1018 to 1020 (more coming tomorrow)

1018 - Moving Ahead

The moment the top ten started receiving updates of what was happening in one of the Yrall Coalition's star systems and saw it with their own eyes, they were shocked. After they recollected themselves from the surprise of both the empire's capability and the horror of the realization that the empire had such a means of attack in place for who knows how long, they issued orders for all robots to be collected and dismantled in all of their star systems to ensure such an attack would not happen again.

Deactivation codes were sent out en masse from the robot manufacturers, immediately shutting down nearly all robots in those star systems. Ships were then sent to collect them for immediate destruction, despite knowing the catastrophe that would result from this action. They made the decision because the alternative was worse than the damage they were already experiencing.

The Yrall Coalition suffered the most damage, as they used robots in the majority of their production bases. Using robots saved a large amount in construction costs since the production plants no longer needed the unnecessary infrastructure required to keep humans alive. As a result, more than half of their production bases, which were operating at maximum output for war preparations, came to a halt. For those production bases close to enemy star systems, they had gone so far as to bomb them out of existence.

The Zelvora suffered the least damage, as they used telekinesis through their mental abilities to do the majority of things and rarely relied on robots. Even so, they still suffered a large loss. They had just started seriously looking at robot soldiers as the only solution to facing the empire's near-endless and deathless soldiers. All of them had started producing robot soldiers en masse as a way to equalize the empire's Avatars, but with a single move, the empire had taken out that part of their plan.

This was just the start of the fallout. It had only been four hours since the attack took place, and the empire had made it clear that they had more attacks planned and would continue until they surrendered. They were also investing a large amount of manpower into trying to discover other ways the empire could attack a star system. They had already given up on one of the top ten Yrall Coalition star systems, which was now under the control of robots, while maintaining surveillance for anything the robots might be planning.

While they were dealing with all the problems on their hands, the fifth hour finally arrived. The conclave members, imperial citizens, and all those in the former conclave star civilizations held their breath, waiting for what the empire had planned for its second attack.

…………………..

“Why is the system reporting that as normal?” a supervisor in Star System Kronog asked one of his subordinates, pointing at the massive screen spanning the entire wall.

This was the Ministry of Transportation and Space Management, responsible for monitoring all travel and anything not on a planet, including space stations and asteroids. At the moment, the supervisor was pointing at a space station around the capital planet whose orbital trajectory had changed without raising any alerts in their monitoring system, something the system was specifically designed to do, making him wonder if it was a scheduled change.

“There is nothing in the records about any planned change of orbit, but you should have been made aware of that anyway,” the subordinate said as he went through all the logs related to that space station. He found nothing resembling a decision to change the orbit; the only thing he found were the specific changes that were being applied. This data was not reported by individuals on the space station but was collected through the observer sensors their department had all over the star system.

“Someone is controlling the space station without the system registering it as something worthy of an alarm…,” just as the subordinate was about to go further into his rambling, he paused before the two of them said in unison, “The empire.”

“Fuck, report it to the higher-ups,” he said while tapping his subordinate's shoulder before turning towards the room and shouting, “I need all of you to stop whatever you are doing and monitor all of the space stations for any anomalous changes regarding their orbits. Focus on those in orbit around a planet, AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.”

He had just realized the empire was planning on deorbiting all space stations orbiting the planets to cause as much damage as possible as their second attack. His anger flared against the empire for having already taken one of their top star systems, only to be targeted once again, instead of another civilization.

“STOP FUCKING STARING AND GET TO FUCKING WORK,” he shouted when he realized his subordinates were looking at him with curious eyes instead of implementing his orders. The shout seemed to bring them back to their senses, as they immediately got to work. Within just a few minutes, they saw the reason for the orders: all space stations around a planet were in the process of a deorbiting maneuver that was minutes away from going critical. Their perigee was getting shorter and closer to the planet with each passing second as their orbits decayed, fully securing the space stations' fall.

They tried initiating contact with the control centers of these space stations to have them reverse course before it reached the point of no return, but none of their attempts went through. All of this was now being updated live to the upper echelons of the government, who were scrambling to come up with a solution before it became a catastrophe.

…………………….

After a few minutes, the military forces in the star system finally moved, splitting up to head toward all of the space stations. This was a contingency measure in case the other attempted solutions didn't work, in order to reduce the damage as much as possible.

1019 - The Nightmare on the Erythians

"Oh, god," one of the billions of humans watching whispered as he saw a massive, moon-sized space station falling toward a habitable planet. Although it was an enemy planet, it still weighed on him to watch it happen, knowing the number of lives that would be lost if it continued on its current trajectory.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!

An explosion, bright enough to flashbang everyone watching, erupted on the screen. Before anyone, whether they felt sorry for the enemy or looked forward to the extinction event, could fully process the scene, the space station was instantly turned into the brightest object in the sky. One of the approaching military ships had nuked it. This was a difficult decision, deemed the action that would cause the fewest casualties. The ships immediately began shooting down the smaller pieces, focusing on those falling toward the planet in cooperation with the planetary defense installations, which were now painting the sky with their fire.

The same thing was happening on the other planets, with the only difference being the timing of the intervention. Stations that were still a safe distance away were evacuated of their inhabitants and critical materials as much as possible before being shot down.

At the same time, the moment this method of attack was realized, they immediately raised the orbits of all space stations to hundreds of thousands of kilometers. This would make them easier to deal with if the empire gained control of them again, even with their control systems taken offline.

Once again, the method of attack was different. This forced another inconvenient course of action across the top ten civilizations, who now had to move their assets out of the optimal locations they had previously chosen for maximum efficiency.

With the first two attacks originating from the digital front, they decided to remove or incapacitate all possible access points the empire could have. They forced all of their critical infrastructure to be examined before moving to offline operations as a cautionary measure. The scale of the first two attacks, which occurred before they had even faced the imperial forces directly, had scared them. This move would reduce the efficiency and speed at which they could operate and solve minor problems, but the trade-off was confidence. Even if the empire had previously gained access, the scale of any future attack would be reduced to a level of loss they could stomach.

They hated being in a passive situation, unable to do anything but wait for the imperial forces to come to them. They had little experience with waiting, as they were used to being the ones who put others in such a predicament. They were all seething with anger as the empire's actions made it clear that they were inferior to the small empire they had previously looked down upon and had the confidence to initiate a war against.

Amidst their escalating anger, another five hours passed, and a third attack commenced. This time, instead of a technological one, it was biological. But instead of hitting one of the Yrall Coalition star systems like the previous two, it targeted the civilization that would be the most damaged by it: the Erythians.

A virus targeting the DNA base code of their bioengineered monsters started spreading in one of their production star systems. It targeted just a few specific lines of code, incapacitating any bioengineered monster, leaving them conscious but unable to move. It appeared to be airborne and capable of multiplying. One by one, the monsters started falling. On the planet where they were being produced, it felt like a wave; monsters in a storage facility began to fall like dominoes, and before long, nearly a million of them in that facility had collapsed.

Before they could deduce if the biological attack was limited to that storage area, they received an answer. Monsters in different areas started experiencing the same symptoms. The moment one of them fell, all the others in that area also followed, making it obvious that it spread through close contact and the air. Fortunately, it was not harmful to any other intelligent life form.

……………..

“What is the fucking cause? How did they reach the monsters that were already on the ships?” the leader of the Erythians shouted after receiving the report, as the casualties were still mounting.

“We suspect that only a single batch was infected, and it spread from there to all the monsters that came into contact with or were in the vicinity of that batch. From then on, it cascaded. Even our soldiers who were near these monsters during transport carried and spread it. Since it is only harmful to the monsters and likely had an incubation period, we have yet to know how long ago this happened or which batch was the source. It might not have been spread directly to a batch, but through one of our people, and from them, it spread until it reached the monsters. It could have been years or just a few months ago. We don't really know, which makes us blind to the scale of the infection,” the man reporting was the head of the department responsible for the research and production of the monsters, meaning this oversight was entirely his responsibility, and he would be the one punished for it.

“What do you mean you don't know yet? You started as if you were confident,” the leader asked, pointing out how the man was now complicating his explanation as if coming up with answers in real-time.

“There are two theories. The first is that a spy infiltrated our production facility and spread it to a batch. The second is that the empire infected one of the envoys, the mana stones cargo, VR devices, or anything that would eventually come in contact with one of our people, who would then spread it until it reached the monsters or someone in close proximity to them. These are the only two possible ways, but the first one is the least likely since we would have found something weird in our production plants during our regular checks…”

Before he could finish his Hail Mary explanation, his communication node beeped, informing him of an update. He immediately stopped speaking and started reading. With each paragraph, goosebumps spread across his body as he was stricken by fear.

“What does it say?” the leader asked impatiently as the silence in the room extended.

“It looks like our second hypothesis is correct. All of the soldiers in our fleets who we have scanned for this specific virus have been discovered to have it. Although it is only twenty percent of our forces and we are continuing with the tests on the remaining forces, we can say with confidence that the virus was spread through contact with one of our people. As for the trigger, it looks like the empire used a mana signature to end its incubation period and activate it,” the man said, his voice shaking with fear at how efficient the empire was.

1020 - Hell on the Targeted

It was a pandemic, a hell targeted specifically at them. With each scan they performed on the remaining soldiers, they came to the realization that nearly all of them carried the virus that was deadly to the monsters the Erythians depended on to fight. With each passing second, millions of their monsters continued to die as they frantically searched for a mana signal that would command the virus to stop and return to its passive form.

It was their best solution at the moment. The time it took for the virus to go from activation to incapacitating a monster was very short, and researching and producing a vaccine would take months, if not years. By the time that route could provide a viable solution, they would have already lost all of their available monsters.

It was the worst attack ever perpetrated against the Erythians. They realized the empire had most definitely used the knowledge the Erythians themselves had provided to learn about and specifically target only the monsters they were producing. They had spread the virus months, if not years, before even the scent of conflict was in the air.

“What about mutations? Are they crazy? What if it mutates and starts being harmful to other life forms? Are we sure the empire doesn’t have the means to trigger the virus to become harmful to other life forms as well?” the Erythian leader asked. He realized that not only were the monsters infected, but he, the rest of their military, and their citizens also carried the virus. It just wasn't harmful to them. But with the spread on the scale of hundreds of billions, if you counted the monsters, the possibility of a mutation turning it harmful to other life forms was more than certain.

“That is not a problem. We checked the virus's DNA and discovered it has redundant code and more than fifty different ways to destroy any version of itself that mutates. Although we are still decoding and understanding the DNA and what every line of it does, there is currently no hint of any part of it being inactive and waiting for activation,” the heavily sweating man answered. He raised his head from the constantly updating report as his mind struggled to accept that they were losing their most powerful strength with each passing second.

…………………..

The reaction to the third attack was different depending on the person and the civilization. The conquered civilizations reacted with both relief and fear. They were relieved the biological attack wasn't aimed at them, but they were fearful upon realizing the empire was capable of such a specifically targeted attack. 

Their fear grew when they understood that the empire, with a single move, had literally taken away the Erythians' most powerful weapon: their ability to overwhelm enemies with vast numbers of monsters of varying strengths. It was a move that would be remembered. Although there was no live footage of the third attack, the empire released the virus's plan with a full, detailed breakdown of what it could do, how it was spread, and how they were confident it had already infected the entire Erythian civilization.

At first, many who read the document thought it was a virus targeting people. But after reading further, they realized it was targeted at the monsters, which made more sense. The empire would already know that targeting citizens with a virus was against its own rules of engagement, but the monsters were not classified as citizens, meaning they were fair game, and the empire had treated them as such.

As for the imperial citizens, they came to the realization that the empire had prepared for this long ago and was only now revealing its full preparations. They were living the motto, "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best," in a literal sense. They were confident that a month was not enough time for the empire to produce such a targeted and sophisticated attack and then spread it across the Erythian star systems.

Opportunists even went ahead and opened betting on whether the Erythians would surrender. The betting was open to everyone under the empire's control, including the captured civilizations, who also placed bets. The total pool exceeded trillions of END and continued to increase with each passing second as more people placed their bets.

Five hours into what the Erythians would forever call a nightmare, the empire kept its promise and moved to the next round of attacks. It was another biological attack, but on a different civilization, with implications similar to, if not worse than, what was happening to the Erythians. The target was the Galvinith, who gained their strength through biological symbiosis, where an organism matching their affinity forms a symbiotic relationship that gives the person the organism's power. This time, the empire triggered a virus that specifically targeted the connection of this symbiotic relationship. When activated, the virus acted as a knife, severing the bond between the two individuals. This meant that those affected by this new virus literally lost their strength in a single action by the empire, resulting in them losing nearly forty percent of their power.

It was only the fourth attack the empire had sent, but the top ten were already dreading what else the empire had in store for them.

…………………..

“Do we have anything they can use against us?” the Valthorin leader asked during an impromptu meeting.

They had just declared their superiority and promised to keep fighting to the end, but the four attacks the empire had sent out had immediately made some of them, even the proudest ones, nervous.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what they will target, which is our biggest problem in finding a solution. If we use the four attacks as a reference, they seem to launch two attacks of a similar style back-to-back before moving to the next. At the moment, that isn't backed by much evidence, as what we have is not enough for a conclusion. However, we shouldn’t rule out the empire escalating their biological attacks to target our people directly, not just our means of strength. That is a possibility they might take in future attacks if we continue holding out. There is really no limit to what they can do, so we should take everything into consideration when coming up with countermeasures,” one of the most powerful Valthorins said, his pride nowhere to be seen during his speech.

It wasn't just that he was afraid; at their level of strength, pride was not the main focal point. They had become much more objective.

The empire was pushing this aspect of their behavior to the maximum, forcing them to find a solution. Surrender was out of the question; they would rather die, but they knew that if things continued as they were, it would not end well for them.