(A/N: Uhh well in this chapter, I somewhat wrote an entire research paper. Don't worry I'll write a chapter after this that'll simplify everything with examples and everything so just skrim this one through.)
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Toreth smirked faintly.
"I'm sure there's something else you're here to talk about," he said. "But while we do—allow me to show you."
The world shifted.
Zazm felt no distortion, no pressure—only the sudden absence of walls. He looked around.
They were in space.
Stars stretched endlessly in every direction, distant galaxies glowing like scattered embers in a black ocean. Zazm looked forward—and saw Toreth floating upside down, arms folded, expression completely relaxed.
"Don't worry," Toreth said casually. "We can breathe here. Now—continue what you were saying."
Zazm glanced around once more, unfazed.
"I wanted to ask," he said, "why we can't attack the remnants."
Toreth rotated in midair until he was upright, hands clasped behind his back.
"Because," he replied, "we're using nearly all our resources protecting planets outside our one-billion-light-year radius—and bringing them under our control."
The scenery shifted again.
This time, they hovered near an unimaginably massive red giant star. Its surface burned violently, waves of plasma rolling like oceans of fire. Yet surrounding the star was an equally massive structure—layer upon layer of interlocking segments completely enclosing it.
Zazm's gaze lingered.
Toreth noticed and drifted forward.
"That," he said, "is an advanced Dyson Sphere."
He gestured broadly.
"It doesn't just absorb stellar energy—it stabilizes the star itself, prolonging its lifespan. Every bit of energy collected is transmitted wherever it's needed."
"How?" Zazm asked.
Toreth smirked.
"Quantum entanglement. Every atom in this Dyson Sphere has been fragmented. Some fragments remain here, others exist in distant locations—yet they function as one system."
He landed casually on the glowing surface.
"As I was saying—besides this, remnants exist in an entirely different cosmic web. To place teleportation devices or wormholes there, we'd have to physically go."
He shook his head.
"Not possible. Even at two hundred times the speed of light."
He exhaled and leaned forward.
"And all existing wormholes in that region are already occupied by them."
Toreth glanced around, grimacing slightly.
"Man, it's hot here. Let's go somewhere else."
Reality shifted again.
Zazm now stood upon the accretion disk of a black hole. Matter spiraled violently beneath their feet, light bending unnaturally around them. His expression didn't change.
Toreth smirked.
"Relax. We won't get pulled in."
"Why?" Zazm asked.
"Because I can destroy it before that happens," Toreth replied, laughing as if it were trivial.
He added lightly,
"Oh—and fun fact. Time slows down near these things. While we're here, it moves differently for us."
He paused, then facepalmed.
"…Why am I explaining this to someone who literally controls space and time?"
Zazm turned to him.
"Toreth. If humanity can do all this—then tell me something."
"What?" Toreth asked.
"Back at the EIAA," Zazm said, floating closer, his gaze sharp. "When Miss Myterl and the others were teleported—why did you wait for me to create a black hole? You could've done it. Many lives could've been saved."
Toreth's expression darkened.
"You're wrong," he said quietly. "We couldn't have."
"Why?" Zazm pressed, his voice colder.
"Because we would've needed precise equipment and calculations," Toreth replied.
"If the black hole had been even one meter smaller, it wouldn't have worked. One meter larger—and it would've caused a catastrophe."
He looked directly at Zazm.
"What you accomplished in hours would've taken us days. Now do you understand?"
Zazm nodded and drifted back.
"Back to the topic," Toreth continued. "We can't attack the remnants yet."
He turned away—
—and stopped when Zazm spoke again.
"There's no way," Zazm said, "that you don't already have an idea."
He paused.
"No—technology has an idea."
Toreth turned back slowly.
"…You're right."
He sighed, a rare heaviness crossing his face.
"I spent my entire life designing something that could take us there."
He looked away.
"But it'll never be possible."
They reappeared in Toreth's office.
"Wait," Zazm said. "What do you mean?"
Toreth sat down.
"Exactly what you heard."
"Supreme Commander Toreth," Zazm said firmly. "As Supreme Commander of Obsidian Fang, I demand you tell me."
"And I refuse," Toreth replied calmly.
Zazm didn't back down.
"You're forgetting something. Things aren't the same now."
Toreth's eyes widened in realization. He exhaled slowly.
"…I'll at least show you."
They teleported again.
They stood in a vast field filled with flowers, floating structures scattered across open space beneath a dome of artificial sky.
"This," Toreth said, "is a spatial structure. One of my research spaces."
They stepped onto a pedestal.
The world shifted again.
They appeared inside a massive chamber. As Toreth raised his hands, countless holograms ignited across the room.
He passed his hand through one—and it wrapped around him, his body dissolving into glitching blue cubic projections.
The same happened to Zazm.
Their forms became holograms. The space itself transformed.
At the center floated a colossal ship.
"This," Toreth said quietly, "is my life's work."
Data flooded the air.
"It's a perfect model," he continued.
"How does it work?" Zazm asked.
"It's a wormhole," Toreth replied. "Not one that travels through space—but one that is space. A walking wormhole."
He paused.
"Do you want the deeper explanation?"
Zazm nodded.
Toreth's expression sharpened.
"Then prepare yourself."
The ship expanded.
"This machine," Toreth said, "will be constructed entirely from degenerate matter. Its size—roughly one hundred to one hundred twenty astronomical units."
Zazm listened.
"Now, that raises questions," Toreth continued.
"Wouldn't something that massive collapse under its own gravity? Wouldn't anyone inside be crushed? And how would it even move?"
He zoomed in beneath the ship.
"The answer lies here."
"There will be a total of twenty-six billion seven hundred twenty-one million eight hundred eighty-eight thousand five hundred sixty-four Singularity Pulse Devices."
"What are those?" Zazm asked.
Toreth nodded.
"I'll explain."
####
"A Singularity Pulse Device functions as an engine," Toreth continued, his fingers dancing across the holographic air, pulling out a cross-section of a single device. "It takes a particle and crushes it. We aren't talking about pressure here, Zazm. We are talking about forcing reality to fold in on itself. We create a singularity—a micro-black hole."
Zazm's gaze remained fixed on the massive hull. "A ship this size—hundreds of astronomical units of degenerate matter—would have a gravitational pull so immense it would collapse under its own weight. Anything inside would be paste."
"Normally, yes," Toreth said, pacing around the holographic model.
"But that's why we have twenty-six billion of these devices. When the black holes are formed, their internal gravity is phased to cancel out the ship's own mass. It creates a state of Dynamic Equilibrium. The ship doesn't feel its own weight because the engines are constantly 'pulling' it back from the brink of collapse."
"And the path?" Zazm asked flatly. "A mass that large moving through a galaxy would pulverize every spatial body it passes. The gravitational wake alone would tear solar systems apart."
"Which is why we don't travel in 'normal' space," Toreth replied, swiping his hand to show a side-view of the space-time fabric.
"We sink the ship to the Under-Ether—the very basement of the space-time fabric. We stay so deep that our gravitational shadow never touches the surface. We can slide past a sun, and the people living there wouldn't even see a ripple in their tide. We are a ghost in the foundation of the universe."
Toreth stopped, looking up at the massive model. "But then I hit a wall. I almost gave up, actually. I thought, 'Toreth, you genius, you've built a cage, not a ship.' If we move this thing underneath a supermassive black hole in the real world, the external gravity would pull us down that extra meter into the abyss. We'd be crushed."
"The solution?" Zazm asked.
"Energy Wheels," Toreth replied, his tone shifting to one of genuine scientific pride. He highlighted massive, glowing toroids within the ship's structure."
"We take the waste heat from the antimatter annihilation—about 0.00001% of the total output—and we feed it into these. They are gyroscopic anchors. When we encounter external gravity, these wheels spin up, creating a repulsive gravitational 'shell.' We don't just resist the black hole; we reflect its own energy back at it."
He zoomed in on the engine core, where two massive banks of lights flickered in a perfect, alternating rhythm.
"Now, look at the timing. This is the part that kept me awake for a decade. To maintain this state, we use a Reciprocal Handoff System. There are two banks of engines. Bank A creates and destroys its singularities, and in the exact plank-instant they vanish, Bank B ignites. There is no 'off' switch, Zazm.
It's a constant, alternating cycle. If there was a delay of even 0.0000000000000001 seconds between the banks, the equilibrium breaks. The ship would sink that final meter and vanish into the abyss."
Toreth's smirk faded slightly, his expression turning uncharacteristically serious. "But physics is messy. Even with our tech, there's something called Quantum Jitter—tiny, unpredictable fluctuations in time and energy. That jitter creates a delay we can't calculate away. That's where these Energy Wheels come in again."
He pointed to the glowing toroids spinning at impossible speeds. "They aren't just for external black holes. They act as a gravitational buffer. When the 'jitter' causes that micro-stutter between Bank A and Bank B, the wheels provide the stabilizing force to keep us level. They catch the ship in that billionth of a second of free-fall."
"But there's a catch.
There's always a catch," Toreth muttered, scratching the back of his head. "The 'Hum.' Living inside a constant cycle of black hole destruction does things to the brain. It's a vibration in your jaw, a ringing in your ears that never stops.
Stay in here too long, and you'll go mad. And then there's the 'Ship-Soul.' No computer can time twenty-six billion pulses perfectly. It needs a living intuition. The ship isn't a machine, Zazm. It's a biological-digital hybrid. It's... alive."
Toreth turned back to Zazm, his lazy demeanor returning, though his eyes remained sharp. "We sink into the Under-Ether—the basement of the universe—where distance is a suggestion and the speed of light is a joke. We can cross the fifty-billion-light-year gap in seconds.
He sat down on the holographic grass, looking exhausted just from the explanation.
"It's the perfect weapon. A walking wormhole. A fortress that doesn't exist until it's too late to stop it."
Zazm looked at the simulated sky, the constant flicker of the pulse engines overhead. "When do we start construction?"
Toreth laughed, a dry, hollow sound. "That's the thing, Supreme Commander."
Toreth sighed a genuine irritation in his voice, "We can't."
Zazm's voice cut cleanly through the dense holographic glow.
"Why can't we?"
Toreth turned slowly, already knowing the direction of the question.
"Why do you think?" he asked.
Zazm didn't hesitate.
"We lack resources."
Toreth let out a sharp breath—half laugh, half disbelief—and shook his head.
"What are you talking about?" he said. "We can create matter itself. As for degenerate matter—there are more than enough celestial objects we can harvest it from."
He paused, brows knitting together as his thoughts raced ahead of his words.
"…However," he continued slowly, "the antimatter."
His jaw tightened.
"The antimatter we possess is in extremely limited quantities. Barely enough to power ten engines—let alone billions."
Zazm replied instantly.
"Antimatter isn't an issue."
Toreth looked at him sharply.
"Oh? And why is that?"
Zazm lifted his hand and pointed—directly at Toreth.
"Your student," he said simply. "He can."
For the first time, Toreth froze.
His eyes widened, and he stood up so abruptly the holograms around him flickered.
"Wait," he said. "Zazm—are you saying Minos?"
Zazm nodded.
"Yes."
Toreth's voice rose despite himself.
"But his power is matter creation and manipulation. How would that allow him to create antimatter?"
Zazm's tone remained flat, but there was weight behind it.
"Supreme Commander Toreth," he said, "are you aware that a power can be used in more than one way?"
He raised his hand.
An apple appeared.
Perfect. Glossy. Real.
Toreth narrowed his eyes.
"You teleported that."
Zazm shook his head.
"No. I didn't."
He closed his fingers around the apple.
"I formed a micro-space," he continued, "and created it from nothing."
Toreth's breath caught.
"…Don't tell me," he whispered.
Zazm nodded once.
"As you know, my power governs space and time," he said. "That includes all possible outcomes. Which means I can alter reality dimensions and conceptual structures within my space."
Toreth staggered back and collapsed into a chair, one hand gripping the armrest. Sweat beaded at his temple.
"Then—by that logic…" he muttered, eyes unfocused, racing ahead.
"If we show Minos antimatter. If he understands its properties…"
His head snapped up.
"…Then we have hope."
An anxious grin spread across his face. His leg began to shake, heel tapping rapidly against the floor.
"So close," he breathed. "So close, yet just out of reach."
Zazm didn't move.
"What other issues remain?"
Toreth exhaled sharply and leaned forward.
"This project would require every engineer. Every advanced technological division," he said.
"However they are all constantly busy in Constant gear replacement. AMI marks. Entire manufacturing lines."
He shook his head.
" We can't have all our engineers on one project we can't even spare a single person let alone all.."
Zazm fell silent for a moment.
Then he stepped forward.
"Tell me, Toreth," he said. "How long would it take to build this ship?"
Toreth smirked, clicking his tongue thoughtfully.
"Fifty years. Minimum. Give or take."
"Well then," Zazm replied calmly, "everything is set."
Toreth blinked.
"…What?"
Zazm continued, unbothered.
"We need new gear and AMI marks for frontline soldiers—especially those defending territories outside our control," he said.
"That is correct."
Toreth nodded.
"Yes."
"It wouldn't be an issue," Zazm said, "if I'm the only one fighting."
The realization hit Toreth like a physical blow.
He stood up again, eyes blazing.
"Have you lost your mind?" he snapped.
Zazm shook his head once.
"I'm the strongest individual on our side. I can teleport instantly anywhere. It takes me one second to erase entire armies."
Toreth laughed sharply.
"And if an Omega-level threat appears?"
"We won't know," Zazm replied.
"I refuse," Toreth barked. "This is idiotic."
"I haven't finished," Zazm said.
Toreth stopped.
"I won't be alone," Zazm continued. "Nova. Miwa. Other elite soldiers. Squads composed only of the strongest."
He looked directly at Toreth.
"If none of them die, we won't need replacement AMI marks or gear."
Toreth sat back down heavily, holographic chair forming beneath him. He leaned back, rubbing his face.
"This is insanity," he said.
"This entire plan is anchored to you. If something happens to you, everything collapses. Humanity won't have time to respond."
Zazm's expression didn't change.
"I'm not the only anchor," he said. "Nova and Miwa will hold the field if I fall."
Before Toreth could respond, Zazm spoke again.
"I also have a solution to your fifty-year problem."
Toreth looked up sharply.
"I'll provide a space where time flows differently," Zazm said.
"When fifty years pass inside it, only five will pass in the main universe."
Toreth's eyes widened.
"I can't reduce it further," Zazm added, raising his fingers slightly. "Five years is the limit."
He lowered his hand.
"So, Supreme Commander Toreth," Zazm asked calmly, "what will it be?"
For a moment, there was silence.
Then Toreth laughed.
He laughed hard—raw, unrestrained. The sound echoed across the chamber, bouncing off the holographic projections. He laughed for a long time.
Then he stopped.
In a single motion, he stood, crossed the distance, grabbed Zazm by the collar—and slammed him into the wall.
The impact shook the room.
Toreth's grip tightened, knuckles white. His face was inches from Zazm's.
"Five years," he said, voice low, trembling with something dangerously close to fear and pride intertwined.
"I'll build this colossus in five years—no matter the cost."
His eyes burned.
"So don't you dare let humanity fall."
He released Zazm abruptly and turned away.
The doors slid open.
Toreth walked out without looking back.
Zazm remained where he was, standing perfectly still—emotionless—watching Toreth leave.
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