Chapter 48: The Knowledge Seizer and the Answer
“Evil God.”
The Radiant Legendary, the Winged Human Yarnamillo, stated directly. Her tone was firm. The winged woman could be seen standing up, fluttering her wings as she paced back and forth on one side of the meeting room. She seemed to be thinking, murmuring softly as she pondered: “Without a doubt, it’s the aftermath of the Evil Gods’ great purge of civilizations from before. We speculated back then that before the Era of Radiance, there must have been an Evil God that wiped out another civilization. Otherwise, the fact that almost all civilizations across the entire Void Star River were born simultaneously simply doesn’t make logical sense.”
“Then why haven’t we discovered such ancient ruins in the Lost Star River, our homeland?”
Sword Saint Lamotte muttered to himself, but quickly, having received the summarized data Joshua had previously compiled, he figured out the reason: “—Ah, right. The Lost Star River is theoretically the youngest, the last Star River created by the First Flame. We humans are the first civilization in this newborn Star River to encounter an Evil God’s purge! That’s precisely why we finally came to a halt, unlike other Star Rivers, which began slowing down and stagnating much earlier!”
This speculation was very reasonable; everything fit together. Joshua did not raise any objections either. He merely nodded slightly and began to ponder inwardly.
—That ancient, powerful civilizations were all destroyed by Evil Gods was not surprising. The awakening of the Spirit Clan was merely a civilization born from the ruins, hardly a rare occurrence. If the Era of Falling Stars hadn’t recovered the Unified Grand Database and the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, they would likely be no different from the Spirit Clan in this regard.
But it was one thing for the Spirit Clan, a newborn civilization, not to have discovered these ruins… How could those powerful beings capable of spying on the expedition fleet, even crossing Star Rivers to observe the Mycroft World—beings as strong as himself, the Old Pope, and even the Seven Gods—possibly have missed the ruins of these precursor civilizations?
Their conditions were far better than those of the newborn Mycroft civilization. They should have discovered these strange, colossal remnants of civilizations much earlier. After learning of them and making deductions… had these ancient, powerful civilizations of the Multiverse Star River long since become suspicious, just like them, of the truth behind the Multiverse?
In other words.
Joshua was pondering whether, among the other civilizations of the Multiverse Star River, there existed powerful beings who, like them, had seen through the truth of the Multiverse’s stagnation and knew that behind the Evil Gods lay a hidden hand. He wanted to know how those civilizations and powerful individuals had responded to this truth.
This was not a question that could be answered through idle speculation.
So the reconnaissance continued.
Aboard Reconnaissance Ship No. 001, the Void vessel carrying Priest and his team.
An unmanned shuttle landed on a scorching, lava-covered planet. This greenhouse-effect world, filled with thick carbon dioxide, surface temperatures reaching 218°C, and acidic cloud layers nearly ten kilometers thick at their thinnest, was utterly inhospitable to any form of life. If not for the entire Elite Squad being Gold-rank, they would have been wiped out within the first minute of appearing on the planet’s surface.
“Main world of Star Domain No. 39958… Confirmed as a Greenhouse Furnace World. This planet has oceans that are perpetually boiling. The entire world is almost completely filled with high-temperature water vapor, leaving only the hardiest extremophile bacteria to survive.”
A mage clad in Mana Armor activated his Psychic Terminal, beginning to summarize the data on this world. But their purpose was not here. After the Knight deployed a flying vehicle, the five-member Elite Squad began flying towards a super-massive crater not far away.
It was a non-natural geological formation over 150 kilometers in length—more a scar on the planet than a crater. It was incredibly deep, plunging straight to the planet’s core. From the flying vehicle, the mage and the priest used their Psychic Terminals to record. They could see golden-red lava flowing within this perfectly circular giant pit, which was clearly visible even from outer space.
“A powerful attack pierced the crust and mantle, releasing the planet’s internal heat. This created an extremely dense, non-natural atmospheric layer that trapped the heat. The heat-based attack, of unknown origin, was intended to detonate the core, shattering and exploding the entire celestial body. But halfway through, it inexplicably stopped, resulting in this strange, half-finished spectacle.”
While the mage and priest were recording, the Alchemist was cross-referencing data. He frowned deeply, then exclaimed loudly after a moment: “That’s it, no mistake. This is the homeworld of the ‘Worm Civilization’! The data Team 008 found in World 14634 perfectly matches this world. This is their destroyed home star!”
The worm lifeforms in World 14634 had crashed in an ecological spaceship. That ship was a bio-vessel. After crashing into World 14634, the vast majority of the pilots died, but the ship itself did not. It used automatic programs encoded in its genes to modify its form, transform the ecosystem, gradually eroding the entire world’s biosphere. Through its gene bank, it cultivated the original bodies of the Worm Civilization. However, the local ape-like lifeforms were fundamentally unsuited for parasitism by the worm organisms. To this day, no intelligent life capable of restarting the worm ship had been born.
The Nature Mentor had modified the worm ship and extracted its database, obtaining the coordinates of the Worm Civilization’s former homeworld. Following Joshua’s instructions, Priest successfully found this world.
A planet that had survived an attack by a planet-destroying weapon or magic, yet remained intact.
“Ruins of the Worm Civilization are scattered throughout Star Domain 39958. We’ve already discovered a large number of shattered continental world wrecks and pulverized planets within star systems. It’s clear they were a highly prosperous and developed Void civilization with a unique biological warship technology. They fought desperately against an unknown enemy, refusing to let them occupy their planet until the very end. The result was that the unknown enemy used planet-killing weapons from outer space to completely annihilate them, reducing them to dust in the Void.”
“Strange.”
At this point in the recording, the Knight couldn’t help but mutter: “Why would the attack stop halfway? Could it be that the Worm Civilization had reinforcements at that time, forcing the unknown enemy to temporarily retreat?”
“Very likely.”
Although the Knight was a jinx most of the time, this speculation was not wrong. Everyone in the Elite Squad agreed with this guess. Priest, who was transmitting all reports in real-time back to the Joint Fleet Headquarters, nodded seriously: “The ecological spaceship that appeared in World 14634 was likely the one that escaped during that time… The question is, which civilization fought against the unknown enemy and successfully forced them to retreat temporarily? Were they destroyed by the enemy, or did they flee to another Star River?”
Since only the Spirit Clan, a newborn civilization, existed in the Origin Star River, Priest and the others didn’t even consider the possibility of this civilization winning. If they had won, there was no reason for them not to stay in their homeland.
“Heh, who cares if they exist or not? If they don’t, there’s nothing to say. But if they’re still alive, they’re definitely wandering somewhere within the entire World Star River. If that’s the case, we’ll meet them one day.”
The Knight accelerated the flying vehicle, taking the three spellcasters to continue recording the massive crater left by the ‘planet-killing weapon,’ allowing them to collect valuable data. Because they were busy with work, and because what the Knight said wasn’t unreasonable, no one reacted to it, nor did they tell him to shut up.
Year 845 of the Falling Stars Era, February 9th. Nearly a month after the large-scale ruins reconnaissance operation began. The seventh day after the Elite Squad went to World 39958.
Joshua once again received news that gave him a headache.
“Priest and the others haven’t reported in for a long time… Don’t tell me they’ve gone missing again.”
In the central meeting room of the Jetram Void Base, watching the Dragon Girl Lisa walk towards him with a serious expression, ready to report, Joshua sighed deeply: “Why do they have so many incidents? Even when I was young, I wasn’t this troublesome.”
…Sorry, what did you say?
At the other end of the conference table, the Nature Mentor, who had just been discussing matters regarding the Void Ecological Park with Joshua and was now closing her eyes in contemplation, waiting to continue the conversation after Joshua finished with Lisa, immediately opened her eyes upon hearing this. She stared at the warrior with a strange look. Verdani searched her memory but couldn’t find any being comparable to Joshua’s capacity for causing trouble. Not to mention the numerous major reforms and upheavals in the Mycroft World, the entire Joint Expedition Fleet was first proposed by him.
And you dare to say others are troublesome? Does the Radcliffe Family have no self-awareness at all?!
“No, Teacher. Senior Brother Priest and the others haven’t gone missing… Quite the opposite, they’ve made a bountiful harvest.”
On the other side, Lisa seemed not to notice the strange atmosphere. The Dragon Girl dutifully handed the report in her hand to Joshua, then quickly and simply explained: “Due to an unexpected accident, Senior Brother Priest and the others were sucked into the ‘planet-killing giant crater’ by a stellar shift in World 39985. Inside the lava layer, they found the wreckage of a strangely shaped metal spaceship, completely different in design from the Worm Civilization’s warships.”
“They originally wanted to explore the interior of this ship. But unexpectedly, after tens of thousands of years, the ship still had power—it seemed able to absorb lava energy for its own use. So they were trapped inside the ship for several days, only recently getting out. Fortunately, they managed to obtain part of the data from this ship’s information database.”
“Oh?”
Hearing that the Elite Squad hadn’t gone missing, been captured, or encountered any powerful alien beings this time, Joshua couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief for his student and his teammates. The subsequent news was also important. He asked with interest: “So, what did they gain?”
I don’t have the reading clearance.
Stinger. Lisa didn’t speak. She scratched her hair, looking a bit troubled. The girl respectfully handed the document to Joshua. Joshua took it, didn’t open it, but directly read the entire contents by sensing the ink-printing marks and the confidential psychic imprint on the paper.
“…An allied civilization that formally established diplomatic relations with the Worm Civilization. Also a parasitic lifeform, but their race is similar to ants. Instead of parasitizing through a natural body, they use some kind of innate magical rune to ‘parasitically control’ the soul and thought center of the host through physical contact… Interesting. A magical parasitic insect race. A very novel life form. It seems this civilization was the one that repelled the Evil God attacking the Worm Civilization, giving their ecological spaceship time to escape.”
Although they were ultimately destroyed in the end, at least at that moment, there was a glimmer of hope.
After reading, Joshua couldn’t help but marvel at the vastness and diversity of the Multiverse. Parasitic types like the Worm Civilization were common on the Mycroft Continent, but this magical parasitic insect race from an unknown civilization was something he had never seen before: “The Worm Civilization’s name, literally translated, would be ‘Flesh Seizer’? Quite straightforward. And this civilization’s name, let me see… ‘Knowledge Seizer’? Interesting. No wonder they were allied civilizations. The division of labor is very clear. Sounds a bit sinister… Wait.”
Joshua blinked, then sensed something was off: “There’s a problem.”
He recalled the names of those notorious disaster civilizations in the Multiverse Star River that the Great Khan had mentioned to him—the ones even less welcome than the Star Shepherds. The warrior repeated the names of these two civilizations: “Flesh Seizer and Knowledge Seizer… Knowledge Seizer…”
“The Knowledge Seizer?”
…
In the pitch-black Void.
A massive fleet, dense as a swarm of ants, was advancing silently.
If any indigenous civilization not yet in the Void were nearby, they would look up and see that the light of the sun or stars had become distorted and dim. The vast Milky Way would appear severed by an inexplicable shadow. Amidst the twinkling stars, countless tiny points of light, smaller than stars but exceptionally bright, could be seen flickering.
Those were the tail flames of an immensely vast fleet.
And it was not just that.
At the far ends of spacetime, in many places across the Multiverse Star River, unusually bright points of light were setting sail from the endless stars… Psionic, biological, magical, aetheric—each light was different. The only commonality was that they were all incredibly powerful and made no attempt to hide their purpose.
Vast fleet clusters converged from all directions of the Multiverse Star River.
And their target was there—that place which had arrogantly issued a declaration to the entire Multiverse Star River. They were heading there to ask a question of those visitors from the distant Lost Star River.
And to obtain an ‘answer.’