last nine years of the ninety-nine local years required for the ritual, and the planet's land, water sources, and even the vegetation that grew out of the planet had all made their final mutations in the nine years close to harvest, and naturally he couldn't find that his own dependence on these beings for survival had been permeated by a similar curse.

But he's still thinking about it.

In such an unfavorable situation, there are two factors that still hang Sevita as a spider's silk and slide into hell: one is the alchemy of creatures originating from the emperor. The Astarte Modification did take something away from them, but apparently, it gave more to these warriors who were destined to be beyond the ordinary. The second is his innate psionic talent.

One thing that can easily be overlooked is that Yago Sevitaleone is a psyker.

He didn't like his talent, he was strong enough without psionic energy anyway. In the early years, before he was transformed and set foot in the sea of stars, he had already heard the whispers of the dead too often because of this talent. When he became Astarte, he even tried to seal this talent away during his tenure in the Eighth Legion, hoping that it would disappear on its own. It's a pity that this is obviously a wishful thinking. This power, which he never understood and never managed to control, only grew under the seal. If it weren't for the help of nobles, he would probably really be killed by his own talent.

Even though he had barely learned how to restrain and use this ability from the little Star Whisperer Otani who worked for them in the Dark Angel's warship, he had never liked the talent. It caused him to see a lot of things he didn't really want to see, to hear a lot of sounds he didn't really want to hear. Over the course of his ten years in Terra, Jaystar had come to understand how his genetic father had been driven insane by uncontrollable prophecies—thankfully, the vast majority of the foreseeable future on this remote planet was safe and quiet enough for him to go insane.

But this is the talent he didn't like, and even almost killed him, and now it's saving him.

Astarte's remodeling surgery made him more resilient physically and mentally than ordinary people, and gave him the basic conditions to break free from the trap of ordinary people who would only be trapped to death; And his own psionic energy finally realizes that those subtle "transformations" will rob him of his ability to think for himself, so he is driven by Sevita's survival instinct to reclaim what belongs to him.

He didn't realize all this, but he was really thinking faster.

It took him five minutes to realize that he wasn't too far from the scene he remembered for the last time: he was now standing in the open space outside the terminal building; Two minutes later, he knew that almost everyone who was living in the cargo station was also gathered here; After another thirty seconds, he realized that almost all the people around him had aggravated their "blue gray syndrome" to varying degrees.

Sevita was active in the thirtieth millennium. He was more familiar with the propaganda of "Imperial Truth," but he didn't fail to see other ...... after the Great Rebellion What the hell have some fanatical cousins done? Therefore, he did not know exactly what was going on, how to get out of it, how to stop it from going in a direction that he did not want to see, but fortunately he could be sure that what was happening was supernatural and could not be explained by common sense and logic.

Then, it occurred to him that this might be dealt with with supernatural psionic abilities that could not be explained by common sense and logic.

When he thought about it, he didn't realize that he was being saved by this supernatural force at the same time, and at the same time being killed by it.

He seemed to be nothing unusual in the real world, but the psionic energy that only followed his instincts and kept flowing, but lacked basic protection, unconsciously lit up his soul. To the creatures behind the veil, it was like a candle in the darkness, a little food in the sand, seemingly unthreatening and defenseless, only for the insects to pounce on them. And Sevita, who has always lacked a true understanding of psionic powers, may have no means to defend against the unborn.

The only thing that still stood in their way was the curtain between subspace and reality, but after the Great Rift unfolded, under the influence of nearly a hundred years of chaotic rituals, that curtain was already as thin as a cicada's wings and precarious.

In fact, before the official starting gun was fired, they were already looking for a suitable target to feast on.

Sevita's affected mind was too sluggish for him to see how it began. After he had tried to get back to normal as much as possible, he turned his head to look for it, and he saw old Hank, who had become inhuman.

Come to think of it, for the demons who are waiting to share the spoils behind the curtain, the body that is more deeply infected by chaos will be better captured, and Old Hank, who has a history of "blue gray" for more than forty years, will naturally bear the brunt. The slick, laid-back, old man who always managed to find a hole and leave a little bit of supplies to make wine moaned, feathers sticking out of his blue-gray skin, the skeletal structure of his limbs rapidly becoming more similar to a bird in the tooth-aching grinding and cracking sound, he waved his arms wildly in pain, perhaps to call for help, perhaps just to grab something, but his rapidly alienated vocal structure no longer supported him to speak like a human.

Sevita had no way of knowing what Old Hank was trying to say at the end of his consciousness. When the eyes were closed, clouded by age and exertion, they shone with a disgusting, joyful and evil glow with inhuman intelligence. Thus, without any relevant knowledge, even those who have a rigid mind to enshrine the truth of the empire, can immediately be convinced when they see such a gaze: old Hank is dead.

Now it is something else that occupies the shell of this physical realm.

This doesn't happen just once. Old Hank may be the first to bear the brunt, but how many of the people who work on this planet have not contracted the "blue gray" under the infiltration of the chaos ritual? And even those who do not show corresponding symptoms on the surface of the body can be called safe?

After ten years of living on the planet as Astarte, Sevita was barely able to sustain itself. What about those ordinary mortals who were born and grew up?

He heard the sound of small jars falling to the ground. It didn't take much keen hearing, anyone could easily tell from the sound that the small tin can, which had been used for ten years and had not been tightly sealed, had been shaken off the lid when it collided with the ground, and the round wheat contained in it was scattered all over the ground. There were many people he had worked with, who had only spoken a few words, barely known or not at all, twitching and wailing, but Sevita didn't really care about them. He just desperately pushed his rusted neck to look in Aelita's direction.

He didn't know what he could do when he couldn't protect himself, and he vaguely knew that he probably couldn't do anything. But he still turned his head, thinking that he had to at least confirm Aelrita's condition.

His gaze slid across the ground, and round wheat jumped and rolled in front of his eyes. It dawned on Sevita that the round wheat wasn't supposed to be like this—it was indeed a full, round grain after the husk, but it wasn't so round, it wasn't like a shrunken eyeball, and it didn't roll itself on the ground with a cheerful and blasphemous whisper, or even chase each other.

…… Has the food produced by Jaystar always been like this?

Just as his attention was unconsciously attracted by the round wheat running all over the ground, Aelita's trembling hand grabbed the corner of his clothes. His gaze hadn't been able to catch her, but it didn't seem to be needed much anymore—for before it was, the touch that came from the hand, which might no longer be called a "hand," was fear.

It is the most familiar emotion in the life of the Midnight Lord's first company commander Yago Sevitalyon, and there is no one. Before his sight receives the signal, his senses of touch, hearing, and even smell have integrated this abstract concept and passed it on to his brain as an answer.

Aelrita's hand, which had turned almost entirely blue, hung on the holes in the rough fabric with sharp claws that weren't there, and her fearful whimpering and shivering in pain were picked up by Sevita's touch. The sound of tooth-aching bones grinding around him sounded all around him, and Sevita's sluggish neck finally managed to twist to a suitable angle, and he could finally see Aelita now:

Brilliant feathers had covered her arms, spreading towards her torso. Her husk was silently twisted by the chaotic forces that had permeated her, and the extra growth tissue tore at the simple fabric of her body. Sevita could clearly see the scar on the side of her neck that would have been hidden under the turtleneck blouse, the straight, slender white line that he had repaired with his own hands, as if it had come to life within a few breaths of dizzying blue, and wriggled into an esoteric symbol.

Aelrita's lovely face, always smiling, had been distorted by pain and fear, and tears were swaying from those desperate eyes, slicing through the tiny freckles on her fair cheeks, and silently smashing to the ground.

Jacob ...... Jacob ...... What to do...... Help me......" Her voice was no longer cheerful, and it had been mixed with a sharp scraping sound that did not look like a human being.

Aelrita, who was being alienated into some other species, instinctively turned to the most knowledgeable and trusted person she knew for help:

"There's something...... Eating my ......"

But the object of her prayer, the Midnight Lord's first company commander, Yago Sevitalyon, could do nothing.

A nameless remorse and anger rose from his chest: the innocent were suffering before his eyes, and once again, he could do nothing.

The bell ringing at midnight marks on time, and the ninth day of the celebration begins. The starting pistol literally sounded, the curtain shattered, and the surface of Jestar began a feast that was not human.

In the midst of the boiling joy that the human spirit could barely bear, Sevita asked herself quietly:

Why can't you, once again, do nothing?