Luna saw that she had achieved her objective and decisively stopped talking.
She wouldn't post any more opinions on this forum. She believed in the ancient wisdom that talking too much leads to slips of the tongue.
The current situation was already ideal.
Those God's Chosen would push this matter forward on their own initiative because there was no downside for them.
To the Believer Civilization, both the Faraway Civilization and the six-dimensional God were enemies. Since this plan could pit their enemies against each other, why wouldn't they do it?
In fact, even if the God's Chosen discovered Luna's true identity, they would likely still proceed. The only difference would be how long they hesitated.
Of course, all of this followed standard logic.
But this world never operates strictly according to logic, or at least not human logic, or even Luna's own. As the saying goes, reality is often far more outrageous than fiction; those words have merit.
Luna couldn't rely on just one preparation.
She found Thard's contact info and inquired about purchasing a starship, or even a larger ship or warship. She needed to observe that star at close range and figure out how to destroy it.
Thard was, as usual, completely forthright.
"Actually, these things can be manufactured within your Shell; there's no need to purchase them."
"However, since yours is a newly established Shell, developing it, especially acquiring the necessary technical knowledge, might not be easy."
"This highlights the importance of your joining our Gravity Faction. Within the faction, certain foundational information is shared. Oh, I don't think I gave you the access to our faction's private forum yet."
"Between faction members, trading knowledge is quite inexpensive. As a God's Chosen, you can pray for some niche but useful knowledge to exchange for currency."
Knowledge was wealth.
And in the Believer Civilization, knowledge was even easier to convert into riches.
"I have the complete knowledge of Yaroessen kinetics. Before I was identified as a God's Chosen, I prayed dozens of times. Combined with the data I gathered from the Yaroessen kinetics seminar in my original Shell, the knowledge is now fully complete."
Since One's seminar intended to use Yaroessen kinetics to gain noble status, it meant the technology hadn't been fully cataloged yet.
"Yaroessen kinetics?"
"Let me check."
Thard spent a moment searching for information regarding Yaroessen kinetics.
"You're in luck. There happens to be a noble who needs content in this field. Because the offered price was too low, no God's Chosen took the job."
God's Chosen could obtain complete information on their own, unless the knowledge was exceptionally complex, where even praying for 100% wouldn't yield a complete picture. Otherwise, God's Chosen didn't typically buy knowledge.
Most nobles in the Believer Civilization weren't God's Chosen; they were the primary buyers.
Thard sent over the quote.
110,000 kosius.
Kosius was the standard currency of the Believer Civilization, its value based on 1% of the knowledge from the basic Star Energy Studies (Volume 1).
Volume 1 only covered the introduction to stellar energy, essentially basic nuclear fusion and stellar evolution, so it wasn't very valuable.
One hundred kosius could buy the entire volume.
However, each of the subsequent seven volumes of Star Energy Studies increased in value significantly.
Volume 2 was 1,000 kosius, and Volume 3 was 10,000 kosius.
It followed a decimal progression.
This made sense, as the Believer Civilization was built upon Star Energy Studies.
110,000 kosius wasn't much, only enough to cover about one-third of a starship, which explained why no God's Chosen had bothered with it.
Thard then introduced Luna to the knowledge-trading channels. It was so helpful that Luna briefly wondered if she had been exposed.
Fortunately, she was already prepared for that possibility.
"My thanks!"
"The God will bless you and grant you even more knowledge."
Luna spoke the lie. In truth, the entire Believer Civilization was incredibly hypocritical. They clearly didn't believe in the God and even detested Him, yet they constantly sought benefits from Him.
"The God will bless you as well."
"Moon, we are of the Gravity Faction, after all. If you obtain more knowledge regarding gravity, I can purchase it from you at a high price."
Thard was quite wealthy, living as it did in the Second Ring.
"Certainly. I will make sure you receive any such knowledge first."
Luna's attitude pleased Thard immensely; it enjoyed dealing with someone like her. Despite being divided into factions, the God's Chosen were quite independent. Unless it concerned their own interests, they ignored one another.
In human terms, they were like a collection of socially inept shut-ins. A high-EQ person like Luna made Thard feel very comfortable.
Ending the communication, Luna entered the Gravity Faction's forum to begin her research. She found numerous threads describing gravitational phenomena. Browsing through them, she noted many unique insights, some of which were quite profound.
Luna had a basic understanding of gravity herself.
Having lived so long and held such a high position, she had to dabble in everything to know how to solve problems when they arose. Her knowledge of gravity wasn't at the cutting edge of human civilization, but she believed anything up to Type 2.3 wasn't difficult for her to grasp.
These incomprehensible pieces of knowledge would likely be very helpful to human gravitational studies. Luna made a mental note of them but didn't study them in depth.
There was a high probability she wouldn't be returning to the third dimension.
Therefore, she would leave these things for Ayla to discover when human civilization returned to the fourth dimension; she just needed to focus on her current task.
Aside from these topics, the forum also contained discussions about the Faraway Civilization and, more frequently, requests for help with various pieces of knowledge.
In the Believer Civilization, not all knowledge was as easy to obtain as Yaroessen kinetics via a set prayer method. Prayers had to be constantly modified and renewed, using different body forms and prayer languages to acquire new information.
Often, the first person to pray wouldn't even know what they were going to get. Only when more people prayed and pooled their findings could they understand which technology a specific piece of knowledge pointed to.
In short, it was like a gacha system.
And since it was random, when a God's Chosen wanted to build something, they would find they were missing certain pieces.
Don't misunderstand, this wasn't innovation.
This manufacturing was more like receiving a blueprint that required dozens of techniques, but only having gathered a few. To build it, one had to start collecting the other necessary pieces of knowledge.
Luna believed the Believer Civilization was entirely a domestic, captive civilization.
"A tragic civilization."
Indeed. That six-dimensional civilization could mold the Believer Civilization into whatever form it desired.
Luna suspected that the technologies provided to the Believer Civilization weren't random at all, but part of a plan. The issue was that because of the lack of faith, the Believers could only extract knowledge piece by piece. Otherwise, Luna believed the civilization could have reached humanity's current technological level within ten thousand years.
The Believer Civilization's theoretical peak was likely Type 2.7.
The six-dimensional civilization probably couldn't control a Type 2.8 civilization.
After all, the technological gap between Type 2.8 and 2.9 is only tenfold, and given the physical distance, the power disparity would shrink further.
After browsing the Gravity Faction forum, Luna logged into the trading forum. This was for pure business, with no extraneous information.
Some wanted to buy specific knowledge; others wanted to sell. Aside from knowledge, ships, warships, and other items were also traded here.
Luna looked at the prices.
Ships started at 11.3 million kosius.
Warships started at 333 million kosius.
The distinction between a ship and a warship in the Believer Civilization was different from human civilization. While size was a factor, it was mostly about how the knowledge was applied.
A ship and a warship could both be 1,000 meters long, but their internal weapon systems would be different, hence the 30-fold difference in their starting prices.
The Believer Civilization truly has a fixation on multiples of three.
One hadn't been lying to her.
However, there were still those who ignored such rules.
It was simply a matter of those who chose to maintain the facade versus those who didn't.
Luna located the post from the noble looking to buy Yaroessen kinetics and sent a private message.
The transaction was completed almost instantly.
In fact, the forums, chat systems, and everything that resembled human civilization were direct imports from humanity. Ayla had controlled the Believer Civilization, but she never intended to truly enslave them. Instead, she planned to slowly civilize them, much like other three-dimensional civilizations, until they were integrated into the human Federation.
This was why human footprints were everywhere.
Seeing the 110,000 kosius deposited into her account, Luna's mind began to churn. She carefully scrolled through the requests of other nobles, memorizing them before searching the forums for the corresponding prayer methods.
Since one prayer session granted her 100% of the data, and these buyers were all looking for complete knowledge, she was in her element.
It was as easy as a fish taking to water.
In just two months, Luna conducted trades with over forty different nobles.
None of the buyers questioned why she possessed so much knowledge.
Firstly, she traded with different targets; secondly, they simply didn't care.
Ultimately, because human civilization had retreated from the fourth dimension and the Gol Civilization had also pulled back following the Faraway Civilization's arrival, the Believers' only remaining enemy was the Faraway Civilization itself. And a civilization as powerful as Faraway would never stoop to the lowly tactic of sending spies.
When an elephant tramples an anthill, does it need to send an ant spy inside first?
Consequently, not a single individual suspected Luna's identity.
As long as she was one of their own, why would they investigate? The logic was simple. Not everyone is perpetually paranoid, especially the Believer organisms; they simply didn't have the mental inclination for such suspicion.
"This is the simplest infiltration mission yet."
"I just hope it isn't a facade."
Through these two months, Luna earned 42.8 million kosius. She immediately chose to purchase a ship. If she tried to manufacture one in her own Shell, it would take decades; she couldn't afford to wait.
The ship arrived just over ten days after the purchase.
It was built in a classic four-dimensional style, a hyper-triangular body, more accurately described as a regular tetrahedral pyramid, or a regular 5-cell.
It looked incredibly complex and exquisite.
Even at the smallest detail, it featured intricate four-dimensional geometric structures that refracted different metallic hues as the viewing angle shifted.
"To me, these structures are beautiful, but for a four-dimensional being, they are likely just a part of everyday life."
These four-dimensional geometries were like the edges and corners on a three-dimensional ship, merely decorative. Luna had seen them on many other four-dimensional vessels as well.
She entered the ship's interior. Surprisingly, the internal space wasn't very large.
Thard's starship had been spacious, but this ship's interior was only about a dozen square meters. There were no screens or consoles, only a single capsule, identical to the ones within the Shell.
"It seems Thard's starship was specifically modified, while this is a standard Believer Civilization ship."
After a brief thought, Luna dismissed the concern.
She entered the capsule and connected to the ship's systems. Immediately, all of the ship's data flooded into her mind.
Dimensions: 1938 x 1283 x 1152 x 2381, four-dimensional data. The units weren't meters, but yage. One yage was equivalent to 1.17 meters, so the numbers would be even larger when converted. Still, it was only a 2,000-meter-class small ship.
Luna noted that a large portion of the equipment extended into the fourth dimension.
As a three-dimensional being, she hadn't understood why; even Ayla couldn't fully grasp it, as three-dimensional imagination was limited. But as a four-dimensional being, Luna understood now.
Because a four-dimensional being sees in three-dimensional surfaces, the fourth-dimensional surfaces of a four-dimensional object are hidden to them.
It's like how a three-dimensional being looking at a cube can only see one face at a time. From a specific angle, you might see more, but at the visual stage, you're still seeing a surface; it's the brain that processes the lines and perspective to make you realize there are more faces.
Strictly speaking, the four-dimensional civilization didn't "hide" things in the fourth dimension; they were inside the overall framework, just oriented along the fourth-dimensional curves. It's like how you wouldn't arrange things across the diameter of a cylinder's cross-section, but rather vertically along its longest axis.
A four-dimensional civilization would make the invisible fourth-dimensional line as long as possible to allow more things to be laid out.
Thus, on this ship, the fourth dimension was the longest.
If viewed through three-dimensional eyes, the entire ship would look like an oval, even smoother and rounder than an egg. Its top speed could reach about 30,000 kilometers per second, reasonably fast, considering the price.
Luna didn't waste any time. She immediately piloted the ship toward the star.
"Time waits for no one. The Faraway Civilization won't wait long."
"If the Believer Civilization fails to summon their God, I will begin the destruction of the star myself."
No one monitored her.
Luna traveled unimpeded all the way to the star's surface.
This star was massive.
Luna's vision allowed her to see its complete three-dimensional surface. In her data processing, everything around her was visible, and her mind naturally reconstructed the four-dimensional information of the object.
The moment she saw the star, Luna knew exactly what existed within its interior.
In human civilization, such a thing was called a four-dimensional cavity.
But in the Believer Civilization, this was simply referred to as the "Inside," much like how a three-dimensional being refers to the back of an object.
The inside and outside are interconnected.
A three-dimensional being cannot visually perceive the anomalies on a star's surface. They can only deduce the difference between three and four dimensions by synthesizing data.
The most prominent difference is quite clear.
Any three-dimensional mathematical formula requires an additional coordinate system in the fourth dimension. Computers brought from the third dimension, specifically, human auxiliary brains and quark-bots, will fail 100% of the time if they use three-dimensional logic for calculations.
Whether it's a soldier, an officer, or especially a scholar, high academic performance is a prerequisite to understand this, making the distinction easy to identify.
Ayla had researched four-dimensional stars thoroughly. While a three-dimensional being can only see a perfect sphere, they can use calculations to find the connection point between the inner and outer surfaces. By striking that point directly, there is a high probability of entering the "inside."
But Luna didn't need to do that.
She could move directly on the four-dimensional surface. Theoretically, she could navigate around the four-dimensional curve to observe the star's interior directly.
As she moved across the fourth dimension, the entire star began to shift in her perception. It was no longer a perfect sphere; it began to stretch. The length of the star's fourth dimension was equal to its other dimensions, its length, width, and height were all essentially its diameter. The star's diameter was 1,675,200 kilometers, about 1.75 times the volume of the Sun.
No matter how Luna moved in the fourth dimension, the three-dimensional mass she observed remained 1.75 times that of the Sun. It didn't change with her movement. However, she could calculate how much larger the object was than the Sun.
But the ratio depended on the method of calculation.
Since three-dimensional objects have no fourth dimension, the value for that coordinate in the calculation is zero. Therefore, regardless of how you calculate it, the volume ratio between a three-dimensional and a four-dimensional object is infinite.
This is the fundamental difference.
Since 1 is infinitely greater than 0, and 100 is also infinitely greater than 0, Luna could only substitute a variable 'x', where 'x' is measured in kilometers. Thus, the volume of this four-dimensional star was 1,675,200x times that of a three-dimensional star.
This was the simplest way to calculate it.
In mathematics, if a result equals zero or is undefined, one sets a hidden variable to make the formula visually meaningful.
Luna continued to explore the four dimensional boundaries, eventually spotting a massive Shell in the distance. This Shell was enormous, at least a hundred times larger than her own. It appeared extremely busy, with ships constantly entering and exiting.
"That's one of the core Shells of this star system. But it's too small."
Even as a massive structure, it was only a few hundred thousand kilometers in diameter. Perched on the star's surface, it occupied less than 1% of the star's area. It was far inferior to a true mega structure.
Luna's target wasn't the Shell, but the true interior of the star.
While the fourth dimension is technically inside an object, that term should be used loosely.
In reality, it is only inside from a three dimensional perspective. If one can move in four dimensions, that interior is actually accessible from the outside.
To destroy a star, Luna had to reach its interior, specifically, the core. Disrupt the core, and the star collapses.
Unfortunately, this ship wasn't capable of that.
It could only reach the star's radiative zone. But Luna hadn't come here just for a tour; she possessed considerable knowledge of weaponry and could easily construct a simple chain reaction weapon.
Simple was relative, of course, specifically to the current stage of human civilization. For modern humanity, destroying a star was child's play.
"But now isn't the time. The preparations on their end should be nearly complete."
For now, Luna focused on manufacturing the weapon. She connected to the forum and found that the latest posts were instructing all God's Chosen to pray to the Divine.
"Moving faster than I expected."
This wasn't a matter of human survival, but their own fate; the God's Chosen wouldn't drag their feet. The new posts contained intel on the Faraway Civilization. Their warships were already approaching the Believers, which was another reason for the urgency.
What surprised Luna, however, was that the Faraway Civilization was bringing its entire fleet.
In her mind, the Faraway Civilization was so powerful that a single warship should have been enough to obliterate the Believers. If they truly just needed these stars, why send the whole fleet?
"Did I stumble onto the truth by accident?"
It was possible the Faraway Civilization actually knew about the Believer's secrets.
"If I had the data from the dimensional gateway, I could be more certain. For now, I have to play it as it comes."
Luna hoped her manipulation of the situation would be effective and that events would proceed in the direction she intended.
...
Two days later.
All the God's Chosen were ready.
Tens of millions of emotional prayers surged upward. They were nearly tangible. Luna's metacellular nature made her exceptionally sensitive to emotions.
The emotions of a single individual were limited, allowing Luna only simple communication with Believer lifeforms. But now, she felt the full weight of those emotions.
Majestic. Expansive.
Like a river flowing into the sea.
If emotion could be used for communication, it was clearly a form of energy, and as energy, it was only natural for it to be observable. Perhaps Luna's super ability was actually a universal trait among the Believer Civilization.
It might even be a common trait for all four dimensional beings.
After all, this was a higher dimension.
The extra dimensions allowed for a greater complexity in material properties; changes at the base layer would trigger a chain reaction, diffusing through every facet of the universe.
"I can't try to read these emotions; they're too convoluted."
Luna sensed her head beginning to throb just from observing.
The Believers were built to read emotions; for them, it was like a human listening to sound. For Luna, it felt as though thousands of people were screaming directly into her ears, a deafening roar.
"But those emotions seem to have a direction."
Though she couldn't parse the details, Luna's rough perception revealed that these emotions weren't a river entering the sea. Instead, thousands of streams converged into a single torrent, and that torrent was surging directly toward her.
No wonder she could feel them so vividly.
"It's not me."
The emotions surged through Luna, heading straight for the core of the star.
"Is the star hollow? Do these high level civilizations just love playing these kinds of tricks?"
The emotional transmission persisted.
The star was rotating; if the void were on the star's surface, the trajectory of these emotions would shift, yet Luna noticed no such change.
"It seems this star's void is at its center."
"Or perhaps it isn't hollow, but a Hawking star."
A star with a microscopic primordial black hole at its core.
Recalling the accounts of Giotto and Toma K, Luna knew that top tier civilizations could use wormholes to transport large scale equipment like ships. If a ship could arrive intact, then so could these emotional signals.
"If they travel at the speed of light..."
Luna mentally calculated the duration of her previous prayers, from the start of the invocation to the acquisition of knowledge.
It had taken roughly ten odd minutes.
The math checked out.
"However, if the signal has to travel all the way to the sixth dimension, ten minutes wouldn't be nearly enough."
"Perhaps that thing is right here, inside the star."
This discovery didn't excite Luna; in fact, it posed a hurdle to her original plan.
If that object were inside the star, as a piece of top tier technology, its energy signature alone might equal a significant percentage, or even a fraction, of the star's total energy.
Destroying the star wouldn't be so easy anymore.
"Truly, being alone has too many downsides. Next time I'll have to tell Ayla: no more missions like this."
"The Olive Branch Civilization mission was an outlier. Back then, I wasn't facing the entire civilization."
As Luna was lost in thought, the emotional transmissions ended.
The forum erupted into frantic activity.
"Was it actually effective?"
"Will the God answer our pleas?"
"Pitting the God against the Faraway Civilization... that's impossible. Why would the God do this for us?"
"Who came up with such a brain dead plan anyway?"
Prayer is the process of inviting hope.
But now that the prayer was over, it was the process of facing despair.
Consequently, negative emotions began to pile up.
In human civilization, Luna and Ayla would never allow such a public outcry to fester, but this was the Believer Civilization, and those complaining were the rulers of the society.
"Maybe I should take a look!"
"Just a look!"
It was the same kind of logic as "I'm just going to dip my toes in."
Luna piloted the ship and dove into the star.
It's not that no God's Chosen noticed her.
After all, an advanced civilization is a networked one, and the Shells themselves possessed a certain degree of observational power.
But no one cared about her.
Who would care about a single ship entering a star?
What was it going to do, destroy the star?
Haha, what benefit would that even bring her?
The Believers certainly wouldn't destroy their star, and neither would the Faraway Civilization.
Once Luna entered the star's interior, she was met with darkness.
Even though the surroundings were filled with pure radiation, and intense radiation brings light and heat, what Luna experienced now was absolute darkness.
The radiation was so intense that for the ship to operate safely, it had to block it out. Consequently, the ship's sensors only accepted radiation that wouldn't damage the vessel or other highly penetrative free particles, such as neutrinos.
After plunging 100,000 kilometers into the star, Luna saw nothing unusual in the ship's data. The only anomaly was the ship frantically bombarding her with high temperature warnings.
Standard ships were designed to withstand the outer layers of a star's interior, but that didn't mean they could fly freely inside one. It was like the water resistance on a 21st century phone: it exists, but it's meant for splashes, not deep sea diving.
Ordinary ships simply had no reason to enter a star's core. Their high temperature resistance was merely a byproduct of reinforcing the hull against laser weaponry.
Luna followed the emotional trail 600,000 kilometers deep into the star. The star's diameter was 1.675 million kilometers, meaning its radius was 837,000 kilometers. The core of this star was approximately 170,000 kilometers in diameter.
Luna was now extremely close to the core, where the temperature had skyrocketed to nearly 7 million degrees Celsius.
"I can't go any further."
Inside the ship, Luna clearly felt the vessel reaching its limit. Even in this zone, she couldn't stay for long; the ship's energy was being rapidly depleted.
The hull's defensive perimeter utilized energy fields to grant the exterior superior defensive capabilities, a technology common in both human ships and warships. In fact, one could argue that a standard human ship couldn't even delve this deep; only a warship could.
Luna activated the ship's sensors.
The sensors filtered out light interference, reading only specific particle waves.
The logic was simple: if the target intended to absorb emotions, it would necessarily use technology to block stellar radiation and short wave light, firstly, to probe the outside world, and secondly, to draw the external emotions in.
If emotions had physical form, upon entering a star's interior, they would be disrupted not only by radiation but also by the star's immense gravity.
And there it was.
Luna saw the data on the sensor, faint, but present. She detected something moving, or rather, moving in a specific pattern. It wasn't large, maybe only a few meters. And there was no unusual gravity source around it.
"The Hawking star hypothesis was wrong. It seems that six dimensional civilization sent a single individual possessing specific knowledge here."
"Is that thing a machine or a lifeform?"
The sensor could only display waveforms. Although the object moved in a pattern, every movement showed subtle variations, something that only occurs in biological organisms.
As a biological expert, Luna found it hard to believe that any organism could exist in a star's core, even with something like a mech suit. The heat and pressure there were so intense that atoms were packed tightly together; the core was a place with the density of metal. An organism moving through metal and surviving for years? Impossible!
Luna confirmed that there was no hollow space within the star, not even one cubic super meter.
"To think..."
Luna increased the number of sensors, including thermal ones. She had expected a high pressure, high temperature environment, but she discovered that while the pressure remained high, the temperature was extremely low.
The reading from the sensor dropped straight to the bottom of the scale.
What did that mean?
Absolute zero!
It was a pocket of space at absolute zero.
At that moment, Luna thought of the Oulan Sea Flower.
Luna's memory of that event remained vivid; after all, it concerned the nature of dimensions. After the dimensional passage opened, she had even visited the location several times. Spatial scholars had been dispatched to build a research station there, but decades passed without any significant findings.
Though the memory had been relegated to a dusty corner of her mind, Luna could recall every detail perfectly when needed.
That time, it was inside a planet.
This time, it was inside a star.
The environments were worlds apart, yet the overlap was over 50%.
Absolute zero and a biological entity, those two factors alone made Luna suspect a connection.
"If it really is the same civilization, their reach is incredibly deep and far. It's fortunate human civilization was already advanced back then."
If they had still been a Type 2 civilization or lower, they likely would have been seduced.
Luna remembered that event being around 170,000 A.D.
Now, it was 230,000 A.D. The Believer Civilization had been developing for over 50,000 years.
The timelines actually lined up!
And it was all occurring around the same dimensional gateway.
"Ninety percent certain."
"Perhaps in the fifth or seventh dimensions, there are other Believer Civilizations around this same gateway."
"That six dimensional civilization has already taken control of this dimensional gateway. What are they plotting?"
The doubts were piling up. Unfortunately, none could be answered.
She couldn't string the pieces together to get more detailed information. Perhaps this plea for help would allow Luna to understand a bit more.
[Warning! Ship energy below 20%]
Luna had stayed here too long.
Having confirmed the existence within the star, she now knew how to destroy it.
Piloting the ship out of the star's interior, Luna returned to the surface. Her time inside hadn't been long, and since there were no results from the outside world yet, she waited.
The wait for the results of the prayer was exceptionally long.
Not only was Luna waiting, but every God's Chosen and noble was as well. The number of people online and the frequency of discussion on the forum likely set a new record in the civilization's history.
And so the wait continued.
The Faraway Civilization fleet approaching from the distance had even completed a spatial jump, arriving directly at the star system's outskirts. This sent a shockwave of fear through the Believer Civilization.
Such capabilities...
The Believers felt an intense sense of crisis.
"Why is there no reaction from the God?"
"Has the God rejected our plea?"
"Maybe that six dimensional civilization is no match for the Faraway Civilization."
"I told you this plan wouldn't work. What do we do if the God doesn't intervene?"
"It seems this time will be just like the last. Maybe the God can't even defeat the humans; that would explain the silence."
As time passed, the Believers' estimation of their God plummeted to rock bottom. Previously, they had no real faith, but they at least believed their patron civilization was powerful. Now, even that belief was gone.
This caused many God's Chosen to waver.
They had convinced themselves to believe, that was the only way their faith existed. If the very condition that allowed them to convince themselves vanished, what were they supposed to do?
"The Faraway Civilization warships are about 38 knotat away from reaching the interior."
A knotat was a unit of time between a week and a month in human terms.
Thirty eight knotat was roughly eleven months, nearly a year.
Even a civilization as powerful as Faraway couldn't traverse such immense distances in a short time.
Luna did the math.
"The maximum distance of each Faraway spatial jump is likely only a few light years."
"But they could have jumped straight into the star system. Does stellar gravity or the surrounding chaotic celestial bodies interfere with spatial jumps?"
Gravity generated by matter is, essentially, a distortion of space. Theoretically, an entire star system exists within a distorted region of space.
Even powerful civilizations aren't omnipotent.
A capability like spatial jumping requires extreme precision and the avoidance of any interference. While interstellar space has gravity, it's like small ripples on a pond; the interior of a star system, by contrast, is a series of whirlpools.
"Nearly a year. Not long, but not short either. I wonder how the Believers will respond."
Luna had just intended to see the further discussions on the forum when she discovered that someone had already launched an attack against the Faraway Civilization.
Yes. A direct attack.
Luna was caught off guard, and the other God's Chosen were terrified.
"Who launched that attack?"
"This is going to get us all killed!"
The forum was in an uproar.
These cowardly God's Chosen didn't have the stomach for such a move; Luna didn't even believe any individual in this civilization would have the nerve to attack the Faraway Civilization.
At this stage, only those on the forum had even received the intel. So, the culprit had to be one of those few thousand.
But it didn't have to be that complicated; one only had to trace the origin of the attack to identify the specific Shell. In the Believer Civilization, a noble wouldn't hold two Shells; even if they had a new one, it wouldn't be deployed until a new God's Chosen or noble appeared.
Luna intended to remain a bystander.
The posts were refreshing rapidly. Then, a new post was pinned to the top.
[The origin of the attack has been confirmed as a recently appeared Shell. The owner is a new God's Chosen named Moon!]
"?"
Luna was shocked. The drama had landed right on her doorstep.
But how could it be her?
This had to be a frame up; the person accusing her was surely the true culprit.
She looked at the author of the post.
And in that instant, she understood.
"Thard. No wonder it was so friendly to me."
The author was Thard; it had deceived Luna.
Luna had originally assumed the Believer Civilization was harmonious.
After all, it was an alien civilization; Luna couldn't assume any specific social model or biological interaction. Therefore, since arriving, everything she had witnessed had been her only source of information, and she had taken it as truth.
"Goodwill never comes without a reason."
Luna had made a massive mistake.
"Could I have been discovered?"
"No, my time with Thard was too brief. My ascent from an ordinary individual to a God's Chosen was also too quick."
"Even if it had been watching me from the start..."
"Wait, what am I analyzing? This fellow just directly attacked the Faraway Civilization; that proves it doesn't share the same destiny as the Believers. Theoretically, it's a third party."
"Who fits that description?"
"The Gol Civilization!"