Higher-dimensional life must necessarily be high-energy life.
A weak, superficial energy level simply cannot support the manifestation and macro-display of higher dimensions within the lower-dimensional reality.
Only an energy level and density approaching the terrifying intensity of the Big Bang's inception can truly open a stable higher-dimensional space and sustain it indefinitely.
This was a primary reason why Seraphine's Facade "body temperature" was so horrific. Simultaneously, the surging energy levels and high-frequency dimensional shifts caused a series of severe "wounds" or rather, massive impacts on the fundamental structure of the surrounding cosmic space.
Consequently, throughout Seraphine's higher-dimensional unfolding, every single moment generated layers of faster-than-light, heaven-turning waves born from pure spatial manipulation, devoid of matter, information, or energy—much like the universe's dawn.
These waves blanketed and devoured the infinite void in all directions.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Deep within the boundless universe, a five-dimensional hyper-space-time vortex formed from Seraphine's unfolding. Its boundaries were unseen, occupying a region of space measured in quadrillions or quintillions of kilometers. It enveloped and blanketed the surrounding space-time at speeds trillions of times faster than light.
Under this brutally violent expansion and consumption, the Dirac Sea and Higgs field, hidden "behind" the layers of the hazy real-space, were influenced and fell into uncontrollable "rioting."
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Within these violently boiling and chaotic "riot" zones, the properties of all matter—whether shattered meteors, hazy stardust, or drifting molecules and atoms—underwent incomprehensible warping and corruption.
Their mass, volume, charge, and structure were distorted in an instant.
However, these changes lasted only a moment before the matter was "crushed" by the roaring space-time waves into dimensionless subatomic particles that shot into the void.
Viewed from a far-off stellar perspective with super-luminal vision, Seraphine had become a gargantuan, dynamic, and bizarre geometric structure. It was composed of countless flickering points, light-streaks, diamond-faces, and brilliant cubes—constantly expanding, vibrating, tumbling, rotating, shifting, overlapping, and interweaving.
In the process of devouring space, Seraphine's five-dimensional unit cells continued to split and multiply. Because every hypercube has hyperplanes, and a hyperplane is an N-1 dimensional space (just as a hyperplane in 3D is a 2D plane, in 4D is a 3D cube, and in 5D is a 4D tesseract), whenever these five-dimensional unit cells were born, numerous four-dimensional unit cells serving as their hyperplanes were created simultaneously.
As those four-dimensional unit cells—which transcend three-dimensional space—were born, their hyperplane three-dimensional unit cells were naturally created at the same time. Thus, the quantity and magnitude of all dimensional unit cells forming Seraphine's True Form surged rapidly as she devoured the external three-dimensional space.
The many dimensional unit cells building Seraphine's true form were all consumed from the outside world. The true essence of space is as mysterious as it is profound. Even a mere region of three-dimensional space, provided its structure is complete, possesses the characteristics of infinite points, continuous connection, individual distinction, and equal weighting.
Based on these traits, dimensionless points can ascend into one-dimensional lines, then two-dimensional planes, then three-dimensional solids, then four-dimensional hypercubes, and finally, five-dimensional hyper-hypercubes.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
One second had passed.
Seraphine had surged from her initial five or six meters in size to a gargantuan presence spanning 32,000 light-years in diameter.
Coincidentally, roughly 30,000 light-years from the (former) Galactic Core sat an elliptical dwarf galaxy known as the Virgo Stellar Stream. This dwarf galaxy, occupying the largest area of the Earth's night sky, was a remnant formed during the Milky Way's early merger eons ago, containing only a few hundred thousand star systems.
Yet even this "remnant" harbored a significant number of intelligent lives and civilizations. Because the Sentience Realm Hallway system didn't extend there and its scale was so minute, the strongest star-civilization within this dwarf galaxy was only on par with the Mercury Empire. Even their evolutionary levels were mediocre—forget Sages, there wasn't even a single Stage Ten Overlord.
Consequently, when faced with the hyper-space-time high-dimensional "storm" surging toward them at trillions of times the speed of light, none of the billions of individuals across the thousands of civilizations within the Virgo Stellar Stream could offer any effective response.
In a single heartbeat, the hundreds of thousands of star systems were ruthlessly pulverized and disintegrated by the storm into infinite streams of ultra-high-temperature subatomic particles. Accompanied by chaotic, scattering bursts of hyper-space-time energy, they shot into the deep reaches of the hazy universe at faster-than-light speeds.
In the process of these millions of stars disintegrating, 99.9% of three-dimensional matter, after releasing massive amounts of light and heat, collapsed and annihilated down to the subatomic level.
Only an infinitesimal few atoms, after enduring the stimulation of the terrifying four-dimensional and five-dimensional environments, underwent bizarre evolutionary shifts into four or five-dimensional atoms with vastly different properties.
Whether these high-dimensional atoms possessed stable structures or longevity was irrelevant. The mere switching and partitioning between different dimensional unit cells caused them to disintegrate and collapse back into subatomic particles.
Thus, the trillions of intelligent beings scattered across these hundreds of thousands of star systems were like blind and deaf ants, utterly unaware as they were obliterated by Seraphine's high-dimensional unfolding.
Their past lives and glorious histories became meaningless light and heat in an instant. Like the billions of threads of Root Spirituality, they were devoured by Seraphine without a shred of pity.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Accompanied by the roaring space-time waves that tore apart and vaporized all matter, just one more second passed, and Seraphine's "magnitude" expanded to over 60,000 light-years in diameter.
In that second, the former home of the Gravitational Dragon and Ponret races—the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, with its billion scorching stars located 4,200 light-years from the former Galactic Core—and the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, with tens of millions of stars located 50,000 light-years away, were swallowed whole.
Both Milky Way companion galaxies, their countless stars, and unknown thousands of civilizations were consumed by Seraphine's surging advance.
Furthermore, because Seraphine's high-dimensional unfolding exerted such violent control over three-dimensional space-time, the surrounding infinite void shuddered even before the expansion reached it.
The silent, boundless intergalactic space became like a deathly still lake struck by a massive boulder. Layers upon layers of space-time ripples rose, pushing against the void in all directions like a falling row of dominoes.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Within an instant, the cosmic region spanning 100,000 light-years with Seraphine at its center vibrated violently. But it didn't stop there. The impact of this intense, fundamental space-time vibration was far more severe than imagined. It caused the neighboring intergalactic void in all 360 degrees, and even the vaster reaches beyond, to tremble uncontrollably.
In a heartbeat, the Large Magellanic Cloud (160,000 light-years away with ten billion stars), the Small Magellanic Cloud (200,000 light-years away with hundreds of millions of stars), and even the Ursa Minor Dwarf (225,000 light-years away with nearly five million stars), all felt the impact.
The millions of star-civilizations within these three Milky Way satellite galaxies discovered through their precision monitoring equipment a terrifying fact: the entire expanse of space they occupied was vibrating at a high frequency.
Within an instant, the millions of star-civilizations scattered throughout the three dwarf galaxies were seized by a frantic terror.
They were utterly unable to comprehend this cosmic anomaly, which defied their astronomical theories. They knew instinctively that something momentous was about to occur. Yet, as fragile as they were, these billions of intelligent beings had no solution; they could only pray in confusion for fate's protection.
However, not all civilizations were so weak and ignorant. But at a time like this, ignorance was a blessing.
At the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a silicon-based civilization that had advanced its super-luminal cosmic observation technology to nearly the level of the Galactic Core's six races had previously discovered that the Milky Way, located at an immense distance, was rapidly vanishing.
When this startling discovery was made public to a select few, it caused a massive psychological shock throughout their society. The level of horror was comparable to someone on old Earth looking through a telescope and seeing that the other nine planets had simply disappeared.
Stunned.
Beyond belief.
What happened?
How could so many stars just be gone?
Was it total destruction?
Even vacuum decay wasn't that fast!
Could it be the descent of a God-tier civilization?
The disappearance of the Milky Way had brought nothing but panic to this silicon-based civilization. After all, at such a distance, what could they do? Investigate? Too far away. Flee? At the speed the Milky Way was vanishing, they wouldn't make it. So if they could do nothing, what then?
They could only pretend they hadn't seen it. Though they couldn't dispel the boundless fear and confusion, the silicon-based civilization tried to push aside their terror to keep their society functioning. But now, even their own Large Magellanic Cloud was vibrating!
Instantly, the entire civilization recalled the disappearance of the Milky Way. They compared the two events. In a heartbeat, their entire society suffered a collective breakdown, paralyzed by a form of civilizational PTSD.
"Hahaha, it's over! We're all going to die!"
"Is a God-tier civilization descending?"
"Hahahaha, whatever! Let's all die together!"
Millions of light-years away, Seraphine naturally didn't care about the thoughts of ants.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Accompanied by the layers of space-time fluctuations across the vast cosmos, just three seconds later, the gargantuan hyper-space-time vortex created by her high-dimensional unfolding ruthlessly crushed the ten billion star systems of the Large Magellanic Cloud and surged toward even vaster regions of space.
Another second passed, and the Small Magellanic Cloud, with its hundreds of millions of stars, followed. It too boiled and wailed in an instant, consumed by the roaring vortex and sucked into Seraphine.
Half a second later, the Ursa Minor Dwarf, with fewer than five million stars, was pulverized and devoured, vanishing from the hazy universe.
Even then, Seraphine's surge did not stop. Her high-dimensional unfolding continued.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A full second later.
After reaching and devouring half of the Draco Dwarf galaxy (which held over a million of stars and sat 280,000 light-years from the former Galactic Core), Seraphine finally came to a halt.
And at this moment.
Standing amidst the infinite universe, having successfully ascended her dimensions, Seraphine had transformed into a cosmic deity 560,000 light-years tall. She seemed forged from the boundless void and trillions of radiant nebulae.
Wrapped around her massive waist, from the inside out, were layers upon layers of "belts" composed of misty points of light. Each of these points was a star system. These belts were the remnants of the Draco Dwarf she had consumed.
At that exact moment, the Infinite Attributes system activated once more.
HUM—
[Host: Seraphine]
[Physical Strength: 50,000 Galaxies]
[Soul: 50,000 Galaxies]
...
BOOM—
The rippling void instantly boiled with surging waves, churning continuously. The fragmented Draco Dwarf, composed of millions of stars clinging to life as a "belt" around Seraphine's waist, was instantly shattered by the overlapping space-time ripples. It was broken into hundreds of irregularly shaped, misty star clusters.
Simultaneously, the few top-tier star-civilizations within these clusters, who possessed varying levels of super-luminal observation capabilities, discovered with absolute horror the violent, immense space-time fluctuations occurring throughout their territories.
Stars, nebulae, constellations, and star clusters, they had all suddenly shifted. No, that wasn't right! It was that the entire visible expanse of space had completely changed! This earth-shaking transformation, affecting the structure of a whole galaxy, had never occurred in their countless eons of history.
In the blink of an eye, the familiar universe had become utterly alien. Finding themselves in this strange space, their worldview shattered, and they were plunged into ultimate panic.
Of course, Seraphine, standing like a cosmic deity in the far reaches of space, didn't care about their panic. Her focus was on her attribute panel. Following the previous doubling of her attributes, the mysterious [Infinite Attributes] system had activated again.
Without any delay, it took the Physical Strength and Soul attributes that had already increased 25,000 times due to her Dimensional Ascension and doubled them once more.
In truth, Seraphine's "Physical Strength" was now entirely different from common perception. When her Facade wasn't manifested, her "Physical Strength" referred primarily to the billions of threads of High-dimensional pure energy the "free" quark flows at ten sextillion degrees that surged through her many dimensional unit cells.
To an ordinary observer, these would appear as beams of high-energy light millions of times hotter and brighter than the core of the sun. But to Seraphine, this was her body. Macro or micro, unified or discrete: to her, there was no longer a difference.
HUM! HUM! HUM!
A majestic power equivalent to the mass of 50,000 Milky Ways roared and surged through her body and soul.
"This power... is not bad."
Amidst the infinite space, Seraphine slowly raised her muscular left arm (230,000 light-years long, exceeding the diameter of the entire Milky Way) and clenched her fist.
BOOM!!!
In an instant, within a radius of a million light-years centered around her giant "fist" (itself 30,000 light-years in diameter), the vast universe, from the Higgs field to the subtle structure of space-time and the Dirac Sea, shuddered violently!
As if there were no intermediary process, the remnants of the already collapsing Draco Dwarf, the nearby Sextans Dwarf Spheroidal with its thousands of star systems, the Carina Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy with its billions of stars, the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy with its hundreds of millions of stars, the Leo II dwarf galaxy (100,000 light-years from her fist), the Leo I dwarf galaxy (200,000 light-years away), the Phoenix Dwarf (700,000 light-years away), and even Barnard's Galaxy (nearly a million light-years away with its hundreds of millions of stars): all eight galaxies within a million-light-year radius were annihilated.
In the first heartbeat after Seraphine clenched her fist, they were reduced to decillions of subatomic particles and boundless, pure light and heat.
Simultaneously, the septillions of threads of Root Spirituality within these eight galaxies, along with their septillions of complete memories, streaked across the rippling void at trillions of times the speed of light, flying into her magnificent body.
Indeed, with a single clench of her fist, Seraphine had reduced everything within a million light-years to nothingness. And this wasn't even her full power; it was merely a small experiment in injecting a portion of her majestic physical strength into the silent, underlying structure of three-dimensional space-time to violently "stir" it.
After ascending to the fifth-dimensional level, Seraphine's sensory precision of the external world had increased by over a hundred million times compared to when she was four-dimensional. That is, a precision a hundred million times finer than the subatomic level.
Of course, this meant a precision finer than the subatomic "scale," not smaller than the particles themselves. The two are not the same.
The microscopic realm is counter-intuitive. If one can truly measure the size of a particle, they are close to probing its internal structure.
For example, the radius of an atom is the distance from the outermost electron to the nucleus; the space between them is vacuum. The nucleus is made of neutrons and protons, which in turn are made of quarks.
However, the sixty-two fundamental particles (such as electrons, photons, the six types of quarks, muons, tau particles, neutrinos, gluons, W and Z bosons, gravitons, and the Higgs boson) are "point" particles with no clear radius or volume.
An electron, for instance, is dominated not by "particle" characteristics, but by "wave" characteristics. In such a state, an electron's radius is no longer a fundamental property; within a "wave" framework, discussing a radius is unnecessary.
Fundamental particles should never be understood through classical solid forms; they are better viewed as excitations of a more fundamental "field." Even their mass isn't classical mass, but relativistic mass (essentially a measure of energy).
A particle's "radius" (like that of a quark) can be roughly considered its de Broglie wavelength. In short, classical concepts of radius and mass are mere manifestations, not the essence.
HUM
With such terrifying precision, the three-dimensional space-time in Seraphine's eyes shifted from its previous dull flatness to something vibrant and complex. Under her five-dimensional vision, the seemingly flat void was no longer flat.
It was filled with [Flat Manifolds], [Non-flat Manifolds], [Curved Manifolds], and [Non-curved Manifolds] (homeomorphic and non-homeomorphic space-time planes and surfaces at a topological level, thousands of times smaller than the subatomic scale).
When Seraphine used a fraction of her power to shake a million light-years of space and annihilate eight galaxies, she relied on these infinitesimal micro-surfaces of three-dimensional space-time. Matter, energy, and information, the fundamental elements of the universe, all seemed intricately linked to them.
These manifolds were the final threshold to the true essence of space-time, containing unimaginable power. Seraphine suspected these powers originated from the even more microscopic Planck scale, perhaps linked to quantum foam.
Of course, all of this required further observation and research.
"Fifty thousand Milky Ways. Hmm. Not bad."
Seraphine slowly withdrew her arm. The mass of 50,000 Milky Ways was roughly double that of the Great Attractor. A single Great Attractor influenced the motion of millions of galaxies across hundreds of millions of light-years. And that was just the potential within her Physical Strength.
If she factored in the equal power of 50,000 Milky Ways within her soul, she could, at full strength, pull four Great Attractors through the vastness of space.
Thus, Seraphine, now a humanoid Great Attractor, had finally stepped into the ranks of the Super-Galactic tier. A nearly flawless, hexagonal Super-Galactic powerhouse.
As for her Three-layer True Form system, it had naturally evolved into a Four-layer system upon her ascension to the fifth dimension.
The outermost layer of her self-space, the Material Facade: A body of "free" quarks maintained at a terrifying constant temperature of ten sextillion degrees Celsius.
Before this fearsome form, even thousands of neutron stars would be vaporized into subatomic particles. Other, even more fragile objects in the universe would fare far worse.
The third layer of her self-space, the Three-Dimensional Exterior: A series of three-dimensional unit cells, each a thousand light-years on its side, large enough to hold tens of thousands of Pleiades-style star clusters.
These cells are linked by threads of high-dimensional pure energy, the Celestial Arcana, and exist in a constant state of shifting, intersecting, overlapping, and rotating.
There are 2,560 of these cells in total.
The second layer of her self-space, the Four-Dimensional Exterior: Composed of 320 four-dimensional unit cells, also a thousand light-years on each side, tightly interconnected by the Celestial Arcana capable of creating or destroying all things.
Fundamentally, the many three-dimensional unit cells of the third layer are the hyperplanes of these 320 four-dimensional cells, their essential components. Within a tesseract representing a 4D cell, the intersection of non-parallel three-dimensional cells forms its twenty-four square faces.
At every edge of a 4D cell, three 3D cells intersect, and at every vertex, four 3D cells meet, while six 3D cells intersect along four edges. Thus, the birth of one 4D unit cell naturally entails the emergence, or surrounding, of eight 3D unit cells.
The final layer of her self-space, the Five-Dimensional True Form: Constructed through the interconnection of Celestial Arcana across a complex, multi-layered geometric structure that defies three-dimensional or even four-dimensional representation.
It consists of thirty-two five-dimensional unit cells, each a thousand light-years on its side. In these five-dimensional worlds, each far larger than ordinary nebulae or star clusters, five dimensional axes are mutually perpendicular.
Objects possessing only three or four dimensions cannot exist normally within them; upon entry, they would instantly disintegrate, collapsing into subatomic particles.
And Seraphine's Immortal Primordial Soul, now ascended to the fifth dimension, stands firmly at the center, surrounded by those thirty-two five-dimensional unit cells.
To accurately describe Seraphine's current form from a perspective beyond three or four dimensions: her True Form uses five-dimensional unit cells as its foundation, with decillions of ultra-high-temperature, high-energy "free" quarks serving as her flesh and organs.
Between these two, the Celestial Arcana, a fusion of infinite five-dimensional pure energy and the Grand Unified Force, serves as her essence, weaving together the many three, four, and five-dimensional unit cells into a high-dimensional, highly ordered super-entity.
In this state, Seraphine can sense every moment that the vast space and the infinite mass-energy around her are in a state of absolute submission... even fear.
To truly wound Seraphine now, one must first overcome her outermost layer: the body of ultra-high-temperature, high-energy quarks with the mass of 50,000 Milky Ways and a temperature of ten sextillion degrees Celsius.
Next, they would have to breach her third-layer Three-Dimensional Exterior, followed by her second-layer Four-Dimensional Exterior, which ignores all three-dimensional attacks.
Throughout this process, the attacker would have to withstand the terrifying assaults of her Celestial Arcana, imbued with the Grand Unified Force and five-dimensional pure energy.
Furthermore, they would have to endure Seraphine's [Multi-dimensional Severing], a strike repeated countless times every second, powerful enough to slice and peel away a supermassive black hole layer by layer until it is reduced to a naked singularity.
This terrifying dimensional severing effect, caused by the high-frequency shifts between the various three, four, and five-dimensional unit cells within Seraphine, is something no object in this universe can withstand, with the exception of naked singularities and the sixty-two types of dimensionless fundamental particles.
Even if one were to somehow overcome all of these layers and reach Seraphine's first-layer five-dimensional True Form, and then utilize some unknown method to annihilate that form and the five-dimensional Immortal Primordial Soul "behind" it, there would only be a miniscule chance of truly harming her.
And even then, it would be a slim chance at best.
For the mere presence of Seraphine's Four-Dimensional Exterior as it manifests, lingers, or traverses through real-space time for too long causes near-irreversible damage to the deep, subtle structure of three-dimensional space-time.
This forces vast regions of space to rapidly decay into cosmic dead zones where everything larger than a subatomic particle disintegrates.
To say nothing of her Five-Dimensional True Form, which is even more destructive to the fundamental structure of three-dimensional space-time.
Its mere manifestation would instantly "churn" a vast region of the universe into a tangled mess. Practically no living being could survive for even a microsecond in such a horrific environment.
And Seraphine's true, ultimate strength... the Light of Infinity, evolved from the Root Spirituality that is slowly deifying deep within her fifth-dimensional Immortal Primordial Soul, is even more terrifying.
Even if her Four Layer True Form system and the Immortal Primordial Soul were completely collapsed, a single flicker of the Light of Infinity could instantly restore everything to its original state at zero cost.
"The Root Spirituality is almost fully deified."
Seraphine turned her attention inward, focusing on the flash of divine light within her five-dimensional Immortal Primordial Soul, the Spirituality.