The Martial Unity

Chapter 4218: A Terrifying Discovery

-o—o-o’s eyes widened. ”What...?”

He couldn’t believe that they were so close to the border of an alien civilization. Even though this was an outpost world that the homoarachnoids had chosen to inhabit, they hadn’t expecte to be this close towards coming close to touching their border.

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”Impossible! This. Is. A. New. Highly. Advanced. Civilization,” -o—o-o realized. ”But. How? How. Could. A. New. Civilization. Expand. So. Fast. We. Would. Have. Seen. It. We. Would. Have. Seen. Signs. Energy. Signatures. Industrial. Activity. Logistical. Activity.”

Oo—o-’s expression grew a little severe as she studied the border of human civilization as described by the human that she had captured and extracted information from. Her initial reaction had been the same. There was no way that a whole civilization had managed to completely conquer the stars around and expand to such a degree without giving out some kind of energy signature that could be used to identify them.

And yet, the homoarachnoids had immigrated to Planet Amadeus III a long time ago, creating their civilization within the infected planet, hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders. Yet, they hadn’t seen any hints of activity in the section of stars that the human had marked as human territory.

That was hard to believe, but not outside of the realm of impossibility.

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”There. Are. Two. Possibilities,” Oo—o- remarked thoughtfully. ”The. First. Is. That. They. Have. A. Stealthy. Means. Of. Expansion. Not. Unlike. Ourselves.”

The homoarachnoids were not native to the world of Planet Amadeus III. They, too, had come to this world from elsewhere. They had done so in as stealthy a manner as could possibly be done. Even though it was stealthy enough, given that they had been discovered by the outsiders who specifically targeted their planet even before a single homoarachnoid had openly made their presence on the planet known.

However, Oo—o- didn’t think this was likely. The reality was that, based on the way that the outsiders had conducted themselves recently, they simply didn’t have the finesse to expand across the stars in a stealthier manner than the homoharachnoids did. Ever since they had come to the Strehegeld Star System and had begun interacting with Planet Amadeus III and the homoarachnoids that inhabited it, they had been loud and attention-drawing.

This was simply not the modus operandi of a species that could spread through the stars quietly.

”The. Second. Possibility...” Her clicks faltered.

”What. Is. It?” -o—o-o demanded. ”Just. Spit. It. Out.”

”The. Second. Possibility. Is. That. They. Have. Managed. To. Conquer. All. These. Stars. Even. Before. The. Light. Of. The. Stars. Has. Managed. To. Even. Reach. Us.”

That possibility rocked -o—o-o where he sat, which made him then groan in pain because of his still fresh wounds that checkered his body. But not even the pain drowned the shock that his body was in. He stared Oo—o- like she had insulted the Divine Mothers.

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”That. Is. Impossible! Conquering. So. Many. Stars. Before. The. Light. Can. Reach. Us. No. Civilization. Can. Practically. Expand. That. Fast!”

She had to concur, nominally. Even as she gazed at the star map in front of her, with the territory of human civilization marked across it. The territory covered a sphere of a little more than a hundred light-years and roughly ten thousand stars. For all of that distance to be covered before the light of it crossed the boundary of the sphere was a pace of conquest and expansion that was fundamentally impossible, as far as she was concerned.

No alien civilization in the Milky Way, not even the homoarachnoids themselves, had ever expanded across the Milky Way so fast. So much so that one could always guarantee receiving light from a civilization conquering its stars, serving as a forward warning of what was to come.

And yet, this time, they had run into an alien civilization that had accelerated its expansion of the stars at such a rate that it truly beggared the imagination. She wasn’t just speculating, either. The questions that she had asked the human specimen had allowed her to gain clues that this alien civilization had managed to conquer a large number of stars within a very short amount of time. .

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”Most. Likely. This. Alien. Civilization. Has. Managed. To. Conquer. Ten. Thousand. Stars. In. Just. Thirteen. Years.”

-o—o-o did another double take that made his body flare with pain, causing the creature to grimace in a manner that was very human-like, before turning to his fellow ascendant warrior with an expression of pure terror. ”Ten. Thousand. Stars. In. Ten. Years?! That’s. Impossible!”

Frankly, she felt tempted to agree with him. She understood where he was coming from, considering that she had reacted to this revelation in this manner. An alien civilization conquering ten thousand stars in thirteen years was just absurd. It should not have been possible. Conquering ten thousand stars took centuries, if not millennia, for slower and less advanced civilizations. She had been alive for centuries herself as the homoarachnids spread from star to star, to infected world to infected world.

She had come across many alien civilizations, but she had never heard of any kind of alien civilization that could expand at such an absurdly high rate in the Orion Star Strand. At most, she was aware of a machine civilization in some other star strand that had achieved terrifically fast-paced expansion.

But in the Orion Star Strand? A Star Strand that had separated from another star strand in the Milky Way Galaxy and contained smaller alien civilizations? None of them had ever expanded across the cosmos at such a high pace.

Not to mention, the field of stars that the human had indicated was part of human territory was mostly red dwarf stars. The lowest quality stars with the lowest energy output. Their energy output was so low that most alien civilizations would simply ignore them if they were in the middle of nowhere, like human territory, because the low energy yields simply didn’t justify the kind of expenditure that it would take to travel that far and try to set up a Dyson Sphere.

How did such a powerful civilization emerge from such a dump in the middle of nowhere, cosmically speaking? She didn’t know. But their technology was advanced enough that they needed to be taken seriously. The threat they represented was also one that could not be understated.