“Looking at your body, I can no longer see the divine protection directly bestowed by your god. As I thought, the holy power residing in your body was only temporary.”
“Ugh...”
In the dim underground nest.
It was a place where the sight of grotesque Great Devourers writhing in every direction was enough to drain anyone's mental fortitude.
In fact, the dense psionic energy permeating the area alone was enough to make it difficult for ordinary people to breathe.
In such a place, Celia looked at Adian, who was bound and entangled by tentacles.
The antennae extending from her eyes and the symbiotic carapace ant wrapped around her body had already sensed all the power within Adian.
The divine protection bestowed by Hestia was substantial, but it was only temporary. Thus, by the time Celia first met him, the protection had already been completely exhausted. It was all because the battle had lasted longer than expected.
Since then, no direct divine protection had been detected on him.
However, one thing was bothersome.
And that point was the most distinct difference among the human species data sets that the Great Devourer had encountered.
“There is something in your blood. What is it?”
After listening to Elise's analysis, Celia leaned close to Adian's face and questioned him.
Because of the nanobots in his body, any parasites would be killed as soon as they were implanted, making them entirely useless.
Even so, Adian kept his mouth tightly shut.
Just as she said, Adian was merely a lowest-tier servant who could defect at any time if he wished.
Adian thought to himself that if he confessed everything truthfully, he didn't know what these unidentified monsters would do to him.
“Something very tiny and very annoying.”
Elise showed interest as she extracted the nanobots from Adian's blood.
She was the Queen of the colony, constantly creating mutants that surpassed the limits of life using Universal Cells.
Furthermore, she had already analyzed and decoded almost all of the genetic information of the human species.
Therefore, finding tiny robots hidden in the blood was nothing to her.
However, these nanomachines were composed of pure machinery rather than biological data.
With Elise's current knowledge base, she was unable to analyze them.
“Hurry, figure it out quickly!”
Like a child with a new toy in front of her, Elise greedily urged Celia.
She told her to quickly uncover the truth behind this miraculous technology.
“I am giving you a piece of advice.”
Celia sighed, unable to ignore the Queen's urging. To break Adian's stubbornness, she began to persuade him.
She told him that if this continued, Elise would bring him unimaginable pain, and suggested that if he cooperated honestly, he could avoid the suffering and save his life.
“...Remaining silent won't help you.”
Celia sighed softly, straightened her back, and reached out. She used magic to manifest a shimmering screen above her palm.
On the screen, his companions and the crew captured from other ships were being held in different parts of the same nest.
“You despicable woman!”
Adian was furious.
Celia smiled at his reaction.
Adian did not know Celia's true identity, but Celia, who was once human, knew his inner psychology and emotions very well.
“Your companions have already begun to confess.”
Celia didn't just brutally use the captives as hostages.
Celia watched as the researcher, Elena, screamed in terror at the sight of the disgusting Gene Stealer parasite writhing on her body, blurting out her identity information in a panic. Celia bit her lip.
On another screen, the Great Devourer was forcibly and continuously injecting parasites into another crew member's body.
The nanomachines in the body also had their limits.
In the struggle against the parasites, the number of nanomachines was gradually depleted, and their regeneration ability reached its limit, eventually ceasing operation entirely.
As a result, the crew member's body, whose defenses had been breached, was completely controlled by the infecting parasites.
“This way, we will hear everything we want to hear anyway. However, because of your stubbornness as the captain, this process will be filled with pain and terror.”
“Ugh... what on earth do you want?”
“Everything you know.”
When Adian's spirit was finally on the verge of collapsing, Celia's eyes brightened as she leveled her gaze with his.
‘Damn it... to a monster like this...’
Adian looked at her face as she approached and closed his eyes tightly.
Contrary to his rational mind which loathed them, his heart was pounding violently for some reason.
Was it fear, or some other emotion?
...
“They are from a civilization called Zion, and it seems they call their gods ‘Constructs’.”
Celia shared the information she had obtained with the colony in real time.
It was a well-organized report, clear enough for the Queens and even Lin Miao, who was watching through the screen, to understand.
Lin Miao's eyes sparkled with interest as he heard the name of a faction that even the deity forum didn't know about.
“I suspected as much when I heard they had spaceships. As expected, it's a familiar-sounding name.”
“The name Zion is confirmed to exist within the colony's memories.”
Yuno, from the Goddess of Light Association, confirmed that Zion was one of the Association's allied forces.
The name Zion had also frequently appeared during the interrogation of captives from the Goddess of Light Association, such as Chief Tech Kane.
“Captain Adian of the ship Rum said they were dispatched under the direct commission of the Goddess. They are not a regular army, but armed merchants...”
Their identities were also brought to light; they were neither Zion's regular army nor just any mercenaries.
Although it was shocking to have been nearly defeated by a single armed merchant ship, they had won in the end, so Elise didn't care much.
“The reinforcements that warped in using the coordinates they provided are similar to them. They are just a group of mercenaries who joined in to get a piece of the pie from the Goddess.”
“Warping...”
Elise reacted to this new technology.
A means of crossing world barriers that was different from a Stargate.
For them, who had to expand their power through invasion and aggression, it was an essential technology.
“Get it.”
Nothing more needed to be said.
Since she had judged that the technology and knowledge they possessed would be beneficial to the colony, Elise had to have it.
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