Star Empire

"Send out a purification fleet and prepare to clean up the death tide."

"The operation of the entire network structure and high-capacity communications are temporarily suspended to prevent the spread of contamination."

…

In space, the still young sea of ​​stars releases silvery brilliance, and their presence makes the actual structure of space rich and colorful.

But now, between the cantilevers of a galaxy deep in the universe, an unfriendly "door" has been opened by unknown factors. The two-dimensional gate without any light, and perhaps even the descriptive elements themselves such as "darkness" and "unknown" have been burned away, becomes extremely obvious in a strange way in the vast space.

Among the stars, this "perfect circle" gate that is devouring and destroying rules, but itself presents extremely standard rules, is full of a sense of madness and chaos.

A strange smooth film seems to cover the "door leaf" of the door, and the surrounding area of ​​the door is being destroyed. It is obvious that the appearance of the door has caused the world of order to be destroyed, but it seems that nothing perceptible is released from the door. .

The structure of space is being distorted, and more and more gravitational lenses are making the starlight passing through here become alluring and crazy. Thousands of stars shrouded in an ominous atmosphere are trembling, the background radiation of the universe begins to fluctuate, and black and red patterns begin to adhere to more and more celestial bodies.

Everything shows that this gate must now become some kind of "source", and this source is pouring out some "something", an invisible and extremely dangerous pollution and destruction - it cannot be identified, but There is no doubt that destruction and destruction are being unleashed through the gates.

Deep in space, this invisible pollution containing distortion, violence and malice is distorting the structure of space and corrupting the stars. As the distance of pollution increases, their spread even shows an uncontrolled and intensifying trend. It is like a bottomless pit, a weird bottomless pit, appears inside the uniform and flat order structure. Its appearance causes everything around it to collapse. Collapse, and this collapse quickly affected a wider scope.

"It has been recorded that the diffusion method of death tide pollution in the conventional order world without extraordinary radiation suppression is suspected to be a chain collapse effect, which is proportional to the information gap and the distance part of the world application interval. This kind of pollution will not occur under the current situation. As the pollution interval increases, they will be hindered. On the contrary, their spread speed may be further enhanced. The exact grade and intensity of the dead wave have not yet been clarified, and relevant guidelines are still being formulated."

"Currently, the possible penetration range of the limit of the spread of dead tide pollution has been clarified. The actual radius of the three-rank space structure is three hundred light years. The overall structure of the world to the bottom protocol area is blank. The defense fronts with missing attributes have been confirmed. Security redundancy has been considered. Interval, implement conventional tactics against the Death Tide Gate in the world."

The contamination is spreading, and it is spreading faster and faster as the distance it spreads increases, but in all its paths, roadblocks and barriers are now beginning to appear - perhaps hundreds or thousands Tens of thousands of battleships shining with purple or golden light and engraved with the imperial emblem have now formed a "spherical shell" in the actual space. Intangible mapping connections driven by crystal energy are intertwined in the structure composed of these battleships. in the matrix.

Among the stars, a net invisible to mortal order and physical means has been cast by the warships that have been deployed here. These deliberately hidden constellation structures are the first line of defense to prevent the spread of death tide pollution, but for For them, such a huge and sparse fleet structure makes it impossible for them to use their own shields to form a joint system to block such a danger.

It is not impossible to lock or even completely annihilate this cosmic domain with a pure protective layer of crystal energy, but if we do that, nothing of the original structure here may be left, a patch of light golden debris and flickering lights. The space debris of purple light will replace everything here.

"The basic nodes are in place, constraint vacancies between nodes are detected, unstable information fluctuations are detected, identification fallacies appear, and are within the acceptable range. Dead tide pollution has begun to approach the current stability boundary. The area covered by branch nodes and leaf nodes is stable , the protection system has been activated."

"Suppressive broadcasts have begun, follow-up protective positions have been deployed, and backup teams are on standby, ready to call for support."

The death tide pollution that was still invincible just now slammed into the defense line in space. It violently corroded everything that blocked its progress and attempted to destroy them. However, compared with those uniform "transmission media", the invisible walls here seemed to be more than just It blocks itself from the direct physical level, and more like blocks the possibility of diffusion from all levels. It is as if now, there is only such a puddle left in this world.

More small and medium-sized battleships appear in the "vacant" positions of the grid composed of large battleships. They form a matrix, relying on shield broadcasts and extraordinary mapping to further seal the macro-continuity here. At this moment, as far as the outside world is concerned, this space with a radius of more than three hundred light years has disappeared.

"It is confirmed that the protection system is complete. Third-party observation shows that the foundation of the space outside the protective layer is stable, and all constant distortions are within the normal evolution range."

"Complete the operation to block the dead tide pollution - all ships should pay attention to their own conditions, and follow-up troops should pay attention. Once the instability of the ship ahead is detected, take over immediately! All warships release the adsorber targets, and the target range and corresponding tasks have been assigned Completed, the squadron is free to attack the corrupted aggregate!"

Almost at the same time as the order was issued, the mathematical rate keys contained in countless "missiles" were activated, and they were projected out from the interior of the ship. These missiles, which were comparable to small battleships, were equipped with quite unique "warheads" - -The warhead environment has been spatially expanded, and there is a huge space inside, and this huge space is filled with special uniform substances. They are designed to induce large amounts of "pollution smell" inside the door to accelerate its seepage out of the door.

Current research has determined that the "seepage" of pollution will destroy the stable structure of the gate itself, and doing so is currently the only way to solve the Dead Tide Gate at a relatively small cost without destroying the world's infrastructure. .

Figures with a faint golden light sailed in the unstable space. Their missile bodies were almost the same as those of small battleships, giving them extremely strong independent planning capabilities and resistance. Even though the space structure here was not continuous due to the continuous destruction of the dead tide, Despite being in danger, they can still approach the source of the spread of pollution using a method similar to void navigation.

As long as the shipboard system determines that the "distance" is close enough, the crystal energy protection will be completely lifted, and the large amount of material contained in the warhead will "absorb" the unknown pollution around it.

"The Adsorber target has been activated - the auxiliary crystal energy beacon has been detected and the attack has begun."

Among the artillery fire that was cutting through the twisted and crazy space and erasing the corrupted and crazy stars, some quietly changed the path of attack. They carried just the right amount of information and hit the gates stacked on the Death Tide with sufficient accuracy. A huge black ball nearby. At this moment, those black balls are trying to expand, and the last remaining blockade insurance of the entire missile body is fighting against the internal trends that are trying to self-destruct and spread contamination.

Information seals the gap that has begun to sink and burns away the carriers through which pollution may spread.

"Entering the stable stage, all fleets should pay attention to maintaining the current status and always pay attention to the overall stability of the Dead Tide Gate."

"Entering this stage, the entire operation has entered an overall stable trend. For us, the only thing left is to invest more time and resources to completely purify the pollution in the blocked area."

"The dead tide itself will corrode order, but at present, it seems that the dead tide pollution itself does have a very strong tendency to spread, but the corrupted order environment itself and the polluted material itself are also important carriers of pollution diffusion."

"After being contaminated, the corrupted cosmic matter is likely to no longer follow the original rules of motion, and its own existence properties may also undergo huge changes. They are likely to penetrate space at a speed that exceeds the limit of the world's reality and cause Contamination spreads rapidly, and any interaction between these objects and all the objects around them has the potential to spread contamination."

The soldiers controlled the battleships and cautiously threw precise firepower at the "corruption army" that was spreading wantonly in space and seemed to have abnormal intelligence.

Countless warships have locked the order of rules in space, which forces the death tide pollution, or the "order carrier" contaminated by the death tide pollution, can only be followed by the locked time and space again and again before all the surrounding rules are destroyed. "backflow" in a fixed area, which greatly slows down their diffusion.

The special substances contained in countless missiles "scratched" the stability of the door again and again.

The fleet command system soon realized that the boundaries of the "gate" had begun to blur - according to past experience, this basically meant that the gate would collapse on its own, and the pollution process would end this time, but sometimes, the death tide The door will suddenly erupt at this time, causing sudden catastrophic consequences.

"Improve the accuracy of the detection array to confirm the distribution of the total amount of disturbing information, which may be strongly related to the stability of the Death Tide Gate itself. The range has not suffered high-intensity direct attacks."

The Death Tide Gate and the Death Tide itself cannot be accurately examined. At least so far, they are not tangible substances, and as phenomena, they lack targets that can be accurately identified. Therefore, it seems that they may not only be located in the super metaphysics, or their mode of existence. It seems that they will continue to swallow the order itself, but they will not appear in any form that can be observed and detected. .

When the Death Tide Gate erupts, it is not so much that the Death Tide causes everything to become corrupted, but it is more like the world of order itself fighting the invisible and insubstantial, desperately fighting itself, and then they themselves begin to corrupt and collapse, and this is Like a severe infectious disease, it is about to break out.

"Counter-observation" is currently the best way to interact with the death tide, that is, by confirming the degree of damage the death tide has caused to the environment itself to detect what kind of damage the death tide has caused in the order environment - a long time ago, this Prototypes of the device, or other devices with similar ideas, were already widely used in the Imperial fleet of that era.

Countless pairs of eyes and countless consciousnesses are staring at the door itself that is constantly vibrating like a wave in the counter-observation projection. After losing that calm membrane, it no longer presents a standard, consistent appearance from all viewing angles. The circular structure vibrated like disturbed liquid in a small depression, and the dark depths of the portal became visible at a perceptible speed.

The door disappeared.

"According to this observation record, it can be confirmed that the "order diameter" of the Dead Tide Gate is 50,000 kilometers, and the direct impact radius is 195 light years under slow reaction conditions. If not controlled, the Dead Tide Gate will have The ability to completely dismantle the entire world within a year.”

"The report has been recorded."

"Fleet Commander Communications - 9-3-1-j64846, 13-4-3-uo849766, the environment has been cleared, please lead your department to check whether this environment can be restored through absolute time reversal."

However, as soon as the order was issued, the reports from the two teams arrived almost simultaneously:

"The corrupted wreckage of the dead tide has been tested, and it has been confirmed that all the wreckage has suffered a high degree of information loss. They no longer have historical iterations from the past, they no longer have their own historical structure and historical memory, and their large amount of lost information may It also stems from this. They only exist abruptly now. If the information of these wreckage is not supplemented and reconstructed, and time is simply reversed, they cannot be restored. In their natural state, they no longer have the ability to be "restored" part."

"...Understood, the observation fleet will be here to detect the aftermath of pollution and residual disturbance in the later stage, and the combat fleet will return."

This is a battle of order against the tide of death. For this world, the victory of the imperial fleet in this battle represents the rebirth of the world, and for this fleet and the imperial beings stationed here, this is This victory carries a unique symbolic meaning, and even though the countless experiences accumulated from battles in other worlds are open to anyone who needs it, its symbolic meaning is still irreplaceable at present.

For the empire, for the vast time and space spread throughout the empire, this is just one of countless battles against the death tide. For the whole, for the battle against the death tide within this kind of world, it is so of insignificance.

The borders of the empire were re-extended outwards, and this process also led to more and more such battles. They sporadically penetrated the borders of the empire. In fact, they may be happening every moment - the "order of civilization" The "Shadow of Pressure" has not been fully confirmed, but at least the core territory of the Empire is still safer than the frontier, too much safer.

In the eyes of the Void Sky Survey Radar, the borders of the Empire, and the outside of the Empire's territory... The disappearance of those stories corresponds to far more information loss than these. The currently detected Death Tide Gate, and the Death Tide disaster itself, may only be seen by the Empire. The tip of the iceberg of a total disaster in the distant void that is missing. The current empire is capable of handling this issue, but over a long period of time, the empire cannot predict what will happen.

If there is a problem in the core territory, the entire empire may be brought down by itself.

"I hope this situation...never happens."

For the fleet and the battle, accepting tasks, deploying, assigning tasks, executing them individually, summarizing and recovering, and waiting for the next mission, this is the Imperial Fleet and the battle posture the Imperial Fleet needs. Commands are issued from a higher center, and they follow the path they should take all the way across nodes at different levels of authority, and are accurately communicated to each end.

Lower nodes further distribute tasks and details, passing them on to all teams.

When the war is over, all people will summarize their experiences and tell what is reasonable and unreasonable. This information will be summarized and sent back along the opposite path to those who can make decisions.

"It feels a bit boring, doesn't it? I mean, traveling in a cabin with no depth, monitoring the same content all the time. These contents may not change significantly for tens of millions of years."

"But that's how battles are. The fleet itself works in shifts. After the battle, everyone has their own part of time and space. During that time, they are willing to do whatever they want, as long as it does not violate themselves. There is no problem with the imperial rules and regulations that need to be followed.”

"As for the battle itself, where is the need for more things to do and more content that can be regarded as "interesting"? War is serious and also cruel. Facing the invisible and insubstantial enemy, we must take the most serious attitude and face it in the most efficient way - in fact, the mission announcement at each task stage and the deliberate and clear communication of meaning between each person, those words-like communication are essentially done because of "life exploration" It’s quite a bottom-line concession.”

"oh"

Facing the crew members who raised these questions, 1-3-3-y132149 felt very surprised - it is true that the overall atmosphere of the current empire encourages thinking and doubting the current part, but as far as he knows, the current entire empire There are many such examples - most of these phenomena occur in the newly born imperial beings. They will question the current imperial rules themselves, and this questioning does not seem to stop at modification or improvement.

I have a strange feeling that cannot be quantified yet - their doubts, their unspeakable dissatisfaction seems to be astonishing. If it is only considered from the perspective of practical calculation, it may not be abnormal, but the sense of crisis in my intuition tells me that , they seem to hope for something or to start over, and they don’t know which party or what kind of existence they hold such an attitude towards.

This shouldn't be the case. The empire's infrastructure and basic life shaping system may not directly inject all knowledge into everyone in an instant, but that system should at least determine a relatively solid and consistent "relative and absolute" that the empire has currently established. "There is a correct harmony and connection - there are countless possibilities, infinite rules, and countless permutations and combinations of the former in the void.

They may span all worlds, occupy all reality and the past, and be everywhere in infinite time and space, but they themselves need a suitable environment. Only in a suitable environment can their establishment have value.

The empire allows relativeness, but the empire also has its own absolutes - up to now, this has been regarded as a basically clear point of view. It is impossible for the life of the Empire to be allowed to do everything without restrictions now, even if it thinks that thing is right, even if that thing is thought to be right by many people, if those events are too far away from the current purpose of the Empire and the general environment, then it is wrong. ——Not much leeway.

Based on the intuition formed by the Anchor Soldier's tens of millions of years of experience, he could not intuitively analyze specifically what was wrong with the soldiers who asked him such questions, but his intuition told him that there was an invisible influence on the empire. , existences that are "hostile" to the environment - seem to be hiding behind those soldiers, those basic beings.

".Have you found anything?"

"The lock that restricts certain senses and inner knowledge seems to have been broken through, but there is no problem with the information structure. There are no visible traces of external distortion and internal distortion of perception. If the suspicion is established, this matter may involve pataphysical relatedness."

"Field, connect the secret communication channel."

"According to the information released by the Empire Network, in the past week, there have been twenty-six large and small death wave disasters in our area. Three of them caused actual losses, and one of them even directly penetrated the two layers of defense. , if the third line of defense is broken down, then that world may not be able to be saved.”

"I hope that relevant scholars and relevant imperial functions can achieve more results as soon as possible. By the way, how are our work tasks going?"

"The 1235th collection of the background information structure of this world has been uploaded. You should be able to read this question from our mission system, right? Moreover, haven't you always known the details of this better than me before? "?" Looking at the cabin structures around him that had been temporarily solidified and seemed a bit stiff and abrupt, Villamark originally wanted to erase them directly so that everything here could operate in a mode that he was comfortable with and liked, but he recalled that the network Despite all the suggestions, he still chose to give up.

"Just like you are unwilling to use this fixed cabin environment, I personally don't like the current so-called "finding life" experimental method. Indeed, we need experiments to confirm whether we will accept it and how we will accept it. What methods and means are used to practice acceptance and non-acceptance.”

“But I have to say, I really don’t think there is any need for these structures to be forcibly used in this way now, especially since all information interaction and task processing can be completed instantly through the network, without any need for any actual actions and actions that can be reflected. Detailed actions, but the latter is forced into our current lives.”

"Zataraik-77-4-3, you don't like the decisions of the current empire?"

"Well, you have to do it, but as a self-individual who is still closed, I don't like the content of the decision that much, or I don't appreciate that the blunt insertion should not exist in the current environment. "Based on the current operating mode of the environment, just like these cabins, just like the words between us, they can be replaced by more efficient ways."

"Certainly there's a lot of historical record out there that we need to rebuild a lot of things, so we need to experiment with a lot of things, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's clear that the regulations that we're currently trying to make are clearly not absolutely consistent with our actual natural needs. conform to."

"I understand what you mean, and I also have my own ideas about this - these experiments may eventually lead to certain special atmospheres corresponding to groups that like them, but this should not be imposed on the entire empire, and the existence of these contents There should also be parts of them that match the environment and can be regarded as "reasonable existence", for example, communicating with those possible civilizations. Forms like ours will inevitably be easier to understand."

".It is necessary to give suggestions. By the way, what about our previous topic?"

"Zatara, I think you are deliberately pretending to forget - our mission is to constantly retrieve the world's underlying information and world infrastructure, record and report them to the relevant departments."

"Yeah, I remembered, ah, yes, this mission is to detect the possible information differences between the current empire's inherited world and the native world of the void, and to detect the spontaneous emergence of the native worlds of the current empire and the void after being attacked by Jiutian, Deathstroke and Dead Light. difference."

"It is said that there were some then-unnoticed influences in the last era that affected the fate of the entire empire."

"There are only a dozen, with such a weak soul foundation, but they exist in the empire's once largest, most chaotic, and coldest network. The phenomenon of red reality has been proposed since then, but the red reality itself may not just come from the depths of the soul. Regarding the silent and increasingly thin reality and their own perceptions, the two His Majesties suspected that the source of the blood-red color that induces wisdom to resist change may correspond to the top facilities of Σ civilization known as the "Quadrant Continent".

"If this inference is correct, then the empire may experience the same distortion and spread of red reality in the future. The spread of red reality has indeed become extremely thin due to its own existence, but if this red reality is connected to the Nine Heavens that can span the endless world of the void .That’s very dangerous.”

"Our duty now is to use our greatest strength to screen for possible loopholes in the data. This is what we at this level of the empire can do. We can make this danger pass, or... let it explode. Do as little harm as possible.”

"If Jiutian actually corresponds to all void intervals and can spread the scope of influence to such an extent... No, it will indeed spread like this..."

…

Imperial Council.

"Recently, the information recovered here has been quite fragmented - many things are not particularly important, but they all must be solved... there are too many." Faced with so many problems, Cavinrel seemed a little worried.

"We have piled up too many problems at once. These problems not only cause headaches for the majority of current researchers, they also make our stories bloated and confusing. Many people cannot figure out what we are currently doing. , what do we need at the moment, there is no clear main line here, and I think this situation is not good."

"...This is also normal. After all...most of the things in the entire empire need to be torn down and started over. The empire's system is so large and complex. If there are no problems, then that is the biggest problem." Regarding this situation, Wei Wei Srifan shook his head slightly.

"Let me put it this way - we don't necessarily have to solve all the problems directly now. What we are doing now is to raise as many questions as possible. These problems may be solved as the research progresses, or they may It is difficult to sort out at the moment. They may need to be left to time to solve, and in the future, these problems may not exist. What we are doing now is to put forward as many problems as possible that may need to be solved, and put The rest is left to time and the extension and development of the story.”

"Zhai Cahir, what's going on?"

"I saw some... strange things, a little unsettling. These changes seem to have occurred in the infrastructure and the lowest level of life in the entire empire."

"Zhai Cahir... It's rare to see you so uncertain." Faced with this strange topic, Vidoville frowned.

"Because this is really impossible to determine - I can't see any entity, and I can't even find the corresponding information section, but my ability and part of the information fed back here can already prove that there may be anomalies..."

"We are losing information, but after calculation, the information destroyed by dead wave pollution is much less than the amount of information we are losing."