Nova
"So you're telling me something's wrong with the Astral Dimension?"
"Yes, Master."
The Astral Dimension was a dimensional wormhole used for actual warp travel, and the signals and data of the Interdimensional Integrated Community flowed through it as well. Unlike ordinary three-dimensional space, it could not be charted with clear distances or coordinates — it was a realm known simply as the Unknown Dimension, one the Galactic Empire itself had only ever harnessed in part for its warp network.
Aria's silken voice continued.
"While a Community user was interfering with the item transmission system, they happened to collide with the very server Minister Makia and Vice Minister Kahlen were testing. Of all the servers in all of existence, Human."
"And that collision just happened to connect near the Wall, which is where the problem came spilling out."
"Yes. That is correct."
"The Wall…"
It marked the boundary between the currently colonized universe and the uncharted Outer Cosmos beyond — the expanse even Karlstein had yet to conquer. Complete colonization of that frontier was not, strictly speaking, impossible. Terraform a world, ship in settlers, and planetary expansion was easily achieved.
But beyond the boundary known as the Wall, hostile unidentified cosmic lifeforms — monsters — appeared in scattered bursts. Endlessly evolving creatures that harbored an infinite malice toward humanity. No power in existence could endure their ceaseless assault forever, not for all eternity.
It was an entirely different matter from the interior of the vast astral curtain called the Wall.
That was precisely why the Wall was the single most critical element in the survival of humanity and of the Empire — and any disturbance to it was no trivial affair. Fortunately, thanks to Aria's swift response, the breach had been a temporary one, and all that remained was to eliminate the handful of monsters that had spilled out near the compromised section.
"But there are actually beings out there capable of tampering with a passage we built?"
"A number of circumstances appear to have aligned to cause it 'coincidentally.' How would you like to proceed?"
"How do you think? Obviously we deal with the Wall first. Then we cut the problem off at the root. Open the gate."
"Preparing warp gate activation."
Kuuuguung—
With a expression cold enough to frost over, Karlstein strode toward some undisclosed corner of the Imperial Palace.
"You're coming too?"
Maxien, who had been following at his heels, spoke up at his voice — he hadn't even turned his head.
"That is hardly a question worth asking, Your Majesty."
"Good. Lend me a hand."
Behind his back, where he could not see, Maxien allowed herself a faint smile.
That was the extent of their conversation.
By the time he reached the hangar, Karlstein had already boarded a 2,000-ton-class core ship. The hundred-meter warship pulsed with blue light from its launch bay and began to rise into the air.
The core ship required no operator and no navigator. It was the flagship reserved solely for Karlstein and his closest circle, and it was piloted by Aria alone.
Vuuuum—
The moment he settled into the seat, mechanical arms extended from the floor and ceiling, locking suit components into place across his entire body.
Hiss-click. Clack. Clack.
Seams joined and hydraulics hissed out their pressure as armor clamped over him piece by piece. The moment the 7-star custom reinforced suit Argenta sealed around him, it resonated with his physique and erupted with a torrent of raw energy. Of all his personal suits, this was the full-body armor type — the one specialized for wielding ether weaponry.
Vuuuum—
A crimson glow flared.
One might have said he carried a planet against his chest.
The core ship rose from the Imperial Palace on Terra, capital world of the Galactic Empire, climbing straight up before slipping inside a colossal vessel anchored high in the darkened sky, as though swallowed whole.
The great warship's stealth shroud dissolved, and arrays of mechanical apparatus unfolded and linked to the core ship.
Vuum— Clack. Clack—
Layer upon layer of intricate machinery docked with the core ship, completing the connection. Throughout the vessel, home to a crew of some twenty thousand, the hum of urgent activity began to stir.
Keeeeen—
It was the Imperial — the massive ship Karlstein boarded only for official duty.
Kuuuguung—
The warship — 2,400 meters at its tallest point, 8,500 meters stem to stern — lifted slowly away, headed for the warp gate installed in orbit near Terra.
Kwaaaaang—
Red ribbons of light swirled around Karlstein's armored frame, radiating waves of force. In the same instant, a cosmic lifeform several times larger than the Imperial itself — its body bathed in black blood — split apart with a rending crack.
-Guooooooo!
It was the dead vacuum of space, where no sound could travel — and yet the pulse radiating from the colossal creature spread across the entire sector, howling like a terrible scream.
Dissolving outward from its core, the great monster Titan let out one last whimper before disintegrating into the dust of the cosmos.
"Haah… Good thing it didn't have a mother plant. Who knew a large-class would show up."
"You've worked hard, Master."
"I want to be in a bed already."
As Karlstein turned his head, he caught sight of Maxien in her 6-star reinforced suit, swinging twelve pillars of giant light and carving through swarms of mid- and small-class monsters like a chef dicing vegetables. Within those pillars of light, a faint starlight shimmered — the same silver as her hair.
That girl… she's actually enjoying herself, isn't she…
…That must be… an illusion, Master.
It was a simple truth that an ordinary human, merely approaching a monster, would be seized by chills and drowning dread, hard-pressed to keep their sanity at all.
Karlstein, thanks to the nature of his body, felt only a mild unpleasantness.
But nobody went rampaging around like that, looking so delighted.
Meanwhile, oblivious to Karlstein's sidelong stare, Maxien had just vaporized a mid-sized specimen and was sweeping her gaze across the battlefield.
"Ah…"
The sight of the great monster-type Titan meeting its end filled her eyes.
A Named-type horror, one that had earned the codename Titan, was being reduced to cosmic dust by a single strike from the Emperor who had sortied alone.
Did that even make sense?
As she beheld the scene in a kind of rapture, heat flooded through her whole body.
Incredible…
No other word could possibly describe what she was witnessing.
A large-class monster was not merely large. From baseline defenses to resistances to raw vitality, everything about it was superior — a different order of being altogether.
Compared to a common lesser specimen, the gap was like comparing an elephant to a minnow.
And this had been a Named type.
Thinking of her Emperor — who had annihilated a creature whose defenses no ordinary monster could even approach — her vision blurred into a dreamy haze.
She shook her head, shaking off the reverie. She wanted to savor this moment, right now, standing on the same battlefield as Emperor Karlstein for the first time in so long.
Her twelve pillars of light grew thicker still and began to dance in a dazzling display.
"That's about that."
Chunks of flesh and carapace drifted around Karlstein like weightless debris, while his fleet fanned out across the battlefield, busily collecting and vaporizing monster fragments.
It wasn't over entirely — not yet. Tens of thousands of small specimens the size of a two-story building, down to swarms of human-sized micro-specimens, were still rampaging.
But he wasn't worried.
From his fleet of three hundred warships, thousands of slender beams of light poured forth, burning the remaining monsters away.
Small and micro-class specimens could be handled by the fleet alone — he had no need to lift a finger, much less run around himself. The cleanup afterward required no involvement from him either.
> Eliminated — Large-class: 4
> Eliminated — Mid-Large-class: 722
> Eliminated — Mid-class: 7,868
> Eliminated — Mid-Small-class: 247,333
The troubled Wall itself was observed slowly knitting back together, returning to its original state.
"Glad it ended so cleanly."
On the scale of a cosmic battlefield, this barely deserved to be called a skirmish.
"Having Grand Duke Maxien here is what let us finish so quickly."
"Well… that much is true."
Despite those unsettling eyes that carried a hint of madness, her skill was beyond reproach. If he had been left to clear this battlefield alone?
He'd probably have been running around for days without sleep.
"This is why you've gotta make use of Maxien!"
"…"
Aria held her silence at Karlstein's mutterings. Then something surfaced in his gleeful eyes.
"Hm? Ah…"
In one corner of his vision, he saw Keisha Winsler — the one known as MagicIsJustABonus — bristling at her massage chair like a cat whose fur had never been touched, wary of it as though it were some sworn enemy. Her expression was a masterwork of conflicted emotions.
"That's not the important thing right now."
Karlstein had not forgotten the culprit — the one whose meddling had forced him to sortie in person.
"How would you like to handle it?"
"I have no intention of letting things keep exploding like this just to clean them up after."
Inside the suit, Karlstein's eyes were ruthlessly, terribly cold. Looking into them, no one would imagine the man who lolled around the Community chuckling at cat videos.
He was the Emperor who led the Galactic Empire.
When it came to the weight of that crown — to what must be done and what decisions must be made — he did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second.
In moments of judgment like this, there was no distinction between his petty, ordinary heart and the iron-blooded heart of an Emperor. Karlstein knew exactly how to draw that line.
"Nova — authorized."
"…Understood."
The death of a star. The detonation of a star.
Nova — the most advanced, most devastating strategic weapon in the Galactic Empire's arsenal — had been pronounced from his lips.