Lorc had never fully understood why he was seeking those individuals—especially given his memory loss.
He wasn't that kind of person.
He wasn't the type to lay down his life for others.
And yet...
That didn't mean he wasn't willing to sacrifice himself—for something else.
What could be worth that price?
Perhaps only one thing remained.
The star nation.
His civilization.
Every citizen of the Eternal Cycle Star Nation could trace their lineage back to the age of the Olive Branch Civilization—a time when communal consciousness ruled supreme and individual thought was forbidden.
Lorc remembered that long ago, someone had appeared—and changed everything.
It started with the rise of independent thought in his own city. The concept of Independent Victory emerged for the very first time.
That city was called Titled Station.
Back then, that individual stood alone, surrounded by countless minds. Under relentless pressure, she didn't yield—debating both the masses and the leadership of Titled Station itself.
Later, they realized her civilization wasn't powerful at all. In fact, compared to theirs, it was pitifully weak.
As part of the communal consciousness, Lorc knew the truth: Titled Station had initially planned to dominate her civilization.
But she resisted—almost single-handedly—with nothing but time and conviction, delaying the advance of Titled Station for over ten thousand years.
Looking back, the nature of that conflict was crystal clear.
Not a single word she spoke was true.
She was a liar—through and through.
But her lies echoed the hopes and dreams of the entire Olive Branch Civilization.
Perhaps she never believed those ideals herself.
But Lorc did.
To him, independence had always felt like a dream.
Even as an enemy, he held profound respect for her.
He often wondered—
What gave her the courage to stand against an entire civilization?
To this day, he still couldn't grasp it.
But he wanted to.
He wasn't the kind of man who would sacrifice himself for someone else.
But for a civilization?
Maybe that was different.
And now… was the moment he faced just like hers, all those years ago?
Moffat stepped into an isolated research chamber.
Inside were rows of machines, humming with cold precision.
He began dissecting Kesiba's body.
With each spherical particle removed, the entity possessing Kesiba grew weaker.
"It was definitely sharing his biological systems," Moffat noted.
"Deeply integrated. That's how it slipped past the main server's scans."
Moffat hailed from a powerful megacorporation. His tech was light-years beyond anything Lorc could access.
Separating Kesiba was easy.
But Moffat was careful—he didn't attempt to probe Kesiba directly.
The lab was filled with clones, all human.
Their bodies were nude, and their reproductive systems had been genetically removed.
"Stay cautious. Don't go deeper than the atomic scale," Moffat reminded them.
The clones meticulously operated the instruments, analyzing each spherical particle.
One of them attempted to power up a sample.
"There's still residual data from Kesiba."
"And… anomalous data embedded in the structure."
"The data architecture is rudimentary. No signs of complex cognition. Its standard intelligence value is 5."
In Eternal Cycle Star Nation metrics, a standard intelligence of 10 equates to the average human from the Proxima Centauri era—more or less the same as humans from the Earth era.
A 5, by Earth standards, would be considered intellectually disabled.
"In theory, then, this wasn't an actual possessing entity," Moffat said. "Just a basic AI program occupying the body?"
"Exactly," the clone replied.
That answer gave Moffat pause.
If Kesiba was being controlled by something that simple… then it wasn't an entity at all. It was a virus.
A virus had hijacked the body.
If the same applied in the physical realm, then these so-called "entities" were likely acting through mechanical programming.
But something didn't add up.
Moffat had heard enough from Lorc and Kesiba to know these entities were carrying out highly covert missions.
That behavior wasn't algorithmic.
At least—not in this world.
Maybe in the underworld, they behaved like viruses.
He didn't know yet.
But some things were already clear:
First, these things obeyed a commanding intelligence. They might even be alien lifeforms.
Second, the nature of the attack was structured—not an invasion, but an assault.
There's a difference.
An invasion implies physical entry, uninvited, by an actor—like an alien civilization breaking into Star City 5.
An assault, however, implies that what they were witnessing was the weapon itself.
It wasn't about conquering, or stealing.
It was about erasure.
Moffat hoped that it was the former.
Because at least then, there would be a target.
But logic told Moffat the truth: the second possibility was far more likely.
From what Kesiba had described, the enemy hadn't used any overly elaborate tactics in the mortal realm.
"Looks like we've got trouble," Moffat muttered.
If there were a single person behind this, then finding that individual might resolve everything.
But if the threat was a weapon, then they would first have to locate it—and then disarm it, piece by piece, like defusing a bomb. And locating the bomb would only be the beginning.
As Moffat pondered this, the clone monitoring the scan made a discovery—Kesiba's consciousness was still present.
It was faint, but detectable.
The dissection process itself, however, was causing damage. If left unchecked, it might destroy Kesiba entirely.
Only the main server could repair the damage.
Moffat connected to the server via a corporate DataNode to submit a priority request: a consciousness without a body had been recovered.
The main server responded instantly, focusing on Kesiba's mindstate and beginning restoration. It didn't attempt to reconstruct his body—because that body was still undergoing trauma.
Meanwhile, the clone had already extracted and neutralized the parasitic program.
The main server then reintegrated Kesiba's consciousness into the body.
Lorc stood nearby, watching, feeling a rare stroke of luck.
According to Kesiba, he had died in the mortal realm—and his body had then been reconstructed in the underworld.
Had he died in the underworld instead, the server would've immediately attempted to re-upload his consciousness to the original body.
But what if that original body had been occupied again by then?
The server was blind to these infiltration programs.
Kesiba would've been permanently lost.
He was lucky—lucky that HHHI Corporation had intervened.
In Human Civilization, even the smallest company wielded influence beyond what any one person could counter. And HHHI was anything but small. As a major interstellar conglomerate, it handled cases like this with ease.
Kesiba's reintegration completed rapidly.
His first words were:
"I didn't lose my memory, did I?!"
Moffat and Lorc both laughed.
"The fact that you're asking proves you didn't."
"Your body's intact. So are the memory traces embedded in it."
Moffat gave Kesiba a summary of what had happened.
Kesiba was overjoyed.
"She's alive too! I'm sure of it!"
Moffat didn't understand his excitement. Lorc could guess a little—but not much.
For security reasons, the transmissions Kesiba had witnessed hadn't yet reached broader circulation.
So Moffat and Lorc sat and listened while Kesiba explained everything he had seen.
His account of changes in the microcosm astounded Lorc—but to Moffat, it was electrifying.
"White holes!" Moffat exclaimed.
"Based on your observations, I have reason to believe in the existence of a microscopic curled-up world. Possibly not just one—but an entire domain."
"Famous curled-up topologies include things like Calabi-Yau space—a six-dimensional manifold."
"To study such structures, you don't necessarily need a dimensional gateway. In fact, HHHI Corporation's entire strategic roadmap is built around Calabi-Yau space."
"I'm beginning to suspect this alien incursion may be directly related to our own corporate activities."
Years ago, exploration of the microcosm had been a hot academic pursuit—especially after first contact with the Flyer Civilization.
For a while, micro-level research boomed.
But humanity lacked the foundational tech to sustain that direction. The momentum died off quickly.
The mainstream technological path remained macroscopic electromagnetism.
However, with the Federation now advancing toward a Type 2.6 Civilization, dimensional research was gaining renewed importance. Demand for space physicists exploded. Annual salaries skyrocketed from 300,000 to over 5,000,000 Energy Credits.
The Federation began aggressive recruitment.
Corporations saw a clear pattern forming: space physics would define the next hundred thousand years of tech warfare.
So they scrambled to onboard scholars, open new labs, and push for breakthroughs in dimensional tech. Even minor discoveries could yield massive profits through military and government contracts.
HHHI Corporation had originally been a mining giant, with resources across dozens of systems.
Over 1,500 years, it transformed into a space-tech entity.
But by then, they were already late to the game.
While they employed 70,000 to 80,000 space scholars, competitors had hundreds of thousands—with government partnerships across multiple star systems.
HHHI had no real advantage.
So they pivoted—toward the Eternal Cycle Star Nation.
As one of the Federation's largest megacorps, their arrival had ripple effects. Native companies in the star nation saw the writing on the wall and began aligning with HHHI, attempting to follow their lead.
Unlike their peers who raced toward black holes and hyperdimensional access, HHHI's internal consensus was different.
They knew they couldn't win that race.
So tens of thousands of their space physicists debated—then voted.
They would aim smaller.
They would aim inward—toward the Calabi-Yau microcosm.
The Eternal Cycle corporations followed suit. They lacked HHHI's capabilities but hoped to ride their coattails.
Much of the Eternal Cycle's industry was still young. The future was a haze. To them, HHHI wasn't just a partner—it was a lighthouse.
And HHHI's micro-world research wasn't limited to Star City 5. Every Star City across the Eternal Cycle hosted some branch of it.
If a civilization truly did exist within a curled-up manifold, then it was likely HHHI—or its competitors—had already disturbed it.
"Could a civilization survive indefinitely inside a curled-up world?" Moffat asked.
"What about energy?"
"Sure, the microcosm might offer fusion-grade yields—but high quality doesn't mean high volume. Where's the scale?"
"They're so advanced… have they never observed us?"
Kesiba pushed back.
He insisted this wasn't retaliation—this was an offensive strike.
That distinction mattered.
Moffat didn't press the argument.
Instead, he said, "No matter what, at least we agree on one thing—the curled-up world exists."
"And if that's the case, then we have to destroy it."
"Normally, I'd suggest using a black hole. But since this is our Star City, there's only one viable method: quantum phase transition."
Quantum phase transitions are abrupt changes in quantum states—akin to water freezing into ice, but at the subatomic scale.
One example is Bose-Einstein condensation, where bosons near absolute zero coalesce into a superfluid state.
"If the enemy's techniques can't interfere with bosons," Kesiba reasoned, "we might use bosonic phase changes to disrupt fermionic structures."
It sounded plausible.
But Moffat shook his head.
"Impossible."
"Just because bosons aren't affected doesn't mean they can't affect fermions."
"Whether fermions or bosons, both are quantum fields. The enemy manipulates quantum fields to influence fermions—how could that not include bosons as well?"
"It just means they chose not to interfere with bosons—because they didn't need to."
"The quantum phase transition I'm talking about is a fermion phase transition."
"Through cooling, fermions can become quasi-particles. These quasi-particles can still be manipulated by the enemy. But since they can't influence bosons, we can deduce that their technology is targeted. So once the fermions become quasi-particles, I believe their influence on the macroscopic world will cease."
Listening to their conversation, Lorc felt as though they'd both gone insane.
Quantum phase transitions require temperatures near absolute zero.
And while achieving that is easy enough today, it's only ever done on a few atoms, subatomic particles, or at best—a cup of water, a microbe.
But what Moffat was proposing meant cooling all of Star City 5.
Just how massive was Star City 5?
Forty astronomical units across.
If Earth were placed beside it, it would be barely visible.
Even the Sun, with its 1.39 million km diameter, was smaller by several orders of magnitude.
Cooling Star City 5 would be harder than cooling a star.
"I can't do that," Lorc said flatly.
Moffat shook his head. "You're thinking too small."
Moffat wasn't just any executive at HHHI Corporation. He was a high-ranking one. And while technically a businessman, his grasp of physics far outclassed both Kesiba and Lorc.
"Turning bosons into fermions, or fermionizing bosons—that's immensely difficult."
"But what if we liquefy fermions instead?"
"Actually, after hearing your description, I thought of only one thing: Cooper pairs."
In superconductors cooled to near zero, fermions don't move independently. Instead, they pair up weakly—one spin-up, one spin-down.
Together, they act like bosons.
Though not true bosons, they behave like them. And that's enough.
Such is the strangeness of the quantum world.
The problem is, in Kesiba's observations, the fermions didn't behave like Cooper pairs. They were bonded by forces even smaller, even deeper.
This pair of fermions didn't display any bosonic characteristics.
"How do you plan to make that happen?" Kesiba asked.
It already had a rough idea what Moffat intended.
But it wasn't something trivial.
"Don't forget where we are."
"This is HHHI Corporation—not some backwater lab. We have resources beyond your imagination."
Moffat didn't blame Kesiba for doubting him.
It was a matter of perspective.
Some technologies lie beyond what ordinary minds can conceive.
One of them is called element alteration. In the weapons field, it's known as particle stripping.
As the name suggests, element alteration can turn an oxygen atom into hydrogen, or iron into silicon.
It's a precision technology.
Used as a weapon, it forcibly strips electrons, protons, and neutrons—collapsing the atom entirely.
This can trigger fission. During fission, neutrons are released. These then strike other atomic nuclei, creating a chain reaction.
In theory, it only takes splitting a small part of the material to cascade into a chain reaction that collapses most of it.
Sometimes, neutron absorbers are added to guide or accelerate the reaction.
That's why nuclear weapons don't always fully detonate.
Element alteration avoids that by using a complementary technique: neutron collection.
Originally, neutron collection wasn't invented to aid element alteration. It was a sub-function in nuclear fusion tech.
Fusion reactions release vast amounts of energy via neutrons. But how do you harness it efficiently—without boiling water like in a Tokamak?
By accumulating those neutrons. Not to start a chain reaction, but to retain them.
Moffat originally wanted to use this.
But then he realized—it wasn't needed.
When he triggered a fission reaction within himself, he noticed something strange.
Fission occurred—but no energy was released.
Fission energy comes from mass defect—mass converted into energy.
But what if the atom had no mass defect to begin with?
The unknown civilization had fundamentally altered the atomic system. On a macroscopic level, the atoms still looked normal—but internally, they held twice the usual number of fermions and bosons.
This disrupted the strong force.
The strong force binds both quarks and atomic nuclei. But now, what used to be tightly bound had become weakly coupled—except deep inside, where it remained tightly locked.
As a result, these atoms underwent fission easily, but the process released no energy—because barely any mass was lost.
"What I'm going to use is fission," Moffat said.
The moment he explained, both Kesiba and Lorc understood.
He was going to use fission to transform the very fabric of Star City 5 into a high-temperature superconducting material.
Under such conditions, fermions would form Cooper pairs—but due to high temperature, their phase correlation would remain disrupted, so superconductivity wouldn't actually occur.
But superconductivity wasn't the goal.
All they needed was for fermions to form Cooper pairs.
Once that happened, and these Cooper pairs superimposed with bosons, the enemy's interference with fermionic ordering would kick in.
That would push all matter in Star City 5 into an ordered state, drastically lowering its effective temperature.
"But that still doesn't bring us anywhere near absolute zero."
Kesiba and Lorc did the math.
The current average temperature in Star City 5 was −138°C.
Even with fission-based cooling, they could maybe reach −241°C.
Still far from the required 0 Kelvin.
"Star City's heat mainly comes from its size and the external radiation it absorbs."
"But you're forgetting—Star City is modular."
Moffat had already worked it all out.
All that remained was to execute.
And for that, there was one thing they still desperately needed:
Authorization.
Without proper authorization, any modification to Star City was strictly prohibited and classified as rebellion by the main server.
They would be apprehended immediately—rendering any effort to "save" Star City meaningless.
Moffat's connections ran deeper than either Kesiba's or Lorc's. He volunteered to resolve the authorization issue.
That left Kesiba and Lorc to handle everything else.
Just then, Dawn sent a message: he wanted to meet.
In theory, meeting face-to-face wasn't necessary, but due to the main server's interference and censorship, key information was often lost or distorted. Hence, the need for a direct encounter.
Both had expected a serious and extended conversation.
But seeing Dawn again, they noticed his demeanor toward Kesiba and Lorc had changed in a subtle yet unmistakable way.
"Take these documents and go."
"It's better if you leave Star City."
"Star City 5 is beyond saving."
He spoke bluntly and walked straight between them.
"I'm leaving too."
"Goodbye."
People like Dawn always had multiple exit routes prepared. He was already ready to disappear.
The only reason he even handed over the documents was because of his past bond with Kesiba.
After Dawn left, Kesiba opened the file.
"4722 years ago, the first known case of amnesia appeared. At that time, several scholars studied it, but came up with nothing."
"It made brief headlines in a small region, then vanished from public consciousness."
"The second case appeared 4551 years ago. The third, 4102 years ago."
The timeline went on.
Around 3523 years ago, the amnesia cases began increasing dramatically—jumping from one case every 300 years to four cases a year.
Given Star City 5's population—measured in quadrillions—this didn't raise alarms.
But this was an unprecedented affliction. And no one seemed interested in finding a cure.
The real outbreak began 2837 years ago.
"Wait—the timeline matches up!"
Lorc noticed this was when HHHI Corporation first entered Star City 5.
In that same year, amnesia cases spiked to 490 annually.
The number kept rising.
By 2731 years ago, it had climbed to 3100 cases per year.
For the next 200 years, it plateaued—hovering between 3000 to 4000 cases annually.
Then came another surge.
This new spike coincided with mass amnesia among HHHI Corporation employees.
Tens of thousands of them suffered memory loss.
The next year, the number of new cases jumped to 510,000.
In the fifth year, it reached 800,000.
By the thirteenth year: 1.09 million.
Twenty-ninth year: 2.7 million.
That was more than two millennia ago.
"So many victims… and no one looked into it?" Lorc was stunned.
Kesiba replied, "Because it was the mortal realm. No one cared enough to investigate."
"That's why those entities operate there so freely."
When broken down:
1384 years ago, 13.22 million people suffered from amnesia in a single year—13.17 million of them in the mortal realm. Only 50,000 were in the underworld.
If the main server had access to this, it would've identified the anomaly instantly.
But the main server was being misled.
Relying on individuals to track such trends was hopeless—especially in a mega-city like Star City, home to over a quadrillion people.
It was like Earth: in a population of 8 billion, if 80 people developed a strange condition, and 79 of them were in cities where their cases were dismissed, and the one rural case had no online record… how could anyone ever find the pattern?
Without a known target, and with no awareness that such a group even existed—how could anyone find them?
"Currently, the annual number of amnesia cases is 480 million."
"The total accumulated number has reached 109.8 billion."
And yet, that figure isn't even that large compared to Star City's scale.
But the cause?
The result of deaths orchestrated by an unknown alien civilization.
Some victims, like Lorc, survived. But most lost their memories entirely—especially those in the mortal realm.
Dawn had already traced a few such survivors.
This explained one of Lorc's prior confusions: if the enemy's weapon wasn't precise, there had to be survivors.
Those survivors should have stirred massive public outcry.
But strangely, nothing happened.
No viral spread online. No real-world protests or movements. Not even a whisper.
It was like nothing had ever happened.
The survivors? Their memories were wiped. They'd been marked.
Lorc's decision to kill himself first might've been the only correct move—back then.
If over 100 billion were survivors, then how many had actually died?
The number could be in the trillions.
And how many of those deceased had been hijacked, like Kesiba?
Dawn's departure was triggered by intel from Moffat—he'd learned of Kesiba's possession. Combining that with his own data, Dawn saw no hope left.
If even one-thousandth of Star City's population had been compromised, yet no one realized it…
Could Star City truly still be saved?
Kesiba flipped to the final page of the report.
"Last year, 21.1 billion people developed amnesia. If we assume a 10:1 control ratio… that's 211 billion people under enemy control."
"Maybe something we did prompted the enemy to escalate."
Invasion or assault? Moffat believed this was a strike—meaning no alien creatures were physically invading.
But that didn't mean it was devoid of intelligence.
The enemy's assault had a central system—coordinated, systematic, and precise.
"We must finish the Star City particle transformation ASAP. Time's running out."
No one knew what threshold would push the enemy to act outright.
Even with this many cases, they still couldn't tell what phase the attack had reached.
In truth, Lorc still had no idea what form the weapon even took.
How exactly would the enemy destroy Star City 5?
While Lorc pondered that, Kesiba kept flipping through the pages—then suddenly exploded.
"That damn Dawn! I told him to research historical cases of amnesia, and he didn't!"
Lorc wanted to say:
It wasn't that Dawn didn't want to—it was that it was impossible.
But he didn't voice that.
Kesiba had hit a wall.
He needed hope. He needed to believe in something, or he'd completely unravel. In this state, he wasn't even as sharp as a member of the Swarm.
"After all, the events are ancient. Digging up the data isn't easy."
"Honestly, there's no need to be so frantic. If we succeed, your name will be everywhere. At that point, just say the word—and whoever you're looking for will come to you."
If that person worshipped power, wealth, or status—then this was Kesiba's only real shot. At least, that's what Lorc thought.
Kesiba's figure shimmered slightly.
"That's a good idea!"
"Then we can't afford to waste time. We must uncover what those entities are truly after."