Chapter 87: Aether Ring World
For all the ambassadors who participated in the joint assembly and, guided by their escorts, toured the entire Jetram base—and for the fortunate few who even used Star Gates to visit the homeland of Mycroft Civilization—their hearts were always filled with doubt.
Where did they get so many resources?
It wasn't contempt, but bewilderment. The Mycroft people did not hide any of their circumstances. They openly displayed their home world and void bases without the slightest hint of timidity. And precisely because of this, many civilization ambassadors could easily discover that the total population of the Mycroft people's home world did not even exceed three billion.
That number was far too small.
Any void civilization has a baseline population of tens of billions of intelligent individuals—at least, for medium-sized flesh-and-blood civilizations. For a special individual-type civilization like the Lund civilization, the entire civilization's population might also not exceed three billion. But a single Lund individual, without any tools, is equivalent to a small manufacturing center, capable of building a small colony from scratch in an alien world within a few years.
The Mycroft people were not such a special case. They might have unique advantages in transcendent power, but they were far from being that exaggerated.
In fact, the ambassadors of various races had long speculated that, as a transcendent civilization, the total population of Mycroft Civilization should not be large. They mainly relied on the advantages of their powerful experts and cutting-edge technology to achieve their dominance. But even so, to achieve that previous, fierce, wildfire-like offensive of conquest and vassalization, the required resources and logistics should have been a terrifyingly large number. According to reasonable calculations, the Mycroft population should have been at least eight billion or more to maintain such a void fleet and the operation of those dozen or so large void bases.
But in reality, it wasn't.
Although Legendary experts and deities are essentially beings who possess cutting-edge technology and equipment beyond their era, integrating these forces into themselves—their essence being humanoid super-battleships and super-fortresses armed to the teeth, and perhaps even capable of transforming into super-logistics bases—their numbers were not large, and they probably couldn't bear such a huge consumption.
What exactly supported the logistics of Mycroft Civilization, enabling them to wage such unceasing warfare and suppress void civilizations whose total populations were hundreds of times larger than theirs?
There was only one answer left.
That was that some of their experts were probably far stronger than anyone had anticipated.
"We need to dismantle the mass of at least three worlds to forge such a 'Ring'."
Origin Star River, border star domain. In the deepest darkness closest to the Silent Void, a medium-sized world floated. Its world barrier was mottled; the intact parts emitted a silver radiance, but large patches of black barriers that absorbed all light covered it, like stubborn stains, and were even still spreading.
It could be seen that seven divine lights of different colors were rotating around the periphery of this world. They were constantly adjusting the positions of the black barriers, correcting the world's parameters, and even continuously drawing infinite Steel Particles from the void as materials for their work.
It was apparent that this world was not originally like this. It had clearly been artificially modified, and those seven beams of light were among the overseers.
Inside the world, in the aetheric vacuum gradually illuminated by starlight, a Steel Giant God, larger than the star itself, gazed at the sun before him. On his shoulder was a tiny, barely noticeable, azure-blue dot. This dot was the Legendary mage Nostradamus, who was lamenting to his friend: "We dismantled all the celestial bodies inside this world, even extinguished the star, and extracted all the matter... But this is far from enough. Far from enough."
"To forge a 'Ring World', we need to dismantle the mass of at least three worlds, provided the internal mass of those worlds is not less than this one."
"...Even if it takes thirty, we must do it."
Hearing his friend's voice, the gaze of the immense Steel God did not waver in the slightest. He said in a low voice: "'Ring World' must be built. This is our most important goal after arriving in the Multiverse Star River, and there is no 'one of' about it."
"This was a decision made by you and the Seven Gods. Even Israel didn't tell me... And then what?"
Nostradamus was silent for a while. He stared at the star created by Joshua before him, at this cluster of brilliant sparks that could burn steadily for billions of years. He couldn't help but recall, more than a decade ago, in the icy wilderness of Moldavia in the Northern Lands, the first time he saw the man beside him fight... Step by step, leap after leap, until today, reaching a level comparable to, or even surpassing, the gods.
We are being dragged forward, pushed towards a future that should have been absolutely impossible. And the banner dragging and pushing all this forward is right beside him.
His train of thought ended. The old mage came to his senses after a long moment. He rubbed his forehead and said softly: "I won't ask why either... Joshua, what will you do after this?"
"After you and the Seven Gods finish building this 'Ring World' that revolves around the star, which direction do you plan to lead us?"
Joshua was silent for a long time.
After a long while, he spoke in a rather gentle, even mild tone: "Afterwards... it's about leaving hope."
Joshua raised his hand. Silver light mist flowed out from his surroundings, like overflowing spring water. Nostradamus cooperatively opened dozens of space-time channels, transmitting this mist to the nodes they had already determined. It could be seen that the nearly infinite silver mist, centered on the nodes, began to spread at near-light speed along a circular orbit about 150 million kilometers from the star.
This giant circular orbit around the star had a total length of an astonishing 940 million kilometers. Even light would take nearly an hour—about fifty minutes—to traverse this path. However, due to the space-time nodes opened by Nostradamus accelerating the propagation of the light mist, within just a few tens of seconds, a hazy, giant circular line phantom revolving around the star appeared in the aether world.
If observed from outside the world, this scene would look like a god drawing an incredibly precise, silver circle on a pitch-black blueprint.
"This specially made star can provide suitable light and heat. The previous Void Behemoth, the Immortal Phoenix, gave me inspiration. I can make this star develop the most basic self-will, capable of controlling the intensity of light radiation according to needs, and also maintain absolutely stable gravity in this single-star world."
Joshua pointed into the void, waving his hand continuously, as if he were just randomly drawing lines towards the star's direction, like a child scribbling. But Nostradamus knew this was not random scribbling. Five minutes later, when the light from the distant point reached here, it could be seen that the silver phantom, which was just a line, began to spread along the trajectory of Joshua's previous gestures. It thus transformed into a giant ring with a length of 940 million kilometers and a width and height of 13,000 kilometers. The boundless silver mist continued to pour out from Joshua without end, filling the ring's surface area of approximately 12.22 trillion square kilometers.
It could be seen that the silver mist was painting on this ring, whose area was unimaginably vast—equivalent to 24,000 times the surface area of an ordinary planet. It outlined the shapes of mountains, the contours of oceans, drew boundaries for heaven and earth, and created plains and basins, hills and islands.
Although they were all phantoms, the silver mist depicted them vividly. Light scattered, rotating in the pitch-black world. The giant ring phantom began to spin. It could be seen that the simulated colossal mechanical stress was destroying all nodes of this ring structure. But at this moment, there was no need to consider material strength, because this world was an aether world. Through the pure control of 'force' and 'direction' by aether, this colossal mechanical stress could even be converted into a force that stabilized the ring structure.
And after this, the Seven Gods would come here, bestow their blessings and divine grace upon this giant ring, and inscribe it with eternal divine power runes.
This was a deliberately created world, a deliberately created star, and a deliberately created colossal structure. This was a super wonder that could absolutely never be built without the use of transcendent power.
This was the impulse flowing in the blood of the Mycroft people, the most romantic and grandest fantasy.
"The template was already prepared long ago, Master Nostradamus. This was a design jointly created by the Seven Gods and me, and we even invited technical personnel from the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground's Dominant Will and the Knowledge Seizer for the planning."
Joshua lowered his hand. The template phantom formed by the silver mist was gradually stabilizing, finally solidifying into an extremely vast and intricate structure. It seemed that in the future, merely filling it with matter would complete the giant structure. The four arms of the Steel Giant God were crossed over his chest. He said in a low voice: "A giant artificial world capable of housing a population measured in trillions... the 'Aether Ring World'."