In the tranquil garden, the air, which had been a mixture of joy and warmth, was instantly frozen the moment Magna finished speaking.
Everyone's movements froze at that very moment.
Around the garden, the exotic flowers and plants that Sanguinia had personally cultivated, capable of sensing emotions, saw their originally brilliant and warm golden light rapidly fade away at this moment.
In its place was a cold, deathly gray-white, as if stained by fear.
Even Angronia's ceaseless chewing came to a halt.
For the first time, her amber eyes, which burned with pure Battle Intent, caught a scent in Magna's calm words—a scent of "End" that was purer, more fundamental, and far more unsettling than even Khorne's most insane bloodthirsty desires.
The perfectly elegant smile on Fogremia's face also vanished completely.
Her deep purple eyes stared fixedly at Magna, as if trying to find even the slightest hint of scholarly exaggeration on this new Sister's face.
However, she failed.
There was no expression on Magna's face.
It was a cold calmness that transcended fear and gravity, an absolute state, like one stating a physical constant.
"What is that?"
Eventually, it was Angronia who broke the suffocating silence.
Her voice was low, carrying a hint of the instinctive wariness a beast feels when facing an unknown natural predator.
Magna's gaze slowly swept across the faces of each Sister, all of which were filled with shock, and finally landed back on the head of the table, on the black-robed Goddess who had been quietly listening from the very beginning, her expression unchanged.
"It has no name."
Magna spoke slowly, with the rigorous and clear tone of someone presenting a paper at an academic seminar.
"Based on the anomalous perturbations of information entropy at the deepest levels of the Subspace that I have been able to analyze, I have tentatively named it—'source of the void'."
"It is not an entity, not a consciousness, and certainly not a life form with a physical shape."
"It is a state."
Magna paused, seemingly searching within her mind palace for the most precise vocabulary that mortal language could describe.
"—The final state of death for the universe."
"It is absolute zero, complete silence, the ultimate entropy increase where all energy and information will return to stillness."
These words, like cold ramblings from another dimension, sent a chill deep into the souls of all the Primarch Sisters present.
They were all ultimate creations of energy and emotion, born from the storms of the Subspace; their very existence represented "intensity" and "change."
And "nothingness" and "silence" were the fundamental "natural predators" that were diametrically opposed to the essence of their lives.
Magna watched the confusion and bewilderment on the Sisters' faces, then extended a slender finger and tapped lightly in the air.
In an instant, a holographic image constructed from her vast psychic power appeared above the crystal table.
It was a massive, fragile "bubble" that radiated warm light, filled with countless brilliant galaxies and complex flows of energy within.
"Our physical universe is just like this bubble."
Following this, Magna traced a line with her finger.
Outside that "bubble," an endless, pure, absolute darkness appeared, as if capable of devouring all light and Hope.
"And the 'source of the void' is the endless, cold deep sea that envelops our bubble."
"It is not 'attacking' us."
Magna's voice was calm to the point of cruelty.
"It is simply, slowly, and irreversibly 'eroding' and 'assimilating' our universe."
"It is like dropping a single drop of hot water into an infinite icy sea. Its final fate is not to be destroyed, but to gradually cool down and eventually become part of the icy sea."
"Losing all heat, losing all motion, losing all characteristics of 'existence'."
This intuitive yet desperate demonstration plunged everyone into a deeper silence.
"Then... what about Chaos?"
Sanguinia could not help but ask, her sky-blue eyes filled with deep confusion and sorrow.
"Since there is such a terrifying enemy, why do the Four Chaos Gods... why do they still wage endless wars within the universe?"
Magna looked at this kind-hearted Archangel, and for the first time, her crimson eyes revealed a hint of extremely complex, almost pitiful emotion.
Then, she uttered an answer so shocking and world-shattering that it was enough to overturn the worldviews of everyone present.
"Because Chaos itself is the...'stress response' generated by our universe to resist that 'absolute silence'."
"What?"
This time, even the usually calm and proud Fogremia gasped.
"Sister, think about it."
Magna's gaze turned to Leticia.
"If the 'source of the void' represents absolute 'quiet,' then what is the best way to resist it?"
Leticia's deep black eyes moved slightly.
"It is 'noise'."
"Exactly!"
A fanatical light, belonging to a sage, flashed in Magna's eyes!
"It is 'noise'! It is extreme, ceaseless 'noise' filled with energy and information!"
"And what is the most intense 'noise' in this universe?"
"It is the emotions of life!"
"It is Hope, despair, anger, desire, love, hatred... all these primitive psychic energies, intense enough to Subspace reality and stir up monstrous waves in the Subspace!"
"Chaos is the ultimate collection of these 'noises'!"
"The Four Chaos Gods, and everything they represent—war, plague, conspiracy, lust... all these behaviors that can generate the most intense emotions are, in reality, a morbid, insane, and desperate form of'self-salvation' that our universe employs when facing the erosion of 'ultimate silence'!"
"So..."
Magna took a deep breath, delivering the final, chilling conclusion to this subversive report.
"So, the Four Chaos Gods are both the cancer of our universe and the destroyers of civilization."
"At the same time, they are also the most insane 'guardians' of this universe, acting in an unconscious state."
"They wage endless wars, spread endless plagues, and incite endless desires, not to destroy the universe—that would be meaningless to them."
"They only want to ensure that this universe can continuously produce enough intense 'emotional noise' to delay the final fate of the entire universe being completely swallowed by that 'absolute silence'."
"They just want this universe to 'live'."
"Even if it means living in pain, in distortion, and in madness, it is ten thousand times better than being assimilated by that cold, eternal'silence'."
"And this The Galaxy / Milky Way we inhabit is merely one of the countless prime 'pastures' they have enclosed to produce 'emotional noise'."
Boom!
This shocking truth, like a supernova detonating on a spiritual level, completely stunned all the Primarch Sisters present into an endless, blank silence.
For the first time, they realized that the truth behind the universe they inhabited was so absurd, so sorrowful, and so... desperate.
The Chaos they hated, fought against, and viewed as their ultimate enemy... was actually the morbid "immune system" that this universe relied on to survive?
What is this?
What is this!
In the garden, that deathly silence lasted for a long, long time.
Until a calm voice, seemingly devoid of any emotional fluctuation, slowly rang out, breaking the frozen despair.
"Then."
Leticia picked up the cup of flower tea in front of her, which had long since gone cold, and took a gentle sip.
She raised her eyes, her pure black pupils calmly gazing at Magna, and asked a pure, strategic question.
"How should we judge the progress of the 'source of the void's' erosion?"
Looking at her Goddess's terrifyingly calm face, the sage-like satisfaction Magna felt from revealing the ultimate truth vanished instantly without a trace.
In its place was a deeper, soul-felt awe.
Faced with such a subversive truth, all the Sisters were plunged into the massive shock of a collapsing worldview.
Only she, only their Goddess, had moved past all emotions at the very first moment and pointed directly to the core of the problem.
Magna took a deep breath, forcing her heart, which had been racing slightly from excitement, to return to absolute calm.
Then, in a tone even more grave than before, she spoke a deduction that was enough to make all of them feel even more horrified.
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