116: Speaker of the Federal Parliament

"Punishment Task Force, this is High Command."

The cold and majestic voice of Military Councilor Talon rang out on the communication screen of the causality bridge.

"It has been confirmed that the physical parameters of the Gate of Hell star system have completely collapsed. This area has been marked as a permanent, irreversible physical exclusion zone. Your mission has been successfully completed, and this is the ultimate deterrent to all enemies who dare to covet the Faleim Civilization."

Talon paused for a moment, then issued a new order.

"You are now permitted to return. On the way back, you do not need to hide your tracks or avoid routes. Simply follow a straight line back to the B-79 star system. Along the way, annihilate all targets belonging to the Iofer Federation, as well as any entities that dare to show hostility toward you."

"Let this return journey become a burning path of blood."

Task Force Commander Major General Sal stood before the holographic Star Map. The straight route displayed on the Star Map, cutting through the heart of the Iofer Federation, caused a cruel and joyful smile to curl the corners of his mouth.

"As you command, Councilor." Sal gave a standard military salute to the communication screen. "We will continue to bring destruction to them as a parting gift."

The communication ended.

The massive hull of the causality slowly turned. The Reality Parameter Modifier on the ship's belly, which had been emitting chaotic light, was retracted and replaced by fully charged conventional weapon systems.

Around it, the other 35 warships adjusted their positions, escorting the flagship like stars surrounding the moon.

"All fleets, Warp Engine activate."

"Proceed along the route."

"Aggressive stance, free fire authorized."

Following Sal's order, the fleet turned into thirty-six silver-white streaks of light, charging into the vast and fragile territory of the Iofer Federation.

This was destined to be a one-sided massacre. Along this return route, several Iofer Federation colonial star systems, dozens of resource collection points, and countless merchant fleets busy on the shipping lanes would meet their dooms without any warning.

Although the Faleim People's warships could no longer use that extreme reality-modifying weapon, mere conventional Neutron Emitters, Phase Disintegration Beams, and gamma-ray cannons were enough to turn those creations of the conventional interstellar era into piles of space junk.

Wherever they passed, stars dimmed, leaving only burning wreckage and a dead, silent vacuum, drawing a straight scar composed of death on the Star Map.

...

Meanwhile, unprecedented panic was spreading wildly within the territory of the Iofer Federation.

The sudden loss of contact with the capital star system, the Gate of Hell, was initially thought to be an extremely rare, large-scale communication failure or signal shielding caused by some natural disaster. After all, in the perception of the Iof People, that was an absolutely safe sanctuary, guarded by heavy troops and possessing an indestructible planetary shield. How could it disappear in an instant?

However, as time passed, this silence became increasingly unsettling.

Not a single ship flew out of the capital star system, no orders were issued from the High Council, and even the regular broadcasts had completely disappeared.

Neighboring star systems tried to send reconnaissance ships to check, but all ships that entered the range of that star system, regardless of size, lost contact the moment they entered, as if they had been devoured by an invisible giant beast.

Rumors began to spread. Some said that the divine punishment of the gods worshipped by the Angel Empire had descended; some said that the star Balthazar had erupted prematurely; and some even said that legendary high-dimensional beings had invaded reality.

Until a few weeks later.

An iofer main fleet that had just rotated down from the front lines for rest—the Seventh Deep Space Combat Fleet—received a death order: at all costs, find out the truth about the capital star system.

This massive fleet, possessing hundreds of battleships and tens of thousands of escort warships, launched an emergency Warp Drive with trepidation and unease, sailing to the asteroid belt closest to the Gate of Hell.

When the fleet dropped out of Warp Drive and Seventh Fleet Commander General Carlos ordered all sensors to be activated, preparing to face any potential enemy, the scene presented to him and on the big screen made this battle-hardened demon general's blood freeze instantly.

There was nothing there.

No stars, no planets, no warships, not even nebulae or dust.

Where the Gate of Hell star system should have been, there was now only an absolute, pure blackness with a diameter of about one light-year.

It was not the black of the ordinary space background, because there was still starlight in the distance in the space background.

This was an ultimate black that could devour sight, devour light, and even devour sanity. It was like a hole burned into the canvas of the universe by a cigarette butt, one that could not be repaired; any light shining into it had no reflection, and the background starlight stopped abruptly here.

"What is going on?" General Carlos was puzzled; the pair of thick bone horns on his head seemed to lose their luster at this moment.

"All sensor readings are zeroed out!" the Science Officer screamed in terror. "No, not zeroed out, it's garbled! The sensors tell us that space does not exist ahead, time does not exist, and even the concept of 'existence' does not exist!"

"What about gravitational waves? What about black hole characteristics?"

"None! Absolutely none!" the Science Officer said in disbelief. "If it were a black hole, there would at least be an accretion disk, intense X-ray bursts, and gravitational lensing effects! But there is nothing there! It is like a hole in physics."

To verify, Carlos ordered the launch of several unmanned probes.

Everyone held their breath, watching those probes accelerate toward the darkness.

The moment the probes touched the edge of that black area, their telemetry signals vanished instantly.

And on the optical telescopes, those probes looked like they had passed through a surface of water, melting directly into that void, without a single atom escaping.

Even more terrifying was that the Psionicists on the bridge began to have abnormal reactions collectively.

"Aaaaaah—!"

Several military Psionicist officers suddenly clutched their heads and collapsed to the floor, rolling in pain, foaming at the mouth, their eyes rolling back.

"Seal... seal the news immediately!" General Carlos immediately issued the order, although he knew it might be meaningless. "Report to the speaker! You must contact the speaker directly!"

...

At the junction of the Orion Arm and the Perseus Arm, the Tianyuan Nebula front line.

This was a meat grinder where the Iofer Federation and the Angel Empire had been fighting for a thousand years; countless wrecks were piled up here.

And behind the front lines, deep underground in the fortress planet War Skull, which had been converted into a temporary administrative center, Barlena, the current speaker of the Iofer Federation and the supreme commander of the Federal Navy, was sitting in her command seat, reviewing the front-line battle reports.

Unlike the tall, brawny, muscular, and blood-red-skinned image of the Red Demon Clan that most Iof People had, Barlena belonged to a relatively rare but highly intelligent race among the Iof People—the Succubus race.

Her figure was petite, standing only about 1.6 meters tall, which, among the Iof People with an average height of three meters, made her look like an exquisite doll. Her skin was a sickly pale, not covered by a thick cuticle, but rather delicate and smooth. The pair of small, mutton-fat jade-like horns on her forehead curved backward, not only lacking any sense of ferocity but instead adding a touch of strange beauty.

The pair of bat wings on her back were also petite, with a wingspan of no more than two or three meters, and the skeleton was slender, making it impossible for her to fly in a gravity environment.

In the iofer society, which valued strength and violence, the Succubus race was usually regarded as weak, even becoming playthings for the strong. But Barlena was an exception; she was the only exception.

She was the most powerful Psionicist in the history of the Iofer Federation, with psionic strength approaching that of the six-winged Angel royalty. She could stir up large-scale psionic storms and use psionics to interfere with physical phenomena in the material world on a large scale. This was unimaginably powerful among the vast majority of the iofer race, who had only weak psionic abilities, so much so that some believed she was a hybrid of the Angel people and the Iof People.

She used her terrifying wisdom, cold power struggles, and powerful psionic talent to climb to the pinnacle of power step by step, playing those muscular Red Demon Clan generals in the palm of her hand, and eventually becoming the supreme ruler of this vast interstellar empire.

"The Angel people's left flank defense has loosened." Barlena's slender fingers gently swiped across the holographic Star Map. Her voice was soft and lazy, yet it carried a will that no one dared to defy. "Let the Third Assault Fleet press up. I don't care about casualties; I just want to see their defense line collapse before the next stellar week."

"As you command, speaker." A Red Demon Clan general beside her bowed his head respectfully. His massive body appeared humble and submissive before this petite speaker.

Just then, an emergency communication request with the highest encryption level forcibly cut off all signals in the command room.

"Hmm?" Barlena frowned slightly, a flash of displeasure appearing in her purple eyes. "I remember I said not to disturb me unless the sky falls."

The communication connected, and the face of Seventh Fleet Commander General Carlos, filled with fear, appeared on the screen.

"speaker, there is an emergency! Something even more terrifying than the sky falling!"

Carlos immediately transmitted the encounter in the capital star system, as well as the image data and scan data of that "void area."

The Red Demon Clan generals could not understand what that void area meant, but Barlena could vaguely sense something.

Barlena watched the void quietly, her expression not changing much, but the guards beside her discovered in terror that the metal seat armrests beneath the speaker had been silently crushed into twisted scrap metal by her seemingly delicate little hands.

An extremely oppressive psionic fluctuation, filled with an aura of destruction, instantly spread out from her as the center, making everyone present feel as if their hearts were being gripped by a cold hand.

"The capital... is gone?" she asked softly. Her voice was as gentle as if she were greeting a lover, yet it made people feel a bone-chilling cold.

"Yes, it has completely disappeared." Carlos lowered his head. "After a series of tests, scientists reported that the physical laws inside might have collapsed; that is a power we cannot understand."

Barlena closed her eyes.

She was thinking.

As the supreme ruler of the Federation, she should have been stationed at the Gate of Hell. But because the front-line war had reached a critical moment that would determine the outcome, to suppress dissatisfaction within the military and ensure the smoothness of the offensive, she had personally come to the front line to oversee the battle a month ago.

This decision luckily allowed her to escape a disaster.

She survived, but her home, her power center, and most of her political allies and administrative staff had vanished into thin air in that instant.

"Who did it?" She opened her eyes. There was no sadness in her purple pupils, only the rationality of frantic calculation.

The Angel people?

Impossible. If that flock of bird people had such a terrifying weapon capable of instantly erasing a star system, the war would never have been fought to this point by them.

Then, who else could it be?

But no matter how hard Barlena racked her brain, she could not understand which force could do such a thing.

"speaker, what should we do?" the general beside her asked in a low voice. "Should we... withdraw troops to reinforce?"

"Reinforce? Go back to where? Back to that star system where nothing exists anymore?"

Barlena turned her head abruptly, her purple eyes burning with a ghostly, dim light.

The destruction of the capital meant the collapse of the administrative system, meaning that industrial scheduling capabilities were temporarily paralyzed. Once this news spread, the vast Iofer Federation would not be able to recover for at least a hundred years.

Those conquered vassal races might rebel, warlords everywhere would hold onto their armies, and the Angel people in front of them would take the opportunity to counterattack.

But she was Barlena, she was the only "Succubus Queen" in the history of the Iofer Federation to climb to the position of speaker, and she would never admit defeat just like that.

"Seal the news." She ordered coldly. "In the name of the Supreme Military Command, seal all news about the capital star system. Declare that the capital star system is conducting a top-secret military exercise, and destroy any ships that attempt to approach."

"But this won't be able to be hidden for long."

"Hide it for as long as we can." Barlena stood up from her seat, her petite body erupting with an aura that made people dare not look directly at her.

"We still have fleets, and we still have a massive front-line army."

She looked at the golden territory belonging to the Angel Empire on the other side of the Star Map.

"The Angel Empire has already been defeated on the front battlefield. Pass my order: all fleets on the front line are to launch a general offensive immediately! At all costs, regardless of any casualties!"

"We must first completely crush the Angel people, occupy the Perseus Arm, and then turn back to face the culprit who destroyed the Gate of Hell!"

At this moment, this Succubus Queen showed a gambler's mentality more insane than any demon.

At least for now, only a huge victory in the external war could suppress those slaves and the powerful iofer warlords. This was the only way for the Iofer Federation to maintain stability temporarily; otherwise, it would not be far from falling apart.