No Free Cleanup
The war with the Goddess Department raged on. Despite the Dimensional Lord’s warning, the high-heat beams and missile barrages pouring from the space fleet showed no sign of stopping.
“No matter how many direct hits my body takes, this form is the physical vessel of a Spiritual Being. Physical force barely affects me. Weapons relying on shockwaves and heat at this level cannot even subdue a Lower God, let alone reach a High Lord. It’s laughable.”
Still, leaving them alone was grating on his nerves.
“If they were unmanned Machine Gods, I would have smashed them all. Unfortunately, they have sentient beings inside, so I cannot simply destroy them at random.”
Superhumans were not this numerous in the material world, yet every single one of them was crammed into these vessels, charging forward like moths to a flame.
“Are they even sane? These are clearly high-grade Machine Gods capable of exceeding the speed of sound. Yet they are restricting their performance by carrying ordinary people.”
He found the internal modifications intriguing, but for now the battlefield was filled with dust and noise. The Dimensional Lord invoked the defensive magic he had created precisely for moments like this.
“‘All Things Shall Return to the Sower. Now is that time.’ — Magic Type: Law Magic, Defensive, Always Active — Effect: All attacks are spatially returned to the attacker. Neither the magnitude nor the nature of the attack matters; the authority of Dimensions instantly teleports them back, making them nearly impossible to block. Developed after identifying the weaknesses of self-defense magic during battles against the Substitute Gods and mercenaries. Since an attacker killed by their own reflected strike does not negatively impact Karma, it remains his favorite spell.”
— First manifestation, protagonist’s remark: “Still doesn’t feel reliable.”
The 10.5-circle magic, different from the spells of his past as a Main God, unfolded. A vast circular mana barrier manifested. The moment the rain of attacks from the Machine Gods touched it, every strike vanished. At the same instant, tens of thousands of enormous fireballs filled the void.
BOOOOOOM—!
The simultaneous explosions were so overwhelming that even the roar was swallowed by the shockwave. The same fate befell the warships that had been bombarding the planetary surface. Every Machine God and warship that had attacked the Dimensional Lord was instantly returned to its point of origin by spatial transference, only to be obliterated by its own reflected assault. Tens of thousands of Machine Gods and hundreds of massive metal vessels shattered into fragments. The battlefield fell silent once more.
This was the might of 10.5-circle magic, a fusion of Dimensional authority and mana.
“An improved version of my defensive magic. There is no longer any time lag before attacks are reflected. If you wish to break through, bring at least three times my divine power—! Where is the Machine God of this place? Will you not show yourself? Shall I simply annihilate this entire solar system?”
The Dimensional Lord’s furious intent reached the mobile fortress-class flagship hovering above the planet. Inside, screams erupted from the crew clad in gleaming formal uniforms.
“Confirmed destruction of 25,000 small unmanned units! 4,000 manned humanoid units destroyed! Distress signals coming from the remaining 2,000!”
“450 medium multipurpose warships and 2,000 assault ships destroyed. Remaining combat strength below 5%! Seventh Fleet is combat ineffective!”
CRASH—!
A transparent screen replayed the battle footage. Across it, a single line kept flashing: “Lifeform analysis impossible. Weapon analysis impossible.”
The sheer futility of the result compared to the cost enraged one of the officers, who slammed his fist into the screen.
“Analysis impossible? The entire Seventh Fleet was wiped out, and that is all we have to show for it?”
“Didn’t that lifeform’s first transmission indicate friendliness? Why escalate matters instead of requesting cooperation?”
“It is a lifeform capable of spatial travel through the universe in humanoid form alone. If we can analyze it and obtain its biological data, we could become the same. What being would willingly submit to precise analysis? You all agreed as well, did you not?”
Three elderly men whose bodies had been augmented with gleaming metallic prosthetics exchanged harsh words. Within the command center surrounded by glowing screens, other personnel whose flesh had merged with machinery stood frozen, their minds blank at the sudden annihilation of the Seventh Legion. The commanders who should have decided between retreat and counterattack were instead wasting time shifting blame.
“We must report to His Majesty the Emperor. This has already exceeded what local forces can handle.”
“How do we report a defeat like this?”
“Silence! Was it not you who reported that you would capture and present this rare space lifeform? The planetary integrated management intelligence opposed hostile contact!”
“We cannot obey the decisions of mere mechanical artificial intelligence! We are the new humanity that has transcended both machine and human.”
Beep—! Beep—!
Suddenly every screen flickered, signaling something gravely amiss. The mobile fortress-class flagship shuddered as though struck by an earthquake. A frantic staff officer shouted the situation.
“Unidentified gravity surge from the hostile lifeform—!”
“The entire command fleet is being pulled toward the planet!”
Only then did the commanders grasp the severity. Their voices rang out in desperation.
“Break away at maximum power! Initiate spatial transfer to the Capital Planet—!”
“Impossible! Spatial transfer coordinates cannot be established!”
“What—!”
FLASH—!
A blinding light seared their eyes. Countless personnel collapsed in agony. The flagship and its fleet had been forcibly subjected to spatial transference, exposing them to several times the intensity of sunlight and causing temporary blindness.
BOOOOOOM—!
The flagship shuddered with the sound of tearing metal. Every single person was thrown to the floor, groaning. Acrid smoke filled the air; emergency alarms blared. Then, abruptly, the alarms ceased. The vibrations and smoke vanished as well.
Step. Step.
Footsteps echoed. From the very center of the command center, a voice spoke.
“How absurd. Not even the Cyber Realm’s Machine Gods, but primitive planetary Machine Gods dare to challenge me? No, these are not even Machine Gods. They are machine-humans fused with machinery? How amusing. Fleeing from proper evolution, worthless metal chimeras attacked me? Their natural lifespans forcibly extended by machinery, devoid of vitality, utterly useless—!”
CRUNCH—!
“GAAAAAH—!”
“AAAAH—!”
The sound of metal being crushed rang out, yet the blinded crew could only scream in terror. An immense gravity pressed their mechanical bodies into the metal floor, crushing them.
“Metal chimeras! Die cleanly and return to proper evolution. That is my mercy, forgiving the sin of challenging a god.”
CRACKLE—!
The fortress-class flagship, every warship, and all remaining weaponry were compressed from three dimensions into two, then into points, and finally disappeared entirely. Everything had been compressed to the utmost and converted back into raw resources. As he extracted the various metals, data, and lifeforms from the compressed mass, the Dimensional Lord clicked his tongue repeatedly.
“Tsk, tsk. A scientific civilization built upon tremendous waste. The total energy required to refine high-grade metal resources is catastrophically large.”
A single star could not sustain it. The rate of stellar resource consumption had long exceeded natural recovery. “You have squandered resources to an absurd degree. How many stars did you dismantle to create a worthless machine legion that cannot even defeat a single Lower Demon God? What unforgivable act have fewer than a million low-grade machine-humans committed? Their natural lifespans are already spent; they are vitality-poor, useless things—!”
To the divine races, this was an act that set their teeth on edge. Precise investigation revealed that their bodies had been modified to the level of artificial humans, with base lifespans exceeding two hundred years. That was how they could operate and ride in supersonic high-grade weaponry. Up to that point, it was acceptable.
“Augmenting one’s body with machinery to extend life is not a problem. However, the resources consumed to maintain it per person equal what would sustain ten thousand ordinary individuals.”
Even the nobles of the Middle World consumed resources, yet their lifespans did not exceed fifty years unless they became transcendents. These beings, however, could persist for over a thousand years by replacing parts, and their numbers grew exponentially for the sake of expansion.
“If there are tens of millions of such beings, countless planets must be consumed. In the worst case, they consume resources without replenishing them, so every planet would be stripped bare in an instant and most of the solar system would become lifeless worlds.”
The problem was the information extracted from the compressed remains: the total number of machine-humans exceeded one billion.
“Maintaining them consumes one star per year.”
Beneath the machine-humans existed ordinary humanity. Hundreds of billions of normal humans were subjected to abnormal exploitation to produce and maintain their precision components.
“The average lifespan of normal humans does not even reach thirty years. They are born endlessly, exploited until death, and deplete the vitality of stars.”
Every life born from a star is born, develops, and evolves based on that star’s vitality, further growing its own vitality. When a being born with basic vitality dies after strengthening it, that vitality returns to the star in a natural cycle. That cycle was being ignored. Only labor was extracted, with no enhancement of vitality through evolution or development. Even the fundamental resources were stripped away, preventing stars from growing and causing them to die.
Yet were these machine-humans strong? Not at all.
“It is a biased material development that any star whose mind, soul, and body have developed in balanced harmony could easily overcome.”
Maintaining the general Main Divine Realm would be a hundred times more efficient than sustaining the entire machine-humanity at this level of stellar consumption, yet they had already devoured over a hundred stars capable of forming a Main Divine Realm. They had been tolerated only because the stars lacked moons and suns necessary to establish divine realms, but now that they had exhausted the surrounding lifeless planets, they were beginning to consume stars with living beings.
Stars brimming with precious life force were vanishing because of the unforgivable acts committed by fewer than a billion machine-humans in his universe.
“Now I understand why I came here. It is the will of this universe, commanding me as a god to correct a flawed evolution. It is the guidance of a great existence, telling me to revive dying stars and let life flourish.”
He quietly closed his eyes and stored the compressed resources and data from the machine legion into his extradimensional space, sorting them neatly. Only now did the Dimensional Lord feel the will of the world wrapped around his body.
“The desperate calls of stars endlessly consuming their vitality and dying reached me, who was flung here by a dimensional travel error. They wished for judgment upon the machine-humans who are slowly killing them.”
The Dimensional Lord gathered the wills of all the stars, connected them, and answered at once.
“I refuse! You insane things! Who are you trying to exploit for free? If I exterminate the machine-humans and my Karma drops due to mass destruction, who will compensate me? Even processing this machine legion is barely breaking even. Submit a formal proposal through the proper channels to the responsible Main God and receive official orders—! There is no free labor or reckless destruction in the universe he governs. Rot in your graves, you damned stars.”
The Dimensional Lord’s mood was at its worst, owing to the time lost to the dimensional travel error and the unreasonable demands of the Main Divine Realm.