It was truly "our" collective plan.
This was not an ambiguous statement; this "our" explicitly excluded Damoro.
After reviewing the entire strategy, Damoro gained a completely new understanding of the surviving soldiers aboard the warship.
This was an entirely self-generated proposal.
However, it wasn't merely Yuccaile's proposal alone, but that of every single soldier on the vessel.
Following another period of profound introspection, and knowing the battle was far from over,
The fog of war continuously enveloped the warship, a burden Damoro carried alone.
These soldiers had undergone a profound spiritual metamorphosis.
Through continuous self-deprecation and the unwavering glorification of Damoro, they finally reached the conclusion that they themselves must achieve salvation.
Therefore, they jointly finalized this new strategy, conceived from an entirely fresh perspective.
Damoro secretly wished he could shoulder everything alone.
Of course, this wasn't his preferred path; the crucial factor was that he deemed everyone else on the warship useless, believing he could only rely on himself.
And in this plan, all soldiers were integrated.
The concept itself was actually quite straightforward.
Damoro's solitary consciousness absolutely could not contend with the behemoth, but if the consciousnesses of every surviving soldier on the warship were combined, perhaps a slight chance might materialize.
Thus, their self-proposed strategy was to allow them to enter the super-microscopic realm to engage the behemoth directly.
"What is your assessment?"
Yuccaile asked Damoro.
She fully expected Damoro to agree, but to her surprise, Damoro flatly refused.
"There is no rationality in this plan. I see no feasibility in its execution."
"You simply need to remain honestly in your quarters. That is the greatest assistance you can offer me."
Damoro was no longer agitated.
He calmly analyzed the plan Yuccaile had presented.
Although the concept sounded passable, the specific procedures detailed within it were exceedingly vague.
This type of strategy is colloquially termed a "sacrifice-style" tactic.
If executed perfectly, it might yield unexpected results, but failing that, it amounted to nothing more than courting destruction.
Yuccaile instantly collapsed upon hearing Damoro's analysis.
She had not anticipated that their meticulously crafted plan would be deemed completely erroneous in Damoro's estimation.
Her surging courage rapidly deflated.
It felt akin to someone intending to smash a broken pot, only to discover they lacked the very strength required to crack it.
Yuccaile departed like a deflating balloon, showing no further interest in any of Damoro's current deliberations.
Watching her receding figure, Damoro engaged in deeper contemplation.
Yuccaile's strategy, despite its flaws, might not be entirely meritless.
The most critical component of the plan held potential:
Utilizing the collective consciousness of all soldiers aboard the warship to contend with the behemoth within the super-microscopic world.
The true question lay in how to contend.
Should a multitude of individuals enter, or should those individuals merge into a single entity to engage?
There were tens of thousands of people currently alive on the warship. Could the sheer consciousness of this many people actually contend?
Damoro's thought process centered on this: If he committed to entering the super-microscopic world, could he position himself as the central core?
He would extract everyone's consciousness, gather it entirely within his own psyche, and directly initiate the confrontation with the behemoth.
"If tens of thousands aren't enough, then perhaps more personnel can be incorporated."
How to integrate more individuals on a warship?
The answer was exceedingly simple: Cloning.
Clones undeniably possess consciousness; this was an established fact.
Consciousness, while difficult to fully grasp, was not a rare cosmic commodity.
It was comparable to dark energy, widely distributed throughout the universe, even constituting more than half of the universe's total mass, yet lower Civilizations still couldn't detect traces of it.
The reason clones hadn't been utilized before was their lack of resolute willpower; they could not maintain lucidity after entering the super-microscopic world to effectively transmit data back to the macro world.
But after countless prior trials, Damoro found that even those with strong wills failed this task, so why expend unnecessary effort on complex will-testing?
Furthermore, this time the clones wouldn't be directly deployed into the super-microscopic world for combat.
Their purpose in existence was to serve as foundational energy—nutrients.
"If I utilize other people's clones, I might very likely be overwhelmed and absorbed by the sheer volume of foreign consciousness."
"Therefore, it would be preferable to generate my own clones directly. This might circumvent that particular hazard."
Perhaps.
Damoro had never undertaken anything precisely like this, so even he lacked absolute certainty.
But the situation had now reached a point of no return.
"Main server, what is the projected time until we reach Star City 4?"
[12 years, Soldier Damoro.]
Twelve years.
For a cosmic voyage, this duration was almost instantaneous.
Reaching Star City 4 might signify the absolute end. He wouldn't secure the opportunity to exit Hyperdimensional Space.
He had to take a gamble!
"I might perish, but when have I ever not struggled on the very edge of demise?"
Damoro immediately began researching the plan's feasibility and simultaneously instructed the main server to commence clone fabrication.
The main server inherently lacked this capacity, as they were mechanical lifeforms, but constructing the necessary cloning apparatus was relatively simple.
It took less than two months to manufacture the equipment, and production commenced swiftly.
The manufacturing utilized existing human templates, referencing widely available clone data within the Federation to mass-produce the units.
This specific clone line was designated [Perfect One]. It possessed no singular prototype, or perhaps its progenitor was itself another clone iteration.
It was custom-engineered, furnished with flawless physical attributes and comprehensive memory data.
After the first Perfect One materialized, Damoro went to observe it. Judging by standard human aesthetics, this entity represented peak perfection, though its appearance deviated slightly from what was considered typical humanity.
Standard humans usually presented with black hair, dark eyes, smooth skin, and a mildly sun-kissed complexion.
But the [Perfect One] iteration included a pair—one male, one female—both possessing blonde hair and blue eyes, displaying strikingly defined features and snow-white skin.
Upon querying the main server regarding the qualifications of these new beings, the computer provided Damoro with the final assessment.
[This is a cloning program gaining popularity within the Federation, where clones are intentionally created with slight physical variations from original humans. This practice serves to provide a more intuitive means of distinguishing between clones and baseline humans.]
As technology advanced, the physical distinction between clones and natural humans began to blur. If creators aimed for absolute identicality, it would inevitably cause identity overlap issues within the Federation's population registry.
The first generation was designated [Perfect One]. Later iterations introduced more drastic differences: [Perfect Two] even manufactured clones resembling Elves within established Human Civilization; [Perfect Three] possessed animalistic ears; [Perfect Four] manifested as demonic figures…
"Humans really do play the flashiest games!"
Damoro understood instantly why such modifications became mainstream.
But this spectacle was irrelevant to his immediate goal.
The most critical factor was whether these newly formed clones could successfully bear his memories and subsequently serve as the initial batch of sacrificial lives.
These [Perfect One] units were merely physical shells; the crucial elements—consciousness and memory—were supplied entirely by Damoro himself.
Consciousness, he reasoned, was not some noble abstraction; it was fundamentally a form of energy.
It divides into two components: source energy and radiated energy.
This could be readily understood using the analogy of fire.
Life itself is the flame, whereas consciousness represents the thermal and luminous energy dispersed by that flame. Fire produces light and heat, but what truly matters is not the light or heat itself.
In life's nascent stages, even preceding the birth of organized Civilization, organisms could generate flames, yet they lacked the comprehension of how light and heat were produced.
Consciousness operates similarly.
Currently, it is possible to manufacture conduits for consciousness, and even to modulate the existence of consciousness, but grasping the intrinsic nature of consciousness itself remains impossible.
Of course, it is not entirely unknown.
At least the mission brief Damoro received upon accepting this task indicated that current research concerning consciousness-related matters was far more advanced than he had initially assumed.
This knowledge could support him in executing this complex, consciousness-based fusion.
After 10,000 [Perfect One] units were produced, Damoro initiated the first round of trials.
Consciousness fusion necessitated the creation of a suitable vessel.
This vessel served to retain and bind the concentrated conscious energy.
Returning to the fire analogy, this container functions by collecting the photons generated by a flame, preventing those photons from dissipating outside the container.
There were, however, some subtle differences.
As long as a flame persists, it eternally releases light and heat. Consciousness is different; it does not simply drift away. It remains tethered to a life form, intrinsically connected to the living body.
According to research, a life form possesses consciousness from birth. This base consciousness does not accrue with the passage of time; every life's foundational consciousness is inherently equivalent.
Variations in consciousness are thus determined entirely by the experiences accumulated by the conductor; this experiential data is what gets transmitted to the consciousness.
But consciousness, fundamentally, is just a vessel.
In infancy, consciousness is merely an empty cup. Over time, this cup gradually fills.
Consciousness possesses a finite capacity, which inherently limits a life form's maximum potential.
Life cannot harbor infinitely vast consciousness, primarily because consciousness itself is not a tangible, concrete object.
In the broadest sense, everyone defines consciousness as the seamless unity of knowledge, emotion, and will.
That is, the world's perception, emotional states, and one's own volition.
Some Federation scholars propose that consciousness does not possess independent existence; its inherent conductor is life itself. The reason consciousness can be extracted is simply due to the act of observation and influence exerted by the life form.
Life creates a conduit similar to itself around its periphery, extracts the consciousness, allows it to extend onto this conductor, or even transfer entirely to it, thereby allowing "consciousness" to begin a separate form of existence.
Simply put, life utilizes advanced scientific technology to transfer a life's perception, emotion, and will onto another object. We merely use this transferred structure but do not precisely know its underlying composition. This transferred perception, emotion, and will is what we term consciousness.
Therefore, this consciousness fusion project...
It is essentially using this physical structure to extract, gather, and then completely inject a life form's perception, emotion, and will into Damoro, embedding it within his physical form.
The former theory (fire and light analogy) and the latter (conductor theory) represent the two mainstream schools of thought explaining consciousness within Human Civilization at this juncture.
Damoro did not definitively align himself with either school.
Even if he possessed limited direct knowledge of technology, humanities, physics, biology, philosophy, and related fields, he understood that all these disciplines were ultimately unified under the umbrella of "science."
And science is inherently a methodology for summarizing and inductively analyzing observed phenomena; it does not create the phenomena themselves.
Both explanations merely offer interpretations of consciousness from their respective analytical viewpoints. The rigorous study of consciousness was only established after the existence of consciousness was empirically observed, not that Human Civilization or any other Civilization first established the study of consciousness and thereby manufactured it.
Prior to the consciousness fusion, Damoro had already gained a comprehensive theoretical grasp of the concept of consciousness.
After another half a year passed.
Ten thousand units of consciousness had been successfully collected.
He now stood before the equipment. Countless fine tubes connected to particles adhering to his body. He appeared to have grown long hair, his original physical form no longer discernible; he now resembled a spherical, hairy mass.
[To ensure maximal success, consciousness fusion will be executed in a single, comprehensive infusion, directly injecting all accumulated consciousness via countless conduits.]
[These foreign consciousnesses may very likely impact your original consciousness, but you need not worry. These consciousnesses are all essentially you; they perfectly resonate with your own signature, yet no one can guarantee the precise outcome, as this marks humanity's inaugural consciousness fusion.]
[Are you prepared, Soldier Damoro?]
Damoro entrusted all his final settings to the main server.
His core felt a small, unexpected surge of apprehension.
But having reached this critical juncture, Damoro possessed absolutely no inclination to retreat.
His initial strategy held only a one-in-a-million chance of success, but the revised plan increased the probability of victory to 1% or even 10%. This risk was absolutely worth taking.
"Begin!"
The main server responded with brevity.
After uttering a firm affirmation, it initiated the injection of the consciousness signatures of 10,000 individuals into Damoro's body.
Damoro's chassis was mechanical; this specialized metallic structure allowed it to bear consciousness much like a living being.
According to Damoro's initial projections, after receiving these consciousness streams, he should have been continuously influenced as if watching a rapid slideshow.
But in reality, that was not the issue.
The problem was that consciousness does not inherently contain memories.
Although consciousness can process data derived from memories, this information is not the memories themselves, but rather the powerful emotions attached to them.
What truly impacted Damoro was emotion.
Countless raw feelings, roaring hoarsely, flooded towards him.
He struggled to describe the sensation.
Perhaps it could be partially understood as an extreme amplification of every emotion he possessed.
Joy, rage, sorrow, pleasure—every single feeling was pushed to its absolute maximum intensity.
He might have previously disdained wanton slaughter, but no matter how ruthless, one inevitably develops some emotional feedback regarding the suffering around them. Therefore, he harbored sympathy for the slain and hatred for those wielding the metaphorical scythe. These magnified feelings drove him toward a state of near-insanity.
"Perish! Perish! All of you, be extinguished!"
"You pathetic little creature daring to stand before me, how utterly ridiculous!"
"Look, you've stepped on a rock. There must be microorganisms on that stone. You killed them. Wahhh~~ What beautiful lives lost!"
Countless overwhelming emotions were amplified.
Damoro spiraled toward an extreme breaking point.
He would weep for the demise of a microorganism, fly into a rage if someone committed an act he disapproved of, and feel crushing shame over some minor imperfection from his distant past.
Emotions piled up, emotions erupted, threatening to cause his system to collapse entirely.
[Calm down, Soldier Damoro!]
The central computer began releasing substances designed to regulate Damoro's emotional input.
But it proved futile.
Damoro even began enacting self-termination protocols because of intense, retrospective guilt over cruel methods he had employed against former enemies.
The main server could only focus on continuously suppressing him from committing self-destructive acts.
The rest, he had to overcome internally.
...
Damoro originated during the era of the Eternally Democratic Star Nation.
That era was intensely restrictive.
Ideals of freedom, democracy, and related concepts permeated every stratum of society. Everyone genuinely believed there was nothing inherently flawed with this structure, and initially, there wasn't. However, societal rigidity dictated that any structure there would inevitably calcify into a form of hell.
In fact, even Chu hadn't fully grasped one crucial point.
At this juncture, many of the lower-class populations were already beginning to harbor deep dissatisfaction toward Chu.
Perhaps Chu had granted them a veneer of new liberty.
But when this 'freedom' morphed into a new set of chains, this discontent began to eclipse even the glory of Chu's initial reign.
Especially given the prevailing social climate, everyone urgently sought liberation from confinement, giving rise to an excess of new, unconventional ideologies.
However, Chu's governance became increasingly erratic, leading to a severe detachment between society and all life forms, causing existence itself to descend into universal despair.
If the original Olive Branch Civilization resembled a flock of domesticated fowl confined in a cage.
Then the Eternally Democratic Star Nation was a pack of wild beasts confined within a zoo. They would frantically run rampant, utilizing this chaos to resist their predicament, even willing to bash their heads bloody in defiance.
However, the difference between wild beasts and a zoo's routine confinement was too vast.
The zoo could repeatedly employ sedatives to halt such behavior, infinitely prolonging the period of suppression.
After prolonged suppression, the fundamental difference between intelligent life and mere wild beasts would manifest.
Intelligent life would still harbor hope in its core, believing that given sufficient time, circumstances could improve. Thus, after being subdued by "tranquilizers," intelligent life began to wait.
While wild beasts would perceive this as further restraint, continuing to struggle violently.
Damoro believed he was originally human, but slowly transformed into one of those wild beasts.
Although the dawn of hope was dazzling, the surrounding night was enough to suppress the appearance of that dawn. Damoro existed perpetually at the 'edge of dawn,' pushing himself toward it, eternally waiting.
Thousands of years.
Tens of thousands of years passed.
He relaxed slightly, his physical form changing involuntarily. He looked behind him, discovering that the faint dawn before him was less than one ten-thousandth of the encroaching darkness. Despair finally claimed him.
He rushed to the central square, immersing himself in the gaze of everyone present, shouting loudly.
"This world is black! Our future holds no light!"
His body, at that instant, transformed into a streak of pure light.
This light shone intensely for only a brief moment—perhaps a few seconds—then rapidly faded.
The surrounding square and streets reverted to darkness.
This was Damoro's first taste of liberation.
After his expiration, Damoro entered Hyperdimensional Space.
It felt utterly alien.
The mission sent down once again made Damoro feel profoundly constrained.
However, the rich experience gained from that first world deeply delighted Damoro.
Different worlds offered fundamentally different experiences. He had once served as a Warbeast fighting within a besieged city; that profound sense of unrestrained freedom utterly fascinated him.
He became completely immersed in the Hyperdimensional Space.
Unlike many others, he actively sought out and entered various worlds.
Fighting!
Endless, relentless fighting!
This brought him repeated sensations of exhilaration.
He thrived on encountering novel enemies and confronting new challenges, then using his own strength to utterly destroy both the opponents and the obstacles themselves.
But Hyperdimensional Space encompassed more than just combat.
One specific mission required Damoro simply to act as an escort for a single person.
This was meant to be a very simple assignment.
Yet, it led him to experience a despair deeper than anything he had known in his entire life.
It was a girl. Damoro would never forget that girl. She wasn't powerful; she could even be described as fundamentally incomplete.
Every day she lay in her hospital bed, desperately yearning to move about and hustle like normal people.
Damoro approached her, dedicating himself to her care.
Although the girl faced the bleak despair of an incurable illness, her face remained perpetually lit with smiles.
This sincerity made Damoro recognize a parallel in himself. Wasn't he deceiving himself in a similar manner?
But wasn't this self-deception a unique form of strength?
Deceiving others is simple; yet, deceiving oneself remains the hardest task in the world.
The girl, perhaps due to Damoro's daily attention and encouragement, developed genuine affections for him, but she dared not voice them, acutely aware of her inevitable fate.
Damoro, having witnessed so much, initially viewed this purely as a dictated mission requirement.
It should have ended there.
But on his birthday, the girl, struggling against her severely ill body, prepared a lavish dinner for him. Although the food was slightly cold, and perhaps even rather unappetizing, when the girl uttered the words, "Happy birthday, thank you for caring for me," Damoro, for the very first time, truly understood the essence of human emotion.
Although it was merely a common expression, as a being who had experienced the Gas Victory and the era of the Eternally Democratic system, he had never felt so tangibly close to the very thing he yearned for.
He developed feelings.
Then followed the familiar, inevitable script.
Death…
The girl passed away exactly seven days after his birthday, during a necessary surgery.
It was so sudden, so utterly unprepared for.
He experienced a feeling of empty collapse.
Damoro felt his entire being instantly hollowed out, leaving nothing behind. No tears, no desperate wails—just an overwhelming sense of helplessness.
This helplessness was so profound that it reignited suicidal thoughts within Damoro.
Even if this experience was technically just a mission mandate.
It had been a real world. It wasn't simulated reality; it was tangible. The girl was real, and his experience with her was genuine.
What was lost could never be retrieved.
Damoro intensely despised that sensation. He had spent seven months accompanying the girl.
For him, these seven months might only register as a fleeting moment in his vast existence, yet at that time, they had felt so significant, so incredibly precious.
A life that had never known emotion now suffered a critical hit of emotional damage. He had reached his absolute breaking point.
As he was on the verge of choosing death, he took one final step.
He visited the girl's original hospital room and found a single piece of paper resting on her bed.
It was a will.
The girl knew she could hold on no longer; her body ached to its limits every single day.
In the will, the girl's writing was delicate and alive. Her sole expressed wish was for Damoro to live well—a simple, almost mundane request.
But for Damoro, this note represented a second liberation.
It was not liberation from external chains; rather, he was freed from his own consuming obsession.
What did the populace of the Eternally Democratic era yearn for most?
Emotional emancipation.
But Damoro had never known what true emotion felt like. He pursued it, he engineered emotional connections with others, yet those felt as fragile as paper.
True emotion, he now realized, was incredibly heavy, overwhelmingly resonant.
After this turning point, his inner state stabilized. He was no longer frantic but cautiously navigated existence within Hyperdimensional Space.
Yet, this was not his final liberation.
There were many more instances, many more experiences yet to unfold.
Each event held the potential to become a brilliant, unique story.
These accumulating moments forged the Damoro he was today.
When Damoro's emotional capacity was eventually supplemented to its absolute peak by countless borrowed consciousnesses, he recalled those repeated moments of personal liberation.
These liberations had gradually settled his inner turmoil.
The amplified emotions still existed within him.
He had simply found a necessary equilibrium among them, establishing calmness as his dominant tenor.
[Congratulations, Soldier Damoro, your objective is achieved.]
The main server's congratulatory announcement did not cause the slightest ripple in Damoro's heart.
"I must press forward. I can sense it is still insufficient."
"Even my emotions are too uniform. I am still predominantly myself. My consciousness has been enhanced, but the amplification level is not yet high enough. I require those soldiers—all of them!"