Ultimately, the spies relied on the warship's standard weapons, enhanced by their microscopic techniques.
By design, individual warship weapons were never meant to be overwhelming; military sidearms existed for battlefield cleanup, not direct assault.
Compared to Damoro, the spies were far weaker in personal firepower, and their microscopic techniques had severe limitations. In the end, they were utterly crushed.
Damoro dispatched them swiftly and moved on, not even sparing a glance at the nearby soldiers.
His shadow flickered from one part of the warship to another.
Even though he was killing spies quickly, it barely made a dent in the vast vessel.
The warship carried hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and among them lurked at least tens of thousands of spies.
Inside, soldiers were dying in droves. Explosions rocked different sections one after another.
But Damoro remained calm.
This was exactly what he wanted.
Many spies were still lying low, suspicious, wondering if this chaos was a trap. They were waiting for the warship's complete internal collapse.
Damoro was waiting too—waiting for them to move, knowing their actions would cause even more soldier deaths.
But what did that matter to him?
He hadn't come to save anyone. In his eyes, there was only one priority: carrying out his mission.
Completing one main mission and two side missions perfectly would be enough.
In a cabin, Damoro cut down another spy who had just killed a soldier.
He floated silently, staring at the unconscious corpse sprawled on the floor like scattered carbon ash.
"Killing spies is easy. The real challenge is uncovering their attack methods."
"Before, I was only guessing. I had no choice but to probe the microscopic world—but so far, I've only uncovered one type."
"I must go deeper."
That was Damoro's headache.
Combat was his domain; investigation was not.
Especially investigations tied to the microscopic world, where enemies came from an alien civilization—one that would never surrender.
"There's still some time before all the spies are deployed—at most a week."
"I don't know if that will be enough..."
Damoro hovered in the room.
In front of him, a black cube-shaped container opened, revealing a circular drill-like device inside.
It was hollow, almost resembling a musical instrument. But on closer inspection, its surface was etched with extraordinarily intricate patterns—denser even than advanced microchips.
It was clearly no instrument, but a piece of hyper-precise equipment.
Damoro had acquired it in Hyperdimensional Space, at great cost, from another "Divine" being.
Passing through its wide end and exiting the narrow one allowed one's body to shrink.
Its application range was narrow—almost trivial in scope. The only reason it was so valuable was because it could be used practically at all.
Rumor had it the device incorporated Flyer Civilization technology.
For tens of thousands of years, the Federation and the Flyer Civilization had exchanged knowledge, and in the last few millennia, their cooperation had deepened. Through this, the Federation had obtained fragments of advanced microscopic-world technology.
These technologies were not widely spread across human civilization—they were instead trialed within the Mortality Selection.
But for the mechanical beings of the Eternal Cycle star nation, small size was never a disadvantage; it did not count as a flaw.
With this device, Damoro could compress his body by a factor of ten thousand.
His intention was clear: he wanted to step into the microscopic world himself.
The risk was enormous.
The microscopic domain was undoubtedly the enemy civilization's home ground. To enter without proper safeguards would be no different than suicide.
Damoro could only hope the enemy's deployments within the microscopic realm were structured primarily to influence the macroscopic world.
He no longer hesitated. Shedding all weapons but his strong force armor, he allowed his body to be swallowed into the device.
On the other side, Damoro emerged—his entire form now only a few centimeters across.
Everything around him seemed impossibly vast, yet when he turned his gaze to the microscopic realm, it remained microscopic still.
The gulf between centimeter-scale existence and the true microscopic domain was infinite.
To reach the super-microscopic scale, he would need to shrink another ten trillion times.
That was a threshold beyond his reach. At least, not while his body remained whole.
He drifted toward where he had set his weapons aside and commanded one to aim directly at him.
Ordinarily, such an act meant certain death—the weapon's blast could disintegrate a body outright.
But Damoro was different. His strong force armor could stabilize and shield each minute unit of his body, preventing it from shattering.
He dialed the weapon's power down to its lowest possible setting.
A beam lanced out, striking him.
At once, he felt his body unraveling.
Even in a mist-like state, no matter how far he spread, he had never been able to divide himself into multiple parts.
This time, he was forcing a division.
Fragmented, he could push into an even deeper microscopic tier.
He willed his consciousness to bind itself to one of the separated particle-units.
Ordinarily, the molecular units of his body averaged about 0.2 nanometers in diameter.
But after the ten-thousandfold shrinking, each unit had compressed to a diameter of roughly 2 picometers.
This method of compression, pioneered by the Flyer Civilization, did not merely squeeze particles closer together or increase density. It was an entirely different form of microscopic reduction.
Now, each molecular unit of his being was already far smaller than the atomic scale.
At this point, ordinary elementary particles were only about two thousand times smaller than he was.
Damoro realized he had entered a world of endlessly shifting spheres.
He was no longer suspended in the room's center but had fallen to the floor. The warship's chambers were maintained at near-vacuum, so matter density here should have been extremely low.
Yet at his new scale, he could perceive micro-particles themselves: electrons, nuclei, neutrons...
But quarks still lay a thousand times smaller, making them a million times beneath his current threshold.
He judged the enemy's coiled world to be hundreds of millions of times smaller still.
It was the equivalent of a human, 1.8 meters tall, trying to perceive something just 1.8 nanometers across.
The key difference: Damoro had no microscope, no precision instruments to bridge that scale.
This was his absolute limit.
Fortunately, he had planned for this. He didn't need to see the super-microscopic world directly. It was enough to infer its workings by analyzing the disturbances it caused in the physical laws of the microscopic realm.
But that, too, was a monumental challenge.
By coincidence, the basic structural units of his body possessed exactly this ability.
At this moment, Damoro's consciousness anchored itself to a sensor-unit of his body—one specialized in capturing fluctuations within the microscopic world.
Now, shrunk ten-thousandfold, its precision had sharpened even further.
"Let me see what kind of arrangements you've hidden here."
Damoro had prepared for this.
Before shrinking himself, he had already activated a string manipulation device.
This device distorted the strings within the chamber.
The enemy's coiled space—or any other array anchored in the super-microscopic world—had not yet reached down to the string level, but the induced string chaos would ripple outward to affect them nonetheless.
The impact should have been minimal.
Strings were simply too small.
The energy from their oscillations was vanishingly weak.
If the enemy's constructs in the super-microscopic world were not robust enough to withstand this faint interference, then all of their methods would collapse instantly. And in that case, such an enemy would never have been so terrifying.
But the truth was undeniable: the enemy was terrifying.
Even now, neither Damoro nor the Eternal Cycle star nation had developed any reliable countermeasures against weapons operating in the super-microscopic realm.
As Damoro studied the captured disturbances within the microscopic field, he finally began to detect anomalies.
String turbulence manifested as particular particle phenomena.
Ordinarily, such phenomena should have been universal—especially inside a consistent atomic system—appearing with a high degree of regularity.
But his readings revealed something else entirely: massive discontinuities.
Across entire regions of space, particle fields displayed wave-like undulations.
Some particles' energy levels rose, while others dropped.
The oscillation was astonishingly stable.
Organized into rows and clusters.
High nodes consistently paired with low nodes, producing an endless alternating rhythm of high–low–high–low. No consecutive highs. No consecutive lows.
What did each peak represent?
What did each trough mean?
If every high point corresponded to an enemy installation, then there were simply far too many.
The pixel density was far beyond even Damoro's worst expectations.
If this pattern extended across the entire warship, the precision involved must have been unimaginable.
But then—why did the enemy's strikes exhibit such glaring irregularities?
If these nodes all detonated at once, the warship would be obliterated in an instant. Why hadn't they done it?
Damoro felt that if he could decode this pattern, every secret of the enemy would unravel before him.
He began experimenting.
He nudged an electron, forcing it to shift to a different energy level. The moment he released it, the electron snapped back to its original state.
Next, he tried to dislodge an electron entirely, removing it from its atomic system.
Instead of stabilizing elsewhere, the particle went scattering wildly in all directions. On the surface this resembled a natural effect, but it was anything but normal. Its dispersion was chaotic—imbalanced.
And within that imbalance, it drifted far away.
Its absence destabilized the atom it left behind, and that atom began to merge with another, sharing the displaced electron.
Still, this was technically a "normal" microscopic phenomenon. But beneath it lurked a strange, undeniable peculiarity.
For here, the atom's energy levels and energy shells shifted in tandem, rewriting the electron's orbit entirely.
In Damoro's observation and assessment, the electron's orbital path was highly unstable. It moved in an unnatural state—not circling its own nucleus, but orbiting at the intersection of two atoms' electron shells.
Its motion was distorted, yet still followed a kind of hidden order.
Theoretically, electrons shifting between energy shells is a normal quantum event. But in this wave-like world, every elementary particle was locked into a fixed fluctuation of energy levels. Not a single particle showed the typical jumping behavior.
They were constantly manifesting collapse states. These collapse states were influenced partly by a certain string device, but mostly by something else.
"This device must be producing an invisible force that interferes with electrons and other elementary particles."
If it could influence such particles, then it could also be linked to the fundamental forces themselves.
But in reality, he found himself unable to alter these particles at all.
Which meant there had to be a stronger force anchoring those devices.
Without such a force, at the microscopic level these things would remain unsolvable.
Impossible to observe.
Impossible to interpret.
"Could it be that everything I'm seeing right now isn't the actual weapon?"
Damoro could not make sense of the contradictions within this unknown civilization's methods.
The only plausible answer was that the entire microscopic domain functioned as a sensor—it merely detected positions, rather than delivering the attack itself. Something else was responsible for striking.
With this in mind, Damoro fused with the equipment, directing it to leave the room.
The cube-shaped modules locked together into a larger cube.
He had the equipment locate a nearby person, then directly entered that person's body.
That individual would inevitably be killed by the enemy. Damoro needed to "see" from within the microscopic domain at the exact instant of death.
It was an extremely dangerous gamble, one that could very well result in his own death.
But he had reached a dead end. Without taking the risk, he would never uncover the deeper truth.
Time was bleeding away.
He calculated that within a week, the infiltrators would begin a mass slaughter. Though he could let the killing unfold slowly, if the entire warship's crew was exterminated and the vessel itself destroyed, his mission would collapse in total failure.
And failure meant erasure. Erasure could not be avoided.
He still held many free passes, but their only purpose was to suspend the mandatory cycle of entering new worlds.
Hyperdimensional Space dictated a schedule: enter a designated world, complete a mission, then return—its timing scaled by rank.
At the very beginning, he had to enter a world once every 2 days. As his rank rose, the intervals extended to 3 days, then 4, and so on.
By the time one reached the Divine rank, the requirement was just once per month. A free pass could skip that month, recalibrating the cycle—it was nothing more than a reprieve.
As far as Damoro knew, within Hyperdimensional Space, even death at another's hand was reversible. Only mission failure, and the resulting erasure, remained utterly beyond salvation.
Damoro could have chosen to finish the main mission immediately and leave.
However—
The lure of higher mission-rank rewards was simply too great. He was willing to gamble.
"What is this…?"
Through his equipment's sensors, Damoro spotted a figure.
He transmitted directly:
[This is a weapon—far stronger than anything mass-produced. I am Damoro. The entire warship is under spy assault. Running is useless. We fight.]
Everyone already knew about Damoro's earlier outburst.
The figure froze at the message. Before he could react, several more people crawled in through another pipeline.
He hurriedly donned Damoro's equipment.
Those newcomers locked eyes on him warily. After a tense standoff, they finally confirmed he was on their side.
But they had no time to relax. Another squad entered.
And this squad, upon seeing them, struck without hesitation. Death fell instantly.
One spy's body twisted grotesquely, morphing into twin cannons, purple light flickering within the muzzles.
No one else could perceive the glow. The photons were compressed too tightly, trapped inside the barrels before discharge.
It was like a flashlight—the beam only visible once released.
The enemy had come fully prepared for slaughter. By now, it was too late to run.
The soldier wearing Damoro's gear suddenly felt the cubes activate, binding with him.
Like a legendary artifact recognizing its master, the weapon shielded his body.
The spies fired.
High-energy photons slammed into him, detonating in a flare of purple brilliance.
Yet he lived.
An energy field had unfolded, intercepting the attack.
"I'm… alive?"
He had been certain death was inevitable. But now, as he saw the cubes orbiting him, joy surged.
With this kind of weapon, why should he fear?
He hastily scanned the functions, then ordered a cube to strike.
As top-tier weapons, these cubes possessed their own intelligence. They could auto-defend when the user failed to react, and even launch counterstrikes on their own.
This was true bleeding-edge tech.
But when he tried to command an attack—nothing happened.
Puzzled, he looked toward the spies—only to find two of them already reduced to dust.
High-tech warfare was brutal in its simplicity. Most strike methods were of the indefensible kind, lacking flashy light shows or theatrics. It was like flipping a switch—then watching the target simply vanish.
The soldier exhaled in relief.
He hadn't expected the weapon to be this overwhelming.
Confidence flared. He ordered Damoro's weapon to lock onto the spies and unleash a furious barrage.
The spies immediately sensed the danger. Their bodies quivered, releasing a strange diffusion—something like a field that hurled the soldier back several meters.
His protective energy veil warped violently, then shattered in an instant.
"What is that?!" His confidence evaporated, leaving him like a terrified mouse. He scanned frantically for the nearest pipeline, preparing to flee.
Damoro, observing at the microscopic scale, saw more clearly.
This was no mere force field.
It was a fine layer of particles brushing against the soldier's body, physically pushing him back.
Worse, after shredding his energy veil, those particles slipped inside, invading his body at the subatomic level.
They began manipulating his elementary particles—aligning them for a moment, then throwing them back into chaos.
"I thought their attacks would devastate us,"
Damoro understood now.
The enemy's methods weren't singular at all. Their arsenal of attacks varied—but most of those methods were simply ineffective against him.
The true pinnacle of technology within the Eternal Cycle star nation wasn't their machines. It was their lifeforms themselves.
Their very bodies were capable of performing fission and fusion. And deeper still, at the microscopic scale, their basic structural units displayed astonishing precision.
For example—right now, Damoro could anchor his consciousness onto a single elementary particle unit. Not because of his own ability, but because such capabilities were built directly into the particles themselves.
Yet no matter how sophisticated microscopic techniques were, they could never rival macroscopic power.
The difference wasn't one of quality—it was sheer scale.
Microscopic energy, no matter how dense, was meaningless in small numbers. Hundreds, thousands—even millions or tens of millions—were still a drop in the cosmic ocean. Just as with an enemy like the Eternal Cycle star nation: if raw might were enough, would they ever bother with centuries-long infiltration?
One super-range weapon could annihilate a Star City in a single strike. Why waste centuries eroding it in secret?
In the macroscopic world, even a fingernail contained hundreds of trillions, even quadrillions of particles. If each particle inflicted only 0.000001 damage, together they could unleash catastrophic force.
The unknown civilization's methods were subtle, devious—cunning, but not overwhelming.
In theory, their attack ceiling topped out at the level of an individual organism. Scaling that up to a warship, or worse, a Star City, would require immense time to prepare.
"Useless," Damoro thought coldly. "This might help me resist their tricks, but I still can't grasp the true nature of their attacks."
Yet even this half-understanding offered him another advantage: it showed him the path to killing them more efficiently.
But that wasn't his immediate goal.
He needed to strike again.
The same type of strike as before.
Through his weapon's link, he sensed the soldier he had chosen was panicking—desperate to escape.
Fool.
This was a warship. Where could he possibly run?
Damoro ordered the cubes to fire on the pipelines, sealing them off in an instant.
The soldier's eyes widened in horror.
"Don't shoot! Don't—!"
"You've cut off my escape route!" he bellowed in rage.
But the spies across from him showed no mercy. Their next offensive rolled out immediately.
This time, they unleashed a gravity field, slamming the soldier's body to the deck. Then their warped bodies pressed against the metal surface, emitting a deep vibrating hum.
That sound reverberated through the ground, resonating into the soldier's flesh.
And for the first time—Damoro heard the voice of the spies.
The sound was nothing more than a brief crackle of static. So fleeting that a human ear might never even register it.
Damoro doubted that any flesh-and-blood creature could perceive it at all. The volume wasn't low, but the duration—barely a one-hundred-thousandth of a second—made it imperceptible.
And yet, within his current field of perception, the sound blazed with unbearable clarity.
The once-chaotic quantum world suddenly stirred to life, jolted awake by the resonance.
Damoro's vision was filled with atoms. He saw a few swelling like balloons, while the majority shrank away into nothingness. Even his own host body began to diminish.
His consciousness, stripped of its anchor, had no choice but to retreat fully into the weapon.
Still, he managed to glean fragments of information.
The expanding atomic systems were unstable. Fragmented, incomplete—threatening to collapse at any instant.
From the perspective of the quantum field, this was the only explanation that made sense.
The soldier's body hadn't crumbled yet, only because those erratic particles still knit together the structure of his form.
Collapse would come only once the atomic systems themselves fell apart.
"That's it?"
This was not the answer Damoro sought.
If this was what he observed, then the sound wasn't simply a targeting mechanism—it was the attack itself.
Perhaps the spy had shifted to a different method this time?
His confusion lasted only a moment. A massive atom in his view couldn't withstand the distortion.
It didn't explode as one might expect. Instead, it rapidly contracted, bleeding off the energy that had once driven its expansion.
Then, surrounding particles and atoms flickered back into place—reconstituting the soldier's structure. Even the vanished fundamental units of his host rematerialized, almost unchanged.
"What…?"
"It shouldn't be like this."
Perplexity tightened around Damoro like a vise.
Could the quantum field operate like a one-to-one mapping—a turnip snug in its hole, a fixed correspondence?
Or had the attack itself been absorbed?
In the macroscopic world, the soldier staggered, stunned for half a second by the sound. Then he blinked in disbelief—he was unharmed.
"So this is all the spies amount to?"
He convinced himself the surrounding equipment had absorbed the enemy's strike.
But then he glanced back at the spies. To his shock, they weren't even looking at him. They were scanning the pipelines, as though preparing to withdraw.
They were leaving.
Why?
Was he… invisible?
The thought barely formed before his mind clouded. His consciousness flickered, unstable—like a bad connection. His thoughts sputtered, then distorted, before cutting out entirely into black silence.
His body entered collapse at the same time.
Microscopic world.
Damoro had already retreated to his most basic unit, forced to witness everything from that vantage.
For two seconds, the atoms that had reassembled held together. Then, abruptly, they spun apart, scattering chaotically.
No longer bound, they repelled one another, fragmenting into dissolution.
It happened too quickly. Damoro had no time to analyze further—he himself was being shaken by some alien force.
"What is happening…?"
"Energy gathers, then disperses again. That explains why every corpse can actually be reused repeatedly—never fully disintegrating into free elementary particles drifting in the air."
"But then… how did he die? And why did his consciousness vanish?"
Damoro was certain he hadn't overlooked anything.
He had observed nearly the entire process.
If this was the complete chain of events, then there had to be some kind of built-in inevitability hidden within it.
Using the computational capacity of his weapon systems, he began his analysis. When bound to a single fundamental unit, his intellect could barely handle even multiplication.
"The initial surge of energy was clearly a localized process."
Yet the more he thought, the more it felt like this attack was distinct from the others. Still, he couldn't dismiss the possibility they belonged to the same class. For now, he would proceed as if they were.
"Localized energy concentration… essentially, mass increasing at a specific point."
"Or maybe it's not localization, but a switch. When the mass at one node reaches a certain threshold, a switch flips, triggering the attack."
"But then why does the energy return afterward?"
"That's abnormal. The quantum field provides no explanation for such behavior. Unless… the space we're in isn't ordinary at all."
His thoughts sharpened. The warship's internal space had been altered.
Damoro murmured to himself—then froze, realization dawning.
"We've been deceived. The enemy didn't just strike—they fabricated an entire false quantum world. No… not false. A layered quantum field."
"Our grasp of the microscopic world is too primitive. We simply couldn't detect it. Just as a civilization ignorant of dark energy can't perceive dark energy strikes at all."
"False isn't the right term. It's more like… an overlay. Another layer stacked atop the genuine quantum field. We think we're walking on solid ground—but in truth, the ground lies a meter below, and we're merely treading on a patterned carpet full of hidden mechanisms."
He paused.
"But if it's only a mechanism, the reaction wouldn't be this slow. Is it a matter of distance? Or is the system itself sluggish?"
Unlike conventional logic, in high-tech civilizations, analyzing an alien technology relied entirely on conjecture.
With no tangible or conceptual clues, the mind had nothing to grasp. Like a human trying to intuit four-dimensional or five-dimensional space—it was impossible.
A true dilemma.
And yet, Damoro felt he was closing in.
"Distance could provide isolation. I'll create a near-vacuum environment, place a recorder inside, and simulate a parallel attack. Let's see if the strike penetrates."
He set to work at once.
Increasing particle size was simple enough. Humanity had yet to master the quantum field in full detail, but mastery wasn't always required for usage—just as one could manipulate strings without comprehending their deepest nature.
Damoro applied his methods: increasing the oscillation frequency of elementary particles to raise their energy.
Or, more directly—by adding fresh elementary particles into an atom.
In short, the goal was simply to push the system into a state where it could launch an attack.
Given that the mechanism seemed crude rather than sophisticated, the odds of triggering it were high.
As Damoro began, a single atom rapidly expanded to the desired size.
He stared at it for ten full seconds.
The atom collapsed almost instantly afterward. Nothing else stirred in the microscopic world.
"Perhaps the quantity is too small?"
This time, Damoro magnified one million atoms at once.
Strictly speaking, there was a subtle difference: the spies had expanded matter from the level of elementary particles, and the atoms only swelled because their underlying particles had grown larger. But Damoro dismissed the distinction. If the enemy's expansion worked at the atomic level, then it must also be effective when applied at the atomic level.
Again he waited.
After one long minute, the result remained the same—nothing.
"Could my assumption be wrong?"
He reconsidered carefully, retracing each step. At last, he found a blind spot.
He compared the distribution of the expanding atoms with the ripples created earlier by his disordered strings. To his surprise, the two patterns overlapped almost perfectly.
"Each ripple point… is that a switch location?"
Driven by this suspicion, Damoro repeated the experiment. This time, he used the disordered strings to map the surrounding distribution, then once more magnified one million atoms.
Everything changed.
The magnified atoms were far more stable than before. They held together for seventy-two nanoseconds. Though they eventually collapsed, after several seconds the same strange force resurfaced, disturbing the surrounding particles.
More striking still: the disturbance did not occur within the space occupied by those one million atoms. Instead, it spread across the volumetric range equivalent to the body of a normal Eternal Cycle lifeform.
The realization struck him like lightning.
"So that's how it works!"
"It can manifest even in a relative vacuum—so it isn't distance. These attacks are generated locally, on the spot."
"This system itself is slow. But its slowness cannot be mechanical. It must be biological!"
A bold conjecture surged in Damoro's mind.
Could there exist an entire microscopic world on the reverse side of this false quantum field?
Perhaps the so-called false quantum field wasn't false at all, but an entire parallel layer of reality bound to three-dimensional space—an attached world.
And this world connected not through coiled microscopic dimensions, but through something subtler: any disturbance within the microscopic world could transmit information into that other layer.
Think of the false quantum field as a sealed box filled with water. Inside the box is a movable mechanism. When mechanism A is pushed down, mechanism B on the opposite side will rise because of the pressure.
Point A lies on the front; point B lies on the back.
The false quantum field—and the so-called normal quantum field as well—function in the same way.
If it is a wave, then there can never be only crests; there must also be troughs. The higher the crest, the deeper the trough.
This same principle applies to information transmission between two worlds.
Sound induces changes in the particle state of the microscopic world. But particles are themselves waves, which means the waves shift. When that happens, in another world, the alteration is detected. Once detected, the weapons already prepared in that other world will immediately discharge back into the three-dimensional world.
Because the change itself is instantaneous, while the time needed to prepare a weapon far exceeds that, the other world must then decide afterward whether the targeted individual has moved—and if so, to what location.
The separation between the two worlds makes it difficult for them to pinpoint exactly, leading to frequent errors.
Damoro did not grasp the specific mechanism, but he felt certain that his conjecture was highly probable.
As for why he had described it as biological slowness—
It was because, as Damoro knew, in advanced civilizations such as human civilization, or any similar level of society, only biological entities could exhibit such an exaggerated delay of several seconds.
Machines, at such short distances, were virtually incapable of producing such a high lag.
If the slowness truly were mechanical, then the enemy would not be a microscopic world civilization at all. After all, could a microscopic civilization survive if its machines regularly delayed by several seconds? The idea itself bordered on absurd.
And yet, this point was easy to test.
"Machines, when faced with the same problem repeatedly, will make the same judgment. But biological entities differ. They question why outcomes differ; they hesitate, they doubt."
"As long as I keep inducing the same stimulus at the same location, and the opponent fails to react the same way, then I can confirm this as a biological trait."
It was like being on a battlefield. You're in a trench, knowing a sniper has you in his sights. You can't simply poke your head up.
You must first determine whether that sniper is a person or a machine. So you tie your helmet to a branch and raise it above the trench. The first time, both a man and a machine will instantly fire at the helmet.
But when you pull it back down, then raise it again in the exact same spot, the difference emerges. A human sniper may begin to hesitate, suspecting a trick—while a machine will keep firing every single time, without fail.
This illustrates a simple, unintelligent program. If it were a strong AI, it might also grow suspicious and stop firing.
But if you shift the helmet just one meter and raise it again, a human would immediately know whether it was still a decoy. Even a strong AI, however, would still take the shot.
Damoro began his experiment.
The equipment that had previously generated the isolated pseudo-vacuum had been destroyed by the microscopic world's attack. Fortunately, his other weapon systems were stationed farther away. Had they been hit as well, he might have been killed outright.
This time, in order to avoid provoking the "life" in the microscopic world into a violent reaction, Damoro kept only the device that produced expanding microscopic atoms nearby, while moving the rest of his gear far away.
It was already his second attempt.
Once again, it triggered a fresh round of attacks—this time with a slightly larger blast radius than before.
Damoro waited half a minute before conducting the third attempt.
This time it still triggered an attack, though the range was slightly smaller than before.
That was an inconsistency.
On the fourth attempt, Damoro waited two full minutes, but no attack came.
On the fifth attempt, he shifted only a body's length to the side and shortened the interval from the previous test.
This time, the attack did arrive, but the affected area was clearly larger, roughly enough to engulf two people.
Damoro immediately moved again and initiated the sixth attempt.
This time he waited five minutes. When no response came, he prepared for the seventh attempt.
But before he could begin, the attack triggered by the sixth attempt finally struck, engulfing the entire space he occupied. The strike landed so suddenly that he didn't even have time to react.
The impact on his consciousness was devastating. Damoro's awareness was almost instantly annihilated.
Meanwhile, at the location of Damoro's weapon systems, he sensed the collapse of the chamber there.
"Fortunately, I fragmented my consciousness, leaving the bulk of it within the weapon systems. Otherwise, I would have been dead for sure."
"That was far too close!"
"Judging by the experimental results, my hypothesis is correct."
"Sound alters the microscopic world, thereby transmitting information to another dimension."
As soon as he finished the thought, the system prompt appeared:
[Congratulations on perfectly completing the sub-mission (Understanding the Unknown Civilization's Attack Methods). Rewards are being issued.]
[Congratulations on acquiring an A-rank bloodline *1, a free pass *1, 100 years of safety period.]
A short, concise notification.
Damoro's expression lit with joy.
He hadn't expected to complete the mission so quickly. He thought it would require more exploration—maybe even locating and destroying the other world.
But when he thought about it more carefully, that was nearly impossible.
This was reality. Without monumental technological breakthroughs, eliminating an enemy in the microscopic world might take countless years. That demand was far too harsh for a small Hyperdimensional Space warrior like him.
Yet at that very moment—another prompt appeared:
[Due to your completion of the sub-mission (Understanding the Unknown Civilization's Attack Methods), the next stage of the additional mission (Eliminate the Enemy in the Other World) has been activated.]
[Mission Reward: Federation Pass]
[Mission Failure: No Penalty]
"Pfft! So that mission really does exist."
Damoro felt that the higher-ups were seriously overestimating him.
Could he really accomplish this?
And what exactly was a Federation Pass?
[Federation Pass: Possessing a Federation Pass grants unimpeded passage between all Federation star systems.]
(Note: If you do not abide by Federation law, the pass will be invalidated.)
If Damoro had physical eyes, they would have bulged in shock.
The description was brief, yet that single line was enough.
Not all Federation star systems allowed unrestricted travel. The cost of interstellar transit wasn't just the ship and fuel; there were also checkpoints, and both entry and departure required hefty fees.
Transporting goods across star systems usually incurred heavy taxation.
The Federation government couldn't spend without earning—taxes were the backbone of its revenue.
A Federation Pass, granting complete free travel, was an artifact that would instantly elevate him into the ranks of the elite once he returned to real life.
However...
Would it really be so easy to obtain?
Just then, a new message from the server arrived:
[Soldier Damoro, your exclusive weapon depot has been activated!]
Damoro's entire being trembled.
This mission clearly wasn't one he was expected to complete alone—he now had weapon support.
"Hasn't the good day already arrived?!"