"Damn it! Just a quarter of an hour more!"
The Silence King swung the four thick arms on his back with all his might.
"In at most another quarter hour, I'll have a complete lock on that counterfeit throne. Then I can open the subspace transmission channel and save us an enormous amount of travel time!"
After his brief outburst of anger, the King of Silence quickly calmed himself.
Both of his left arms stroked his chin as he muttered to himself:
"That brat Roya must have run into a truly terrifying enemy, to the point he had no choice but to risk being traced by me and activate that so-called Void Throne."
"To push Roya into such a corner… it could only be the Four Gods of Chaos!"
"Heh… I'd love to see with my own eyes how pathetically that boy is toyed with by those four evil deities!"
"Roya, boy… you'd better hold on for a while longer. Don't let yourself be corrupted into becoming the God-Chosen Demon Prince too quickly!"
The Silence King suddenly erupted into a hoarse, deranged laughter, before sending a psychic transmission to the entire fleet:
"Disengage the shadow screen of the subspace barrier! Full speed ahead! Get me to Pirate Star in the shortest possible time!"
Whether to reach Roya before he was completely corrupted and thereby fulfill the Hive Will's command, or simply to personally witness the sight of Roya being toyed with by the Chaos Gods, the Silence King was unwilling to waste even a single second longer.
In stark contrast to Roya's alternating terror and ferocity, Vegapunk had already regained his composure.
Yet his so-called calm was nothing but the tearing away of his false façade, fully revealing the hideous face of near-total corruption.
Upon his body—long since transformed into bio-metal—pus-filled, festering growths began to swell and rupture.
From within those ulcers, bean-sized grotesque insects hatched and burst forth, buzzing gleefully around Vegapunk, crawling in and out of the countless boils across his flesh. Their wings droned with a ceaseless hum, accompanied by the sickening squelch of bursting abscesses.
This was a scene so vile it should have induced nausea and horror, yet it carried an unholy, insidious allure. The sound and sight ensnared the minds of civilians whose spirits were weak or whose willpower was frail, drawing their vacant gazes toward Vegapunk.
Gradually, their eyes grew clouded with the same sickly yellow-green corruption that stained those boils. Their spirits had already been pulled, through some unfathomable channel, into another plane of existence.
And within that plane, their expressions were transformed—radiant with ecstasy, as though they had reached the long-dreamed paradise on the far shore, their bodies and souls at last delivered into salvation.
But in the material world, their bodies began to rot and ulcerate grotesquely.
From their boils, too, insects clawed their way free, tearing through frail, weakened flesh in their desperate struggle to emerge!
The hidden hand behind all this had finally revealed itself, openly unleashing the power of corruption, using Vegapunk's body as its medium.
This corruption worked from the spirit outward: once the soul was infected, it instantly mirrored into the physical world—flesh rotting, pustules bursting—while in turn accelerating the decay of the spirit itself!
Yet those who truly and devoutly believed in Roya possessed a spiritual resistance more than sufficient to repel this corruption. Drawn into resonance with the radiance of Roya's divine perception, they themselves began to shine with a faint light, shielding the less faithful but fortunate ones nearby.
"Vegapunk!"
With a furious shout, Roya's perceptive radiance flared brighter once more!
Brilliant, yet still gentle, the light washed over the civilians ensnared by Vegapunk's corruption, like a purifying agent scrubbing filth away.
The yellow-green taint of corruption melted from their eyes as snow before fire.
Awakening from their false euphoria, the people were seized by the agonizing torment of their rotting, pus-dripping flesh.
The pain was so unbearable they nearly lost their senses, clawing desperately at their decaying bodies, trying to rip free the insects gnawing within their sores.
Thankfully, the perceptive radiance also carried abundant blessings of life.
Bathed in that vast vitality, their rotten flesh sloughed away on its own, carrying with it the poison and corruption.
And in its place, fresh blood and skin swiftly regenerated, displaying a power that could heal the dying and restore the bones of the dead.
With the pain gone, these civilians—having endured torment etched into their very souls—naturally became Roya's most devoted believers, joining the throngs of fervent prayers, extending protection to ever more of the ordinary populace.
Alas, the perceptive radiance could not touch those who had long since begun rotting, the ones hidden beneath their black cloaks.
And so Roya realized—they, like the elite troops of the defense forces, had already been utterly corrupted, beyond all hope of salvation.
Even as he rescued the civilians, Roya did not forget the root of all this: Vegapunk.
All the remaining golden faith-energy he could muster, he poured entirely into Vegapunk's spirit.
Roya knew full well this method was, in essence, no different from the corruption afflicting Vegapunk—it was merely to replace one form of "corruption" with another.
Even if he succeeded in saving Vegapunk from corruption, it would bind him irrevocably as one of Roya's most devout followers.
But in this desperate moment, Vegapunk's personal faith was irrelevant.
What mattered most was purging his spirit of corruption!
For this faith-energy, rooted in Roya's perceptive radiance, was itself the embodiment and extension of his will.
Thus, the instant it entered Vegapunk's soul, Roya directly perceived a presence of unspeakable filth.
It was none other than the source of all sickness and misfortune in the material world—unceasingly birthing and spreading plagues without end!
And yet, perversely, Roya sensed that this being bore toward all life a love as tender as that of a father.
Whether it was Vegapunk writhing in torment beneath its corruption, the thousands of already-rotting souls beyond salvation, or even the swarms of virulent bacteria ravaging them—this entity regarded them all as its children, equally cherished.
Such paternal love was so overwhelming that even Roya faltered for an instant, seized by a delusion that all beings truly should be equal, all bathed in the Father's love, all rejoicing together in His garden—delighting in the endless cycle of agony wrought by plague.
A notion as absurd as it was terrifying.