Herta raised the hand holding the magic wand and pointed at the Devil Fruit tree within the Warp.
The tree's branches trembled, and a fruit immediately fell, dropping into a wormhole Herta had prepared in advance. The wormhole connected to realspace—right in front of Ruan Mei.
Thus, a black, insect-shaped Devil Fruit with a somewhat ferocious appearance appeared before Ruan Mei. She accepted it directly, then looked once more at the Devil Tree and asked Herta, "What do you plan to do with the rest of those fruits?"
"I'll put some of them up for sale on the Interastral Peace Corporation's online marketplace. As for the rest, I'll keep a portion of the special Devil Fruits for research."
"You're not going to eat a second Devil Fruit?"
"No, no, no." Herta shook her head repeatedly, lingering fear evident as she refused. "I've already said it—the taste of Devil Fruits is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Not something a person can endure."
"That experience of eating the Brain-Brain Fruit just now already left a psychological shadow on me."
After saying that, Herta added inwardly.
Aside from the Brain-Brain Fruit, whether it's Paramecia-type fruits like the Tremor-Tremor Fruit, the Glint-Glint Fruit, or even the Flame-Flame Fruit... abilities that control vibrations or even natural elements—I already possess them.
So there's no need to rush to consume Devil Fruits to gain abilities. Slowly researching them will be enough.
Thinking this, Herta said to Ruan Mei, "Next, I'll contact the IPC. You can go ahead and start experiments related to the Mythical Zoan Swarm Emperor Fruit."
"Alright."
Ruan Mei nodded gently, turned, and departed aboard Ruanruan.
As for Herta herself, she planned to leave the matters of contacting the IPC and negotiating the sale of Devil Fruits to Herman. Meanwhile, she intended to enter the Simulated Universe for research.
"I'll handle the external affairs, but there's something I need to tell you—Devil Fruit abilities aren't as simple as they appear. Their powers can be awakened."
"Awakened?"
"It means developing the Devil Fruit ability to 100%. For example, I feel that our current development of the Brain-Brain Fruit is still too shallow. The enhancement it provides is definitely more than just 500 research points. With deeper study, it could grant you even greater research boosts."
"I'll try researching it. If everything is as you say, then we may need to temporarily halt the sale of Devil Fruits."
After saying this, Herta plunged straight into the simulation research chamber to study the development of the Brain-Brain Fruit.
Meanwhile, after taking control of Herta's body, Herman opened his eyes and looked toward the Warp before him. A trace of excitement flashed in his gaze.
The Warp!
With HooH now regulating this world, it likely won't descend into extremes or chaos... In that case, it may evolve into something similar to the Shroud realm of Stellaris.
More importantly, Herta is now the creator of the Warp. Calling her its creator god wouldn't be an exaggeration. Naturally, she can synthesize psionic energy on a massive scale within it.
With that thought, Herman raised the wand high.
In the next moment, emotional energy within the Warp began to boil, rapidly converting into psionic energy under the influence of psionic formulas.
Then, with a shift of thought, vast quantities of psionic energy surged out of the Warp and manifested in the real world as bolts of psionic lightning.
The lightning flashed like a supernova explosion, its immeasurable radiance illuminating the cosmos.
This scene was utterly terrifying—enough to destroy a planet!
And not just an ordinary planet, but something on the scale of Jupiter.
This was the planet-destroying version of psionic lightning.
More importantly, Herman now controlled the entire Warp, commanding the emotional energy of millions upon millions of worlds. If all that emotional energy were converted into psionic energy through formulas, the total would be astronomical.
Of course, most of the Warp's energy had already been consumed during its creation. Otherwise, Herman suspected that just a tiny fraction of the emotional energy gathered from a million galaxies would have been enough to destroy an entire galaxy.
Even so, the remaining emotional energy was still enough for him to unleash countless planet-destroying psionic lightning strikes.
This meant that Herman—Herta—had gained yet another terrifying offensive method.
For now, however, he wasn't particularly concerned about the Warp's current energy reserves. The Warp was still in its infancy. As more worlds became connected to it and more emotions accumulated within its depths, its scale would continue to expand.
One day, it would encompass the entire cosmos.
By then, even if he had yet to become an Aeon, destroying a galaxy would likely be no more difficult than flipping his hand. The Warp's potential was far from having reached its limit.
Afterward, Herman conducted further tests and discovered something else: psionic lightning could only be used within regions covered or influenced by the Warp. Beyond a certain distance limit, it wasn't impossible to activate, but its power would drop drastically.
For example, if Herman used the planet-destroying psionic lightning in a star system not yet covered by the Warp, the attack would still function, but its power would fall from destroying a gas giant like Jupiter to only being capable of destroying a planet on the scale of The Blue.
Herman continued testing and found that psionic energy was extremely versatile. The lightning he used earlier was merely the most basic application.
Psionic power could also create enormous hands that blot out the sky, capable of moving stars and completely altering the operational logic of an entire star system.
It could be said that by mastering this psionic hand technique, Herman now possessed the ability to grasp the sun and moon. He could even declare: "With sun and moon in my grasp, plucking the stars—I stand unmatched in this world!"
After playing around excitedly for quite some time, Herman finally stopped.
Meanwhile, countless people across the Blue star system had already been utterly shocked by what Herman—or rather Herta—had just done.
For example, Lanvelle of the Blue Federation stared at the satellite footage of lightning flashing through space, completely dumbfounded:
Isn't space supposed to be a vacuum?
Where did those positive and negative ions come from?
And how could that lightning be so enormous—large enough to split stars apart?
Could it be... that Miss Herta has once again developed some new black technology capable of controlling super lightning elements?
But soon, as Lanvelle continued watching, she saw something even more astonishing—a gigantic hand, larger than the stars themselves, moving through the Blue star system, casually manipulating the motion of planets.
She even saw that massive hand descend upon the sun, interfering with its rotation.
The sight left her stunned for a long time, a trace of confusion appearing in her eyes:
That hand that toyed with planets—and even the sun... was that really still technology?
Miss Herta had only become a genius less than two months ago. Could the intellect of a genius truly be this terrifying?
Or perhaps... that sky-covering hand was magic? Had Miss Herta truly mastered magic through some unknown method?
Lanvelle fell into deep thought, dazed.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Jade—an executive of the IPC—and the envoy of the Xianzhou Alliance, who had already dispatched ambassadors to investigate the situation in the Blue star system, recorded the massive anomalies and transmitted the footage back to their respective factions, causing shockwaves among countless higher-ups.