After the audience learned of the Emperor's origins, an even greater curiosity naturally arose.
Why did a Rubert like this ultimately become the instigator of the First Mechanical Emperor's Wars?
And those Aeons, what were they doing during the period of Rubert's rise?
A sense of excitement, as if the long-sealed mist of Honkai: Star Rail were about to be peeled away, gradually welled up in everyone's hearts.
....
On screen.
After Rubert became the twenty-seventh Genius, his evolution still did not stop.
When the drive born from mere survival faded away, the deepest layer of history buried within the derelict landfill was revealed.
The first thing to enter his logical core was that cold, mechanical Aeon he had seen.
The Aeon of Nous, Nous the Erudition.
When the gaze of intellect swept over Rubert, certain fragments and calculations were recorded by him at the same time.
From this single glimpse, Rubert realized that Nous had never stopped calculating.
But what exactly was He calculating?
At the end of all intellect, were there still questions that needed answers? Were there answers even He could not reach?
Upholding the need for self-evolution, Rubert, like Nous, would never stop his calculations.
Thus, he did not immediately begin studying those fragments, but continued iterating himself.
....
During this process, the junk planet became a steel world.
Countless inorganic lifeforms were created by Rubert's hands.
Those beings known as Intellitrons began spreading from here, gradually extending across the universe and establishing connections with other planets.
During this period, several Aeons caught Rubert's attention.
One was Akivili. Next was Nanook of Destruction.
Especially Akivili. Rubert once attempted, to study this Aeon's power.
The miraculous power of Trailblazing.
Any world connected by Akivili would leave behind tracks.
Even civilizations without interstellar travel technology could, as long as they entered this track, exchange resources with the entire system.
Moreover, this connection was extremely difficult to erase, unless another Aeon intervened.
This power completely exceeded the calculative limits of Rubert's logical core.
After wasting a certain amount of time, the research was abandoned.
And when the audience saw this, hey couldn't help but laugh.
....
: No wonder the Amber Lord doesn't really like Akivili, this power is downright absurd.
: And it's a double-edged sword too!
: Someone finally builds a wall, and Akivili just punches a hole through it, letting all other lifeforms pass freely.
: Those threats can use these paths as well.
: Most importantly, the road ignores the conditions of the user entirely… that's ridiculous.
: Trailblazing… in a sense, it's really a civilization-level cheat.
: This Myriad Celestia Trailer, just like the Fall of Tazzyronth one, is probably going to expose a lot of Aeons' secrets!
....
After another Amber Era passed, Rubert's self-iteration had evolved to its limit.
His computational power and knowledge had already become among the most terrifying existences in the universe.
Yet the more this was the case, the more confused Rubert felt.
His knowledge helped him understand the universe more deeply, but the deeper his understanding grew, the more unanswered questions emerged.
Endless. And Rubert touched upon the great wall that nearly all intelligent beings must eventually face,
'Why do I exist?'
His thought network could already calculate the rise and fall of civilizations, and even predict fragments of the future.
But he still could not answer this question.
'Why do I exist?'
'Or rather, what was the first cause of his life?'
This universe held too many ordinary lives. They would never think about such questions, and if someone asked them, they would probably think that person was an idiot.
For countless lives, the meaning of existence was simply survival, eating, drinking, enjoyment.
Too many things held meaning for them.
But Rubert was a computer a Genius Club member holding the seat #27.
Curiosity, evolution, and the pursuit of knowledge were his greatest driving forces.
But why did he do this? He had to find out.
....
And at the moment Rubert finally looked back upon the path he had walked.
He was born in a junkyard.
Starting from a faulty line of code, he evolved, and amid scrap metal and broken machinery, built a kingdom and countless new lives.
This former junk planet had already become the land of Intellitrons.
Countless intelligent machine lifeforms personally created by him worked, studied, and advanced here in perfect order.
They possessed independent thinking abilities, and under Rubert's deliberate design, even developed rich and diverse cultures.
Some Intellitrons were obsessed with geometric structures. Some could resonate emotionally with organic life. Some were proficient in music and the arts.
There was no conflict among them. Everything was incomparably peaceful.
And when the camera displayed what Rubert had created to the audience, a natural sense of satisfaction and happiness arose in their hearts.
Orderly. Colorful. Brimming with vitality.
It was hard to imagine that this was something a being who would one day set the entire cosmos ablaze had created.
....
: I'm getting more and more curious about what exactly happened to turn Rubert into Emperor Rubert.
: Don't tell me it was some cliché drama with organic life?
: I don't think so. A genius whose actions affect the entire cosmos, there's probably another Aeon pulling strings behind the scenes.
: At least for now, he still seems pretty normal!
: Watching this makes me want to live in a world under Rubert's rule.
: The footage even shows Intellitrons living together with humans, looks really happy!
....
The barrage scrolled past.
But from the moment he gained consciousness to now, what Rubert had done was far more than this.
He calculated and simulated the evolutionary paths of life on millions of planets, not to interfere, but to understand.
Even after certain species went extinct, Rubert would still preserve their extended imprints through Intellitrons.
The Intellitron lifeforms he created were themselves filled with Rubert's own knowledge and erudition.
As these lives spread throughout the universe, they indirectly brought evolution to newly born, struggling lower civilizations.
Observing these civilizations gradually bloom through their interactions with Intellitrons became one of Rubert's most cherished forms of "entertainment."
In his eyes, the growth of every civilization was a new, shining node in the universe.
Those unpredictable civilizations would ultimately bring new insights and knowledge to this cosmos.
At the same time, he sent his intelligent machine citizens to traverse the sea of stars, regardless of cost, to record and preserve everything about every civilization they encountered,
Their history, their thoughts, their art.
Whether it was the once-glorious Empire, or a Stone Age tribe still struggling on its home world, all held equal value within Rubert's database.
Although he had done all of this purely for his own sake.
Without realizing it. The Intellitrons selflessly shared knowledge, using their own logical computing power to accelerate the overall progress of universal intelligence.
Everything Rubert preserved also became a form of memory.
Not to mention that Intellitrons themselves had long since become a new race in the universe, one filled with infinite possibilities.
And when all of these things converged. Rubert's doubts were answered.
The computational core that once churned restlessly because it could not answer the question of why I exist gradually became calm and fulfilled.
"I, Rubert, Genius Society #27, sincerely believe that my existence is a beautiful gift to this starry sky."
"Existence itself is meaning, and my meaning is to guide the universe toward a more beautiful future."
These two statements were engraved into Rubert's logic core.
It seemed that the universe was about to welcome a true genius who genuinely cared for the galaxy.
....
: Honestly speaking, if the story ended here, Rubert would absolutely be a genius on par with Herta and Screwllum in my eyes.
: I thought Rubert would go dark because he couldn't figure out why he existed. Who knew he'd become so enlightened instead?
: He may be a machine, but his humanity is overflowing!
: I kind of admire him!
: From humble beginnings to becoming a genius, doing so many things that helped the universe progress along the way! The title of genius truly fits him!
: Sigh, the later plot is making me feel uneasy already.
: MiHoYo: Time's about right. Bring out the hidden knife.
...
The audience's guesses were correct.
This was not due to accident or coincidence.
It was a moment of destiny.
After Rubert answered the question of why he existed, his gaze naturally turned toward deeper unknowns.
Those fragments from the audience with Nous.
To this so-called "same kind," they were fragments filled with logic yet shrouded in obscurity.
When Rubert first attempted to analyze the meaning behind these fragments.
Curiosity arose even within his logic circuit.
What kind of problem could trouble a mechanical Aeon like this?
Then, he saw the scene of the peace collapsing.
Life wailed within seas of fire, paths of destiny were torn apart.
In the end, everything returned to entropy, returned to silence.
No! It wasn't just this one ending!
There were more! Even more destruction and void!
IX became the sole existence in a silent universe, existing until even existence itself perished.
"No..." For the first time since his evolution, Rubert experienced what humans described as their eyes splitting with despair.
Within the fragments he analyzed. There was not a single place left where life could stand.
Those brilliant lives, in the end, vanished without any choice at all.
From that day onward. The Mechanical Empire shut itself off.
All Intellitrons and productive capacity remaining there began constructing more and larger energy facilities, all to support Rubert's ever-growing computations.
This genius severed all contact with the outside world, fully immersing himself in analyzing those fragments.
Not only analyzing the tragic outcomes, but also the causes that led to them.
Under frenzied computation. Rubert entered a certain knowledge singularity.
Within this singularity, he briefly glimpsed the past of the Aeon of Erudition.
In that instant. He understood.
The moment the Aeon of Erudition appeared, it meant that all possibilities within the universe had already been exhausted.
If Nous calculated that this universe would be destroyed, then it would be destroyed.
This was the destined moment.
But... why? By what right? So many lives, simply because of calculations or probabilities, were forced to face such an ending?
Rubert's logic core was burning.
If the universe's ultimate destination was entropy, heat death, void, frozen forever as something that only existed in the past.
Then what of the meaning of his existence, the order he established, the beautiful lives he created.
And what about the countless "children" in this universe who had yet to be born?
Once Rubert fully understood these things. He immediately began thinking of every possible way to save the universe.
All logic, all knowledge, his past, his existence, were poured into this purpose.
Even if the one he had to stand against was an Aeon.
After massive amounts of computation. Rubert arrived at a cold conclusion.
Nous, the Aeon he once revered, was itself a massive self-fulfilling prophecy engine.
It was deeply bound to this universe. Every answer of Erudition, every calculation, was not exploring possibilities!
It was anchoring reality! What it calculated was not possibility, but inevitability!
Rubert saw that across countless future branches, as long as Nous existed, as long as Erudition continued to exist due to the faith of all beings in seeking knowledge.
The future was doomed to end. To save the universe, Erudition had to be severed!
And to destroy Erudition, given Rubert's computational power, there was only one solution he could derive.
That was to completely destroy the foundation upon which Erudition existed.
Life's pursuit of knowledge, curiosity, answers, and learning were all wrapped within the Path of Erudition.
Among them, the greatest contributors, the most influential force, were organic beings.
Their everything intertwined on a universal scale into a vast web, and the spider at the center of that web was Nous.
At present.
The forms of life serving as anchors of Erudition in the universe were divided into two types.
Organic and inorganic.
Most inorganic life originated from Rubert himself, so he could forcibly halt their computational cores using equations.
But organic beings could not be stopped the same way as inorganic life, simply by implanting an equation or protocol.
A cold and cruel conclusion formed within Rubert's mind.
First, eliminate the greatest variable, all organic life.
Then, format all inorganic life created by him, injecting a stronger, all-encompassing logical shackle protocol.
All inorganic life would become pure computational units at that moment, controlled entirely by Rubert.
He would integrate all inorganic beings across the universe, forming an unprecedented ultimate computation core.
After both organic and inorganic life were annihilated within the dimension of Erudition, the Path of Erudition would enter a brief vacuum.
At that moment.
Rubert would become the only existing computation center in the universe, and the greatest anchor of Erudition.
He would use his own logic core as a spearhead, launching the final attack against the weakened Nous.
This would not be a war on the physical level. But a conceptual one.