Great, we're doomed now!

But the next second, a mysterious light struck, and an indescribable tremor came from every part of the spaceship, which immediately went out of control.

Before he could even grab the joystick, his vision suddenly went dark, and not only that, but light, sound, touch, and even his sense of time were all stripped away in an instant!

He couldn't feel the air pressure inside the breathing mask, nor could he feel his own breathing; his consciousness was suspended in a void.

...After an unknown amount of time, his senses surged back like a tidal wave, and he was "salvaged" from the sea of ​​nothingness.

But if he had a choice, he might prefer to remain asleep forever, because when he opened his eyes, he was faced with a twisted and violent world!

hum~

An indescribable burst of color exploded before his eyes, like a child's dream materialized and painted directly onto his retina. All sorts of bizarre and fantastical shapes flashed wildly, making it impossible for him to discern where he was. To him, who had just woken up, it was nothing short of hell.

"Ugh—!"

Kazuma Asuka heard his own scream, but it was as indistinct as if it were through thick glass. He struggled desperately to break free from all the restraints around him, but his body wouldn't obey him. Like a rag doll thrown into a whirlpool, he was being pulled and spun around by an invisible force, powerless to resist.

"No... Ugh!"

He strained to focus his gaze on the cockpit, hoping to glean some useful data from the dashboard... and then he saw "light."

A ball of "light," possessing mass and form, slowly seeped from the dashboard. Its dazzling white light contained chaotic rainbows, making it impossible for him to look directly at it. But the last vestige of clarity he managed to retain made him realize that this was the culprit that had swallowed him and his spaceship, leaving him stranded here!

I initially thought it might be an alien attack, but now it seems... this thing actually has life, slowly flowing and gathering inside the cabin, clearly controlled by some kind of will.

It has no fixed form; sometimes it stretches into a blurry, almost human-shaped outline, and sometimes it shrinks into a pulsating ball of light, radiating a warm yet unsettling fluctuation.

Kazuma Asuka opened his mouth, his throat dry: "What...are you?"

The ball of light fluctuated violently, responding in its own way with several syllables that did not form words or phrases, or rather, "thoughts" that directly affected his consciousness, intermittently impacting his mind.

“…Home…returning…is…dangerous…”

"What? I don't understand!" Asuka Kazuma felt a surge of anxiety. He tried to understand—this ball of light might not be malicious. If he could communicate with it, he might be able to find a way to leave this place.

He was, after all, an ace pilot, with both his body and mind well-trained. An ordinary person might faint from fright just entering another dimension, but he was able to continue thinking under these difficult conditions.

—If his brain stops functioning, he truly has no hope!

Unfortunately, those fragments of information were too blurry, like hearing someone shout through a thick curtain of water.

The ball of light grew even more anxious, attempting to change shape, mimicking arms and a face, but each time it was about to take form, it would disintegrate, leaving behind only an even more chaotic blur of light and shadow. Its pathetic state resembled that of a drowning person trapped beneath ice, desperately gesturing but unable to break through the barrier.

Meanwhile, the external environment of the spacecraft began to deteriorate...

What was originally just a simple "strange occurrence" gradually became tinged with an ominous hue, perhaps drawn by the mental fluctuations emanating from Kazuma Asuka and the mysterious light. Shadows began to appear around them, existing between reality and illusion, slowly creeping up the spaceship's hull...

Ka!

The machine creaked under the strain, and the already erratic data on the instrument panel went completely black. Only a few emergency lights were flashing wildly, casting flickering light on Asuka's pale face.

The mysterious light inside the cabin, which was attempting to communicate, seemed to have been corrupted by the external environment. Its form began to twist violently and become out of control, and its warm light became dim and murky, instantly outlining a hideous, monster-like phantom.

Then it turned back into a ball of light, shooting out several tendrils of light that lashed out wildly.

"No, don't come any closer!" Kazuma Asuka shrank back in terror, but there wasn't much space in the cabin to begin with, and the seatbelts on the seats held him firmly in place.

The ball of light flowed toward Asuka like mercury, and the liquid metal-like light quickly spread up his ankles and calves, bringing a strange, numb sensation, and then spread upwards along his body—!

"Whoosh!!!"

Asuka Kazuma's eyes widened, and a choking sob escaped his throat.

He felt a massive energy envelop him, sometimes scorching hot, sometimes icy cold, like a chaotic torrent, forcibly "opening" his body.

"I...uh!"

His vision was completely covered by pure white, and his last remaining consciousness received fragmented information that flickered repeatedly within that light, yet remained incomprehensible to Asuka Kazuma:

"...Home...we can't go back...let's...live on together..."

Everything fell silent.

Only the prototype, having lost power and with its outer shell constantly peeling away and breaking down, drifted aimlessly in this increasingly insane and abnormal extradimensional void.

Inside the cockpit, the pilot's body glowed faintly, as if it had transformed into a silent, human-shaped cocoon, where fragmented and desperate scenes played out in his mind, which could only passively receive information.

The entire planet was enveloped by a gigantic grid of luminous life forms. All the lights on the surface, whether city lights or factory furnaces, were wiped away without a trace after the grid swept over them, leaving only the lifeless, neatly hewn rocky landscape...

One day, the starry sky was covered by a spore cloud, as beautiful as the aurora borealis, that drifted slowly in. The spores fell and merged into the bodies of local creatures. As time passed, their bodies began to mutate, their ways of thinking were gradually altered, and they eventually became like worker ants, joining the "spore cloud."

[A colossal monster, resembling a hybrid of insects and reptiles, destroys everything with sheer brute force and energy breath!]

Skyscrapers were crushed, the earth was torn apart, and the fleeing spaceships were blown apart in mid-air by the heat rays shot from its mouth.

The survivors huddled in the last remaining shelter, watching the mountain-like shadow approach through the monitors… Desperate cries and prayers were the only clear sounds in these fragments of memory, until everything before them was swallowed by flames and darkness.

……

Scene after scene unfolds: primitive civilizations from different galaxies, different races, and different cultures. Some are highly advanced, while others are just beginning to emerge, but their fates are strikingly similar—destruction.

Destroyed by monsters, destroyed by machines, destroyed by flesh mutations...

Asuka Kazuma's consciousness floated and sank in this endless replay of death, as if he himself were there, experiencing despair time and time again...

And at the end of all this—

All the scenes suddenly collapsed and spun inward, as chaotic as a kaleidoscope, finally converging into the largest and deepest scene.

That was not the destruction of a planet, but destruction itself, coming from the pure "black" of the deepest part of the universe, and from the "nothingness" that devours all light and matter.

It floated there silently, its edges twisting and tearing apart all the starlight, swallowing it whole.

It is not a monster, not a machine, not any comprehensible "enemy".

It is a "phenomenon", an "ending"... an ever-expanding, unstoppable black hole!

At the edge of its horizon, fragmented remains of civilizations, like pieces of land, hulls of warships, and corpses of the dead—like sucked-up water—spiral silently into the eternal darkness, without stirring up the slightest ripple.

Everything comes to an end...

All the previous scenes of brutal destruction seemed like a gentle prelude in comparison.

A fear beyond reason, seeping through the mysterious light of fusion, permeated Asuka Kazuma's consciousness:

I can never go home again.

The mysterious light cannot return home because, strictly speaking, it does not belong to the present or the past; it is an energy entity born from the "future."

At the core of that massive black hole lies a void where even the concept of spacetime is torn apart, thus creating the possibility of connecting to other spacetimes.

Once upon a time, a ray of light from the distant past was consumed by the black hole—the Dark Planet Gulansfia. Its energy became nourishment for the black hole, but miraculously, a wisp of light was preserved and merged with the will to survive of the intelligent race that was swallowed by Gulansfia, thus surviving in a state that was difficult to observe.

They would have had absolutely no chance of escaping the black hole, but in the "future"... at some unknown point in time, the incredibly ancient being [Gransphia] will one day collapse and perish.

In that very instant, it miraculously escaped from the core, traversed the torn spacetime, and arrived in the "present".

However, this does not mean that you are safe, because at this point in time, [Gransphia] is still alive!

It desperately tried to escape the area where [Gransphia] was located... and then, attracted by Magus's light, it found "Asuka Kazuma".

It is known that it is in a state of being difficult to observe. If it can merge with the life forms of this era, it can remain completely. Therefore, it keeps sending messages to Kazuma, hoping that he can help it.

【XXXXXX】

"..."

Yima's head was spinning, but he roughly understood the meaning of the mysterious light:

Run away, and survive!

That was a natural disaster that indiscriminately destroyed planets and civilizations. Earth would be targeted sooner or later, especially since they had mastered the technology of an advanced civilization, making them the prey that [Gransphia] loved most.

By merging with the mysterious light, Kazuma will gain the ability to survive in the universe and live forever while hiding from Gransphia...

【XXXXX】

Yes, that's a good suggestion...

"I--"

The man opened his eyes: "No!"

【！！！！】

"I've made a promise to my family that I will definitely go home... Earth is my home, and no one... can take it away from me!"

【XXXX!】

No matter what you think!

This power... powerful enough to grant someone eternal life, you can give it to me if you want—

But I won't run away!

Kazuma Asuka took a deep breath: "I will protect the Earth!"

hum! ! !

The cocoon of light inside the cockpit vibrated violently.

Kazuma Asuka's consciousness was like a small boat struggling in a storm, colliding fiercely with another massive and chaotic will.

"Get out of my way!"

Kazuma Asuka let out a silent roar, his wife's smiling face flashing before his eyes, his son's innocent voice echoing in his ears, and the cheers of Dr. Yao and the others over the communicator... These were the anchors he could never give up!

[Escape...survive...merge...only then can you survive!]

The will of the mysterious light, like a cold tide, surged through the man's rational defenses, carrying waves of fear of [Gransphia], attempting to overwhelm his sense of self as "Asuka Kazuma".

"I said... I refuse!"

He gritted his teeth, refusing to give up: "My home is on Earth! My battle... should be fought there!"

In that moment of stalemate, a sudden change occurred:

The mental fluctuations filled with fear and despair that leaked out during their confrontation were like bloody bait thrown into the dark depths of the sea, naturally attracting sharks.

hum~~~

The already bizarre and fantastical other-dimensional void became even more eerie, as if the intangible had been given mass, and everything had become more "viscous".

Deep within those twisted fissures, pairs of "eyes" slowly "opened." They had no physical form, but were merely colorful and dangerous "wills," blurry and indistinguishable like a palette, but chaos and malice were the main themes.

—It's like magnetism; releasing negative spiritual energy will naturally attract beings with the same attributes.

The "positive" and "negative" poles in this void have been temporarily out of balance because of Kazuma and his group!