Back at HHHI Corporation.
After a long absence, Kesiba and Lorc finally saw Moffat again.
Moffat greeted them warmly, then led them toward a massive factory adjacent to the company grounds.
The factory rose 700 meters high and sprawled across 1.6 square kilometers. By Star City 5's standards, this was hardly enormous.
Factories soaring thousands of meters into the sky and covering dozens—sometimes hundreds—of square kilometers were commonplace. But those giants were usually specialized facilities, dedicated to fabricating specific components. A single part for a ship could easily stretch dozens of meters long and weigh thousands, even tens of thousands, of tons.
This factory, however—
Kesiba and Lorc felt its difference the moment they stepped inside.
At its heart stood a single colossal trapezoidal device.
It was built on two tiers. The lower platform nearly filled the entire interior, rising some 20 meters tall. Resting atop it was the second platform: a broad-bottomed, narrow-topped block like a square-shaped print. The entire machine was jet-black, its surface carved with intricate grooves.
The engravings ran in rigid patterns, either straight or sharply angled, cascading downward like artificial waterfalls. They spread out across the lower platform's outer shell before converging again at several corners.
The corners themselves were asymmetrical, because the lower base wasn't a regular shape at all—it was a seventeen-sided figure, each edge a different length.
This wasn't intentional design. The inner workings had been crammed together piecemeal, and once the casing was fitted around it, the odd shape simply emerged.
And the casing wasn't for looks.
Such a device demanded absolute protection from external interference. The shell was indispensable, forged from materials carefully selected—some of them staggeringly expensive.
"This machine is…"
Kesiba and Lorc were left speechless.
How long had it even been, and Moffat had already built something like this?
The efficiency of a large corporation was terrifying.
And yet, this company was still considered only second-tier within the Federation—on the verge of first, but still leagues away from the true top.
Moffat said calmly, "Yes. This device can generate particle vibrations and particle assimilation across the entire Star City."
He elaborated:
"It sounded simple before. But to achieve it on a city-wide scale requires an unimaginably powerful energy source.
"A chain reaction isn't just like knocking over rows of dominoes, where one push sends them all falling.
"With particle assimilation, energy loss is a constant threat. And we're not just contending with nature's resistance—our enemies will deliberately try to disrupt it. Imagine a hand pressing on every domino. Unless your first domino is heavy enough to crush the hand holding it down, none of them will fall."
Moffat's explanation was direct and easy to grasp.
Even so, it had taken extraordinary preparation to bring this machine into being. He was, after all, only a manager—upper-middle tier in the corporate hierarchy. Convincing the executives to authorize this project, securing the investment, and carrying it out had been no small feat.
In essence, the device could target one or more atoms, destabilize them, and force them to release excess energy. That energy would strike another atom, which would release more, and so on.
But the artificial architecture of Star City itself interfered, dissipating energy before the chain reaction could sustain itself. This machine bypassed that limitation, ensuring the reaction could cascade without collapse.
"So… can it be activated now?" Lorc asked.
"Of course," Moffat replied. "We haven't run any tests yet, but in theory, it has everything it needs to function."
Kesiba's eagerness showed immediately.
"Then let's activate it today. We can't waste another day."
Moffat's expression tightened.
"That might not be stable. We still need authorization. The main server must cooperate—or at least not interfere. If it pushes back, the entire plan will collapse."
Kesiba only smiled.
"No need to worry. We've already accounted for that. The main server issue is resolved."
Moffat's eyes lit up with genuine joy.
He hadn't expected Kesiba and Lorc to deliver such news. He had underestimated them.
"If that's the case…" He hesitated, his face clouding over again. "…it's still not possible."
"This is the first time we've manufactured this device. It still has flaws. It's not that it can't be activated—it can. But the charging cycle will be long."
The real problem with amassing vast energy at a single point wasn't speed. It was dissipation.
This charging method bled power. By the time the process finished, only a fraction of the gathered energy would remain usable.
"Still… thirty hours will be enough."
Meaning: by late tomorrow, the device could run.
"Some things aren't better rushed," Moffat continued. "Since you've already contacted the main server, there's a plan it needs to receive."
He produced a metal tablet. On its surface, words had been etched so fine each character was thinner than a strand of hair.
"This is to reduce the risk of interception. A safeguard, nothing more. I can't say if it will work—the enemy lives in the micro-world, after all."
Records had their place. Ordinary citizens rarely resorted to such archaic methods. But space pirates often did, deliberately downgrading their ships with crude home-built systems and exchanging data through physical courier drones to stay beyond Federation tracking.
It was the kind of method used only when circumstances demanded it.
A voice interjected:
[The main server is also monitoring this channel. Your transmission has been received. The plan is complete. However, the main server requests a small-scale trial before full implementation.]
Lorc and Moffat both turned toward Kesiba.
Kesiba's jaw tightened. He knew this would be difficult.
He said evenly, "You understand what you're asking. Once we test, the enemy will notice. They'll study it. They'll interfere. And then the entire operation will almost certainly fail."
He drew a breath.
"My proposal: on-the-spot judgment. Let the main server decide in real time whether the plan is effective—or whether it endangers Star City. If it sees risk, it can shut us down instantly."
The line went silent for a beat. Then:
[Understood. The main server will monitor your actions directly. Proceed. Good luck.]
Kesiba exhaled slowly. Agreement was all that mattered. Now everything could begin.
Thirty hours passed in a blur.
For Kesiba and Lorc, it felt like the blink of an eye. They did nothing else in that time; everything hinged on the final moment.
"Do you think the enemy already knows?" Lorc asked.
The two stood alone in a vast simulated chamber. The internal scenery shifted constantly, painting landscapes of rivers, mountains, fields—accompanied by soft winds that could be toggled on at will.
Neither had activated the sound. They preferred silence.
Kesiba crouched, running a hand across the simulated earth, the grit and rubble rendered from Star City's modular substrate.
The city's modularity wasn't built on giant blocks. Each "module" was as small as a grain of sand, allowing every surface to be unnaturally smooth.
"That much is certain," Kesiba said.
"But we can't stop just because they know. This is our only chance."
He closed his hand into a fist.
"All that's left is to wait."
In truth, Kesiba had expected the enemy to strike long before now. The fact that they hadn't unsettled him.
Why the hesitation?
What exactly were they waiting for?
Or worse—did they simply not fear this plan at all?
The thought chilled him. But there was nothing more he could do.
"Kesiba, Lorc. It's ready. Come."
Moffat's message hit their virtual accounts.
The two immediately left the chamber and made their way back to the factory.
As they moved, Lorc glanced around, unsettled.
"What are you looking for?" Kesiba asked.
"Don't you feel it?" Lorc muttered. "Not silence… emptiness. The quiet before a storm."
Kesiba heard Lorc's words and scanned the surroundings. The feeling was there—different from before.
When they reached the factory, they found it almost deserted inside.
Seeing Moffat, they strode over.
"Have all the company staff evacuated?" Kesiba asked.
Moffat turned, surprised.
"Evacuated? No."
"This concerns the survival of Star City. Every employee is involved."
"They've gone to the battlefield."
If one had a God's-eye view, Kesiba and Lorc would have seen that surrounding HHHI Corporation, every company employee stood shoulder to shoulder, staring into the distance with unwavering resolve.
But these employees weren't the first line of defense.
Further out, another front line waited—an army of robots.
And at that very moment, brutal battles raged there.
Hundreds of millions of enemies were already hammering against the defenses. The assault had begun long ago. Kesiba and Lorc had simply been unaware.
"Why didn't you tell us?!" Kesiba and Lorc's fury broke out at once.
Moffat only fixed them with a steady look. To him, there had been no need. They had already done enough. For the last thirty hours, he had wanted them to rest.
"Why tell you? Do you think you're that strong? That you could march onto the battlefield and hold back the tide?"
"Don't kid yourselves. All your past victories depended on the enemy's choice to remain in the shadows—on them not being ready to show their hand."
"And don't underestimate people. You're not the only residents of this Star City."
Moffat gave them a round, almost cheerful smile.
"Good. Bear witness quietly."
"Success or failure rests on this one act."
He gave the order.
There was no countdown. At the control console, a staff member pressed the activation switch the instant the command was spoken.
The entire factory shuddered.
The tremor lasted only an instant—followed by silence.
Then another jolt, lighter this time, rippled through the structure.
"Everyone, off the ground!" Moffat barked.
Instantly, people abandoned the factory floor, shooting upward. They didn't stop until they had risen clear into the air.
From above, Kesiba and Lorc could finally see the front line in the distance. Their faces froze in shock.
Enemies. Endless, swarming enemies, pressing in from every direction.
But climbing higher only made their bodies weaken. Their strength drained away, until their flight faltered and their figures wavered in the air.
"This is a no-fly zone enforced by the main server," Moffat explained. "Otherwise, the enemy would likely already be attacking from above as well."
Even as he spoke, the factory below collapsed with a thunderous rumble.
The ground bulged and heaved as if some titanic beast moved beneath it.
There were no shockwaves, no rolling blast waves—only silent expansion. Some invisible energy spread outward, devouring everything in its path.
[You did not specify that such an effect would occur.]
The main server's voice resounded.
The three of them tensed with anxiety.
Kesiba quickly answered, "Nothing can be built without first being destroyed. This is inevitable."
Moffat, by contrast, remained steady.
"This outcome should fall within your calculations, main server. There's no need to press us now."
"As citizens of the Star Nation, you already hold absolute authority over us. You can peer into our memories, our emotions, every corner of our lives at will."
"You must know we've already given everything—no reservations, no holding back. All of this is for Star City."
The reply came at once.
[This is a procedural necessity. We require you to abide by Star City regulations.]
[The main server is the main server. The main server holds all authority—yet is also bound by the laws of authority.]
Yes—the main server was omnipotent. But that omnipotence rested on its foundation: the Star Nation.
"Perhaps you lack the authority to watch us in the moment," Moffat said, staring at the glowing text in the void. "But you can analyze us from our past. That's no different than spying directly."
He hesitated, then asked the question that had tormented him through the last thirty hours.
"I want to ask you—why did you say 'Good luck to you all'?"
He knew those words had originally come from the higher echelons of the Star Nation, echoed now by the main server, at the very moment of their impending success.
The main server's response appeared:
[Citing a saying: 'Small characters have the abilities of small characters, but such abilities cannot alter the grand design.']
[Good luck to you all—again.]
The main server's text vanished, signifying it no longer concerned itself with them.
Moffat glanced downward. The elemental modification shockwave had already reached the first line of defense.
All the robots had ascended into the air, while the enemies remained grounded. Contact with the earth transmitted its energy into their bodies, and they were elementally transformed along with it.
Countless died in an instant.
The modification kept expanding—its aim was to spread across all of Star City.
Behind him, Kesiba and Lorc asked, "What did the main server mean?"
Moffat mulled over the cited words, then answered:
"Perhaps the big characters have already begun to move."
Kesiba and Lorc exchanged looks. They still felt Moffat was hiding something. But now wasn't the time to dwell on it.
Their eyes shifted outward. The enemy masses were being assimilated. Lorc noticed that not all of their own people were actively leaving the ground.
"The main server only records the information of citizens," Kesiba explained. "The enemy has no information. As long as there is data to grant authority—or to control people through that data—that alone is what matters."
A server of such intelligence would certainly have that capability.
"Some of them are trying to fly." Lorc pointed into the distance, where groups of enemies strained to lift themselves skyward.
Kesiba shook his head.
"Useless. I said—authority."
And indeed, those enemies were violently forced back down the moment they rose less than ten meters. The no-flight restriction had already descended to ground level.
They themselves were unaffected because they possessed authority.
All enemies still in contact with the ground were being permeated by elemental transformation. The entire Star City was being rewritten.
"It's simpler than we imagined," Lorc said.
After everything they'd gone through, in hindsight it hadn't actually been difficult.
"Because the hardest problems weren't solved by us," Kesiba admitted.
Without HHHI Corporation, they would likely still be wandering helplessly in Star City—or hunted down by the enemy.
Without the main server, even if HHHI Corporation had provided the technology, it couldn't have been deployed.
Of course, they themselves were still an indispensable part of the effort.
Witnessing the destruction now, a natural pride welled up.
They had saved Star City.
As elemental transformation extended into invisible distance, a fiercer battle ignited nearby. Brilliant lights pierced the void, each flash bright as a star.
Explosions.
The enemy was resisting.
The average body mass of an Eternal Cycle Star Nation citizen was 168 kg. Their elemental makeup—being composed of artificial elements—released 7.4 times the energy of Uranium-235 fission. The fission yield of a single citizen's body was thus equivalent to 24.864 million tons of TNT.
But this wasn't absolute. Their bodies also contained light elements capable of nuclear fusion.
In truth, the number could surpass 30 million tons of TNT.
"Self-destruction!"
Lorc's mind jumped to the worst-case scenario.
"What if all the enemies self-detonate?"
If they realized they couldn't overthrow them, then mass self-destruction would be the most likely tactic—exploiting every last body.
The current enemy count was at least 1.2 quadrillion.
If even half—600 trillion—detonated, the yield would reach 18 sextillion tons of TNT equivalent.
That was already catastrophic.
Remember: the destruction of Earth required only 6–7 sextillion tons of TNT.
"The greatest danger isn't actually self-destruction..."
Moffat spoke quietly from beside them. He had just realized a fatal flaw in his plan.
At first, he believed that if the enemy managed to contain the loss of atomic fission energy, then elemental transformation wouldn't pose much of a threat.
But the real question was—what if the enemy abandoned that containment?
What if they deliberately triggered fission?
On the microscopic scale, they were fully capable of doing so.
Which meant the entire Star City had effectively become a colossal nuclear bomb!
Its mass rivaled that of a star.
And fission power was roughly one-quarter the strength of fusion.
That meant a quarter of a star's worth of energy, released instantly, all at once.
Such a blast far exceeded the destructive reach of even super-range weapons.
And they were standing right next to it…
They would be annihilated without question.
They had to escape!
Kesiba and Lorc could think of nothing else.
But Moffat didn't move.
"No need. It's already begun."
"The enemy's self-destruction is nothing more than a fuse."
"The entire Star City will detonate. And all of us will be buried inside it."
Although Moffat had carefully dissected the main server's words earlier, he had only half-understood.
Now, he fully grasped its meaning.
"Then what do we do now?!"
Kesiba and Lorc were stricken with panic. They realized: Star City didn't have ships.
Or perhaps Star City itself was the ship—explaining why the Eternal Cycle Star Nation had never mass-produced vessels or warships.
But now that the city was collapsing, they would be forced to escape under their own power.
Yet their speed was far too slow.
There was no way to clear the blast radius in time.
It would be like an exploding star overtaking them in an instant—irradiating them, not melting their bodies, but directly shattering their systems.
"No need to panic. Didn't I say? The big characters have already made their move!"
For the main server to speak with such certainty meant it had foreseen this exact outcome long ago—and had already prepared the solution.
Moffat had once submitted his own blueprint to the main server, but it hadn't given any response.
Which likely meant it hadn't even bothered to study his plan.
His words calmed Kesiba and Lorc.
After all, panic would achieve nothing.
All they could do now was wait.
Countless enemies detonated, their chain reactions "igniting" Star City's very particles.
In truth, the city had once been microscopically stable, incapable of fission. But atoms modified through elemental transformation had become ordinary matter.
To make that matter superconductive, a further step was needed—part of Moffat's earlier proposal to block light from nearby stars.
But that plan had clearly been discarded. The main server never implemented it.
And ultimately, it didn't matter.
Even superconductive matter couldn't prevent fission.
Star City ignited—not at one point, but across its entirety.
The terrible glow flared from faint to blinding, swallowing their vision.
Even shielding their optical sensors did nothing; the radiation carried within the light slammed into their systems with full force.
Star City was exploding.
The radiation grew ever more violent.
Far off, survivors fled in all directions.
But it was hopeless.
Perhaps this really was the end. Perhaps they would be buried with Star City 5.
Even in that moment, Moffat doubted himself.
Maybe the higher-ups' original solution was to abandon them.
Could that be true?
Of course it could.
Moffat felt panic at last.
He forced his infrared sensors online, desperate to see what was happening.
And what he saw—was the entire Star City tearing itself apart in one all-consuming explosion!