Chapter 724: 601
"O great Moon God, I beseech you to awaken from your endless slumber!" "Lord, please send down your divine punishment and incinerate these blasphemers to ashes!"
In the vast universe, within an unknown star system located on a spaceship near the moon, the intermittent cries of the Believers gradually reached Aurora's mind.
Because of the Locks of Arcane that restricted her and sealed off space and time, her connection with these Believers was significantly affected. She could only sense their thoughts at the moment of their death.
Recently, the frequency of the Believers' deaths began to rise. From their final cries, Aurora was able to extract some useful information—that the Wizards had started to consciously eradicate her worship within the kingdom and were actively hunting down her devout Believers.
Had they realized the source of her power?
Aurora thought to herself; it was not unusual to be targeted, considering the trick she had played on the Wizard Council and the deities of the main world during their war.
However, the current situation was undeniably dire. If she were to lose the support of her Believers, the possibility of escaping on her own would become minuscule.
Now, her only hope lay in the fragment of her spirit that she had left in the main world. If it could successfully cooperate with the deities, then she might have a chance at freedom.
Complex thoughts flickered through Aurora's mind, and she continued to accumulate power, bit by bit. The death of a large number of Believers had somewhat replenished her nearly depleted Divine Power.
Although she still didn't know if there would be another opportunity to escape, regaining strength was always of the utmost importance, no matter the circumstances.
Just as Aurora, with eyes closed, silently awaited the opportune moment, she suddenly sensed someone entering the power room. Her eyes snapped open, and upon seeing who it was, her brow furrowed involuntarily.
It was Lynn!
Aurora's heart sank. Could it be that he had realized she was accumulating power and intended to strip it away completely?
But this thought was dismissed the next moment. After entering, Lynn made no move to act but instead surveyed her bound form with an inspecting gaze, revealing a trace of... satisfaction?
The Moon God couldn't help but frown; though she was a prisoner, she had accumulated some power to destroy herself.
After surveying the area, Lynn spoke coldly, "I'm here to remind you, Aurora, that the spacecraft is about to undergo a long journey. You better behave yourself, and if I find you secretly doing anything again, then you will no longer be necessary!"
The blatant threat filled Aurora with immense humiliation, her face turning ashen. She glared at the male Wizard in front of her but swallowed the harsh words she wanted to voice. She knew well that provoking him would only disadvantage her.
It was then that Lynn raised his hand, and more Locks of Arcane surged up, reinforcing the protections. Aurora did not struggle further, confirming Lynn's belief that his tampering with the powers of faith had gone unnoticed by her.
Having confirmed this, Lynn no longer pretended to test her. After reinforcing the protection and cutting off Aurora's possibility of reaching the outside world, he dismantled the entire power room from the spaceship. He then took the power room back to the massive projector located in the firmament of the Eternal Star!
This massive projector had been under construction for over two years. Its base was applied with anti-force field magic, enabling it to float in the air.
Wizards inside the Council who were unaware of its purpose were very interested in it. Rumors abounded, but in reality, this place was a site for high-level technology experiments.
The entire projector stretched five kilometers, divided into dozens of sections, each of which was a rudimentary miniature spacecraft. If the aircraft designers at the institute had any new ideas, they typically tested them here first, collecting accurate data to ensure no errors before installing them on new spacecraft.
It was also used to experiment with the effects of ultra-high speeds on the interior of the atmosphere.
Now, Lynn intended to send Aurora into the sky using this contraption!
"Chairman Dennis, is the modification work complete?" Lynn stepped into the projector and saw Dennis and others making final adjustments.
"Almost. The previous tests went very smoothly. If there are no surprises, it can sustain a half-year of continuous journeying without a problem," Dennis confidently stated before proceeding to introduce the internal modifications of the miniature spacecraft to Lynn.
First was the removal of the weapons system, retaining only the protective, propulsion, and communication systems. Since there was no need to carry people, space was compressed to the extreme, and energy consumption was greatly reduced, meeting the needs of long-distance travel.
Further, at Lynn's instruction, a front-to-back separation device had been installed.
"What about the screen issue? Has it been resolved?" Lynn asked again.
Previously, in the process of traveling at extremely high speeds, because the spacecraft's speed surpassed that of light, the information carried by light was compressed, creating a sequence of jumbled light spots.
"Solved halfway!" Dennis replied helplessly. The communication device mounted on this miniature spacecraft was the latest model. Aurora had improved the light projection magic. Now, there would be no more chaotic images like before as the data would be transmitted back via Quantum Entanglement, achieving the purpose of communication.
The only downside is that there might be some delay, potentially affecting the precise targeting.
Lynn nodded his head. It was good enough that the issue with the light screen could be solved in such a short amount of time. Even with some drawbacks, it didn't matter much—they weren't planning on waging interstellar war. Conveying the information back was sufficient.
"Then let's install this thing!" Lynn patted the power chamber floating behind him and placed it into the specially designed groove on the spaceship.
After performing some adjustments and ensuring everything was correct, Dennis pulled the starting switch. The outer circle of runes lit up one by one, and after a few seconds of charging up, the simple spaceship, just over ten meters tall, vanished right before everyone's eyes. It moved so fast that even Lynn could only see a trail of afterimage!
"Fly, Elara!" Lynn silently muttered in his heart. Now, all they could do was wait!
According to the coordinates of those alien fleets, it would take about three months to reach the Eternal Star, which was roughly 0.3 light-years away.
This simple spaceship would approach at 1.5 times the speed of light, which meant they could encounter each other in just over a month!
Under the time flow that was seven times faster in the main world, even if the gods chose to cooperate with the avatar sent out by Elara, four to five days should not be enough for a large-scale invasion...
...
In the vast universe, the second spiral arm, fifteen massive disk-shaped warships rapidly traversed the stellar dust cloud known as Corda. Already a hundred atomic hours ago, the executive officer aboard the isosceles triangle-shaped flagship had awoken from his slumber.
There was still a significant amount of time before they would reach their target, but space travel inherently meant taking risks. Some powerful civilizations could even extend their defense networks to extremely remote areas, and they had entered the cautionary range of most star system-level civilizations, risking being attacked at any moment.
"How is the preliminary observation of that star system going? Have you discovered anything?" The executive officer looked toward the long-shaped monitoring officer, communicating through emitted electromagnetic waves.
The so-called preliminary observation was the decoding of information carried by the light received by their spaceship.
The greater the distance, the fuzzier the information. The closer the distance, the clearer the information, to the point where one could construct a clear and complete image.
The only problem was that the information carried by these light signals was from the past and lacked timeliness.
"Your Excellency, based on the observed scenes, that civilization appears to be just a planet-level one incapable of long-distance voyages!" the monitoring officer answered confidently.
The standard classification for cosmic civilizations by the homeworld ranged from level one to level nine.
The first three levels were planet-level civilizations, which, as the name suggests, could only operate on their birth planet. The criteria for classification included whether intelligent life had emerged, whether they had advanced fusion technology, whether they had completed transformation of planets within their system, and whether they possessed the capability for cosmic voyaging, among other factors.
And from the results of the observations, the other party didn't even meet the standards of a second-level civilization.
Firstly, there was no sign of large-scale modifications on the planets within the star system, which ruled out the possibility of them possessing interstellar colonization technology. Secondly, the brightness of the star had not dimmed at all, indicating that they did not have the capability to utilize this enormous energy source, leading to such evident waste.
Thirdly, the process of receiving and decoding the information within the light was exceptionally smooth.
For civilizations adept in using electromagnetic wave technology, such negligence would never occur because there are too many technologies that can prevent the leakage of information.
"Judging from the observations, the target civilization poses no threat whatsoever!" the long-shaped monitoring officer said scornfully.
"Don't forget, our exploration fleet was destroyed there!" A nearby aide-de-camp couldn't help but remind.
Such preliminary observations could only serve as a limited reference because some civilizations would deliberately alter the information carried in electromagnetic waves, just like one of their exploration fleets had reported that an area seeming to be void was actually an advanced civilization world.
"A civilization capable of such technological prowess would definitely not fail to hide even their coordinates…" the monitoring officer argued, noting that many factors could annihilate an exploration fleet, such as spatial turbulence or a sudden cosmic storm.
After all, the exploration fleet was equipped with technology from the previous era, so it was plausible they couldn't withstand these cosmic disasters.
The executive officer also did not believe that the opposing civilization's technological level could reach such heights. It seemed their operation would proceed smoothly.
However, the next moment, an urgent message was transmitted from a probe that had been deployed ahead.
An attack beyond their anticipated range had arrived!