Sucan laid out every plan he could conceive, stringing them together like a vast mental map.
He covered every conceivable angle—strategic, logistical, psychological.
The section on tactics alone had already swelled to hundreds of thousands of words.
All of it stemmed from his own hard-earned experience.
Of course, he didn't blindly rely on the knowledge Hyperdimensional Space had granted him. At the very start of his tactical preface, he wrote a single reminder to himself:
"Tactics are organization—never the result."
That line would serve as his compass.
Sucan, unlike Damoro, was a man born for strategy. He thrived on structure and precision.
Each time he made a plan, he refined his tactics even further.
Naturally, this was also the reason Ayla had chosen him.
If it had been Damoro, Ayla could only have deployed him to the frontlines—a foot soldier at best, a field captain at most.
Sucan, however, was the Grand Commander of the entire campaign.
Ayla believed he truly had the capability to bear that title.
When he finally finished all his preparations, a full week had passed.
The first warship emerged from the Dimensional Bridge, gliding into the guard post's spaceport.
From a window in the observation deck, Sucan watched it descend.
More and more warships followed in succession, their silhouettes materializing one after another.
Even on a cosmic scale, the distances between them were small—mere clusters within the same guard post—yet, from Sucan's perspective, those colossal warships still looked no larger than ants.
And yet, these "ants" represented the pinnacle of human civilization's military might.
"The transit rate is still too slow," Sucan muttered. "We can't afford staggered arrivals."
He had originally hoped for a swift, decisive campaign.
But the limited throughput of the Dimensional Bridge made that impossible. All he could do was plan, step by step.
"Fine," he decided after a pause. "We'll stick with the traditional three-piece strategy. At the very least, we can't allow the troops to act without discipline."
Guard Post Spaceport.
The soldiers and officers aboard the incoming warships erupted into cheers as soon as they saw the docking platforms through their viewports.
They had passed the most dangerous phase.
Now, at last, they could disembark to rest and recalibrate.
But just as the first soldier stepped forward to leave the warship, an energy barrier shimmered to life before him, blocking his way.
[Attention: No three-dimensional-to-four-dimensional warship unit soldier, including officers, may enter the guard post without orders.]
[All warships are to maintain formation. Once all 100,000 have arrived, the Guard Post Grand Commander will issue a unified directive.]
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"They're refusing us entry?"
"Trying to pull rank on us? We're Federation warriors! I'll see that commander court-martialed."
"Wait until all the warships arrive? Don't make me laugh! That'll take three or four months. Are they expecting us to sit on these ships the whole time?"
An uproar spread through the decks.
The personal quarters aboard the warships were cramped and stifling; everyone had been longing to stretch their legs, to relax and enjoy the amenities of the guard post.
None of them had expected to be turned away outright.
How could soldiers and officers like them react to such treatment? They shouted, they cursed, they made a racket—but it was useless.
Even without Ayla's presence, Sucan's authority as Grand Commander of the guard post was absolute.
Here, his word was law.
No matter how much they raged, it changed nothing.
This was the first step of the traditional three-piece set—the assertion of dominance.
Breaking down their arrogance was essential.
Sucan rarely bothered with such measures. On the interstellar battlefield, individual soldier units contributed little to the grand scale of war; tempering their egos simply wasn't worth the effort.
But this time, the operation was Ayla's mission.
A great figure—that great figure—would be evaluating him personally.
So Sucan had to pay meticulous attention to every detail, leaving no opening for error that might make that great figure doubt his competence.
His first move was simple: confine them.
Lock every last one of them aboard their ships—for months if necessary.
That was Sucan's decision.
And that was exactly what happened.
One month.
Two months.
Three months.
The soldiers remained trapped within their warships, their time bleeding away in futility.
Only when the final vessel finally docked at the spaceport did Sucan make his appearance.
Clad in a sleek, black mech, his expression cold and resolute, he stood upon the platform—his presence alone commanding silence.
A moment later, his holographic image was projected into every warship simultaneously.
The soldiers and officers, upon seeing him, clenched their jaws, their resentment palpable.
Standing perfectly straight, Sucan spoke in an even, unhurried tone:
"Long wait."
"This is your first time in four dimensions. Your bodies will feel strange. You may hope to grow used to it—but you won't."
"As three-dimensional beings, you cannot truly adapt to four dimensions. This is not our world."
"You know why you're here: to fight, to kill. I won't belabor that point."
"You are very likely to die. Prepare for it. Don't entertain thoughts of escape. In three dimensions, running can buy you a hiding place. In four dimensions, it only leads to despair. You can't develop technology here to save yourself. In the end, the only thing that awaits most runaways is suicide."
"So don't be foolish. That is my request."
"You're probably asking who I am and why I can address you like this."
"My name is Sucan. I am the Grand Commander of this four-dimensional guard post, and from now on, your overall commander."
"Now—anyone with the rank of Captain or above may disembark."
The second step of the three-piece set was simple: give the Captains a hard, practical briefing.
Sucan was good at this.
One hundred thousand warship Captains and Commanders stepped down in formation and filed into the conference hall Sucan had prepared.
Once every seat was filled, Sucan began.
"I won't waste time. The opening remarks covered the essentials."
"Let's get to the point."
"My demands are straightforward."
"During combat, warships will always advance. I do not allow retreat."
He then enumerated a string of punishments.
Next came the operational plan. He could have distributed written dossiers, but he knew most would never read them—that was a failing common to living creatures.
So he spoke the plan aloud. Organizing a campaign on this scale was harder than he had expected; even with detailed orders, some would desert, some would disobey.
Luckily, the third part of the three-piece set addressed that contingency.
"All the points I've just made will be followed by a set of questions. Fail them, and your Captain rank will be revoked on the spot."
At those words, many in the hall visibly started, sweat breaking out across brows and necks.
If they hadn't listened, how could they possibly answer?
Fortunately, their auxiliary brains had storage—answers could be pulled up instantly.
By the time Sucan distributed the test, they were ready.
There were over 1,400 questions in total, covering every possible angle.
By the time they finished, the answers had been seared into their memories.
Of course, a few stubborn types—those "dead pigs unafraid of boiling water"—remained.
Sucan kept his word. He stripped them of their ranks on the spot, temporarily promoted a handful of lieutenants, and ran a fresh round of testing.
When that round ended, it was only the second day.
Sucan issued the next order.
"All warships depart—set course for that civilization."
He chose to move earlier than planned.
Technically it wasn't "early"—there were no stars near the dimensional gate, no sunsets to mark delays—yet the decision felt decisive.
Ayla called him again.
"The three-piece set worked, but not spectacularly."
"I understand," Sucan said. "Time was short; you wanted us moving. There's also plenty of transit time."
"Pay closer attention," Ayla warned. "This isn't Hyperdimensional Space where losses are tolerable. This is the real universe—I expect you to minimize casualties."
"The ideal result would be to neutralize that four-dimensional civilization without bloodshed. Whether you can do that is on you."
"Three-piece set" was the name Sucan had given the protocol in his own mind; Ayla pronounced it like a single, sharp fact.
In that instant, Sucan understood how fully this person could read and shape his actions—even his thoughts. Terrifying.
"I understand," he said.
"In this campaign, I will give everything. I intend to impress you."
"If I fail, I accept the consequences—even death."
He pledged himself in military terms. Ayla remained impassive.
"Death is the easiest fate."
"Boredom is the cruelest."
"If you were trapped in an endlessly repeating existence, unable to die—how would that feel?"
Sucan pictured it and felt a cold dread. Such immortality, stripped of meaning, was indeed a worse punishment than death.
"If that is what you deem punishment, I will accept it."
Ayla let the subject drop.
"I did not call you here for that. The Divine have arrived. They are among the soldiers."
"You will encounter them once the fighting begins. You may also locate and use them beforehand."
"All equipment from Hyperdimensional Space is here as well."
"I do not want you to rely on it. Remember: you are the commander. When a commander personally takes the field, it means there are no other options."
Even now, their intelligence on that civilization was incomplete. They still did not know whether it was strong—or weak.
Perhaps once the fleet passed through, that civilization would simply surrender—no war, no casualties, no need for bloodshed.
Or perhaps its true armada would appear instead—swift, merciless, and crush the Federation outright.
Anything was possible.
Sucan's gaze drifted toward a pile of equipment stacked carelessly in a corner, like discarded scrap.
Old memories stirred.
Not all of it was genuine gear—some were merely game props, useless in reality. But most of the stockpile had come from the Hyperdimensional Space, where the majority of worlds still mirrored real technological standards. Much of it remained functional, preserved.
Seeing it again, a faint sense of nostalgia passed through him.
These were the very tools that had once brought him pain—reminders of the hardships he'd endured.
He walked over, piece by piece reattaching his equipment. His expression hardened; his eyes steadied.
Then he turned toward Ayla and spoke with quiet conviction:
"I will return victorious."
Ayla gave no response. She merely turned and vanished without a sound.
Sucan left the chamber and made his way to the spaceport.
Hours later, the warships began to launch—one after another, like stars streaking through the void.
They formed a unified formation, accelerating toward their destination at over 87,000 kilometers per second.
The target was a star system designated Western—so named because it lay westward on the Federation's four-dimensional coordinate grid.
Its motion was peculiar: a spiral not revolving around the galactic core like the Solar System, but coiling along the galactic disk itself.
Sucan personally boarded one of the ships.
In truth, among the hundred thousand vessels, there was little difference between them. The smallest were twenty-thousand-meter-class ships; the largest, seventy-thousand.
None could be considered true behemoths.
Sub-planet-class warships, according to prior analysis, were too massive to pass through the Dimensional Bridge safely. Potato Chip's earlier calculations had shown that such mass would disrupt the black hole's equilibrium—possibly even drag the ship into its event horizon.
Shortly after Sucan's fleet departed, Ayla—watching silently through the warships' sensor feeds—fixed her gaze on one particular figure within a vessel.
She lingered there in silence, waiting in the corner.
Calmly, she scanned the surroundings.
The Federation warship contained a public space, and at this moment a Legion Commander was delivering a lecture.
Her eyes stayed fixed in one direction—listening, yet not listening.
When her gaze drifted across a monitoring screen, Ayla felt as though her invisible self had met her own eyes.
But that was unlikely.
Her authority had not yet reached that level.
"Luna. It's been a long time."
"But you're not Luna. And that infuriates me."
Yes—this was Luna.
And yet, it wasn't.
During the Metacellular Project, countless Lunas had been cast throughout human civilization, and even beyond it.
Ayla herself had arranged for several surrogates stripped of the original Luna's memories. These new Lunas were trained in hidden places.
This one was among them. She had been stripped of her memories and her body, thrown into the Mortality Selection.
A very long time had passed.
She had become one of the many Divine beings within Hyperdimensional Space.
But Ayla felt no affection for her.
A Luna without memories was no longer the Luna. She was simply someone else.
What Ayla truly wanted to study was the potential of Luna's body.
The Metacellular ability persisted in Hyperdimensional Space, which was why this unique Luna had not died there.
Step by step, she had reached this point, enduring much—but she still differed from a true Divine being, one grown naturally from infancy.
And yet, in the past, Luna had brought too many miracles to human civilization.
So this time, Ayla had sent her into four dimensions, hoping to see one more miracle.
In case something unexpected happened in Western.
"I hope nothing does. Conquering four dimensions is the priority."
Ayla withdrew her gaze.
Other matters pressed in—stabilizing the guard post, searching for intelligence on the Swarm.
The Swarm's impact on four dimensions would reveal where surrounding civilizations lay, and how strong they were.
The moment Ayla's gaze receded, Luna frowned inside the warship.
"Did I misperceive something?"
"It felt like someone was watching me."
"No… this is my ability from Hyperdimensional Space. But this is reality. I shouldn't be able to sense another's gaze here. Physically, observation can trigger collapse, but this observation is too weak."
"It was just my illusion—my neural nets are on edge."
"This is four dimensions."
"Untouched, fertile ground."
Luna's warship launched as well, carving a course into that strange cosmic sea.
Travel here felt wrong. Her body seemed to breathe—expanding and contracting in an uneasy rhythm.
That was the motion of moving through the fourth dimension. The body could not directly sense the fourth dimension's shape, but the fourth dimension did alter conditions around it; the mismatch produced a dull, nauseous feedback.
Physically, she experienced rhythmic contraction and expansion, punctuated by a wave of dizziness like severe motion sickness.
"It's unbearable—ugh—"
"Even airborne waste compresses. Opening the mech does nothing."
"There's no fighting in this state. I need to lie down—but even lying down makes me sick."
Luna watched the crew around her succumb to symptoms.
Those with weaker bodily control lost bladder and bowel function outright.
The three-to-four-dimensional transition produced far worse effects than she had expected.
Luna felt it too, but having endured countless vertiginous states in Hyperdimensional Space, she could mask it—staying outwardly composed while the world lurched beneath her.
Thankfully, battle had not yet begun. They had time to adjust.
Ahead, Sucan had already detected the problem.
Over eighty percent of personnel were rendered combat-ineffective by the dimensional shock.
"It must be the shift from three to four dimensions," he observed.
"The two universes are fundamentally different."
He moved fast. Sucan instituted an acclimatization regimen: soldiers cycled into virtual training environments, returning to reality at scheduled intervals.
At first the windows were brief—an hour—then gradually lengthened until they could sustain twenty-four hours of realistic exposure.
It wouldn't take long. One month of steady adaptation would be enough.
The program clarified something important for him: the dimensions themselves could be weaponized. A civilization familiar with four-dimensional physics needed only a few subtle tricks to break an invading force.
"So on the battlefield," he decided, "all personnel must sever nonessential neural links."
Simultaneously, Sucan used the virtual world to intensify practical training—drilling every soldier on what to do and what not to do under fire in four-dimensional space.
An army had to look like an army.
Sucan's concern was not misplaced.
True veterans fought on the battlefields of the Federation and the Twenty-Eight Nations Covenant. The soldiers under his current command had never experienced real combat—only the sterile simulations of virtual war.
The fleet's journey to the target sector would take 12.7 years—a span long enough to accomplish countless objectives.
But before anything else, Sucan needed to deploy a vanguard to scout the Western, gathering intelligence on enemy movements.
"Activate the Swarm Nests."
Sucan's voice echoed through the command channel, and the main server relayed his order across the entire armada.
The massive warships opened their lower bays. Five glowing rings detached from each hull, descending to form miniature magnetic acceleration arrays beneath them.
Moments later, sleek 200-meter-class starships launched from the bays, sliding into the rings and accelerating—
Through magnetic propulsion, their velocity spiked to 130,000 kilometers per second.
Their numbers were staggering: over 400,000 in total.
Seven and a half years later.
The swarm ships neared their destination—Western—still four months out, arriving nearly five years ahead of schedule to commence reconnaissance.
At that stage, they began to decelerate, initiating preparations for insect incubation.
These ships were colloquially known as Swarm Nests, though their proper classification was Swarm-Class Carrier Fighters.
As the name implied, each vessel contained a complete Swarm Incubation System.
Before reaching their designated coordinates, the ships would begin incubation—capable of producing up to ten Swarm units per minute.
Each Swarm unit measured only a few dozen meters across; if they reached a hundred meters, output would drop to two or three per minute.
That might sound modest—until one considered the scale.
400,000 ships, each generating ten units per minute—that was four million new Swarm units every sixty seconds, or 240 million every hour.
These were no ordinary insects. They weren't built for battle but for reconnaissance—designed for high-speed, high-efficiency scouting.
Each possessed eyes attuned to every wavelength of light, and every body carried signal chips that transmitted real-time data back to their carrier, which in turn relayed it to the main fleet.
The Swarm-Class Carrier Fighter was far from new technology.
It had reached a high degree of maturity—robust, steady, not easily perturbed.
Each of the swarm ships carried stealth suites that made them difficult to detect.
Incubation ran on a strict schedule: one week to produce a sufficient cache of eggs—flesh-masses inside the nest that could proliferate indefinitely given nutrients.
Each egg was about the size of a human fist, translucent as glass, a tiny embryo visible at its core. Under normal conditions, hatching would take ten years; with accelerated incubation the minimum could be pushed to thirteen days.
After thirteen days, the first batch swelled to the size of basketballs. The shells darkened to a smoky gray, then ruptured—releasing an elongated, amplified insect that looked like a mosquito only in silhouette. It lacked the mosquito's fragile legs and proboscis; its body was thick as an adult arm, gently curved. Oversized transparent wings folded on its back, though actual thrust came from a gas-propulsion unit mounted at the tail.
The carriers continued onward, skimming toward Western and finally brushing the outer edge of its territory. There they began feeding energy into the hatchlings. The larvae fattened rapidly—molting two hundred times in a matter of hours, consuming even their shed skins. Ten hours in, they were already some sixty meters long.
As they matured, their abdomens ballooned into spheres packed with stored matter. That material would be converted to gas and expelled through the tail-propulsion system, granting the creatures acceleration. Their speeds climbed toward 900 kilometers per second. At that velocity it still would have taken more than a century to reach the planetary zone—if they'd tried a direct approach.
But direct planetary penetration wasn't the point. The defenders would not confine their defenses to orbital worlds alone; the moment the swarm entered the system, they'd be detected and targeted.
So the insects dispersed—vast, scattered swarms instead of concentrated strikes. The first wave comprised roughly 1.8 billion individuals, a cloud that blanketed sky and void alike as it streamed into the star system.
About 42 days later, one of the countless tracking dots on the carrier's control map winked out.
Then another. Then dozens in rapid succession. Bright points that had once dotted the feed vanished—one after another—then by the thousands.
In under thirty seconds the losses snowballed: 100,000. 1 million. 10 million. In less than half a minute, over 100 million insects had died.
[Collecting war information. Predicting enemy energy weapon level. Calculating this attack as passive, not active. Mapping enemy star system defense layer positions...]