Star Empire

"We have traced back the situation of Universe 42 as much as possible...Only part of the data has been recovered, and there is very strong interference in the center of the explosion core of the reactor array." At the "center" of the capital star, it is the most powerful center of the entire civilization. At the Information Interaction Processing Center, Tyrant and Aphra handed over the simulated holographic projection that they had restored after exhausting their abilities to all those who had the authority to know the relevant content.

In the huge and clear image outlined by the optical flow, the arcane reactor array filled with lavender light is clearly visible. This part of the image is particularly clear because it is directly connected to the cosmic benchmark stabilizing anchor.

Since for the current empire, the old crystal energy system and the emerging arcane system are still trying to integrate existentially on a macro level, when the empire's domain covers multiple universes, these two different "big clans" The living and living areas are relatively separated. Universe 42 is one of the living universes of the arcane clan, that is, the "spell casters".

When the life of the empire is revived, the new body construction process has matured. This applies to everyone. Each body has its own space channel arcane reactor, so in fact those large energy arrays are not absolutely necessities.

However, under certain circumstances, Weisrifan ordered all caster universes to add such large-scale arcane reactor arrays that were strong enough to broadcast high-frequency arcane energy as cosmic background radiation. The promotion of a spellcaster does not require a long transformation process and a very low, unclear probability like crystal energy frequency mutation.

Judging from the current observation records, spellcasters often obtain "promotion power" through a deep enough idea of ​​understanding the world, or a spark of thought that directly hits the soul generated by a mind + soul collision. .

For these precious ideas and perceptions, the wide-area arcane field required for experimental construction of large-scale spells is not impossible to establish on its own, but it takes time, and time is likely to make this The inspiration born from the combined action of spiritual sparks and soul fluctuations is lost.

After all, the empire currently has no way to stably determine the direction of these promotions, let alone control these processes. This is only a conjecture based on the results. But in order to obtain as many of these individuals who are of great value to the empire as possible, the empire will not be stingy in terms of background environment protection.

Therefore, in the universe where all spellcasters live, every inch of the universe is filled with such powerful arcane fields broadcast by large-scale equipment.

For hundreds of years, these arrays have been stable. However, today, the arcane field manufacturing arrays in Universe 42 have mysteriously made huge errors that can break the sky.

…

From the stable holographic projection created by information reconstruction, it can be understood that when the explosion occurred, a cognitive white zone appeared in the simulation spell constructed by the Cosmic Base Anchor, Tyrant, and Aphra. , it seems that in the array, a reactor suddenly exploded on a huge scale, and the out-of-control flow of arcane information seemed to trigger a void intrusion.

However, this possibility was ruled out almost as soon as it emerged:

Due to the use of void decay, part of the high-level information generated will flow back to the entire information space channel for its own stability. Therefore, unless the "real number end" of the space channel is destroyed along with all the information structures of the equipment, otherwise this A structure will not stop pushing, and under this situation, void intrusion cannot occur;

And even if the order end of the space channel information reactor is really destroyed, after the imaginary end loses its connection with the order world and external information subsidies, its remaining structure will be completely destroyed due to the information entanglement structure connecting the real part. , and then it was exiled into the void and then disappeared. This situation generally does not even cause any serious problems - information structure verification and actual destruction experiments have shown that the "space channel" itself is independent from the world. It didn't penetrate the world barrier at all.

In other words, no matter how powerful it is, it will be difficult to affect the entire world in terms of information structure. Moreover, even if it does affect reality, at best it will only leave a very small loophole in the world barrier. This loophole can be completely handled by the cosmic benchmark stabilizing anchor.

However, now, the Cosmic Baseline Anchor has begun to use the calculation processing power used to maintain the World Gate to maintain the world barrier in this area, but...

In the ever-rotating purple-black arcane vortex, there seems to be a piece of gangrene - a piece of gangrene that prevents the world's barrier from healing.

"The Royal Fleet assembles, target, the 42nd World Universe!"

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The mapping capacity of the World Gate itself is very large compared to the creations of the Empire. If necessary, these huge equipment groups without absolute structural limitations can even provide a direct jump range with a projected area of ​​tens of billions of square kilometers, enough to accommodate an entire fleet to jump across the world at the same time.

With the assistance of the crystal energy jump engine, the fleet is constantly jumping in the universe at an almost unlimited speed - even if the world gates in a single world are hundreds of millions of light years apart, as long as the destination has been determined, these A distance that can be measured using the indoor scale is not a distance. When the fleet arrived in the 36th Colonial Universe, the world jump gate connecting the universe to the 42nd Universe was down - perhaps because the extremely unstable fluctuating arcane field had exceeded the universe's baseline stability anchor and the world gate buffer. level threshold.

Therefore, the fleet had to take the void route to reach its destination.

…

"The situation... is very serious." When the fleet flew to a place more than ten light seconds away from the Arcane Reactor, the appearance of the Arcane Reactor array that had produced a large-scale explosion was clearly visible.

The arcane extraction array here does not have the common information-conducting lattice veins. As a compensation structure, these main reaction bodies are short and thick cylindrical arcane arrays. The "output end" of the arcane array is huge, like unfolded silver metal. An antenna like a giant wing. under normal working conditions. The purple arcane energy would be broadcast by these antenna arrays in a manner similar to cosmic background radiation, rendering it largely invisible, but now...

In the center of the arcane broadcast array composed of multiple hexagons, the broadcast antennas of several output terminals have been completely burned, and the output ports of several reactors in the central area are spewing out purplish-black arcane energy that seems to be substantial. , these energies did not disperse after gushing out of the output terminal, but seemed to be directly pulled and attracted by some inexplicable force, flowing straight to the center of the explosion center, and forming a solid vortex in this area with a texture like plasma. .

Behind this physical vortex, a strange, absolutely black round hole appears abruptly in the universe as if it has cut off the dark and lightless background of the universe. Even the arcane vortex will be affected by this. A weird void that's so dark it's almost breathtaking blows away. The data of the cosmic benchmark stabilizing anchor shows that the information of the entire universe moves here under the control of the anchor information line, and countless crystal energy radiation is put into the cosmic environment after solidification and decay to make up for the constant lack of Information.

Obviously, without the powerful information control power of the cosmic benchmark stabilizing anchor, the void intrusion caused by the huge void rift may have destroyed the operational redundancy of the macroscopic world, causing the entire universe model to be affected by this external "root". "Nail" has stopped and entered the countdown to the end of the world - the cosmic benchmark stabilizing anchor has begun to be widely used within the empire. In the observation records of these stable anchors that continue to this day, the empire has roughly discovered that the world barrier and world structure do not seem to be as simple as the universe - space galaxies, as well as many structures such as mutually exclusive positive and antimatter areas, seem to be They are just appearances projected by some more complex areas.

This also seems to explain why complete tampering with physical constants will not directly cause the world to collapse - in all cognitions, the solidity of the universe's structure comes from its own huge size on the one hand, and from its interior on the other. Self-consistent and intertwined legal structure and just the right constants.

But in fact, if the constants in the universe are truly and completely tampered with, even just one, it will cause the entire physics building to completely collapse - in theory, although the ranges where several basic forces and possible adhesion superposition forces act are separate , but at the time of the Big Bang, they were completely connected to each other, and it was almost impossible to influence one thing without affecting the whole body.

And the current observation records can further speculate that the structure of the universe should be just a projection of the world... If this is the case, it may be able to explain that changes in the universe environment will not directly damage the world barrier...

…

But right now, this half-good news does not reassure the technicians and scholars who have arrived here with the fleet. Not long after these new and powerful facilities were put into large-scale operation, the empire only tested the stability of their information structure, that is, they only tested whether they could work stably in a normal environment - the empire had no idea that these devices might appear. Apart from the fact that the imaginary number end may be eroded by the void due to model loopholes, what other situations will there be? How will these situations break out and what impact will they have, and how should the empire deal with them.

The Empire is now stronger than the Federation, but at the same time it is more fragile - almost every word in every law of the Federation era is piled up with human lives, blood and tears. But now, the empire's energy system containing infinite power is not understood, and the empire has no way to detect what accidents they may have - because the empire cannot imagine it.

I'm afraid there will be many more things like this in the future - even though His Majesty Weisrifan's experience has reminded us, we still have no way to prevent it... The problem comes from all directions beyond what we can consider. …

…

Under the joint catalysis of multiple serious events, the computing and processing capabilities of the cosmic benchmark stabilizing anchor are approaching their limits, and the cause of the explosion of the arcane extraction array and all the details are completely unknown.

Based on the ongoing phenomenon, it is concluded that several nearby arcane reactors are still working. The arcane energy they create is constantly converging towards the center and squeezing into a huge vortex. Compared with normal arcane energy, the color of this vortex's composition information has begun to become chaotic and black when viewed directly - just like Like void.

"Zhai Cahir, are you online?"

"Your Majesty, I have been monitoring this matter and just wanted to respond to you." Zhai Cahir's "voice" sounded in the spiritual network, "The arcane energy around the Explosive Heart is constantly moving further towards the center of the Explosive Heart Convergence... Obviously the void extraction process is still going on, but the total amount of information in the arcane vortex has not increased significantly, just like there is a strange existence at the center of the explosion that is constantly returning arcane energy to zero. And I am very It is certain that the phenomenon of void intrusion does exist, but the real white area does not completely coincide with the center of the explosion. Although it is a bit blurry, our sight and network can confirm that the reactor at the center of the explosion has not been destroyed."

"...Then, is it possible that new high-level information is at work...?" Vidoville thought for a moment, "Judging from the current environment, it doesn't look like a death wave has erupted..."

"Sorry, Your Majesty, I can't answer this aspect. I checked with several other people on the Internet. The thick arcane cloud blocks everything... The detectors cannot reach such dangerous areas. Their defenses We don’t have enough strength, and if we want to figure out the current explosive situation, we may need to directly mobilize large ships.”

"Mobilize the Immortal-class A2 type dreadnought..." After comparing the various performances of the dreadnought and its performance in different environments in his mind, Vidoville took into account the current overall civilized atmosphere and After detailing some of the value, the decision was made to let the empire's most defensive warship be the "pioneer".

At present, the empire can only solve these problems through its own exploration... The right path may be found during the exploration, but naturally it may also go astray - if this method of directly sending warships or even fleets to solve the problem is successful, Then the empire will receive shield disturbance data, spacecraft durability and resistance reference information, and knowledge of the center of the explosion. If it fails... the empire will also receive data, but this data will become the anti-disturbance of the crystal energy shield. upper limit.

…

"Rough calculations have been made. The basic protection of an Immortal-class A2-type dreadnought, combined with the range supplement and crystal energy shaping ability of the escort fleet, can resist the arcane environment that has been observed and recorded. At the same time, according to It is estimated from the environmental data that has been obtained that the joint shield may not be able to produce higher defense power, and shield projection will also be blocked...Single ship execution is actually the optimal solution." After making the decision, Zhai Cahill carried out Final audit calculation.

After the basic command indicators were confirmed, a huge spaceship slowly flew out from the fleet formation, accompanied by countless formations of petite frigates. The long axis of these frigates did not exceed one kilometer.

After the dreadnought can superimpose space expansion technology, such small spacecraft can even be stacked in thousands in the hangar of the mothership. However, although the ship body is petite, their role cannot be ignored - their formation-level existence can increase the spacecraft's crystal energy shield response capability by at least 50%.

Since the current situation has never occurred before, the Empire cannot give a reasonable workflow now. Therefore, the final result of the discussion was that the dreadnought decided to try to approach the Core Explosion Facility directly from the gap with a relatively low concentration of arcane vortex - the empire was not rich enough to fill in the existing resources without limit for one thing. Even with the collection of resources, it is impossible to do everything in one go. Sometimes, adventure is also part of exploration.

…

The spaceship slowly sailed towards the center of the arcane vortex.

The purple-black storm even inspired hundreds of bright purple arcs hundreds of thousands of kilometers long in the universe. Under the infection of ultra-high-frequency arcane energy, the space around the vortex even began to explode. Change - the mist-like lavender nebula began to continuously emerge from the empty vacuum, and accelerated to form a cloud wall that was several light-hours wide. This cloud wall began to reach equilibrium after expanding to a certain extent. State, and outside the scope of the cloud wall, the deep area with almost no response and feedback is the void crack that is constantly encroaching and decomposing the real world.

"Is this a phenomenon caused by arcana as high-level information infecting low-level information..." Vidoville frowned slightly, "Esket, pay attention to your responsibilities."

"Yes, Your Majesty!" Eskett nodded, and then began to deploy his "children" in the spiritual network. The crystal matrix that lights up one after another on the surface of the spacecraft quickly builds up a shield to cover the entire spacecraft. In this layer of crystal energy shield that is so thick that it seems to have substance, there are some unusual golden highlights shining—— The "Advanced Group" led by Eskett is extending the special crystal energy control power to the crystal energy shield.

"The defense of the spacecraft has been raised to the highest level, and it has begun to contact the arcane vortex..." The moment the comet-like fleet came into contact with the very high frequency arcane energy, the thick but not dazzling shield instantly burst out. With a dazzling flash of light, the changes in this little dreadnought can only be noticed under the imperial network superimposed with attention and powerful environmental processing capabilities.

On the scale of space, if it weren't for the super-dimensional golden flash produced by the crystal energy shield, the giant ship with a long axis of 200 kilometers would actually be invisible dust in such a large dense cloud.

Although the center of the vortex is safer than the surrounding storm walls slightly farther away, just to this extent, the powerful dreadnought ship's multiple-protected crystal energy shields tremble violently. However, after a little adaptation, the anti-phasing neutralization of the shield began to be calculated. Although this would greatly increase the energy consumption of the spacecraft, the pressure on the spacecraft was also instantly reduced a lot.

"The information density here is much lower than in other parts of the vortex... There are unknown entities that are constantly returning zero information... The level of judgment is insufficient... It cannot be ruled out that it is a death wave..."

"No, wait, General, look, that's -" The dreadnought's information feedback instantly attracted everyone's attention - after tearing through the arcane curtain wall, this powerful mothership drove almost sideways. With the maximum power of the conventional engine, the order field was lit half-on and half-off while moving forward in the ultra-high concentration storm. After the spacecraft traveled a certain distance, the reactor as the "culprit" appeared in front of everyone.

"The output material obviously does not match the preset void decay equation..." A wave of waves appeared in Eskett's consciousness. The output end in front of the giant ship that was supposed to output the lavender arcane energy flow was spewing out something weird. The moment the blazing white jet and the huge splashing jet come into contact with the surrounding huge arcane curtain wall, two completely different energies will "annihilate" together and disappear from everyone's perception in an instant.

"That white substance is just like eating our shield!" An exclaim came from the communication channel, and the monitor could clearly see the white substance surging out from the dark space channel. When impacting the pale golden crystal energy shield of the Immortal Level, the shield capacity decreases at a rate that greatly exceeds the amount required to neutralize the anti-phased external information.

"If the spacecraft is completely unable to continue, it must be withdrawn. If there is still room left, then find a way to shut down the weird reactor without damaging it as much as possible!" Vidoville! He ordered, "Obviously, that white matter is a brand new high-level information! It is very necessary to study!"