A Colossus rushes in at the start

Chapter 321 The Unknown Strike is Too Difficult to Analyze

The sudden and dramatic change caused a stir among the upper echelons of the Prinkia civilization.

Due to the suddenness of the event, the Prinkia civilization was unclear about the specifics of what had happened. They could only confirm that an unknown event had occurred, causing the fleet stationed in the microcosm and near the wormhole to suddenly lose contact with the civilization's decision-making level.

The Prinkia Civilization's military command immediately ordered the nearest combat fleet to proceed to the vicinity of the wormhole to ascertain the situation there.

However, the Pulinka were swift, but their enemies were even faster.

More fleets inexplicably and suddenly lost contact. Observing the whole situation from the perspective of the star map, it can be clearly seen that a huge area radiating outward from the wormhole is unfolding at faster-than-light speed. Within this area, the trillion-level fleet of the Pulinka civilization suddenly lost contact one after another.

A high-energy strike attack with extremely wide coverage?

A large-scale intrusion by an unknown attacker?

Or perhaps it was a spacetime accident caused by the collapse of a wormhole?

Before the Pulinka people even understood the situation, they had already suffered enormous losses. The most difficult thing is never knowing the problem but not being able to solve it, but not even knowing what the problem is.

The Pulinka people called this sudden and devastating event "annihilation," a simple and straightforward term. Regardless of the type of defenses employed, contact with any warship or fortress meant certain annihilation.

This irrational extinction encompasses technological creations; even an uninhabited space fortress will lose contact with the Pulinka civilization after being obliterated.

However, even so, the Princau civilization was not helpless. While preparing large spaceships to escape at faster-than-light speed in the opposite direction of the wormhole, they also built unmanned ships fully equipped by AI.

In the Princau civilization, someone conceived of abandoning the Internet and using AI-powered unmanned ships to travel to and from the areas of destruction at a speed faster than the speed of light, which is faster than the speed of regional expansion.

If the coverage area simply causes information to be cut off, then the AI-equipped unmanned ships will return to base. If they do not return, it means that the things within the coverage area have been eliminated.

While the Principe civilization was on high alert, considering how to deal with this sudden and enormous upheaval, the Babel beehive presented a completely different picture.

The initial attack near the wormhole occurred extremely suddenly. The medium creatures witnessed the trillion-level fleet of the Pulinka civilization stationed near the wormhole being rapidly distorted and annihilated by an invisible force, but they did not realize that the attack range was expanding at faster-than-light speed.

When the swarm learned of the extinction and its coverage area from the military information network of the Princa civilization, they belatedly realized that a considerable number of media creatures had already been included in the coverage area.

To the bee swarm's surprise, the medium creatures in the area were not harmed, and the psionic energy did not disappear. The only things related to the Plinka were destroyed by that unreasonable, invisible force.

It's like a cosmic filter that's expanding faster than light, filtering out everything related to the Prinkia civilization.

Unrelated things leak out through the gaps in this filter: stars, planets, satellites, meteorites, etc., are all fine. The only problem is the Pulinka people, as if spacetime has developed a consciousness and is consciously expelling everything related to the Pulinka civilization.

Formless and invisible, expanding at faster than light speed, with highly efficient selective destruction, everything associated with the Pulinka civilization will be wiped out of this universe. To the Pulinka people, all of this is a nightmare.

However, this is not very efficient in the eyes of the bee colony, and even feels a bit tedious.

This makes the swarm wonder if the intangible and invisible annihilation that is now slaughtering the Prinkia civilization is the ultimate destruction they have always feared.

"Is the lack of efficiency and speed due to the fact that the Plinka don't use psionic energy?" a medium-type creature asked.

Recalling the fate of the Unity Civilization and the subsequent contact between the swarm and the ultimate destruction, it's hard not to suspect that the unknown thing that emerged from that spacetime bubble was not the ultimate destruction.

The reason for the skepticism is simple: the destructive power to civilization is not as efficient as the swarm creatures had imagined.

One planetary being speculated, "Or perhaps it's because this ultimate destruction isn't the ultimate destruction of the Pulinka civilization that it wasn't wiped out all at once."

One of the hives speculated, "It's also possible that this isn't the ultimate destruction at all, but something else related to it. Don't forget, the contents of the remnants left behind by that member civilization are incomplete."

There are many possible guesses, but the bee colony cannot determine the specific one based on the existing information alone.

These questions were temporarily put aside. At least it was certain that the formless and invisible thing that emerged from the spacetime bubble was extremely aggressive towards civilization and had demonstrated a power that the swarm had never known.

"Whatever it may be, the intelligence gathered so far is of great value. The swarm has seen something we didn't know before," said one of the medium creatures.

The planetary creature said in distress, "That power is not psionic energy. I can't sense any psionic energy at all. It's some other force that caused that result, but I can't understand where the source of this power is at all."

Given this question, one of the hives speculated: "The area that disappeared is expanding at faster-than-light speed; could it be a spacetime that is currently unfolding?"

The "annihilation" that is destroying the Pulinka civilization exists in an expanding region, and the Pulinka people in space outside this region will not suffer the destruction of the "annihilation".

This indirectly confirms that "extinction" has an objective entity, but this objective entity is invisible and intangible.

However, ordinary objective entities, as long as they contain energy, cannot move faster than the speed of light.

After much thought, only spacetime itself is the most likely explanation.

That is, extinction is likely an expanding spacetime structure that devours the normal spacetime of the original universe and then increases its own size.

"You mean, power comes from the structure of spacetime? Like us?" a Mother Universe asked.

The hive replied, "It's impossible to say for sure. The field of spatiotemporal structure is unfamiliar to us. We haven't studied bee colonies in enough depth, and we're still exploring many aspects."

In the hive, no one understands the spacetime structure better than the mother hive universe. In addition to their own structure being a special spacetime structure, they also frequently repair the permanent changes to spacetime caused by quantum decay within themselves. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect, and with more repairs, they gain experience in understanding the spacetime structure.

One of the parent universes suggested, "If we're talking about spacetime structure, wouldn't a black hole be a perfect refuge? Matter tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter how to move. The spacetime affected by a singularity is the most basic and stable state. As long as a singularity exists, it's virtually impossible to change the spacetime there."

(End of this chapter)