Because it was night, the signs of battle stood out all the more clearly.
Energy beams tore through the darkness in brilliant streaks.
Solid projectiles were harder to track. They were usually visible only in the orange muzzle flashes when they were fired and the violent explosions when they struck their targets.
A base housing more than fifty thousand people had been stormed by barely more than a dozen attackers.
The live streamer and the superhuman squad he had summoned had slaughtered their way here.
Hardly a single shot from those figures missed its mark.
Even the least severe wounds left holes the size of dinner plates.
In the worst cases, the victims' entire bodies simply evaporated.
Among the dozen or so figures were two unusual war machines.
They were not particularly large. The operators inside appeared to be people who had lost their limbs and fused directly with the machines to move.
The two machines were slaughterhouses made metal.
Whenever they charged, dozens or even hundreds of targets were reduced to ground meat in the blink of an eye.
They were utterly ruthless. It did not matter whether their targets were civilians, women, or children. They killed everyone they encountered without the slightest hesitation.
Of course, it was not entirely indiscriminate. A tiny handful of humans were spared.
This appeared to be a human civil war. The streamer had intervened on behalf of the side that was on the verge of defeat, then begun indiscriminately massacring the opposing faction.
Without warning, a crimson beam ripped across the night, making the darkness itself seem to bleed.
A massive fireball blossomed in the sky moments later. One of the war machines had shot down an aircraft attempting to escape the ground.
The explosion swallowed everyone aboard. Some were torn apart by debris, while others were burned to charcoal by the intense heat.
Those lucky enough to survive the initial blast plummeted nearly a thousand meters and were smashed into pulp upon impact.
The fighting was no less gruesome when the attackers stopped using guns and drew their swords.
Practically every victim was hacked apart.
They were like butchers wielding impossibly sharp cleavers as they waded into a pen full of piglets. Every swing sent another round head rolling across the ground.
Not one of them had escaped being splattered with blood.
The blood of their victims coated their power armor like layer after layer of fresh paint.
[My Sister Is the Cutest: Can't these people put up a better fight? They haven't forced these big tin cans or the streamer to reveal their true strength. They're obviously taking it easy, which means I can't properly assess their combat power or determine how much of a threat they pose.]
The comment sounded rather coldhearted, utterly devoid of sympathy.
She seemed to be hoping that the people being massacred would put up a better fight and force the armored giants to use their full strength.
But if they could already conduct such a one-sided massacre while holding back, how terrifying would they become once they went all out?
Honestly, the girl suspected that these dozen or so fighters alone could throw her entire world into chaos.
Unless someone used a weapon capable of devastating several kilometers at once, eliminating them would likely be impossible.
That left nuclear weapons.
Other options, even high-yield aerial bombs, would first have to get close enough to detonate beside them.
Judging by their demonstrated abilities, these fighters would never allow such large targets to get close. They would shoot them down long before they could explode.
Carpet bombing or a massive heavy-artillery barrage might work, but neither could guarantee a kill.
A nuclear strike would be the safest choice.
The dozen attackers were not dominating because their technology and weapons were vastly superior to those of their enemies.
It was clear that the opposing humans possessed weapons capable of threatening them. They were losing because the bodies encased within that armor were simply too powerful.
Their physical reflexes, mental processing speed, combat experience, and every other relevant ability far surpassed those of the humans they were slaughtering.
Worse, these dozen or so warriors had split up to encircle the base and storm it from multiple directions.
The situation should have seemed absurd, yet there was nothing funny about it.
[My Sister Is the Cutest: Hmm, this isn't enough. I need more data before I can further analyze the capabilities of those swords.]
The girl knew which swords the commenter meant. The streamer and two of the armored giants were carrying them.
The weapons appeared to glow, with a layer of almost tangible light covering each blade.
No matter what they struck, they sliced through it effortlessly.
According to My Sister Is the Cutest, the blades might generate some kind of exotic disintegration field capable of breaking matter down at the atomic level.
As for the chainsaw-like swords, she believed their teeth possessed monomolecular edges.
It was clearly an application of extraordinarily advanced technology, yet someone had deliberately given the weapons such deceptively primitive appearances.
[My Sister Is the Cutest: There are also those special rounds. They look like white phosphorus munitions, but they clearly don't destroy their targets merely by releasing enough heat to melt them.]
[My Sister Is the Cutest: And what powers those armor packs?]
Suddenly, several of the fighters stopped killing.
"Captain, we've located the target's homeworld. It lies one hundred and ten light-years due south of this star system."
As the report came through, a holographic projection of the distant star system extended from the warrior's arm.
The image continued to magnify until the enemy homeworld came into sharp focus.
It appeared to be a futuristic science-fiction world.
Numerous structures rose through the clouds and extended all the way into space. They were probably something similar to orbital elevators.
Several fortress stations could also be seen orbiting the planet, along with what appeared to be an interstellar fleet of nearly a thousand ships.
Those thousand vessels were only the ships protecting the immediate vicinity of the homeworld. The defensive forces deployed throughout the entire star system surely numbered far more than that.
The image continued to shift, moving past the homeworld and toward the far edge of the system.
Something strange was there.
A fissure?
No. It would be more accurate to call it a crack rather than an open fissure.
It was like a crack forming in a bottle while the water inside had yet to leak out.
An actual fissure would be different. Once a gap opened all the way through, whatever was inside would naturally begin spilling out.
"The fluctuations detected around this crack are extremely unstable. We estimate it will rupture in two Terran days, and the resulting effects may spread to your current location. Our proposed solution is to use a Cyclonic Torpedo to detonate the system's star and trigger a supernova. The resulting shock wave should force the crack back and seal it."
The holographic projection displayed a simulation.
The crack appeared to be another dimension bulging into reality, on the verge of splitting open.
Once the star went supernova, the released energy would crush the protruding crack back into place and seal it shut.
"We need one of the Cyclonic Torpedoes your team still has with you to ignite the star."
"Understood. I'll send it to you immedi…"
"Wait. You only need that star to go supernova, correct?" the streamer interrupted.
"Yes."
"Understood. Begin evacuating the system immediately and leave the affected area. I'll handle the detonation."
"Understood!"
They obeyed him without the slightest hesitation, even more readily than robots.
It felt as though they would kill themselves on the spot if the streamer ordered them to.
The transmission ended.
Ten minutes later, another message arrived confirming that they had withdrawn to a safe distance.
So the streamer intended to detonate a star?
How was he planning to do it?
He took out a pyramid-shaped metal object. After undergoing several transformations, it generated a wildly twisting holographic image.
The projection displayed a star chart of his current system, along with part of another system more than a hundred light-years away.
That seemed to be the device's limit. It could not expand the displayed region any farther.
Two exceptionally bright spheres shone within the star chart. They represented the stars at the centers of the two systems.
The streamer swiped across the holographic projection, rotating the image until the distant system's star was fully exposed before him.
Then he reached out with his thumb and index finger and gently touched the glowing sphere, which was no larger than a glass marble.
A moment later, he pinched it.
The glowing sphere popped like a soap bubble and vanished.
Had he really destroyed the star of that distant system?
It seemed far too casual, almost like a joke.
However, the team that had evacuated had left surveillance equipment behind, and it immediately relayed footage of the distant system.
At the exact moment the streamer pinched apart the glowing holographic sphere, the star in that system underwent a sudden, catastrophic transformation.
(End of Chapter)
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