Chapter 47: Origin Star River
"Will this be enough to deter the local powers?"
In the world where the sun had just been ignited, Faina, holding a recording rune and flying closely to capture the footage, put down the psionic crystal in her hand. She asked with some confusion: "Although your power, Joshua, is indeed exaggerated... or rather, excessively so, according to Lord Eagle, there should be several beings of the same level as you in the otherworldly star river."
"Those local civilizations weaker than you might decide not to be our enemies because of this recording, after all, power is right here, and no matter how vicious someone is, they will fear it—but for those powerful civilizations, the more you show your strength, the more they want to kill you at the very beginning."
"It definitely won't be able to deter those strong local forces."
The giant god, who was embracing an energy sun, shook the world with his voice. Under Faina's gaze, Joshua's body gradually shrank until it was about the size of a planet three light-minutes away. He stared at the artificial star he had shaped and said calmly: "But I think the same as Eagle—they want to attack us before we can establish a foothold, and I want to take advantage of the fact that we haven't built much here yet to have an early decisive battle."
"Faina, do you want to wait until we have built large-scale bases here, with tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people living here, before we face the attacks of those powerful otherworldly civilizations? Yes, you don't want that, we don't want that, and they don't want that either. So, this declaration of mine is just telling them."
Saying this, Joshua curled his lips. The Sage could see his snow-white teeth, as large as mountains, reflecting the sun's light. The warrior revealed a smile: "Come and fight now."
"If they really want to fight us, or if they want to cooperate with us, then come now—the longer time drags on, the greater their losses will be, and the greater our losses will be. If they are smart enough and harbor absolute malice, then they must come now to defeat us."
Otherwise, they can only watch helplessly as we fortify this star domain like an iron bucket. Once the Space-Time Hub is built and the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground connects to this star river, it will be too late for these otherworldly civilizations to have a say.
Faina remained silent, the legendary sage also deep in thought—what Joshua said naturally made some sense, but in practice, there would certainly be unexpected events. For example, when exactly would those civilizations suspected of harboring malice attack? Just this point alone was difficult to know. Currently, the Mycroft Civilization had no large-scale void observation structures like void observatories here, making it no simple task to anticipate an enemy attack before it happened.
"And... the number of those malicious civilizations is also unpredictable—if it were just one, it would be manageable, but if several invaded together, even Joshua might not be able to block them all."
If the enemy launched a joint attack before the Space-Time Hub was built, all legendary experts would certainly be caught in a bitter battle. Then, who would continue the construction? Without reinforcements from the Space-Time Hub, no matter how powerful the joint expedition fleet was, it couldn't withstand the endless waves of support and fierce attacks from the local civilizations.
But sometimes, pure thinking is meaningless.
Time passed amidst everyone's busy work.
Faced with the overwhelming military might of the joint fleet, the Spirit Clan had no choice but to submit. Moreover, several legendary experts besides Joshua, along with the Abyss Demon Lord, played the roles of the good cop and the bad cop. After they displayed their power, the Spirit Clan's high-ranking members completely gave up any thought of passive resistance. In this regard, thanks must be given to the Demon King Goliath; its appearance and the bloodline aura of a giant insect evolution nearly caused an entire Spirit Clan colony planet to go into collective shock. The fear and despair auras created by abyssal power were indeed unique in terms of intimidation.
Though not as effective as Joshua in the past... it was enough for the Spirit Clan.
And now, these large insects of the Spirit Clan had come to realize—this fleet of otherworldly civilizations, crossing the Silent Void from the Lost Star River, might not be large in number, and the overall level of their civilization might not be very advanced, but the individual martial power they possessed far surpassed that of most civilizations in the Multiverse Star River. In other words, they were like a civilization composed of Void Behemoths, forming a complete society from the lowest-level young to the highest-level behemoths. While having a collective living habit, their top-tier beings possessed the power to exist independently in the void, with one individual equaling a civilization.
Although all of the Spirit Clan's main fleets were now detained in a corner of the Jetram Star Domain, and most of their soldiers had not been returned to the Spirit Clan civilization, currently working on various worlds under the supervision of the joint fleet, the resentment among the Spirit Clan, both high and low, was not particularly great. There was some, of course, since they were defeated and captured, and forced to work as laborers, but the joint fleet was surprisingly willing to pay them generously.
Although this salary was currently just a number, facing a being who could create a sun, catalyze an ecosystem, melt a frozen planet, and split a continent with a single sword strike, the Spirit Clan captives didn't think they wouldn't be able to pay. Moreover, after the introduction of the exchange system, they could even use the 'Psychic Terminal' they received to engage in digital shopping, purchasing otherworldly items from the Lost Star River, including special strategic resources that simply didn't exist in the Spirit Clan's star river.
If these items could be transported back to the Spirit Clan's homeworld, their value would definitely increase tenfold or more—faced with such a generous joint fleet, even the high-ranking members of the Spirit Clan on their homeworld secretly hoped that these captives could work a little longer, in exchange for some resources urgently needed by their nation. For example, high-purity psionic crystals, which would greatly help improve the efficiency of the entire Spirit Clan's psionic network and could be directly converted into national power.
In short, the star river where the Spirit Clan resided was named the 'Origin Star River' by the fleet members. After suppressing the only local power, the expedition fleet began dispatching reconnaissance teams to survey the entire star river.
A total of one hundred and twenty-eight teams, one hundred and twenty-eight reconnaissance ships, departed from the void base in Jetram. These small void ships, carrying exploration squads, were extremely fast and equipped with the most advanced engines and cores, capable of jumping back to the vicinity of the Space-Time Hub at any time in a crisis.
The purpose of these reconnaissance ships was to explore some important star domain nodes in the Origin Star River and deploy universal detection buoys, serving as temporary warning lines before the large-scale detection facilities were completed.
As veterans who had worked for many years in the Imperial Foreign Exploration Department, with rich experience in otherworldly detection and exploration, Priest and others were currently overseeing work in related fields. While confirming the exploration targets of each reconnaissance ship, they themselves would also survey the Origin Star River—now, the Elite Squad, who had been personally trained by Joshua for three years, felt as if a great weight had been lifted... or rather, they were full of energy. They almost couldn't wait to start working, piloting Reconnaissance Ship 001 to distant places.
Including Joshua, almost all legendary experts and high-ranking members of the expedition fleet did not expect this exploration to yield any discoveries. After all, the Spirit Clan, as the only local void civilization, had already thoroughly surveyed their home territory. The Origin Star River was indeed a relatively barren and marginal world star river, with no hidden star domains containing special strategic resources like 'superconductive magic silver.' Even Priest and the others thought they were merely going to some places the Spirit Clan hadn't explored to fill in the gaps.
But contrary to everyone's expectations, on the very second day of the survey, shocking news began to pour in from various reconnaissance ships to the fleet headquarters.
Reconnaissance Ship 079, while scanning the 3491st Dark Star Domain of the Origin Star River, unexpectedly discovered that the internal structure of that dead continent world was very strange, not appearing to be naturally formed. Therefore, the squad responsible for that reconnaissance ship dispatched an unmanned shuttle into the world's interior for survey.
The result was extremely shocking.
In the main world of the 3491st Star Domain (the largest world in a star domain, or the largest life-bearing world), the peculiar continental structure was indeed not formed by natural geological changes but was the wreckage of a super-giant mana puppet. Its body was half-buried beneath the continent, and one raised hand (or limb) formed the main body of the continent's highest peak, over 13,000 meters tall. The Spirit Clan had indeed surveyed this star domain before, but due to their relatively outdated equipment and the fact that their own homeworld had experienced mana mineral eruptions, resulting in many peculiar geological structures on the surface, they had become accustomed to such anomalies and overlooked the existence of this giant mana puppet wreckage.
But humans were different—such overly peculiar geological structures were too conspicuous and unnatural for humans.
According to subsequent surveys, the total length of this giant mana puppet's wreckage exceeded 24,000 meters. A restoration diagram showed it to be a centipede-like void combat puppet, with obvious engine structures designed for void movement. By measuring elemental decay, it was determined that this puppet had broken through the world barrier and fallen into this world 920,000 years ago. Its accidental impact caused the complete extinction of the world's ecosystem, plunging it into a dead dust winter, and drastically altering the topography of most of the continent.
Due to this astonishing unexpected discovery, the reconnaissance ships, which had initially only been testing the waters, immediately increased their attention tenfold. Priest and the others became fully focused, wanting to find more ruins similar to this giant mana puppet.
No matter how advanced the Spirit Clan's detection equipment was, it couldn't possibly discover what was buried deep within the soil layers from a million years ago. However, the 'True Vision' detector, developed under Joshua's supervision and possessing a certain amount of Steel Force, could, when activated at full power, accurately penetrate the entire crust and even the mantle, seeing through the inside and outside of an entire world. With such excessively advanced detection methods, all ruins that the Spirit Clan couldn't find were as clear as the sun in the darkness to the Mycroft reconnaissance ships.
This led to a continuous series of related ruins being discovered.
Reconnaissance Ship 008 landed on the main world of the 14634th Star Domain. It was a life-bearing world. An unmanned shuttle descended diagonally through the atmosphere and eventually landed on a plain. Soon, under the effect of a beacon array set up by the unmanned shuttle, members of the 008 Reconnaissance Ship's exploration squad arrived inside the world through space-time teleportation. They were surprised to find that this world had two completely different ecological environments—one based on a kind of carpet-like moss, where various strange giant worms and fungi lived among these crimson mosses, and the other, more common, similar to the primeval forest ecosystem of the Mycroft World, inhabited by many different types of ape-like creatures.
According to surveys, the ape-like creatures were the natives of World 14634, having lived there for millions of years. Excavated fossils also found the bones of their ancestors. As for the worm creatures—a type of organism unexpectedly possessing higher intelligence and parasitic abilities—their earliest traces of existence were also around 700,000 years ago. Perhaps they had existed in this world even earlier, but they were clearly outsiders.
The worm creatures had parasitic abilities. When the 008 exploration squad placed a worm creature on a native ape, they were surprised to find that it could greatly enhance the ape's intelligence. Soon, the 008 exploration squad found an entire ape tribe parasitized by worms in another corner of the world. They had already learned to use fire and tools, and the most basic language had been created, allowing communication through clapping and roaring.
The worm creatures' own thinking ability was not strong, but when they lodged in the brainstem, they could cooperate with another creature's brain for joint thinking, directly elevating the intelligence of an animal-level ape to the point where it could learn the common language of the Mycroft World. The experimental ape individual had already learned words like 'hello,' 'goodbye,' and 'eat,' and its learning speed was increasing.
Samples of the worm creature and the parasitized individual had been sent back to the joint fleet headquarters. According to Yalna Miro's psionic induction speculation, this worm creature should have been a very developed civilization in the ancient past, but for some reason, the organisms they coexisted with went extinct. They then drove void spaceships to World 14634 and, due to losing their hosts, gradually degenerated into their current form. However, according to the Nature Mentor, it was worth noting that this worm would gradually invade the brain of the parasitized creature until it completely took over, replacing the host's thinking organ. The next generation of apes parasitized by them showed a significant degeneration in brain volume, and there were even strange individuals like brainless empty infants.
They must have once been a very advanced parasitic civilization.
Squad 059 also discovered a very surprising anomaly. They found the ruins of an ancient city civilization in the ocean of a world. It was an ammonia world, where strange metal building tops protruded from the bizarre purple sea. It was a magic tower that had stood for a full 340,000 years without collapsing, and inside the tower, there were even remnants of broken runic arrays.
After reverse-engineering these runic arrays, Baniel frowned and concluded—the civilization to which this tower once belonged had very high magical prowess, even comparable to current Mycroft magical techniques. Moreover, based on the style of the city ruins, their utilization and popularization of magic surpassed the current Era of Falling Stars, reaching a point where almost everyone possessed magical power.
In the restoration diagram, one could see that some building ruins, which should have been children's playgrounds, contained toys that required magical power to activate. It seemed that even their young had a certain level of magical strength.
All sorts of things—a large number of ancient civilizations, at least 300,000 years old—were unearthed by the Mycroft expedition fleet. These astonishing discoveries shocked even the entire Spirit Clan, high and low. They had originally thought they were the first and earliest intelligent life in this star river, but they never expected that they seemed to have merely been lucky enough to awaken at a time when all ancient civilizations had perished.
In response, Joshua felt shocked but not overly surprised.
"According to my initial calculations, these worlds located at the outermost layer of the Multiverse Star River were originally the oldest worlds with the longest history. They lack a high-energy environment simply because all high-energy environments dissipated over time or were absorbed by other newly formed star rivers."
During a gathering of legendary experts to discuss, the warrior sat in his seat and unhesitatingly proposed his new viewpoint. He frowned deeply and said in a low voice: "The Origin Star River, 300,000 years ago—even earlier than the Era of Radiance, more than 200,000 years before the extinction of the Astral Dragons—experienced a star-river-wide destruction. A large number of civilizations were destroyed in battles with unknown beings. The super-giant void mana puppet discovered by Squad 079 is a typical example. This giant puppet undoubtedly possessed legendary-level destructive power, but it was still shattered and fell into the continent of another world."
The unknown enemy, which was written in the report for the sake of rigor, but in reality, everyone present immediately thought of those two words.
Evil God.