An exploration fleet had gone missing...
Selene did not find the matter unusual in the slightest.
Interstellar expansion, void exploration, universal conquest—these were no different from the great ocean voyages and age of discovery of old, filled with uncertainty and danger.
Losing contact was perfectly normal.
Beyond the unknown void lay both peril and opportunity.
Just as Rogue Traders had sprung up across the Empire like bamboo shoots after rain.
Nearly every colony world formally incorporated into the Imperial governance system—even the most basic frontier colony—once stability was achieved, would inevitably see ambitious dreamers set sail. Some were driven by interest, some by survival, others simply by the desire to scrape together a living of freedom. They steered toward the starry sea said to be paved with gold—yet soaked in blood.
Of course, half of them ended with shattered ships and lost fortunes. Others barely broke even, managing only a subsistence-level freedom.
Making a modest profit, improving one's life, accumulating minor wealth, edging closer to minor nobility status—that was already the high point of most civilian Rogue Traders' lives. True windfalls, meteoric rises in a single leap—those were forever the privilege of a rare few.
After all, they were not the military. Nor the state.
Civilian fleets, in scale, tonnage, firepower, and the integration of key onboard systems, were utterly incomparable. The gap was vast.
But the problem was what now lay before Selene...
—Inquisition Exploration Fleet: Lost Contact—
Personnel and equipment loss list...
Frigates... destroyers... transport ships... factory-forge vessels... cruisers... battlecruisers... automaton legions... annihilation mechanized units... tactical Titan legions... Imperial Auxiliary Regiment XXX... Auxiliary Corps I—XXX, VII—XXX, IX—XXX...
Pending confirmation and deactivation: Demon Inquisitor Chapter
Pending posthumous commendation: Chapter First Captain, Sergeant Major John-117
Tap. Tap. Tap...
Leaning back in her chair, Selene rhythmically drummed her fingers against the desk as she reviewed the detailed data and the explanatory report submitted by the Imperial Navy reinforcement fleet that had arrived afterward.
She sank into thought.
My Sergeant Major... gone?
From a macro perspective, the disappearance of an Inquisition exploration fleet was not unprecedented. Astartes legions, Imperial Navy battlegroups—even administrative departments—had recorded fleets going missing before.
Many times.
Including but not limited to—
Encountering cosmic rifts; being struck by void storms within the interstitial cracks of the multiverse while charting unknown realities; experiencing spatial displacement caused by black-and-white hole phenomena during faster-than-light warp travel; exiting translation into stellar storms; colliding with the Big Bang of a newborn universe; entering a dying universe undergoing terminal collapse; simple temporary communications failure; being ambushed upon entry by the defensive forces of a highly advanced galactic civilization; accidentally trespassing into the divine domain of a transcendent universe and being annihilated; or translating directly into the interior of a supermassive void titan.
There were too many possibilities. The methods of disappearance were colorful indeed.
But ordinarily, unless the fleet had been annihilated instantly, there should have been a chance to reestablish contact.
Even in the event of destruction, there should have been residual signs—distress signals, traces of antimatter weapon discharge, proton armaments, black hole bombs, Honkai Energy weapon signatures, debris fields from desperate resistance.
After all, the Imperial military—this monster Selene had created with her own hands—was inherently abnormal. Backed by Selene's blessing, the Empire's attrition rate, even during outward expansion into unknown realms, was astonishingly low.
Compared to its peers, that rate was far lower than the UEG, the UED, the Terran Confederacy, the Terran Dominion, the Earth Federation, or even the former Human Empire.
It was only because the Sacred Selene Empire's scale was so vast—and expanding at every moment—that its losses appeared staggering.
With that thought, Selene lifted the report once more. Her fingers tapped lightly. A smile tugged at her lips.
"Nothing found. Completely vanished. No large-scale battle traces discovered..."
The report showed that the first Imperial Navy reinforcement fleet had conducted multiple sweeps and still found nothing.
No clues.
That stretch of extraterritorial void, beyond the reach of the Honkai hyperdimensional network, was pristine.
A deathly silence. According to combined readings from onboard instruments and the fleet's strongest observers, space was stable. No ripples. No scars.
Realizing the situation was not an ordinary loss-of-contact event, the fleet commander had immediately compiled all data and reported it to the Imperial Capital.
Resting her chin on her hand, Selene's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
"Cosmic deity? A pinnacle weapon from some hyper-advanced civilization? Or did they reach the boundary of a powerful universe, triggering the self-defense and rejection of a world barrier? Or perhaps temporal turbulence?"
Several options formed in her mind. All plausible.
If mechanical detection failed, and her own naval commanders could not discern the cause, then perhaps the issue was simply a matter of insufficient strength.
"Better take a look."
Snap.
She closed the report and rose, stretching slightly before shaking her head.
"Am I tying myself up in my own web—creating extra work for myself?"
The Imperial Inquisition was under Sebas' oversight. A missing exploration fleet should have been his responsibility.
Unfortunately, he was on leave.
Approved by Selene herself.
After the "Peach Banquet," well-fed and in high spirits, Selene had generously waved her hand and granted Sebas a vacation—complete with warm wishes for an enjoyable break.
Now, not even halfway through that leave, Sebas had already departed the Imperial Capital at his young mistress' gentle urging, liberated and relaxed, following Selene's own example of traveling incognito. Which pleasure-garden worlds he currently wandered, no one knew.
She did not constantly monitor his movements. Not for any ulterior reason. It was a matter of respecting privacy. A proper distance was healthy for all.
Riiip—
Lifting her leg and stepping forward, Selene sliced her right hand through the air. A pitch-black fissure rimmed with violet-crimson radiance bloomed open, expanding to envelop her. As she stepped inside, the rift sealed shut, leaving only fading particles of brilliant purple-red drifting in its wake...
Creak...
"Your Majesty, these are the newly compiled memorials...?? Your Majesty?"
Some time later, the duty adjutant intelligence, Offensive Bias, appeared, using a gravitic device to levitate a stack of data folders.
He froze.
Had Her Majesty... slipped off again?
Confirming that Selene was not in the study—and that even within his authorized perception range her presence could not be detected—Offensive Bias quietly began organizing the slightly disordered desk and filing cabinets she had left behind.
Should he inform Sir Sebas?
Offensive Bias' cognitive array modules continued their line of thought.
One second later, he stopped.
Forget it. That exceeded his functional authority. He was not his sister construct, Mendicant Bias, who had a tendency to overstep. His own personality parameters were configured to be more steady and restrained.
After arranging the imperial seals and insignia neatly, he sorted the newly arrived memorials into proper categories.
Creak.
The doors closed.
The imperial study once again fell silent and empty, save for yet another towering stack of documents added to the desk.
The cover title of the topmost file read—
"On the Proposed Handling of the Cosmic Dark Matter Pirate Fleet"
...
Dark void.
Using the expanding tendrils of the Honkai dimension and the final residual traces left by her vanished fleet, Selene locked onto the coordinates and swiftly pierced through spatial barriers and countless shores of the multiversal sea.
With a soundless puff, she stepped out of a spatial fissure—having casually swatted aside a swarm of colossal leviathans dwelling within the void and hyperspace, annihilating and crushing a dozen worlds along her path without pause.
"This is the place."
She had already noticed the Imperial Navy fleet spreading across the surface layer of this region of space, searching for traces of the missing.
At a glance, their professionalism and reaction speed were beyond reproach. Selene had no intention of reprimanding them. This was a difference in realm. Their onboard detection arrays had been pushed to their absolute limits. If nothing could be found, then nothing could be found.
"Scorching… proliferating… gestating… turbulent… chaotic… A newborn universe."
With no desire to manifest herself before others, Selene glanced around and let out a soft murmur. The faint summoning from that direction was immediately locked onto. She tore through layer after layer of spacetime barriers, crossing the boundary seas, until a vision of utter chaos—like the aftermath of a cosmic big bang—entered her perceptual reach.
One word: chaos.
The confusion of a universe newly born. Endless expansion after primordial detonation. Storms of fundamental particles—electrons, photons, neutrinos—sweeping across the cosmos. Even more striking, the outward leakage of refined origin-essence particles from a cosmic cocoon—something that could never form within an ordinary world bubble.
All of it confirmed her conclusion.
This was the prologue to the birth of a powerful transcendent universe.
No wonder her fleet commander had detected nothing.
To attempt detection in the early stages of a universe's explosive genesis was akin to panning for gold in a sea of sand.
And this was the birth of a transcendent universe. The environmental complexity was exponentially greater.
Selene did not hesitate. Drawing upon her dominion over all Honkai creations and their derivative influences, she forced her way into this unknown world the next instant.
It resembled an infinite kaleidoscopic tunnel of flowing light—brilliant and prismatic, saturated with innumerable colors. There was no concept of length, width, or height. Everything was formed by boundless layers of luminous substance, stacked without end.
Beyond that, the profound colors and eternal silence pressed inward as though bypassing sight and sound entirely, expanding endlessly in all directions.
Selene stood at the far end of this radiant tunnel—the precise opposite shore. No matter how this universe expanded, it could never truly touch her.
"Interesting… The spacetime reshaping triggered by cosmic birth. As the material universe began to solidify, it happened to resonate with John-117's expedition fleet, which was preparing for superluminal warp transition. The expanding universe-bubble directly absorbed the fleet mid-translation into its newborn domain."
She reconstructed the sequence of events.
"But why would a universe so newly born—without even a fully formed material world, let alone life—actively accept external visitors?"
Logically, should it not seal itself away? The Empire had not forced entry by locating its coordinates. They had merely passed nearby—yet it had absorbed them instead of rejecting or destroying them.
More importantly, from the moment Selene projected a secondary consciousness into this nascent universe, she felt no repulsion whatsoever.
None.
That was rare.
In her experience, even as a mere strand of consciousness, entering most worlds—even before assimilation—elicited at least some degree of resistance.
Unless…
Having reached a conclusion, Selene's eyes became like a still lake, reflecting the unmoving cosmic firmament before her.
A multiverse.
A vast and powerful composite multiverse.
And one in which newborn universes had accepted outsiders more than once.
This universe before her was but an insignificant fragment within that immeasurable multiverse. Newly formed. Even the most primitive lifeforms—or the transcendent beings and gods that coexisted with it—had yet to be born.
If so, then the Inquisition fleet under John-117 might already have been guided deeper into the greater multiversal structure behind it.
For mighty composite multiverses, foundational multiversal axes, inclusivity was strength. They were not averse to external possibilities. On the contrary—the more variables introduced, the more complete and powerful they became.
Change was, after all, a form of amusement for a macrocosmic observer.
Ceasing her observation, realizing something, Selene smiled faintly and raised her head. Crimson eyes burned with desire and longing. The delicate curve of her lips lifted unconsciously.
"As expected… you possess consciousness."
She walked forward.
One step—reaching the heart of this newborn universe.
"Young though you are, you are not yet qualified to speak with me… Friend, you have observed long enough. Show yourself. My fleet—where have you sent them?"
Her lips moved in silent incantation.
Boom.
Each syllable she uttered resonated directly with the universe itself. The growing cosmos trembled like a beating heart.
Until a golden radiance, flowing with luminous brilliance, blossomed forth—
"Greetings, unknown supreme creator from beyond the domain."
—
—
40 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon:
Patreon.com/DaoOfHeaven