Chapter 312

Chapter 312: Noble Sacrifice

A thunderous crash shook the entire hall. The Hermitage Order members “captured” by walls, floors, and consoles watched in horror as a chunk of the control hall’s ceiling smashed down onto the Sage.

The trapped cultists struggled violently, trying to break free of the metal covering them, only to feel the restraints grow heavier. Rage rose from all directions—rage that poured straight from the ship that had come alive, as if it soaked every wall, every pipe, every line.

Then the pipe that had fallen from above was slowly lifted.

The Sage in white robes stood up.

With each tiny movement, his body grew taller and stronger. When he first crawled out from under the pipe, he was only a tall, thin old man. But when he straightened, he became a towering, perfect warrior over two meters tall, like a hero carved in stone.

The wrinkles of age faded. Sunken cheeks filled out, his skin tightening and gleaming. The white robe that had hung too loose became a fitted short robe. He lifted his head to the steel face on the wall. Bright blue electricity danced through his beard and hair. His expression was stern and fearless, almost godlike.

He stepped forward, and lightning split beneath his feet.

“The greatness and necessity of the Path of Saint Veneration is not something you can understand!”

A cultist trapped in a steel cage suddenly grew wild with hope. Even bound tight, he shouted, “The Sage has completed the final transformation! We’re saved!”

Other Hermitage Order members lit up at the sight of the Sage’s new form, as if a savior had descended before their eyes. Even if they couldn’t imagine how he would fight a living ship that had turned against everyone, they still cheered, feeling hope flare again.

Yu Sheng said nothing.

Two chunks of steel tore free from the wall and hurtled like cannon shells toward the burly old man in white. At the same time, the ground beneath him softened, gravity in the hall twisted into chaos, and everything Yu Sheng could control became weapons and restraints, launching a brutal, relentless assault.

Lightning ripped across the hall. Steel fell like a storm.

The burly old man rose into the air in the warped gravity, controlling thunder as he faced the onslaught. A rocky texture spread across his flesh, and he endured iron blocks smashing into him—then fired a powerful bolt of lightning straight at the face on the far wall.

To Yu Sheng, it meant nothing.

Right now, his body was the entire ship. The face in the hall was only an interface for speaking.

Thunder exploded against the wall, scattering blazing arcs and melted scars across the metal surface. Yu Sheng’s face warped, sagged, and dispersed—but in the next blink, the roof opened an eye and looked down at the Sage floating in midair.

“You don’t seem to care that much about whether your compatriots live or die,” Yu Sheng said slowly.

The few Hermitage Order members trapped in the wall were caught by the aftershock. They turned into smoking lumps of char inside their metal cages.

The cheering in the hall began to die.

The burly old man wrapped in lightning only turned and looked up at the larger face on the roof, fearless. “This too is a noble sacrifice—”

In the next second, his already enlarged body swelled violently again, and even fiercer lightning engulfed him.

His bulk pushed past muscular into grotesque. Muscles bulged into a monstrous mass. Limbs stretched and warped. Skin split apart. Blinding electricity burned away flesh beneath, and it flowed like liquid, dripping down. The white robe—the symbol of authority and status—turned to ash. In only a few breaths, the Sage became a lightning-filled aberration, no longer even shaped like a person. Thick arcs burst from its limbs, and wherever they swept, bodies blackened. More than a dozen Hermitage Order members were turned into char in an instant.

“This is all a noble sacrifice!”

Yu Sheng felt like his ventilation fans had just sucked in a mouthful of reactor exhaust.

“Holy shit— you kill your own people harder than I do?!”

Even as he yelled, he didn’t stop. The hull structure linked to this compartment shifted violently. Metal flowed, pulled, moved, reshaped. Two enormous hands formed from the side walls and clapped toward the floating aberration!

He had to deal with this growing, unstable old monster fast, or the cultists here would all be slaughtered by their own leader.

The metal palms slammed together.

But the very next second, dazzling lightning blasted out from between them.

Under Yu Sheng’s stunned gaze, the hands were forced apart inch by inch. White-hot material dripped from the air like blood, and the thunder-wreathed aberration appeared again. It had completely lost its original shape, as if it had been flattened by the clap and then forced itself back into form through sheer violence.

Seven or eight arms pushed out of the swollen, writhing flesh, prying the metal hands open.

A howl rose from the lightning.

“They are unstable after many iterations. They have not yet ascended into pure, loyal individuals. Rather than let them spill secrets to the enemy and lose their glory, I will send them early to stand beside our forebears while their souls are still pure!”

Yu Sheng stared.

“…What?”

Even more shocking, the surviving Hermitage Order members didn’t rage or falter at the death sentence. Instead, they shouted with feverish devotion—

“Step onto the Path of Saint Veneration!”

“Martyrdom! Martyrdom! Martyrdom!”

“We salute you— the way of perfect good bears witness!”

A deranged, ecstatic atmosphere flooded the hall. Yu Sheng had never seen madness like this—faith without logic, marching straight down a road of destruction while still burning with pride. It left him genuinely shaken.

Then he noticed something worse.

A burst of lightning far stronger than before erupted within the aberration. Its size was swelling rapidly, as if something was about to explode from inside it.

“This too is a noble sacrifice!”

Yu Sheng’s scalp went cold.

He didn’t understand how much black tech the Hermitage Order had, or how a living person could turn into something like this so fast. But he was sure of one thing—if this Sage-ball exploded here, not only would every cultist in the hall die, the ship’s central structure might be blown to pieces.

He had no confidence he could repair damage on that scale. This wasn’t the same as reconnecting a few pipes and wires.

So he chose the backup plan of the backup plan without hesitation.

At the far end of the control hall, the thick composite porthole shrieked—then tore open into a jagged, gaping hole.

Gas-leak alarms screamed. A violent gale swept the hall as the ship’s interior faced open vacuum. A terrifying suction roared from the breach.

At the same time, a massive pipe dropped from the roof and, halfway down, swung like a club, smashing into the rapidly swelling aberration with brutal force.

“Out you go!”

The Sage roared in the raging wind. The sudden pressure change twisted his last howl into something horrific, but under the chaos of warped gravity, the brutal impact, and the terrible pull of vacuum, the monster couldn’t hold itself. Like a cannonball, it was flung straight out of the Pillar of Order.

In the next second, the shattered porthole repaired itself rapidly. Before the surviving Hermitage Order cultists could die of exposure, Yu Sheng sealed the hole in time.

Then his attention snapped to the view outside.

The aberration hurtled into space, still racing away from the Pillar of Order at terrifying speed. Blinding lightning over its body swelled and shrank like a violently beating heart. Yu Sheng watched it fly farther and farther, bracing for an explosion. Even without a shockwave in vacuum, energy like that bursting at close range would still be bad news.

He tensed.

The aberration convulsed a few times… then kept flying farther.

And it really did just keep flying.

It even accelerated, until it became a streak of light shooting through the stars.

Yu Sheng blinked.

“…Huh?”

…

“Noble sacrifice, noble sacrifice… bearing infamy is sacrifice too…”

In the depths of space, the aberration seethed. Radiation and cold tore at it, pain blooming through every nerve it still had, but it knew it had survived the ghost.

From the inhuman lump of flesh, a thin limb split out. At its end, it clutched a talisman: a ruby set in the center of twin circles, glittering.

It poured its will into the beacon.

“Th-this is Babole-3. Requesting… requesting to consume one blessed shelter—any coordinates will do. I-I’m dying… I have important intel!”

A flash cut through the black, and the Sage Babole-3 vanished into the void.