Chapter 1: What Is the Honored Name
Meteors fell like a violent rain of fire, crashing into the earth, boiling the seas and shaking the heavens and the earth.
In the Tehran Star Domain, on the planet Tehran, a once vibrant ocean world that had nurtured intelligent life resembling jellyfish—the 'Tehran People'—was now enduring wave after wave of apocalyptic stellar impacts. Amid the meteors streaking across the sky, one could hear the roar of countless anti-aircraft fire and the hoarse cries of magical beasts.
"Damn it, these Chaos Monsters are simply unkillable!"
On the side of the planet facing away from the sun, it was now deep night. An anti-aircraft soldier was using his flexible tentacles to control a firing point, sending a steady stream of four-barreled artillery fire into the sky, pulling straight beams of light across the darkness. Silver-blue psionic beams surged through the atmosphere, burning one bizarre Chaos Monster after another into ash.
One could see thick clouds torn apart by the wreckage of a massive black beast. Its corpse still writhed and twisted, as if trying to give birth to a new generation of monsters, but dozens of light streams focused on it simultaneously, enveloping its entire body in a scorching blue glow. Even Chaos Monsters could not withstand such power. Its wreckage rapidly disintegrated, melted, and then exploded into a dim fireball in the sky, with sewage-like remains falling like rain into the ocean and onto the land.
There was no rest, no pause. Even though the anti-aircraft fire had formed a dense net covering the entire sky, and countless warships and fortresses beyond the sky were struggling to block the assault, raining down artillery fire like a storm, a few stragglers still managed to pierce through the defenses, their bodies already ablaze, plunging into the turbulent seas of Tehran.
However, even such a brutal battle had its end. As the planet rotated, night turned to day, and the Chaos invaders from outside the star domain had no chance to bypass the spaceborne defense net and reach the inner side of the domain's reverse. Naturally, they could not reach the other side of the planet. Seeing the light at the horizon gradually brighten and the number of Chaos Monster attacks dwindle until they ceased altogether, the anti-aircraft soldier's tentacles finally twitched, and his entire jellyfish-like body collapsed limply to the ground.
Due to prolonged high-intensity thinking and movement, the water composing the anti-aircraft soldier's body had all heated up, like a hot water bottle. The battle had come to a temporary halt.
The anti-aircraft soldier was not worried about the damage the Chaos Monsters that had breached the planet might cause. On a life-sustaining planet equipped with an anti-Chaos field, as long as the Chaos erosion did not reach a critical threshold, the natural environment could decompose all monsters like rotting corpses. The purpose of their surface defense forces was merely to minimize the value of Chaos intrusion. The real main force was the Void Warships and fortresses in space.
"Is this the nineteenth wave this month...?"
However, unlike the fleet, which could take the initiative to attack and destroy the enemy, the surface defense forces, forced to passively endure enemy assaults, bore immense psychological pressure. After resting for a while, once the water in his body had cooled, the Tehran anti-aircraft soldier finally squirmed to his feet. He shook off the condensation on his body and muttered in frustration and anger: "And this month has only been five days!"
The Tehran Star Domain, located on the front lines of the Chaos battlefield, was indeed a bridgehead against Chaos, but encountering nearly twenty waves in less than a week was utterly baffling. After all, Chaos's forces were not infinite. Such futile, unorganized attacks on a heavily fortified planetary fortress were nothing but a free victory.
Yet the anti-aircraft soldier felt no joy in victory. On the contrary, his heart sank like a stone dropped into water.
"At this rate... we won't have enough shells and energy..."
Like most civilizations in this world, the Tehran civilization was a transcendent civilization that had awakened psionic power. Their conventional weapons, aside from the universe-wide 'Psionic Light Lance,' were only electromagnetic cannons and fission weapons, which were of little use against Chaos Monsters. To use psionic weapons continuously, the operator either had to be an Omega-level (Ultimate-rank) psionic user or connect to a 'Psionic Storage Tank' the size of a truck. As for psionic engines... they had not yet been popularized to the point of being installed at every anti-aircraft firing point.
The anti-aircraft soldier knew very well that his single-person firing point had only two psionic storage tanks, normally enough to handle several months of assaults. But now, one tank was empty, and the other was more than half gone. At this rate, by tomorrow, he would have to squeeze his own psionic energy, shooting his soul out as bullets.
Of course, such consumption was naturally more disadvantageous for Chaos. Even if the entire Tehran Star Domain defense line were wiped out now, the losses suffered by Chaos would be dozens of times greater than the normal battle loss ratio. In a sense, this was entirely worthwhile—but that was how the higher-ups thought. The soldiers at the bottom, the Tehran people whose home planet was Tehran, did not see it as worthwhile. For instance, the anti-aircraft soldier was now waving his tentacles, cursing the higher-ups of the Galactic Guardian Alliance.
"Damn it! What the hell is going on with the logistics?! We've been fighting continuously for five days, and the supplies still haven't arrived?!"
Although the anti-aircraft soldier was furious, the Tehran language had few swear words, limited to soft terms like 'damn it' and 'so annoying.' Moreover, he knew very well why the battle had been going on for five days without reinforcements arriving.
It was all the fault of those Midgardians!
The logistics supplies responsible for the defense lines of the Tehran Star Domain and the surrounding five star domains were all transferred through the Midgard Star Domain. Recently, for some reason, the leaf-headed Midgardians had applied to the Alliance's higher-ups for permission to hold an ultra-large-scale ritual. After a tense emergency meeting, the Alliance's higher-ups had approved it. This ritual granted the Midgardians nearly the highest level of material mobilization authority and consumed a significant portion of the logistics system's resources, causing delays in supply deliveries to some front lines that had recently seen little combat.
The Tehran Star Domain had indeed been relatively peaceful recently, so the delays were more severe. No one could have predicted that the Chaos Monsters would be so ferocious. Even if the rear urgently dispatched supplies after receiving the distress signal, it couldn't be transferred within a week.
"What 'Void Portal'? Isn't it just a modified version of the 'Void Anchor' that Chaos Monsters commonly use?"
Thinking of this, the anti-aircraft soldier grew even more indignant: "And summoning a 'Deity'—are those Midgardians still living in the Middle Ages? Even if their god, according to records, has a maximum output no higher than a Void Mother Beast, why does it deserve to mobilize resources from several star domains?!"
He knew that although Void Mother Beasts were powerful, they were not invincible. For instance, the main cannon of the Tehran Star Domain's stellar base had the power to severely wound a Void Mother Beast. Diverting supplies from several front-line star domains to conduct an unstable, inefficient summoning ritual with no effective control measures was nothing but a waste of resources, treating the lives of all front-line soldiers as nothing!
"I wonder if the summoning succeeded... Damn it, if it did, hurry up and come support us! Forget it, I'd rather have more psionic storage tanks—those are more reliable than any void creature."
The anti-aircraft soldier still couldn't understand what kind of void creature would make the Midgardians so willing to pay such a huge price, even taking enormous risks to conduct such a high-level summoning ritual, persisting even at the risk of losing the front line.
Just then, a blinding white light suddenly flashed in the sky—it ignited from the center of a distant star, raced through space for nearly ten minutes, and then arrived at the planet's outer edge.
This light stream, with a diameter exceeding three thousand kilometers, turned all celestial bodies along its path into pure white. Countless Chaos Monsters hidden in the darkness were illuminated, revealed, and then reduced to nothing. Small Chaos Monsters, less than a kilometer in size, were essentially incinerated instantly. Even larger ones, over five kilometers, could only withstand less than a second before being melted and vaporized.
"Stellar Main Cannon!"
The anti-aircraft soldier immediately closed his light-sensitive organs and deftly hid in a dark box to avoid being completely dried out by the intense light, but he was still overjoyed. Powered by the star, the base's main cannon, capable of severely wounding a Void Mother Beast with a single shot, could instantly destroy the main force of the Chaos Monster army. After enduring this blow, the Chaos Monster assaults would significantly decrease over the next few days.
But soon, worry crept in: "Now that the Void Mother Beast hasn't even appeared yet, the stellar main cannon has already been used... Within ten days, even if it can fire again, its power will be greatly reduced. We've lost our last counterattack measure."
The light cannon, gathering the star's power and infused with endless psionic energy, paid no heed to the concerns of a mere anti-aircraft soldier. It swept majestically through space, clearing all Chaos Monsters within eight astronomical units. The remaining twisted monsters, faced with such a vast light stream, could only turn and flee, not daring to offer any resistance.
Three minutes later, the light stream gradually faded, and the dark space returned to normal.
But the anti-aircraft soldier did not receive the 'stand down' order from the combat headquarters. After previous stellar main cannon firings that cleared the star domain's surroundings, such an order was always given, allowing the space fleet and surface defense forces to check for losses and recover their strength and spirit.
Without the dense, scorching anti-aircraft fire, even under the sun's rays, the entire planet of Tehran exuded a suppressed, icy-cold aura.
For most races, this was merely a psychological illusion caused by the stark contrast, but for the psionic-wielding Tehran people, it was not so simple.
"Warning! Detecting an ultra-large-scale psionic leap—it's a Void Mother Beast!"
Unsurprisingly, and hating his own accurate prediction, the anti-aircraft soldier immediately heard the command from combat headquarters: "All personnel, highest alert! We are about to face the twentieth wave!"
"Damn it! Everyone could guess that behind so many Chaos Monsters, there must be a Void Mother Beast, so why did they recklessly use the stellar main cannon?!"
The anti-aircraft soldier raised a tentacle and slapped it despairingly against his head, feeling like he was about to faint and turn into a plate of cold jellyfish salad: "Now what? How are we supposed to deal with it?!"
He was not alone. Even in the void fleet, countless people gasped or cried out in despair.
At the forefront satellite fortress, using advanced psionic detection instruments, the observers saw that not far from the heliosphere of the Tehran star system, a ring-shaped, dark green psionic rift was slowly opening. Accompanied by a psionic wave vast enough to shake planets, an ultra-giant Chaos Mother Beast, shaped like a starfish with a length of over five hundred kilometers from head to tail, crawled out of the rift like a monster emerging from hell.
Unlike most Chaos Monsters, whose surfaces were dark green or black, the starfish mother beast's surface was nearly completely smooth and translucent. Layers of liquid psionic energy flowed through this medium like blood vessels, granting it extremely strong psionic resistance. With this defense, even a stellar-level main cannon blast could not severely wound it in one hit. This was a psionic defense specialized by Chaos after prolonged combat with the Galactic Guardian Alliance.
Even though it was not a civilization, Chaos could still self-correct.
As the Void Mother Beast fully emerged from the psionic rift and arrived at the other end of spacetime, the ends of its five starfish-like tentacles opened into massive reproductive cavities, from which countless newborn monsters flew out, circling the mother beast like bees.
"Is there no end to this?!"
The anti-aircraft soldier could clearly see the real-time broadcast on the screen. He roared in anger and then began quickly checking the cannon barrels and energy converters for any faults—what else could he do? The surface defense forces couldn't retreat like the fleet if they couldn't win. Their final fate was either to be destroyed by their own people using planet-killing weapons or to be transformed along with all life on the planet into a new Void Mother Beast... At that point, other Alliance members might see a giant Chaos jellyfish or jellyfish floating in the vacuum.
But unlike the lamenting and silent surface defense forces and void fleet, something else was happening.
At the Tehran star, inside the stellar base's combat headquarters command center, an old, somewhat shriveled jellyfish was communicating with a Midgardian.
"As you can see, the Chaos Monsters have evolved tactical awareness. As soon as they detected our use of the stellar main cannon, they immediately called for a mother beast to attack."
The aged Tehran commander calmly watched the footage of the Void Mother Beast just crawling out of the spacetime rift. He said in a low voice: "But sometimes, having combat awareness makes them easier to deal with than when they were mere beasts... It has been lured out. Now, it's time to prove your methods."
"For your ritual, headquarters has paid a great price. Don't disappoint the Alliance or betray their trust."
"As you wish."
The polite Midgardian envoy nodded slightly. He took out a box from his pocket. The box was simple in design, a metal case without any patterns or markings. The envoy opened it without any flourish, revealing a small, palm-sized, droplet-like silver light mass.
Then, the envoy gently pushed the silver light—and it immediately disappeared, vanishing without a trace.
"...Just like that?"
The Tehran commander adjusted his sensory organs, still not reacting: "What did you just do?"
"Just like that."
The Midgardian envoy bowed slightly, speaking with fervor: "The will of the God has descended."
"Now, this is the end of Chaos."
At first, no one noticed this tiny silver droplet. Only the detection radar on the flagship of the Tehran void fleet registered a small object moving at eighty percent the speed of light in a straight line—it was quickly dismissed as a radar error, as the stellar main cannon had just fired, and the immense psionic energy was still disturbing the surrounding celestial bodies, making errors perfectly normal.
But soon, as the small object gradually slowed down, its mass began to increase dramatically—but by the time the fleet reacted, this anomalous subluminal mass had inexplicably expanded to the size of a soccer ball, and its weight exceeded that of a large main battleship.
"What is that thing?!"
In just the few seconds it took to widen their eyes in confusion, the silver droplet-shaped light ball had already flown nearly a million kilometers, passing directly through the entire fleet cluster. By the time technicians extracted a single frame from the fleeting footage, the light ball had expanded to about fifty centimeters in diameter, and dense micro-runes and various engine parts appeared around it, causing it to begin leaping.
At this point, the Tehran fleet could no longer track the light ball's whereabouts. They could only detect the psionic waves from the leap approaching the Void Mother Beast's location.
Soon, after a few minutes—which, for the Tehran void fleet that hadn't followed the leap, felt like over ten hours—at the edge of the heliosphere, seventeen light-hours from the Tehran star, a silver sphere with a diameter of one meter appeared in front of the Void Mother Beast.
"Det, detecting massive mass fluctuations!"
At the stellar base's combat headquarters command center, the detection officer stared in shock at the screen, looking up with an incredulous tone: "The Void Mother Beast cluster is retreating!"
"They're running away?!"
On the screen, countless light dots representing Chaos Monsters, along with a massive light ball representing the Void Mother Beast, were retreating—they scattered in panic like sheep encountering a tiger. This was the first time the Tehran people had seen the mindless Chaos Monsters display such intelligent behavior.
"How is this possible?!"
The water inside the jellyfish commander seemed about to boil, steam rising from his head: "A Void Mother Beast wouldn't flee even from a stellar main cannon; it would just tank the hit head-on—why are they suddenly scattering?!"
"Wait..."
Thinking of a possibility, the aged Tehran turned to look at the smiling Midgardian envoy.
The Midgardian envoy appeared to smile without speaking, but in truth, he was also confused.
"'The God' didn't tell me this would happen..."
He thought in bewilderment: "Wasn't it supposed to absorb the star's mass, transform into a giant combat form, and then fight the Void Mother Beast... This doesn't make sense."
But sometimes, defying logic is the norm for the strong.
On the screen, a tiny silver dot, invisible without magnification and careful observation, like dust, collided with the massive, starfish-shaped Void Mother Beast's body.
Then came the distortion.
The moment the tiny light dot touched the mother beast, the translucent anti-psionic medium was immediately corroded and assimilated. A layer of bright silver light spread, writhing, absorbing the Void Mother Beast's flesh—countless gears, as if alive, appeared, spinning and deriving more structures. Endless conduits, pistons, hydraulic devices, and various angular geometric structures began to form mechanical flesh and nerves. Within seconds, one of the five starfish-like tentacles of the Void Mother Beast had transformed into something else.
"Sss—crack!!"
In the vacuum, a scream echoed only in the mind. The mother beast, which lived by erosion, now suffered a reverse 'purification,' or rather, a 'predation' by a stronger being—one could see the converted tentacle, which now looked nothing like flesh and blood, but rather like a powerful mechanical arm, gears, levers, and all sorts of mechanical structures that heaven knows how they worked, humming, operating, releasing powerful energy fluctuations.
Undoubtedly, it now had its own will, so the tentacle adjusted its angle and whipped across the starfish mother beast's face, smashing countless bits of flesh.
"Gah—"
In the combat headquarters command center, the silent hall was broken by a half-scream from an observer, as if someone had choked them. Everyone stared in shock at the events on the screen, watching the Void Mother Beast's tentacle rebel, beating itself until it was nearly dead, their minds almost blank.
Honestly, even in their dreams, they couldn't have imagined such a fantastical scene.
Were they really not dreaming?
"...By our God."
The Midgardian envoy was the first to react. He swallowed his saliva (coolant), raised his hand, and drew a Φ symbol on his chest: "Thank his might for protecting us."
The Tehran commander stood quietly before the screen, expressionless, his observation organs motionless.
Now, the massive starfish-shaped Void Mother Beast had curled up, looking like it had been beaten unconscious. But the silver mechanical structure did not stop spreading. It continued to spread, decomposing the giant Void Mother Beast into a hazy silver mist, where countless gears, levers, and various transmitters and microstructures could be seen writhing within the mist, and around this silver mist, countless Chaos Monsters, as if brain-controlled, rushed into the mist one after another.
"No, it's not control—it's gravity!"
An observer keenly noticed something wrong, she exclaimed loudly: "Detecting a variable gravity source! All Chaos Monsters are being sucked in!"
At this moment, the Void Mother Beast had been completely decomposed into a nebula-like mist, and at the center of the mist, a tiny but dazzling light point appeared. After shining for an instant, it rapidly contracted and dimmed, completely absorbing the immense silver cloud.
Light twisted.
The chaotic and massive gravitational waves shattered all detection lenses.
What remained on the screen was only a final 'black dot' from which even light could not escape.
That was a dim yet dazzling 'dark star' shining outside the galaxy.
—An astonishingly long silence.
After a long while, the Tehran commander exhaled, closed the screen in front of him, and triggered a cacophony of shocked discussions among the staff.
He turned to look at the Midgardian envoy, who, though equally stunned inside, had to maintain a calm exterior.
"Although it's a bit abrupt, Mr. Milanel (the Midgardian envoy's name)."
The Tehran commander said, his tone seeming a bit embarrassed: "Well, um..."
At this point, the liquid inside his body began to boil, and even his shriveled skin swelled: "The God you worship..."
"The God you worship... what is His honored name?"