What Is the Central Plains?
“But isn’t this a pioneer planet? Why would there be underground ruins here?”
Gong Ryun posed the question.
He had clearly heard that colonization of this world had only begun a few centuries ago. So how could there be anything called underground ruins?
Could it be…
“Underground ruins left by some hyper-advanced alien civilization…?!”
“Of course they were left by humans long ago. There is no higher life form in this galaxy than humanity.”
“Ah.”
Humanity was the overlord of this galaxy.
In the early days of the galactic pioneering age there had been rivals—the so-called Heuk-ik-jok, which included succubi, centaurs, and the rest—but they had been thoroughly smashed and defeated time and again.
According to the scholars’ estimates, even surveying the entire past and present of this galaxy, no civilization more powerful than humanity had ever existed.
They even speculated that humanity ranked among the stronger species beyond the galaxy as well.
Because the universe was irrationally vast, humanity had yet to step outside this galaxy. (In truth the prevailing view held that there was no need—this galaxy alone was already more than wide enough. Unexplored territories still sprawled everywhere.) Yet when they analyzed the bodies of the space locusts that had invaded from beyond the galaxy, they discovered those locusts had already wiped out several galaxies before arriving here.
In other words: monsters that destroyed several galaxies < humans.
…Just what were humans, anyway?
“Still, colonization of this planet only began a few centuries ago. So these ‘underground ruins’ are from a few centuries back as well? Ah—or maybe buildings put up in the early pioneer days? Like AE City’s sewers?”
“Hmm. A little different. Brigit, who brought us this job, will explain that part better.”
“This big sis will explain! This facility was built not merely a few centuries ago during the planet’s terraforming pioneer period—no, it was erected at least several centuries before that!”
“A facility raised before planetary colonization even started?”
“They reckon it was one of the research stations set up to check whether people could live on the planet! It’s nothing but a forgotten scrap heap now, though!”
“Oh. So the planet itself was discovered ages ago, they even built a lab here, and the lab probably gave it the green light for colonization?”
“Yeah, something like that, probably!”
“If I may add a little more,” the other continued, “this planet was in fact discovered quite some time ago. The entire Daylascos System was already found during the earliest phase of galactic pioneering.”
“That early? Then why build a research station so late, and start colonization even later?”
“Because this galaxy is simply littered with planets, and people naturally began with the ones that offered the highest migration value.”
“Migration value?”
“How livable a place is for people, how convenient the traffic is, and so on.”
There were plenty of places in the galaxy where humans could live.
Thanks to Hon-won-gong, humans had become absurdly tough and could survive just fine on most planets.
Even so, just as one picks the choicest cuts first when eating meat, people inevitably migrated first to the more advantageous worlds.
They pioneered the planets of highest migration value first, then settled the next-best lands in turn.
A place like this planet ranked low in migration value, so colonization came late.
In short, it had been a thoroughly unappetizing piece of land.
They found it early, yet left it sitting for a long while.
“Why was its migration value so low? Thin oxygen?”
“Oxygen this thin is hardly a problem. The real issue was traffic. It lay far too distant from the major interstellar dimension gates.”
“If the dimension gates are far, just build new ones, right?”
“These days technology has advanced enough that we can open interstellar dimension gates almost anywhere—though it does devour enormous cost and resources. But that is modern cutting-edge tech. In the early days of galactic pioneering you simply could not open a gate ‘anywhere.’”
Interstellar dimension gates.
Like wormholes, they were devices that warped space to link two points—mechanical realizations of the principle behind the Interstellar Shrinking Earth Technique.
Together with the telekinetic engine and interstellar sound-transmission, they ranked among the great inventions that opened the age of galactic pioneering. Geniuses from every corner of the world had poured their lives into creating them; engineers had ground their very souls into the machines.
Yet in those first years the technology carried a critical flaw.
The apparatus required dimensional data for the destination. Dimensional data meant the perfectly precise, real-time spatial coordinates of that point. And that was a problem, because this universe never stops changing.
The cosmos expands at high speed, and the expansion follows no constant pattern anyone has fully mapped. Humanity never obtained a complete formula for it.
Worse: just as planets orbit stars, stars orbit the galactic center, and galaxies orbit within clusters. Everything moves without pause, and everything is tugged by everything else’s gravity. A black hole somewhere far off is enough to scramble dimensional data.
Add dark-matter distortions of dimensional information, coordinate chaos from supernova blasts, phase shifts from unobservable higher-dimensional changes—there were countless reasons.
No mathematical formula existed that could perfectly define and calculate all those cosmic shifts.
Even observation itself was warped; what good was that? Suppose you observe the Cancer constellation as exactly five million light-years away—the Cancer you are seeing is already five million years old.
Age aside, who could guess how much the light had been distorted while traveling that immense distance over that immense time? Light bends under gravity, does it not? Even the tiniest refraction is enough to make an interstellar dimension gate fail.
In the end there was only one solution.
Go there yourself.
Travel in person to the intended destination of the dimension gate and collect its dimensional data. Then you could open a gate there. Hooray!
Go where? Somewhere hundreds or thousands of light-years away.
We need to open a gate, so please go there first!
But without a gate, how do we get there?
It was like buying scissors at the store because you have no scissors, only to discover you need scissors to open the packaging.
Even inventing a spaceship that flew at light speed would still mean a voyage of thousands of years. And traveling at light speed is impossible; no object with mass can exceed the speed of light. The only way to move faster than light is to fold space through a wormhole and teleport. Nothing else.
Thus humanity’s dream of cosmic expansion seemed about to crumble into dust.
So humanity was forced to use its last resort.
They used a cheat key.
“A cheat key?”
“The Martial God, Namgung Hwe.”
“?”
In truth, the foundational technique behind the dimension gates—the Interstellar Shrinking Earth Technique—did not require dimensional data.
More precisely, the martial version of the technique perceived the flow of the cosmos through the mind’s image, entrusted the body to that flow, and leapt through space.
What does that even mean? No one really knows. It is originally an immensely complex and profound art; the above is only a rough summary.
It was the technique first created by the Martial God Namgung Hwe, and in the early pioneering age only a tiny handful of genuine geniuses could learn it.
In modern times research has refined and lightened it enough that a fair number of people can use it to some degree, yet in the past it was virtually Namgung Hwe’s personal patent—an enigmatic martial art belonging to the Martial God alone.
The very reason they turned it into a machine was that no ordinary human seemed capable of mastering it. Namgung Hwe himself apparently recognized as much and threw his full support behind building the device.
So they succeeded in creating the Interstellar Shrinking Earth Technique—but a machine, unlike a human, possessed not a scrap of flexibility.
A human could sense the cosmic flow through mental imagery and roughly plug in dimensional data, and movement still worked. Of course the traveler might miss the mark by several light-years, or pop out at some completely random location—side effects existed—but at least it functioned.
A machine, however, would not form a dimension gate at all unless the dimensional data were complete, perfect, and exact. Better death than error; zero room for compromise.
So what was the solution now?
Namgung Hwe himself would run the errands.
He was the only being who could travel safely without dimensional data.
And the only person who could cross distances of hundreds or thousands of light-years.
Even the handful of other martial artists who could use the Interstellar Shrinking Earth Technique remained unstable and short-ranged. Namgung Hwe, true to his title of Martial God, suffered no such limits.
The Martial God raced across the galaxy with the technique.
He went in person and gathered dimensional data.
Using that data, humanity could open dimension gates at those points.
Every place the Martial God had ever visited in his lifetime became a pioneer corridor for mankind.
The Martial God’s travel was teleportation—point-to-point, not line travel. The countless points stamped across this galaxy. From those points human civilization spread outward, like hundreds of ink dots dropped onto a vast sheet of paper, each spreading into a circle.
Those countless points marked upon a three-dimensional galaxy were humanity’s roads. The only roads, the fastest roads. Trade winds and fortune that let them cross beyond light-speed to the lands beyond.
The network of those dimension gates is called the Martial God’s Dimension Paths.
Gates belonging to the Martial God’s Dimension Paths permitted free passage among themselves.
Having gained the roads, humanity stretched across the galaxy. Planetary colonization proceeded in order of proximity to those Dimension Paths.
A planet, after all, needed good traffic. Exchange had to occur—starting with support for colonization and ending with economic growth through trade. Traffic was everything.
It was the same principle by which cities far from rivers or seas could never develop civilization for want of large-scale shipborne trade.
“Being close to the Martial God’s Dimension Paths was always best. Even a place hundreds of light-years away in ordinary space became a direct through-route the moment a Dimension Path sat next door. Physical distance shrank to nothing. It was like becoming neighbors. Naturally, humanity’s key strongholds developed around these points. Nearly every major city sits astride the Martial God’s Dimension Paths. We call the developed realm linked by those Paths the Central Plains.”
“…And this planet lies so far from the Central Plains that its value plummeted?”
“Exactly. Drop a few light-years away from a dimension gate and—good heavens—how long does the trip take? Colonization of the Daylascos System itself only began after a small dimension gate was built nearby. Without a gate you can do nothing. Even flying at light speed takes forever.”
“Hmm. My knowledge has grown.”
“In truth this planet is not all that far from Terra.”
“Ehh? Really?”
“I mean it isn’t sitting on the opposite side of the galaxy or anything. Not close either, of course.”
“So in the end, if you’re far from a dimension gate you just become the boondocks.”
“Well—unless the planet happens to hold some resource that makes people’s eyes roll back in their heads.”
“And this planet has nothing of the sort.”
“Indeed, ha ha ha. Not this planet, not even this entire system. At best a few minerals? But those are scattered all over the galaxy. Ha ha ha.”