115: Reality collapse

The capital system of the Iofer Federation, "Gate of Hell," was a star sector shrouded in dark red light.

The massive red giant "Balthazar" occupied the vast majority of the view; its immense body, nearing the twilight of its life, radiated suffocating heat and gravity.

Around this star, seven planets had been transformed into thorough fortresses of war.

Especially the third planet, "Throne," the home planet of the Iof People. Its exterior was wrapped in three thick orbital defense rings, with countless spaceports, shipyards, and defense platforms densely packed like flies swarming around carrion.

Tens of thousands of warships took off and landed here, ready at any moment to project the fury of the Iof People to any corner of Orion.

To the Iof People, this was an absolutely safe sanctuary, the most impregnable fortress in this starry sky.

Until today.

There was no warning, no spacetime fluctuations left by a Warp Drive, and not even the tachyons detectors capable of 10 times the speed of light could scream in time.

Above the high orbit of the Throne planet, space seemed to be torn apart by a pair of invisible giant hands. This tearing was unlike the opening of a conventional wormhole; it was a forced penetration of dimensions.

Accompanied by a violent energy pulse that instantly overloaded all electronic equipment in the entire star system, thirty-six silver-white warships appeared out of thin air within the core defense circle of the iofer capital.

Their position was so tricky that the vertical distance to the Supreme Council Building of the Iofer Federation was less than ten thousand kilometers.

"What is th... bzzzt..."

Before the iofer officer in charge of orbital defense could finish shouting the word "that," the super orbital fortress he was on, named "Crown of Steel," was swallowed by a dazzling white light.

The flagship of the Falamt Detachment Fleet, the Paradox-class battlecruiser causality, had merely leaked spacetime oscillation ripples during its hull transition, which ground this super fortress—weighing hundreds of millions of tons and equipped with thousands of heavy cannons—directly into dust.

"Enemy attack! Enemy attack! Highest level alert!"

"Planetary shield failed! How did they get in?!"

"All fleets launch! All turrets fire! Protect the home planet!"

The entire "Gate of Hell" star system exploded into chaos in this instant.

Countless alarms screamed shrilly in every warship, every base, and every city.

The reaction speed the Iof People were proud of turned into extreme confusion and panic at this moment. They had never imagined that the enemy would appear directly in their faces; most of their defensive weapons were pointed toward the outer star system.

"The entire fleet is entering the warp recharge period; shield energy levels have dropped by 50%, and weapon charging efficiency has dropped by 50%."

On the bridge of causality, Major General Sal watched the chaotic planet beneath his feet indifferently. The red starlight reflected on his silver-grey uniform like dried blood.

"But this is enough. Free fire on all armed man-made objects within sight."

The massacre began.

Although in the weak period after the warp, the combat power of the falam warships was still unstoppable.

Five Sciences End-class battleships slowly adjusted their posture, and the huge Neutron Emitter at their bows began to flash.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Five clumps of neutron degenerate matter, accelerated to 99% of the speed of light, were fired. This attack did not rely on explosions but on pure mass and kinetic energy.

An iofer heavy battleship attempting to intercept was hit head-on by a neutron clump.

That eight-kilometer-long warship was like a painting erased by an eraser. From the point of impact, the entire hull underwent atomic-level collapse and fusion within milliseconds. The entire ship, along with the tens of thousands of crew members inside, was instantly compressed into a high-density luminous body, then exploded violently, turning into basic particles in the universe.

"What kind of weapon is that? It destroyed a heavy capital ship in one hit!"

The iofer small fighter pilot who witnessed this scene was stunned.

But this was only the prelude to the nightmare.

Ten High-Energy Radiation-class destroyers, like silver hummingbirds weaving through flowers, were so fast that the fire control radars of the Iof People could only capture a series of afterimages. The high-energy gamma-ray storms they released swept across the entire orbital defense circle.

Any iofer warship or defense satellite swept by the rays looked intact on the surface, but all internal electronic components burned out instantly, and all organic life forms liquefied and died in an instant due to DNA chain breakage.

In just thirty minutes, the capital garrison fleet that the Iofer Federation was proud of—that massive force possessing five hundred capital ships—had turned into a pile of space garbage floating in orbit.

Countless wrecks collided in space, and the occasional sympathetic detonation became the background noise of this one-sided massacre.

"Sir, the 23rd, 49th, and 57th patrol fleets near the home star system are rushing to reinforce! Estimated time of arrival is 5 hours!"

The reaction of the Iof People was not slow. They possessed quantum communication equipment capable of real-time communication. After receiving the information that the home planet was under attack, those fleets patrolling the star systems around "Gate of Hell" started emergency Warp Drive regardless of everything, pushing the power of the Warp Engines to overload.

"Reinforcements? No, that's just more scrap metal." Major General Sal, who intercepted the communication information, curled his lips in a cruel smile.

The quantum entanglement communication equipment of the Iofer Federation did not involve high-dimensional fields. For the Faleim People, who could find the connection between two entangled quantum pairs in higher-dimensional space, cracking the communication information of the Iofer Federation was as easy as pie.

The detachment fleet deliberately waited for five hours until the spacetime fluctuation signal was detected.

Thousands of iofer warships jumped out of warp space with fury. They filled the starry sky densely, and their muzzles were aimed squarely at the thirty-six silver warships.

"Kill them all!"

Tens of thousands of blaster beams and gravitational wave shock bombs poured down like a red rainstorm.

However, they were met by 20 Era-Layered-class frigates.

These frigates did not fire but collectively activated a certain force field generator around their hulls.

"Dimensional deflection force field activated."

In the vision of the Iof People, those silver warships suddenly became "blurred."

They seemed to no longer exist in this four-dimensional universe but had become some kind of projection from a higher dimension.

All attacks, whether beams or solid ammunition, disappeared strangely when passing through the images of those warships, as if they had entered an invisible pocket.

Immediately after, the counterattack descended.

The Paradox-class battlecruiser causality showed its power for the first time.

It was not firepower in the traditional sense, but some kind of "error."

【Logic Overwrite Force Field】

An invisible wave swept across the iofer reinforcement fleet.

The warships hit did not explode but underwent creepy mutations.

In some warships, the hull metal suddenly turned into liquid and then into gas; in others, the direction of gravity inside suddenly reversed, tearing the crew to pieces; some warships even directly violated the laws of thermodynamics, with engines spewing absolute zero frost instead of flames.

This was a local tampering with physical reality, an attack that forcibly turned "order" into "disorder."

Thousands of returning warships disintegrated on their own within less than twenty minutes because their own physical properties collapsed.

The entire "Gate of Hell" star system, except for the red giant that was still burning and a few trembling planets, had no organized resistance left.

Major General Sal glanced at the time.

"Cleanup complete, start broadcasting."

The next second, a high-intensity, unencrypted, full-band broadcast signal covered the entire star system and spread to dozens of surrounding iofer colony star systems.

It was the voice of the detachment fleet commander, Sal. The Faleim language, carrying a tone of contempt, was automatically translated into the iofer common language.

【Listen, you vermin of the Iofer Federation.】

【I am the Faleim Scientific Conglomerate, commander of the Heavenly Punishment Detachment Fleet, Sal.】

【Thirty-five years ago, you despicably induced a supernova explosion of the S-56 star, attempting to destroy our home planet with a gamma-ray burst.】

【This was a stupid and unforgivable mistake.】

【Not only did we survive, but we have come.】

【You like to play with the power of stars? You like to destroy?】

【Very well, today we will show you what true destruction is.】

【We will not only destroy your fleet, but we will also destroy the cornerstone of this star system's existence.】

【Enjoy your final moments, because from today on, the Gate of Hell will no longer lead to hell; it will become nothingness.】

The moment the broadcast ended, causality began to move.

It did not fly toward any planet but flew above the gravitational equilibrium point of the entire star system.

This super battleship, representing one of the products of the Faleim Civilization's 【Cosmic Creation】 plan, finally revealed its true fangs.

Its hull began to deform.

The originally streamlined hull expanded in all directions, revealing a core device inside that was extremely complex and emitted a heart-palpitating chaotic light.

The space around that device was in an extremely unstable state; light twisted and knotted around it, and even time fractured there.

【Reality Parameter Modifier】, or jokingly called the Eraser of Gods by Faleim scientists.

This was the ultimate product of the Faleim Civilization's research on the underlying code of the universe before ascension. Theoretically, it could be used to create new physical laws, thereby creating a mini-universe in a small range.

But likewise, it could also be used to format.

"Target: The entire 'Gate of Hell' star system."

"Modify parameter settings: Planck constant to zero, strong interaction force invalid, gravitational constant reversed, speed of light... infinite."

"This will cause a chain reaction of logic collapse. We must leave this star system before it takes effect." The operator reminded that modifying reality was a terrible weapon even for the Faleim People.

"Execute." Sal's voice was as cold as ice.

Following the confirmation of the command, the core of causality left a zero-dimensional "point" that could not be observed from a three-dimensional perspective at the gravitational equilibrium point, and then followed the entire fleet to start the Warp Engine at maximum power.

When the detachment fleet left the range of the 【Reality Parameter Modifier】, that "point" erupted with a wave that could not be seen by the naked eye but could be perceived by any soul.

This wave swept across the entire star system instantly at a speed exceeding the speed of light (because the speed of light had been modified to be infinite).

Then, hell descended.

First was the red giant "Balthazar." With the reversal of the gravitational constant, the star, which originally relied on gravitational collapse to maintain fusion reactions, lost the power to bind itself in an instant.

It did not explode but disintegrated.

The huge star was like a punctured balloon. Hundreds of billions of tons of plasma no longer collapsed inward but fled outward frantically. But this was not just fleeing; because of the failure of the strong interaction force, the atomic nuclei constituting these plasmas also began to fall apart.

Matter was no longer matter. The star instantly turned into a chaotic and disordered soup of energy composed of quarks and gluons.

Next were the planets. The Iof People's home planet "Throne," which carried tens of billions of lives, ushered in the most terrifying end at the moment of the collapse of the laws.

The earth was no longer solid because the binding force between atoms disappeared. Tall buildings, mountains and rivers, and even the bodies of every Iof Person turned into a pile of loose basic particles at the same time.

They didn't even have time to feel pain because the physical basis for nerve signal transmission no longer existed. The entire planet, like a sand sculpture meeting a strong wind, instantly dissipated into the void.

But this was not the most terrifying thing.

With the zeroing of the Planck constant and the infinite speed of light, energy transmission within this star system lost its limits.

All energy erupted in an instant and then cooled in an instant; the laws of thermodynamics became waste paper here. One second it was billions of degrees of high temperature, and the next second it became absolute zero.

Space began to show dense cracks. That was the universe itself trying to "repair" this erroneous region, but it led to more serious collapse due to the chaos of parameters.

The entire "Gate of Hell" star system, along with the stars, planets, fleets, and lives inside... everything was crushed, reorganized, and crushed again in this torrent of laws.

Finally, it became a chaotic region without any physical meaning.

Light could not propagate here, gravity was a mess here, and time lost its direction here.

It no longer belonged to this four-dimensional universe; it became a black hole in physics... no, worse than a black hole, because a black hole at least follows physical laws, while this was the graveyard of physical laws.

The energy consumed by this level of reality modification was extremely exaggerated, possibly even consuming all the energy of a galaxy's central black hole for a lifetime. Currently, the Faleim Civilization only had 7 core devices left that stored super-specification-level huge energy extracted from The Void Realm, which meant that at least for now, the Faleim Civilization could only launch this kind of strike 7 more times.

But the effect produced by this level of strike was worth it. This symbolized that the Falaim Scientific Integration Nation had issued its imperial voice to this star sector, or rather, to the entire galaxy.

Major General Sal stood with his hands behind his back on the bridge. Outside the porthole, the red light that had originally shone in the distance had now turned into an indescribable, dim, and hollow area.

That was once the capital of a powerful hegemonic civilization.

Now, there was only a warning left there.

A warning issued to all civilizations in this star sector, at the cost of the destruction of an entire star system.