A sphere three thousand kilometers in diameter collided with the Endelion planet.
Considering the size difference between the two, it was the equivalent of a three-hundred-kilometer-wide planet striking Earth.
The instant the artificial planet struck the surface of the tentacle planet, it exploded, converting its kinetic energy into heat and light.
A shockwave breaking the speed of sound erupted first.
Rumble!
Minjun had deliberately adjusted the drop coordinates of the Mining Machine base, aiming for the area where the Endelions had launched their golems and fired waves from the Execution Tower.
Thus, the artificial planet bypassed the oceans covering most of the surface and crashed into the landmass. No immediate seawater tsunami occurred.
Instead, the earth peeled back like shed skin, heaving and surging forward like a tidal wave.
Following the shockwave, the ground swelled and folded back in a massive circle. It was a lingering execution visited upon the planet itself. Tectonic plates were lifted whole, like flesh filleted from bone, crushing everything in their path as they spread outward.
Rumble!
A fifty-kilometer-thick layer of rock curled and shredded like paper, blasting chunks in all directions. The crater forming in real-time assaulted and incinerated everything above and below ground.
The world shattered along the expanding rim of the crater. Sparks scattered like sea foam. Amidst the tidal wave of the crust, rock melted and eventually flashed into vapor.
"Aaaaargh!"
"Save me, please save me!"
"Evacuate, we have to evacuate... Aaargh!"
The matter that once made up the atmosphere had long since disintegrated, sucked into the cold void of space. Caught in that current, kilometer-wide crust fragments were hurled beyond the atmosphere.
The earth fired a meteor shower up into the sky. It was a sight that flipped common sense on its head.
Meanwhile, the reddish-brown tidal wave raced onward at an astonishing speed. A wave of evaporating stone and flame. Everything caught in the rock vapor boiled alive.
The crater only stopped expanding after covering a fifth of the planet's surface. It signaled the end of the violent tectonic shift.
But the tribulation the planet had to endure was not over yet. Of course not.
In a subterranean bunker somewhere, a tentacled operator cried out.
"A firestorm is coming!"
The gas produced by the evaporating rock layer spread heat reaching tens of thousands of degrees.
The tidal wave of earth had stopped, but the firestorm marched forward with fierce momentum.
That heat finally touched the ocean.
Roar!
Meeting the horrific heat, the sea lost its water at a rate closer to an explosion than evaporation. The separated oxygen and hydrogen were blown out of the atmosphere, scattering into nothingness. The sea level began dropping at a rate of ten centimeters per second.
Around that time, the fragments of flesh and bone the earth had shot into the sky began to return to their rightful place.
"Debris is falling from outside the atmosphere!"
The homeworld, rapidly turning into a ball of fire, was losing its gases to space at an alarming rate, but it avoided being robbed of all its massive boulders.
The empty, ink-black void of space kindly returned them to the planet.
More accurately, the planet's gravity pulled the fragments back.
The meteor shower that had been fired into the sky reversed course, plummeting back down to the ground as dictated by physics. The fragments of earth brutally battered the entire planet, adding myriad small wounds to the exposed red devastation. Wherever magma covered the ground, fountains of light and heat erupted every time a fragment crashed down.
In the meantime, the hellish vapor steadily expanded its territory. Green land and blue sea were rapidly replaced by crimson flames.
That tremendous energy nullified the various barriers surrounding the tentacle planet, clashed against them, or completely broke down their constituent Magic into subatomic particles, preparing for a secondary storm.
*
When the wraith appeared at the Mining Machine base, the King had already issued an alert, and many citizens had evacuated to underground bunkers.
However, the tentacles near the impact zone could not escape death, even inside the bunkers. The heat and shockwaves pierced deep underground.
Those in the area that had now turned into a magma lake were actually the lucky ones.
They possessed resilient bodies capable of swimming naked through the vacuum of space, but the planetary collision's aftermath obliterated those monstrous forms down to the molecular level in an instant.
In other words, they did not have to suffer immense pain.
=Ugh... Argh!=
On the other hand, there were citizens who did not enjoy such luck.
=Save me, save me!=
Outside the crater.
Beyond the boundary swept by the tectonic tidal wave.
The fates of the survivors in the areas struck by the heat and firestorms depended on how quickly they had evacuated deeper underground.
And the weight of the pain they experienced varied as well.
=Aaaaargh... No... No!=
Here, one tentacle thrashing in the hellish heat had once thought of himself as very lucky.
Not long ago, when Asif-1 committed acts of terror on the tentacle planet, the military research facility was one of the primary targets, and many researchers lost their lives in the explosions.
However, the facility where this man worked suffered no damage. Having exhausted all his Dragon Heart Bombs, Asif-1 eventually returned without touching that colony.
The researcher had been incredibly relieved back then. He was grateful for his luck. There was no god to pray to, but he worshiped the providence of the universe with pure joy.
And now.
=Argh... Argh... Aaaaargh!=
He was cursing the fact that he had survived that day.
If only he had died then.
Then he would not have had to endure this agony now.
Rumble... Rumble!
The storm and shockwaves blew away even the bunker's barriers. The ceiling and walls that seemed like they would protect them perfectly had long since evaporated and vanished.
The last thing he remembered was the terrifying vibration and impact that shook the bunker. He seemed to have lost consciousness for only a moment. The researcher soon woke up in tremendous pain.
It would have been better if he had never woken up at all.
=Who... Is anyone there?=
He could not see. So he did not know where he was, or if there were other survivors.
He tried to open his eyes, but it was not easy. His eyelids had melted and fused together.
Even if he had managed to open his eyes, it would have been in vain. His eyeballs, the most vulnerable part of his body, had long since evaporated and lost their function. His lenses had shriveled like dried fruit and were stuck to the bottom of his eye sockets.
Sizzle... Sizzle!
Upon the earth that felt like a red-hot iron plate, he desperately moved his tentacles.
He could not stop moving. If he rested his body in one place, his epidermis would burn faster, and his flesh would stick to the ground.
He had already lost the tips of tentacles number 2, 18, and 21. His flesh and the ground had glued together, refusing to separate, until the strands snapped, unable to withstand the force of his forward movement.
The researcher also realized that his number 11 and 12 tentacles were moving as a single lump. They were tangled and fused into one strand, like burned rubber.
=I hate this... I hate this...!=
He did not know why their planet had suddenly turned into hell. He did not know what means Asif-666 had used to attack them.
But he knew exactly why this had started in the first place.
In mind-shattering agony, the researcher hurled curses at the King.
=Because of that foolish... incompetent... King!=
Why had she started this war to begin with?
If she wanted to pick a fight, shouldn't she have prepared to win decisively and secured a way to protect her citizens one hundred percent before starting it?
=King... Even in death... I curse you...!=
He could walk no longer. The researcher stopped writhing. Dozens of tentacles, mangled like rags, baked directly on the scorching floor.
Sizzle! The searing attack did not just come from below. The boiling atmosphere was also slowly destroying his body.
He continued to broadcast mental waves resembling a dying scream.
Ironically, an incompetent ally received far more curses and hatred than a vicious enemy.
=King! You will suffer... in agony far worse than this... surely... even as a ghost, I will...!=
The Endelion raised a tentacle that could still move.
=No more. I can't!=
And brought the hardened appendage to the center of his body.
He fumbled a few times, gauging the exact position by touch.
His preparations were complete.
He forcefully thrust it in.
Stab!
He felt his shell, softened by the heat, being pierced.
He forcefully jammed the tentacle straight through where his melted eyelids used to be.
Squish!
One was not enough. He shoved three more tentacles into his eye socket.
Then, conflicting sensations hit him simultaneously. On the outside, everywhere his flesh touched was scorching, but the tentacles shoved inside his body felt relatively cool. Conversely, the inside of his eyelids, penetrated by the heated tentacles, stung and ached maddeningly.
Squelch!
The researcher pushed the four tentacles deeply into his eye socket.
A grotesque sight unfolded, looking as if he were sucking his own flesh into his body.
If one mistook the location of the eyes and mouth, it looked as though the Endelion were devouring his own tentacles.
=Ugh, uuuugh!=
At some point, he had started sobbing.
=Why? Why me! Why do I have to die like this!=
Like snakes finding their burrows, the tentacles continued pushing deeper inside the eye socket.
Forcing their way in, as far as they could go.
Soon, the awaited sensation arrived.
Endelions did not have skeletons to protect their brains. However, in place of a skull, there was a tough membrane protecting their vital organs.
It was a thick, protective membrane capable of shielding their insides even while they swam through space.
=Ah!=
The sharp, hardened tips of the four tentacles reached the membrane. The researcher felt both relief and sorrow simultaneously. Perhaps the former emotion was greater.
It was hot. It hurt.
It was far too hot to hold out any longer.
The researcher mustered his remaining strength and shoved the tentacles in with all his might. He felt a hole puncture the tough membrane.
It was the moment he felt a gap open in the resisting wall and the tentacles push deeper through it.
Crack!
He finally welcomed sweet darkness.
*
The Endelion King could not regain her senses.
She felt the strength drain from her body. Inside the exclusive royal bunker located deep beneath the continent, she stared at the screen spread before her.
"My..."
The words tumbled into the empty air.
"My planet...!"
She fought the emotion surging up from within her chest.
The emotion an Endelion had to carry for a lifetime was fear.
It was the driving force that compelled them to strive for a safer environment for their race.
Fear was the indispensable emotion that had elevated them to greatness.
"Ah."
If Endelions had not feared the primordial race, they would never have formed the Committee and enjoyed the glory of practically ruling the entire dimensional system in the first place.
Because even imagining what the returning superhumans would do to this world was terrifying.
They had formulated a plan to seal off such a future at the source.
Like everything the Endelions created, the scene she was looking at right now had started from fear, if traced back to its roots.
But...
"This isn't it..."
She muttered.
I only tried to protect us from danger.
As a result, it had pushed her kin into even greater peril. An attempt born of fear was leading to an even greater terror.
Why?
Roar!
The scene on the surface was literal hell. The area the firestorm occupied on the planet's surface continued to widen.
The bigger problem was what followed.
A subordinate shouted, practically screaming.
"The barriers across the entire planet are going out of control! They are already beyond our containment parameters!"
The Endelions desperately tried to send distress signals. However, interference in the Spirit Realm Communication blocked those cries.
Because no wave could surpass the speed of light in the material world, the Committee utilized the spirit realm for ultra-long-distance communication.
The spirit realm had no walls dividing space, and a state change of a particle generated at one point instantly caused an identical or symmetrical state change in a spatially distant location.
But right now, even that method was dead.
"Not to mention our planet, the spirit realm across this entire vicinity has been completely flipped upside down!"
Any type of Magic leaves a trace in the spirit realm.
And right now, the planetary barriers were collapsing and surging out of control in the aftermath of the collision.
This runaway Magic created a corresponding pandemonium in the spirit realm as well.
To compare it to traditional communication, it was as if a storm of electromagnetic waves was raging through the surrounding space, rendering all radio communications useless. A similar phenomenon had occurred in the spirit realm.
Whirrrr!
The King felt her body run cold.
It was not solely due to psychological agitation. The AI managing the bunker had activated the air conditioning.
Even in the deepest subterranean bunker, located on the direct opposite side of the planet from the impact zone, they were beginning to feel the effects from the surface.
As the indoor temperature rapidly rose, the AI circulated cold air at maximum output.
The King shouted in a voice burning with desperation.
"...Reinforcements are coming!"
She did not lose hope.
"Although Spirit Realm Communication has been neutralized, the Committee Headquarters must have witnessed this situation clearly. The Headquarters Planet is only a few dozen light-seconds away from here!"
The Committee could not exist without the Endelions.
Therefore, Todd and the Kavite would send backup forces.
Feeling the air growing hotter despite the cooling system, the King murmured once more.
The headquarters would have no choice but to step in.
*
Yumtus reported to the Pope.
"In ten minutes ship time, the Headquarters Planet of the Committee will come within range!"
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