According to the available data, the star was roughly comparable to the Sun.
The instant he crushed the glowing sphere representing the star on the holographic map, the real star seemed to dim.
It lasted so briefly that it could have been mistaken for an illusion.
Then came the blinding light.
Its brightness increased dozens of times over, then hundreds of times.
No, that was nowhere near enough.
If this truly was a supernova, then the star's luminosity had increased billions of times in an instant.
It was no longer a gentle sphere of light. It had become a dazzling, white-hot fireball that could not be viewed directly.
The light from the explosion was racing across the star system at lightspeed. In approximately twelve minutes, it would engulf the inhabited planet.
The humans living there still had no idea that their star had already been destroyed.
According to the surveillance feeds left behind, they were still going about their ordinary lives.
Twelve minutes later, the light would swallow the entire planet.
Its atmosphere would be heated to thousands of degrees in an extremely short time. The oceans would rapidly boil away, evaporating into steam.
Forests, grasslands, and cities would all be reduced to ash by the heat. Every living thing on the surface would be incinerated within seconds. Even organisms hidden deep underground would be unable to escape the catastrophic thermal wave.
No one knew how many humans lived on that planet.
Yet with nothing more than a brief conversation between a handful of people, the fate of everyone on that world had been casually decided.
Their fate was extinction.
If all this was truly happening and was not merely a movie, then Tabane Shinonono was genuinely horrified by the streamer.
With a simple movement of his hand, he had destroyed a star system, an inhabited planet, and an entire civilization.
He had done it without the slightest hesitation, as though he were merely crushing an anthill.
Terrifying was nowhere near enough to describe such a mindset.
Nor could this man be described as merely dangerous.
From that moment on, Tabane stopped running calculations. She stared fixedly through the livestream at the dying star system.
Three minutes later, the people on the planet finally realized something was wrong with their star.
Several warships launched without hesitation, abandoning their homeworld and fleeing away from the star.
Their struggle was meaningless.
One of the people responsible for destroying the star spoke with contempt.
"These heretics are merely making one final, futile struggle. Their ships cannot reach lightspeed, nor are they capable of making a Warp jump. They cannot escape the supernova."
The surveillance equipment left behind continued monitoring the planet.
The world had initially remained relatively orderly, but five minutes after the supernova began, riots broke out.
Aircraft and spacecraft of every size began frantically taking off, desperately fleeing into the sky.
There were obviously not enough vessels to carry everyone.
That meant any semblance of unity was bound to collapse as people fought for their own survival.
Ten minutes after the explosion, with only two minutes remaining before the supernova's light reached the planet, the surface looked as though it had descended into global war.
People were slaughtering one another in the chaos.
Some knew they could not escape, so they refused to let anyone else flee. They opened fire on departing spacecraft, determined to drag others down with them.
Before the supernova had even destroyed the planet, humanity's internal conflict had already reduced half the world to ruins.
When only thirty seconds remained before the light reached the planet, Tabane held her breath and stared without blinking.
The instant the warning countdown on the surveillance feed reached zero, a horrifying wall of white light slammed into the atmosphere.
The atmosphere rapidly heated to thousands of degrees, turning the entire planet into a colossal furnace.
The oceans began boiling. Anything combustible burst into flames.
Human beings fared especially poorly. Their bodies turned a horrifying shade of red as their flesh began to cook.
Within the span of a single breath, most people on the hemisphere directly exposed to the blast had likely died. Only those who had reached fortified shelters might have survived.
The surveillance device finally succumbed to the intense radiation, and its signal disappeared.
However, the observers had not left behind only one device. They appeared to have deployed another at regular intervals.
A new feed appeared.
It showed the blinding radiation sweeping across the star system.
There was more than radiation coming from the supernova. A physical shock wave was also spreading outward, although it traveled more slowly.
It was estimated to reach the human planet in approximately ten hours.
When it arrived, it would likely destroy the planet's atmosphere and strip it away completely.
On the surface, the tremendous shock wave would rip rock and soil from the ground, generating a planetwide superstorm.
Mountain ranges would be flattened. The oceans would evaporate completely.
The immense pressure would tear open the crust, causing magma to erupt from deep underground.
If the shock wave was powerful enough, the entire planet might even be torn apart and reduced to countless fragments drifting through space.
Any humans who somehow remained alive would be exterminated by that physical impact.
Had he really destroyed a star that easily?
Had all he done been to pinch apart the holographic representation of the star projected by that device?
Had they planted some kind of bomb inside the star ahead of time, with the act of crushing the glowing sphere merely serving as the detonation command?
Tabane doubted it was that simple.
The device in his hand resembled an unusual radar system. As long as a star was within its scanning range, he could apparently destroy its holographic representation and thereby cause the real star to explode.
If that was true, then it was impossible that they had planted bombs inside every star.
The device could not be as simple as it appeared. It was certainly more than an ordinary detonator.
Perhaps crushing the holographic star caused some kind of abnormal change in the space surrounding its real counterpart, triggering the supernova.
It might be a conceptual weapon, something that manipulated causality itself.
It reminded Tabane of a movie she had once watched. In it, God possessed a miniature model that represented humanity's real world.
Anything God did to that miniature would be reproduced in reality.
Such an ability, such technology, exceeded the limits of her imagination.
Even if she spent her entire life pursuing knowledge, she would never come close to grasping this godlike authority.
[Martian: Huh? What happened this time? Is another star system being destroyed? Is this another Tyranid invasion?]
[Whispered: That appears to be a supernova.]
Approximately half an hour after Tabane had been pulled into the Transdimensional Channel, two new messages suddenly appeared in the livestream chat, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Two more members had come online.
The message posted by the user named Martian contained a considerable amount of information.
If stopping or exterminating a Tyranid invasion required the destruction of an entire star system, then the creatures had to be unimaginably dangerous.
More importantly, Martian had asked if another star system was being destroyed.
That implied this was not the first time the streamer had destroyed one.
For now, Tabane needed to extract as much intelligence as possible from these two messages.
Of course, she could not trust everything they said.
She would carefully separate the truth from the lies.
(End of Chapter)
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