Wuca wanted to transmit information back.
But it had no idea how.
All it could do was sense its surroundings.
The space where the colossal beast resided was vast, filled with densely packed matter of every kind.
These materials were not only scattered around the creature but were also embedded within its very body.
Consciousness carries no mass, no charge, not even gravity—it can overlap with any matter, in any place.
Thus, the mere existence of the colossal beast should not have affected anything in the super-microscopic world.
So then—how did it influence both the micro-world and the macro-world?
After long observation, Wuca reached a realization.
What Damoro had theorized as the pseudo-quantum field was, in truth, likely a kind of consciousness conductor.
Much like a living body.
And the colossal beast, bound to it, used this conductor to influence everything.
In general, consciousness is vastly smaller than its conductor, allowing the conductor to fully contain it.
But this beast was different.
Its consciousness was too immense. In objective terms, the conductor appeared as nothing more than a speck—resulting in its consciousness spilling outward into the super-microscopic world.
Wuca observed the colossal beast carefully.
It found it… relatively simple.
"Simple," however, only described its outward structure.
For in truth, the beast possessed staggering intelligence.
"Then why doesn't it just strike the ship directly? Why go about it in such a roundabout way?"
Once again, Wuca found itself mired in confusion.
Through the beast's senses, it could perceive everything in the macro-world. Logically, then, the beast should also be able to sense it. If so, why had it not attacked?
Wuca longed to witness the creature's logic at work.
But time was slipping away.
It was slowly being assimilated—its intelligence spiking to its peak before plummeting rapidly downward.
"How can I transmit information?"
Wuca pondered, but no answer came. The problem lay utterly beyond its reach.
It was like demanding that it explain how the super-microscopic world communicated with both the micro-world and the macro-world.
Even an entire civilization's worth of scholars, armed with centuries or millennia of research, might not unravel that mystery.
And Wuca—alone, pressed for time, and utterly devoid of tools—was left with nothing.
"This is simply impossible."
"Did that guy never consider this when making his plan?"
Wuca was furious.
Earlier, it had burned with anger when Damoro threatened them, forcing them into the super-microscopic world.
But now, having entered it, Wuca knew survival was impossible. The only choice left was at least not to die in vain.
Even if Damoro and the others never learned its name, as long as the information was transmitted, the main server would record it. At the very least, that would give meaning to its death.
But now—even that was beyond reach.
"I see it!"
"You fool, why are you still hesitating here?"
"Since you've sent me to the micro-world, why don't you just ask me directly? Ask me! Find a way to ask me!"
Wuca felt its voice go hoarse.
But in truth, it could no longer produce sound, nor transmit any form of information.
Information…
Suddenly, Wuca realized something.
It didn't actually need to transmit information to Damoro.
It only needed to transmit information to the colossal beast.
But what could it send? What did it truly know? Should it fabricate something?
Would the colossal beast immediately see through a lie?
As Wuca wrestled with the thought—
The entire space suddenly convulsed with violent fluctuations.
It felt the colossal beast's pseudo-quantum field resonate with the quantum field, as though the pseudo-field were a flawless patch, clinging tightly and vibrating in perfect sync.
What was happening?
Through the beast's senses, Wuca saw Damoro crushing the particle used for positioning in the macro-world.
The positioning particle split apart in fission, releasing massive energy fluctuations and triggering a surge within the quantum field.
The quantum field ripple spread into the macro-world, destabilizing the super-microscopic world as well.
Yet consciousness entities, untouched by matter and fundamental forces, remained unaffected. The explosion meant nothing to the colossal beast in its realm.
But after the detonation, Wuca felt its link to the macro-world grow sharper—stronger by an order of magnitude.
The particles of the super-microscopic world around it—impossibly small, chaotic, unordered, seemingly frozen—suddenly converged upon its position.
Not exactly around it, but within the very space it occupied.
Matter condensed. Wuca even felt, absurdly, that it could sit down.
The sensation was not an illusion.
Because it "heard."
At that moment, Damoro was thinking.
Wuca rejoiced.
It could still live.
Frantically, Wuca expanded its consciousness entity, clinging to the matter that had suddenly converged.
It felt itself being pulled.
Those converging materials triggered quantum-field fluctuations. They were at the same trough of the wave, and at that moment an equally large amount of matter appeared at the corresponding crest.
These materials assembled like a corporation of fundamental particles. They clustered together.
It lasted only an instant.
"Pop!"
Like a burst bubble.
Wuca was stunned.
Its consciousness entity remained in the super-microscopic world, unchanged. The brief piling of matter collapsed; all particles scattered.
In that instant it lost contact with the macro-world. Darkness closed around it.
"How can this be?"
"Why am I still here?"
Confusion overwhelmed Wuca. The hope it had just flared was snuffed out in a heartbeat.
After a moment of disorientation it forced itself calm. It had endured for hundreds of thousands of years — it was no ordinary lifeform.
"From the start I wondered why I could sense the macro-world. If the colossal beast can sense the macro-world and even read and interpret life's thought-signals, then destroying things in the macro-world should be trivial for it."
"Here things are inverted. The enemies on the warship are hyper-cautious; their kills rely on sound-localization alone."
"Logically, am I an exception?"
"Before that explosion I could sense the macro-world. After the explosion I could not. So in fact, my link to the macro-world went through that object."
"Based on Damoro's thoughts, that thing is indeed special. It can bring me back."
"There might be an error… or perhaps it's my current state. That's why I can't return now."
"No. If Damoro acts quickly—if he tries again—I might still have a chance."
Yet Wuca held little confidence in its deductions.
Even certainty would be meaningless.
Because it was on the verge of complete collapse.
It needed to act, and soon.
As that thought consumed it, Wuca suddenly felt a sensation—an unbearable awareness of being watched.
It was fleeting, like the briefest glance.
Yet it was crystal clear.
This sensation didn't exist in the macro-world. There, one might never notice a gaze unless through special means.
But here, in the super-microscopic world, the stare was undeniable. Piercing.
Was this due to the strange laws of the super-microscopic world—or the nature of consciousness itself?
Either way, the source could only be the colossal beast.
Within this space, it was the sole other intelligence.
Wuca's tiny form trembled. It had no idea what to do.
Then, mercifully, the feeling of that gaze shifted away.
"Good… maybe there's hope—"
But just as the thought took shape, the gaze snapped back. This time it locked on with crushing force.
At once, the tentacles coiled around Wuca accelerated.
Hundreds of times faster than before.
In barely ten seconds, it was consumed completely. Nothing remained.
Macro-world.
Damoro stared at the glowing dot inside the device.
No reaction.
Only a sudden surge of energy. The fundamental particles that had appeared moments before disintegrated just as quickly, vanishing.
This was a common occurrence in the quantum world.
Fundamental particles could emerge at random, at any point in spacetime.
This is why physicists say there is no true vacuum in the universe.
It's not that every particle can be eliminated.
Rather, even if one were to empty a region of space completely—even sealing it perfectly—new particles could still appear there.
In ancient times, people could not understand this.
Unless particles had the ability to pass through walls, to teleport outright.
But reality was stranger still.
Particles behaved in ways even more uncanny than that.
They neither phased through walls nor teleported. A particle could vanish at point A and reappear at point B almost instantaneously—even if those two points were separated by tens of thousands, or even hundreds of millions, of light-years.
The later introduction of the quantum field concept finally offered an explanation.
Still, as Damoro observed, the sudden appearance of so many fundamental particles in such density, all at the same location, was exceedingly rare.
It must have been caused by the earlier detonation of the positioning particle.
But why could that trigger such a phenomenon?
Damoro had no grasp of the principle behind it.
"Nothing. So does this mean that person's consciousness never entered the super-microscopic world? Is that what this implies?"
"It seems I'll need to try again. Cutting only requires a few hundred times, and it takes barely a dozen seconds… but it's exhausting."
Just as Damoro prepared to resume, the main server spoke.
[Based on the analysis of samples gathered from the chain reaction triggered by the detonation of the particle enrichment gas, the consciousness entity has indeed entered the super-microscopic world.]
[However, its own mass is negligible, and it has not returned to the macro-world.]
[Analysis indicates it may have encountered an unforeseen situation.]
Since the main server had already run the analysis, Damoro no longer needed to speculate.
He considered that the warship's main server must have undergone specialized training—or perhaps, without training, it had simply been fed a dedicated data packet, its contents designed precisely for this kind of analysis.
"An unforeseen situation… that can only mean being attacked by something within the super-microscopic world."
"If there's no way to bring back a consciousness entity once it enters the super-microscopic world, then this entire plan is meaningless; no information will ever be gained."
After all, they themselves didn't understand the super-microscopic world.
Finding a way to retrieve a consciousness entity from there was already beyond Damoro's expectations.
Going a step further—the difficulty was immense.
Damoro thought they should pause for a while, giving him time to truly think about how to break through the super-microscopic realm.
The only good news was that his mode of thought had completely shifted.
The super-microscopic realm didn't contain a world, but a lifeform.
And to contend with a world was one thing; to contend with a lifeform was something entirely different.
"Perhaps another plan should be initiated."
Damoro wasn't eager to do that, because the current method still had value; at the very least, it could send consciousness into the super-microscopic world.
As he considered this, someone flew in from one side of the bowl-shaped pit.
The other soldiers had already gone back to their posts on the warship. If someone was coming over, it must be for a reason.
Damoro looked up.
"What's the matter?"
The man replied, "Nothing, boss. Just wanted to see if there's anything I can help with."
"It's suffocating inside the warship."
The warship was a sealed environment. The soldiers had nothing much to do, and after the earlier incidents, many still hadn't recovered, lingering in a state of high tension.
For an emotional lifeform, that state was pure torment.
"Help? I could use an extra pair of hands. Come to the front."
Damoro never refused help.
The more experimental material, the better.
The soldier's face lit up, and he quickly approached Damoro.
But suddenly, Damoro sensed something was off.
The soldier's speed surged, closing the gap in an instant. A ripple burst forth, carrying countless scattered particles that slammed into Damoro's body.
The equipment around him activated automatically, forming a shield. Particles hammered at it in a relentless storm.
Seconds later, the shield took unprecedented damage, then shattered, the backlash striking Damoro himself.
It was an attack from the super-microscopic world.
Damoro instantly detached his consciousness and slipped into a nearby discarded body.
Inside, he absorbed the body's memories—those of a certain officer.
At the same time, the surrounding matter carried information to him, allowing him to recover fragments of his original memory.
"Main server, you should have preserved my memories. Copy a portion back to me."
Damoro spoke to the main server.
[Understood.]
The main server directly handed Damoro a copy of his memories, and Damoro promptly wiped the memories from this new body.
"Almost got caught."
"To actually attack me — and in this way, right now."
"Coincidence?"
"Or influence from the super-microscopic world?"
The answer arrived to Damoro fast.
From every direction, hundreds of soldiers surged forward at once, charging his newly re-coagulated form.
They came with enormous force.
Damoro sensed quantum disturbances from the micro-world. Countless minute energy fragments struck his body, causing some atomic systems inside to collapse.
Fission reactions raced through him.
"It looks like my discovery of the super-microscopic world spooked them; these hidden ones are panicking."
"Maybe I should keep probing. The more I press, the more I learn."
Damoro deployed dozens of devices from his armory.
They activated and orbited his body.
In an instant, the charging soldiers were completely annihilated.
"Apparently our probing into the super-microscopic realm made them feel threatened."
Those covert spies could have struck at a better moment.
Instead they chose the worst possible time.
Their preparations were plainly inadequate. Though they nearly killed Damoro, their effort fell far short.
"I was a little too eager for information from the super-microscopic world."
"Actually, I don't need that. I only need to make that entity feel threatened repeatedly — it will naturally expose its weaknesses."
Damoro had been watching the micro-world all along, tracking quantum-field fluctuations.
He believed that if the entity could affect both micro and macro scales, then actions in either domain could influence that entity.
The enemy was not untouchable, nor was the gap insurmountable.
"Precision isn't necessary."
"What I need is persistent intimidation."
After settling on his next course of action, Damoro once again began placing the consciousnesses of officers into the super-microscopic world.
Although he had succeeded once before, that success had mostly been luck.
He tried again—ten times, all failed.
Twenty times—still nothing.
Thirty times.
By then, nearly all of those officers were dead. Damoro directly ordered the main server to select one hundred soldiers.
The quality of the soldiers' consciousness was slightly lower than that of the officers. His earlier reluctance to use them wasn't exaggeration—it was because their quality varied greatly.
Consciousness quality was, in truth, a measure of ability.
For example: once inside the super-microscopic world, could a person instantly react to what they must do? Even if they could react, did they inherently possess the conditions required to act?
Soldiers generally accumulated less knowledge than officers.
This wasn't an absolute rule—after all, lifespans stretched long—but officers faced diverse demands across many fields of knowledge, and after promotion, they even underwent specialized training.
In the Eternal Cycle Star Nation, the role of officer was a long-term service post, while most soldiers were only temporarily recruited. Their professionalism and specialization were leagues apart.
Damoro disliked using these soldiers, but time no longer allowed restraint.
Cruelly put, these soldiers weren't even qualified to die.
When Damoro saw them lined up before him, he didn't bother to speak. He simply destroyed their bodies outright, seizing their consciousnesses to send into the micro-world.
Continue.
Forty attempts.
Fifty attempts.
Relentless trials.
Finally, on the seventy-second attempt, the second one appeared.
Damoro waited briefly, then once again detonated the particle that served as a punctuation mark.
This particle was not some random item—it was a component of a complete equipment set.
Maintaining the stability of an object in the void was critical. Such objects could be influenced by countless external forces, and most materials could not endure; they required specialized equipment.
At first, Damoro thought this device merely provided positioning. But now he realized that wasn't the case—it was far more sophisticated.
After a short pause, he detonated the particle again.
This time, he observed carefully.
Wuca had believed that the fluctuations of the micro and super-microscopic worlds were like wave crests and troughs, and that the device's detonation, by generating new crests and troughs, would draw things back into the macro-world.
But in truth—it was not so.
The micro and super-microscopic worlds are not the two sides of a page; they are parallel.
Particles of the micro-world are matter of the super-microscopic world accumulated together—composed of even smaller particles.
They lie on the same wave crest.
Damoro saw this more clearly now.
When the device detonated, violent energy fluctuations rippled outward.
Energy shifted from stability to peak values. In the micro-world, the intensity of energy within a region multiplied dozens, even hundreds of times, meaning shorter wavelengths.
Wave compression reinforced the connection between the super-microscopic and micro-worlds—or perhaps Bourbon itself was the bridge between them.
But what formed was not a complete wave—only a fragment.
It was, in fact, simple: the shorter, finer waves of the super-microscopic world gathered into micro-world waves—into particles.
The reason they failed to retrieve them was because they could not produce waves shorter and smaller than normal, waves capable of entering the super-microscopic world.
This was the bottleneck.
Long ago, some scholars of the Federation had believed the problem was trivial.
After all, they had observed gravitons and even begun to harness strings.
But they later discovered these belonged to fundamentally different categories. A string is one-dimensional—that is spatial transcendence.
The super-microscopic world, however, is three-dimensional. One must become sufficiently small to enter it. Without shrinking enough, there is simply no way.
From this, Damoro inferred the existence of the pseudo-quantum field.
Wuca had believed that the pseudo-quantum field clung closely to the quantum field. Yet, had this information been presented to Damoro, he would have dismissed it outright.
This was a matter of common sense, not open to debate—
even if Damoro himself had never stepped into the super-microscopic world.
If anything, Damoro would assume Wuca had been deceived.
After confirming that the super-microscopic world did not contain a "world" but rather a lifeform, Damoro recalculated his earlier model.
In this new model, the pseudo-quantum field and the quantum field formed a triangular structure.
Originally, the quantum field had been like a sheet of paper. Viewed from the side, that paper was only a line.
At this point, above that sheet of paper—representing three-dimensional space—a smaller sheet tilted close to the original, forming a barely perceptible angle. From the side, it was less than one degree. Almost invisible, yet if extended outward, it would eventually reach the edge of the smaller sheet, where nothing obstructed it.
It was missing a side.
Logically, if one could find this missing side, one could slip into the opponent's narrow gap.
But the opponent was cunning—hiding, or rather concealing, this side through micro and super-microscopic means.
To enter through that side, one had to reach the super-microscopic world.
That was exactly what Damoro attempted. But lurking in that corner was no kitten—it was a colossal beast.
And every small insect he sent in was devoured.
"According to the current model, entering that corner means stepping directly into the opponent's home territory."
"The fact that the opponent feels threatened suggests that our interference with the micro and super-microscopic worlds has pried that corner open."
The one-degree angle had already widened to two.
If it kept expanding, that corner would eventually split open.
"But it won't be that easy."
Withdrawing his consciousness a second time, Damoro still sensed nothing.
In truth, he was acting on intuition alone. Consciousness was too small—he needed specialized instruments to capture it, to place it inside a container.
If the container changed under the presence of consciousness, it proved the consciousness had returned. If the container remained the same, it meant failure.
Bluntly put, it was like a blind man groping an elephant.
Detecting and controlling consciousness was no different—blind men touching the surface of something vast, never grasping the whole.
How had they come to this point?
Most in human civilization would never understand. But Damoro did.
The instrument for controlling consciousness was itself a lifeform—one that already possessed consciousness.
It could rightly be called an evil artifact.
Or, more forcibly: this was technology.
The second container showed no reaction. Damoro confirmed it.
"It seems to be a failure."
"Proceed with the next attempt. I still don't know if this will prove worthwhile in the end."
Perhaps it was all meaningless.
Like casting bait over and over, watching the float tremble. Each time he pulled the line, no fish. And he wondered why.
Perhaps there was no fish at all beneath the water—only something else. Perhaps a whale.
And if so, then a trembling five-meter rod with 0.2 line strength was nothing more than a toothpick.
Damoro judged himself to be in precisely that position—terrifying, yet he ignored it completely.
Because he had no choice but to challenge. Even if it was a whale, even if it was a monster, he had to reel it in.
[Soldier Damoro, approximately 2719 crew aboard the warship are exhibiting abnormal irritability. Their anxiety deviates from normal parameters. It is estimated with 74% probability that they are spies.]
The main server transmitted new data to Damoro.
2719—fewer than he had expected.
Clearly, the opponent had held back during its earlier moves. The only question was by how much.
"Just trash. I'll clean them up later."
He addressed the main server: "This group is nearly spent. Prepare the next batch for me."
It was a solid plan—though admittedly people-intensive.
Even as he spoke, another thought struck him.
"Actually, I want to know: do these spies possess consciousness? What happens if I send one into the super-microscopic world?"
Life in the super-microscopic world should carry intelligence.
It ought to know how to tell its own kind apart from outsiders.
By earlier conjecture, the consciousnesses sent into that realm were attacked and weakened, which explained why they could not be retrieved.
But what if he used a spy—one of theirs?
Would the result be different?
"Main server, can it be done?"
"You don't need to control it. Just summon the spy. I'll take it from there."
[Understood.]
The main server complied, summoning a spy directly before Damoro.
On the surface, it looked no different from any common soldier.
Damoro told it: "I want you to do something. What comes next will decide whether we can truly achieve victory."
The spy listened closely.
And at that instant—
Damoro struck, disrupting it, erasing everything at once, and inserting it into a basic unit using the same technique as before.
He had spoken only to distract it. Otherwise, any movement on his part would have triggered the spy's defensive reflex.
The tactic worked.
Damoro judged this success came from the spies' attachment to their bodies. With physical form came a trace of behavioral logic.
These spies must have mimicked humans for so long that they had absorbed a measure of human assimilation.
Damoro exploited that flaw.
"Continue!"
One wasn't enough.
He lured them in one by one—for safety, always one by one—until he had collected three hundred.
"Good. Three hundred should last me a while."
He resumed cutting particles.
This time, the process faltered; it took one hundred and six attempts to succeed just once.
The bait was cast.
"Now to test my theory. But an unknown civilization surely has its own logic—its own measure of ruthlessness. Everything depends on that."
For a highly developed civilization, life is cheap.
But cheap does not mean it can be squandered without restraint.
A civilization is, after all, built from lives. Life itself must remain the absolute core.
The real distinction lies in status.
High-status lives are admired. Low-status lives are despised. Human civilization is already sliding in this direction; what remains unknown is how the opposing civilization treats its own.
At this moment, Damoro found himself hoping the enemy leaned toward the civilized, not the barbaric.
He checked the time.
This sequence was shorter than before.
Earlier, he had needed far too many of his own people gathering data inside the super-microscopic world. Now, that step was unnecessary.
"Bang!"
The sound was crude, blunt—an explosion.
Its power was roughly equal to a grenade.
Damoro observed carefully. The phenomenon mirrored the previous case exactly—no variation.
A flicker of disappointment crossed him. Still, he followed procedure: reaching out, seizing what looked like a "wad of air," then pushing that "air" into the conductor's container.
But this time the container twitched.
The "air" was no mere air. It possessed consciousness.
He had hooked it.
Even Damoro was momentarily incredulous. He had actually drawn a consciousness from the super-microscopic world into the micro scale—no, not fully into the macro-world yet, but still, the connection was real.
Success on the first attempt.
Proof, beyond doubt, that his earlier conjecture had been correct.
So—
Had life itself emerged?
He fixed his gaze on the earlier coordinates.
The sensation remained the same at first, unchanged. But when he continued pouring a stream of particles into that locus, a shift appeared.
There, one cluster of particles ceased fluctuating.
A flaw had formed in the pseudo-quantum field.
This pseudo-quantum field stretched across both the micro-world and the super-microscopic world, allowing the lifeform within the super-microscopic realm to observe the micro scale, to act upon it, and to judge the macro scale through changes in micro particles.
That was its operational logic.
The fundamental particle explosion, then, was a kind of forced bestowal—energy given to a specific point, causing fundamental particles to emerge.
This emergence pierced both the micro-world and the super-microscopic world. Yet the connection remained no more than countless small waves merging into one large wave; by itself, it could not touch the lifeform directly.
But consciousness could alter the pseudo-quantum field.
The pseudo-quantum field was its skin. Damoro's maneuver had been like snagging a fish by the skin with a hook.
Dragged into a corner, the whole model was clear:
From the macro-world, Damoro cast bait into the micro scale. In the micro-world, that bait—consciousness—slipped across the corner into the lifeform's domain.
At that moment, a new connection was forged. Not one that bypassed the pseudo-quantum field, but one that pierced it directly.
When the bait was reeled back, it did not deflect at the corner. It passed clean through the pseudo-quantum layer.
Consciousness crossed the boundary, and the pseudo-quantum field was no longer intact.
And with that breach, the lifeform of the super-microscopic world stood revealed before Damoro.