These energy particles were remarkably similar to Metacellular organisms.
They functioned by devouring energy to multiply and strengthen themselves.
However, they were even more minuscule than Metacellular organisms and far more difficult to eradicate. They were artificial particles, fundamental in nature, existing as a kind of wave.
This was a product developed by Ayla following the Metacellular Project, designated as metaparticle zero.
The reason it was called zero was that it remained an experimental version rather than a complete form. It still possessed certain flaws. On a battlefield like the one between the Rusty Star Nation and the Ynun Star Nation, it would not be easily detected. However, on a battlefield between the Twenty-Eight Nations Covenant and the Federation, this substance could only exert its full value during the initial phase.
Just like now.
It was capable of instantly devouring high-frequency energy segments, yet it could only slowly digest something as dense as an energy shield.
If it were a sub-planet-class warship, these particles would likely take several hundred years to gnaw through it.
Fortunately, the situation for the Winunder Fleet was far from optimistic.
After enduring nearly 10 seconds of intense energy impact, the chaos subsided.
Aboard the Winunder Fleet, the crews and officers believed they had passed the most difficult phase. Relief was visible on everyone's face.
Carbines was already preparing the next move.
"Do not count on luck. This was merely the first wave of enemy attacks. Who knows what follow-up measures they have in store?"
"We must move as quickly as possible. This is no longer about regrouping. We should disengage immediately and return to the M36 Star Cluster."
"The energy overflow just now allowed the warships to absorb a small amount, filling roughly 1% of our reserves. Currently, our total energy stands at around 18%. I plan to abandon several warships and concentrate the energy of three ships into one. This will provide enough power to boost our speed past 100,000 kilometers per second and allow us to escape."
Carbines made this decision after careful consideration.
The other officers looked worried.
"Doing this could land us in a military court!"
Carbines' expression remained cold.
"A military court? You are talking to me about legalities at a time like this? If we continue like this, we will all be buried here together. Returning to report the intelligence we have gathered is our absolute priority."
"I believe anyone who reviews these records will understand that this was a necessity."
"Besides, we are not originally part of the Star Nation's military; the Army will protect us."
He pointed to the now calm starry sky outside.
The others were still trembling with fear. The terror they had just experienced had not dissipated, and they had no desire to encounter it a second time.
"I agree!"
"Let us do it. At least if we return, we might survive. Staying here is a certain death sentence."
"They possess not only superior strategies but also hidden, powerful weapons. We were all deceived by the Rusty Star Nation; this war was unwise from the start."
Everyone tried to convince themselves. The punishment of a military court was truly terrifying, perhaps even worse than dying right here.
But Carbines could not bear the weight of it. He had made too many mistakes already. At this moment, he felt he finally understood Officer Binom.
It was a profound sense of powerlessness.
What exactly were they fighting against?
Previously, they believed themselves to be invincible. Now, it seemed only their virus caused any trouble for the enemy, while on the frontal battlefield, their forces were collapsing.
"Everyone, stay vigilant at all times!"
After Carbines made the announcement, he leaned back in his chair to relax, yet his nerves remained taut. He stared outside, wondering what would greet them next.
At that moment, he noticed the energy shield outside the warship was becoming dim.
Thinking someone had deactivated it, he immediately shouted, "Who turned off the energy shield?"
"Keep it active!"
However, the soldier responsible for monitoring the shield replied, "I did not turn it off, Captain!"
"It is dimming on its own. I have sent an inquiry to the main server to investigate the cause."
Just as he finished speaking, the main server's investigation concluded, and the data was transmitted to his console.
His face went rigid.
"It is over," he whispered, trembling. "We are finished!"
Seeing his reaction, Carbines demanded, "What happened?"
The soldier replied listlessly.
"It is not over yet. The energy shield is covered with strange energy bodies. They are eroding the barrier. Soon, the energy shield will fail, and we will be completely exposed."
"Those energies will penetrate the hull and destroy the ship. Their energy level is too high."
Carbines immediately formulated a plan.
"If it is energy, the main server can absorb it, correct? Draw them into the energy bay and burn them off."
He asked the scholars on the warship if this would be effective.
The scholars were hesitant.
"The properties of artificial particles are difficult to determine even in a laboratory, let alone when we do not even know what these are."
"But I think we can try. At the very least, the situation cannot get any worse."
Carbines directly ordered the main server to proceed.
The main server activated absorption mode, and the energy bodies were successfully drawn in.
The crew on the warship relaxed again, as if they had just survived a terrifying roller coaster.
"Success!"
"This time, it should truly be over!"
Carbines felt incredibly exhausted. He had made more critical decisions during this mission than in all his past tens of thousands of years combined.
However, his efforts were futile. The energy bodies they had absorbed were actually Mingna.
...
Energy Bay.
Mingna sensed the vast amount of power stored within the energy bay and happily began to absorb it.
She grew stronger once again.
Carbines' greatest mistake was failing to realize that the energy bodies attacking them were actually conscious. Unconscious objects follow presets; as long as they are not triggered, they pose no threat. But consciousness implies initiative.
After absorbing the energy, Mingna began to assault the outer shell of the energy bay.
The energy bay held a massive amount of power and possessed a certain resistance to energy itself. Unfortunately, Mingna chose to detonate herself directly.
The resulting explosion instantly destroyed the energy bay.
The entire warship's interior turned crimson as alarms blared.
Mingna, now transformed into energy, began invading every corner of the vessel through the corridors. This was no silent infiltration; it was explosive.
Terrifying light and heat surged toward everyone inside the cabins.
Death!
Shattering!
Destruction!
Aboard the warship, Carbines watched the crimson warning lights flicker. For some unknown reason, his anxious heart suddenly found a strange calm.
"As expected, we still could not do it?"
There was no more time for further monologues.
Energy flooded the command cabin through the corridor.
The entire warship shattered in that instant.
It was not just this single vessel, but all of them.
Mingna's presence was not limited to one ship. Transformed into energy and infused with metaparticle zero, she possessed a cloning ability similar to Luna's. She could divide into many fragments, each retaining her consciousness.
All warships exploded abruptly, scattering into debris.
In the void, Mingna coalesced once more, shifting back into the form of a Megaptera dolphin.
She gazed into the distance, where the Fourth Fleet was approaching.
For her, the war was not yet over!
...
"That is..."
Aboard the Fourth Fleet, everyone knew exactly what had been launched.
And now, they were witnessing the aftermath.
"Tell me that is fake!"
"Am I awake? Ouch! Who set the pain index in my dream so high?"
"My god, how many secrets are our upper echelons hiding?"
Gachi looked at the shocked expressions of the soldiers around him.
His own inner shock was far greater than theirs.
These people only saw the surface; they did not understand, and because they lacked understanding, they lacked reverence.
As someone from Hyperdimensional Space, he already possessed a concept of Divines. In Hyperdimensional Space, a Divine could dominate an entire universe.
However, he found this scene unbelievable.
This was reality.
And that Divine, using only her Bloodline—merely her Bloodline—had annihilated an entire fleet!
How on earth was this possible?
Gachi was actually a Federation citizen. Some soldiers around him assumed this was some exclusive high-tech from the Federation, but he knew better. The Federation simply did not possess such power.
He had never even heard of it.
He was not arrogant enough to think he knew everything.
But he came from a prominent family whose business spanned thousands of star systems. The education he received and the knowledge he could access far exceeded the imagination of ordinary people, yet he knew nothing of this.
Such a terrifying weapon should have caused a media explosion in the Federation, but it had not.
Perhaps he had been away from the Federation for too long.
Although he had only experienced a few dozen worlds, he had, after all, crossed from the Federation to the edge of human civilization—a distance of several thousand light-years. Even at the speed of light, it would take several thousand years to reach here.
Still, Gachi felt it was impossible; technology would not change to such a degree.
"Perhaps Hyperdimensional Space truly is not a product of human civilization?"
At this moment, he felt his breathing become difficult.
He now had a deeper understanding of the phrase: "The power of a Divine needs no explanation."
Simultaneously, a flame burned fiercely in his eyes.
He wanted to become a Divine!
He had had enough of a lifetime of mediocrity.
Being born into a great family meant having abundant resources, but it did not guarantee a seat at the pinnacle.
His family produced over a million young people every year. A generation spanned ten years, meaning tens of millions of people competed against each other.
For the first five years, the family would not invest fully in every child. Once talents were revealed after five years, most people were ruthlessly eliminated.
Then another five years, and another, and another!
Gachi had survived six of these five-year periods, but for the family's tiered selection process, this was just the beginning.
Twenty periods, or 105 years old, to enter the upper echelons.
Forty periods, or 205 years old, to reach the family's core.
It was not until the sixtieth period, at 305 years old, that one could finally become a regional business head.
The eternal cycle of "five years" had exhausted Gachi.
It was a brutal slaughter.
By any means necessary.
Gachi had not committed suicide; he had been murdered. He did not know the culprit, nor did he know what exactly had killed him. Poison? A hidden blade? Some form of long-range weapon?
After waking up in Hyperdimensional Space, he felt he truly belonged there.
Hyperdimensional Space was no place for slackers; it coerced and pressured, yet it also preserved a relative freedom. It was a simple system of missions and rewards: win and you flourish, lose and you die.
Compared to the repression within the family and the crushing pressure from the elders, Gachi felt like a fish in water in Hyperdimensional Space.
He believed he could do it; he could become a Divine!
To become a Divine—if he could control such power, it was almost beyond his imagination.
This was the power of one individual crushing the might of a collective. He had once pinned his hopes on gene pools, but now he knew that all gene pools were nothing in the face of this.
This was the power he craved.
"I will make it mine!"
As he was lost in thought, the cacophony of voices around him abruptly ceased.
He looked around; the entire crew seemed to have frozen in time, suspended in a motionless state.
Before his shock could fully register, the people around him suddenly snapped back to life.
However, the nature of their conversation had shifted entirely.
"The Strategos actually managed to source a weapon of that caliber."
"It seems the Star Nation still has a hidden arsenal they have yet to fully reveal. If we could deploy these long-range superweapons at will, we would be invincible."
"Don't get ahead of yourself. The cost of a weapon like that is likely more than we could ever afford in a thousand lifetimes. It must be incredibly rare. If we could fire those freely, we would have toppled the entire Federation by now."
It sounded similar to their previous chatter.
They had simply reached a different, convenient conclusion.
But Gachi knew the truth. This was something fundamentally different.
"Someone erased their memories and implanted an entirely new narrative."
"Why wasn't I affected?"
"Is this the work of Hyperdimensional Space?"
"I never knew it possessed this kind of capability."
"It seems my understanding is still far too limited!"
He was consumed by bewilderment and suspicion.
He felt a pair of eyes watching him from the shadows.
This sensation was no illusion; those eyes truly existed.
However, they were not focused on him at this moment.
The warship pressed forward, and Mingna returned to the command deck. she had expected to be interrogated by the crew, but to her surprise, an officer greeted her with palpable excitement.
"Strategos, where were you just now?"
"Your secret weapon was devastatingly effective! A total victory! You have to see this."
Mingna sensed a deep dissonance but could not immediately identify the source. When the officer played back the recording, she was stunned.
The footage showed a massive beam of energy being discharged toward the enemy fleet. Upon impact, it dispersed into a colossal, green, chrysanthemum-like structure of silken ribbons that enveloped the enemy vessels before detonating, obliterating them instantly.
After watching the recording, she began to doubt her own sanity.
"This weapon is beyond anything we imagined! I wonder if the Supernova Technology Corporation developed it. With this kind of firepower, we have nothing to fear from the Ynun Star Nation."
The command deck was alive with jubilation.
Mingna frowned.
She checked the logs of her arrival at the cannon muzzle—the data was gone. Instead, the records showed her returning directly to her quarters to rest, only emerging after the engagement had concluded.
Someone had tampered with the data.
But who?
The answer was obvious: only the Main Server possessed that kind of access.
She confronted the Main Server directly: "You altered the records. I was just outside the hull! My memories do not match this footage."
[Strategos Mingna, your memories appear to be disordered. I recommend that you seek immediate rest.]
The Main Server's cold, clinical response only made the situation feel more ominous.
She knew she would get nothing more from it.
If it wasn't the Main Server, then it was something even more powerful—something capable of overriding it.
The thought of Hyperdimensional Space didn't cross her mind, as she had never encountered such a phenomenon before.
"Strategos, why do you look so pale?"
In the midst of the celebration, Mingna was the only one out of sync, prompting a curious officer to ask.
Mingna snapped back to reality, signaling that she was fine. With a grave expression, she said, "Do not celebrate too early; our war is far from over."
Not for the crew, and certainly not for her.
The system had not yet issued a mission completion prompt, which meant that what she had done was still not enough.
...
Winunder Fleet.
N'daba and a group of Captains fell into a heavy silence as they watched the distant explosions on their monitors.
They had been moving toward those coordinates to support the remnant fleet.
Now, there was no one left to support.
"According to the Fleet-Syntax, the enemy should still have been hundreds of astronomical units away. How were they intercepted so quickly?"
The bridge was filled with a sense of profound perplexity.
N'daba addressed the Captains in the virtual briefing room, his voice strained: "Speculation is a luxury we can no longer afford. We need to evacuate this sector immediately."
"As of this moment, we lack the combat effectiveness to engage the enemy."
It was a simple, pragmatic order.
At least, that is what he told himself. That is what they all wanted to believe.
Yet, the reality was staggering: they had lost nearly half their total strength. It was a humiliating, almost farcical defeat.
One Captain finally reached his breaking point. "Run! Is that all we do now?"
"We ran when we arrived, and we are running as we tuck tail to leave. And every time we retreat, we leave more of our people behind. If we had stood our ground and fought a proper frontal engagement earlier, we wouldn't be in this pathetic state!"
"I would rather go down in a blaze of glory than be slowly ground into dust like this. At least then, I could die with a shred of dignity."
The speaker was Leavall, a human Captain whose resentment toward N'daba was now laid bare.
The other officers shifted uncomfortably. Leavall was a veteran with seniority exceeding even N'daba's. It was only due to past political friction that he had never ascended to the rank of Commander.
Now, with the war effort collapsing, that old friction had ignited into pure vitriol.
N'daba exploded in a fit of rage.
"Leavall, my strategy was flawless given the circumstances!"
"Do you think I've forgotten? When the plan to split the fleet was proposed, you were the loudest voice in the room, inciting the others to hunt for glory. It was your people from the Flaorse Corporation who abandoned the main formation first, and now you have the audacity to stand there and mock me?"
"If it weren't for your shortsightedness, we wouldn't be trapped in this nightmare."
"Mark my words: once we return, I will see you impeached and stripped of your rank!"
The bitter emotions of the defeated were reaching a boiling point. By pinning the entire catastrophe on Leavall, N'daba only succeeded in pushing the veteran over the edge.
"Haha! I recall someone—I won't say who—boasting that we would return as decorated heroes. You were so blinded by the prospect of a promotion that you walked straight into a transparent trap. You want to be a Strategos? You aren't even fit to command a scout ship, let alone this fleet!"
The two men descended into a shouting match, a spectacle of unprofessionalism that stunned the room.
The remaining Captains scrambled to mediate, desperate to remind them that this was neither the time nor the place for a civil war.
But the fire was too high.
The argument was only silenced by the clinical voice of the Main Server.
[Alert: Left flank has engaged hostile forces. Estimated enemy distance: 62 astronomical units. Closing speed is accelerating. All units, prepare for defensive maneuvers!]
The threat of immediate death acted like a bucket of cold water. Both men fell silent; survival, after all, took precedence over spite.
"Currently, aside from a small harassment wing, the enemy's main battle group is still 619 astronomical units away," N'daba said, attempting to regain his composure and return to his principle of stability. "Even if they outpace us, they cannot catch the main body of the fleet."
"Furthermore, after the scale of the previous engagement, their energy reserves must be depleted. As long as we maintain discipline, we will make it through."
The officers looked toward Leavall, who remained uncharacteristically quiet. It appeared he had conceded—for now.
A collective sigh of relief swept through the virtual room. There were no good options left, and further debate would only breed more sedition.
N'daba, sensing the fragile truce, ended the call. "Meeting adjourned!"
The moment he disconnected, he felt his strength fail him. He slumped into his seat, the weight of his failures pressing down like a physical force.
He knew, deep down, that he was responsible. As the Commander, the final decision had been his. He had allowed himself to be swayed by a minor temptation, leading a thousand ships to their graves.
In hindsight, it was an act of staggering idiocy.
The enemy had been masterful. They had fed him a small, easy victory to cultivate hope, making the subsequent trap invisible.
"Utterly ruthless," he whispered.
A normal commander wouldn't use their own soldiers' lives as bait so casually. He had assumed his counterpart would be constrained by politics—that losing so many units would ruin their career. He had gambled on the enemy's self-preservation, and he had lost.
Now, he was staring into the abyss. Upon his return, the political fallout would strip him of everything he had ever worked for.
Even Officer Binom had been forced to return in disgrace to face judgment.
Haunted by these thoughts, N'daba prepared to take what little rest he could. He was exhausted.
But then, a priority notification chimed. As he read the message, his entire body began to shake with a new level of fury.
"Leavall!"
He slammed the communication link open. "Explain this! What is happening out there?"
The officer on the other end sounded panicked. "I don't have the full picture, Commander, but you know Leavall's temper. He took his personal guard and broke formation to hunt down that harassment wing. I've hailed him repeatedly, but he's gone radio silent."
It was the year 230,000 AD—an era of supposed peak civilization—and yet such primitive insubordination was still possible.
"Has that man lost his mind?"
N'daba was beyond exasperation. He ordered the Main Server to broadcast a direct recall order to Leavall's ship.
As a Commander, he held strategic authority, but he lacked the direct override codes to seize control of individual warship systems away from their respective Captains.
He waited. Minutes ticked by. There was no response.
"Damn it all!"
"You've signed your own death warrant, Leavall!"
As N'daba's rage peaked, the Main Server issued a grim status report: fleet morale had officially hit rock bottom.
The soldiers had lost faith in the mission. Worse, they had lost faith in their leader. A Commander who could not even control his own officers was a leader not worth following.
In that moment, N'daba felt the cold realization that he was truly powerless.
...
Fourth Fleet.
The command crew watched the tactical display in disbelief.
"In the midst of a retreat, the Winunder Fleet is actually splitting its forces to chase our scouts? Do they really think their sluggish ships can catch us?"
The Captains were baffled.
Mingna initially dismissed the move as an act of pure desperation, but she quickly corrected herself. She began searching for a hidden motive, some profound tactical maneuver she might be missing.
After agonizing over the data for hours, she came up empty.
"Unless the enemy is concealing a massive power spike, there is no logical reason for this."
"Could it be internal strife?" one Captain suggested.
The others scoffed. To them, such a breakdown in command in the modern era sounded like a fairy tale.
But Mingna didn't join in the laughter.
"Defeat breeds chaos," she mused. "And people at the bottom of a pit are capable of anything."
"Regardless of the cause, we can test the theory. We have time on our side."
Mingna hit upon a new strategy.
A way to secure victory without firing a single shot.