Lower civilizations explore rules. Higher civilizations exploit rules. God Civilizations rewrite them.
For beings that stood at the level of God Civilizations, mathematical principles and physical laws were nothing more than editable parameters. There were no universal constants that could not be altered. Any individual from such a civilization, acting casually, could create or erase galaxies with technological weapons alone. Even the birth of a star was considered a trivial task, something an infant could accomplish.
All it required was two hundred quintillion tons of hydrogen, dispersed across space, accelerated into a nebula, then forced to collapse into a stellar embryo before being ignited with a nuclear explosion. A newborn sun would form naturally. To God Civilizations, this process lacked any real technical difficulty.
And now, multiple God Civilizations were acting together against a single individual.
No matter how it was analyzed, even if that individual were a sentient black hole, survival should have been impossible.
Yet the civilizations that launched the attack did not feel reassured.
Through countless observation methods, including sophon-based surveillance, they watched the target undergo spatial dimensional reduction within the universe. The being was terrifying beyond calculation.
He wore what appeared to be a form of advanced battle armor, one that generated an invisible force field around his body. According to the joint analysis of the observing civilizations, the force field functioned similarly to a curvature engine. It compressed space ahead of him and expanded space behind him, enabling faster-than-light travel.
However, his observed speed exceeded light speed by an absurd margin. This indicated that the force field was not merely a curvature engine. It appeared to involve direct modification of mathematical rules at a fundamental level.
Even so, that was not what truly terrified the God Civilizations.
What horrified them was that the being could reverse their alterations to the universe itself.
When interception outposts were dispatched to block him, both the commanders who issued the orders and the operators who carried them out died instantly, without warning or visible cause.
After repeated trials and catastrophic failures, the God Civilizations reached a conclusion. The attacks ignored distance entirely and closely resembled weapons based on higher-dimensional space.
Just as space becomes observable in three dimensions and time in four, there existed higher dimensions where the invisible entanglement between objects became tangible. Through such entanglement, devastating attacks could be delivered across unimaginable distances.
This technology remained functional even after the universe had collapsed into three dimensions, but its energy consumption was enormous. What baffled the God Civilizations was how the target could use it repeatedly and at scale, without any apparent concern for energy limits.
A deep sense of crisis spread among them. For the first time in ages, they felt their continued existence was under threat.
This was the Dark Forest Law.
In the silent forest beyond civilization, one never knows whether a newly encountered entity comes in peace or with annihilation in mind. The optimal choice is always to strike first.
The God Civilizations, especially the Return-to-Zeroers Civilization, had not faced genuine danger for an incomprehensibly long time. The moment it was confirmed that Malrick posed a threat, they moved without hesitation.
They watched the unfolding attack with anxious focus.
Their most advanced methods had already been deployed. Mathematical rules were rewritten. Physical laws were inverted. Time was frozen. Space itself was collapsing through forced dimensional reduction.
Spatial dimensional reduction, in particular, was a universally acknowledged weapon of mutual destruction. It was unstoppable and impossible to defend against. Any civilization that deployed it would prepare for its own dimensional collapse in advance, because dimensional reduction was a chain reaction that would eventually consume the entire universe.
The difference lay in preparation. The attacker would survive as a lower-dimensional existence, while the unprepared target would perish instantly.
This ambush relied primarily on dimensional reduction. Given Malrick's history of superluminal movement, the attacking civilizations feared he might escape the affected region. To prevent this, they even altered mathematical constants to reduce the effective speed of light within the starfield.
The sequence was flawless. Even the Return-to-Zeroers Civilization would have struggled against such a coordinated assault.
Now, all that remained was to wait.
Then, through every available observation method, the God Civilizations witnessed something impossible.
Malrick glanced around calmly and lifted a finger, making a casual motion through empty space.
The universe, which had been collapsing into two dimensions, began to recover. Space reformed as though it were being reconstructed layer by layer from an invisible blueprint. Dimensional integrity returned. Anomalies across the starfield corrected themselves.
The speed of light stabilized at approximately three hundred thousand kilometers per second. The gravitational constant returned to standard values. Quantum assaults, fusion strikes, particle beams, and black hole attacks all failed without exception.
The Rose Nebula regained its original form, radiant and undisturbed, as though no cataclysm had ever occurred.
They had lost.
Multiple God Civilizations, acting together, had been defeated completely and effortlessly.
They could not comprehend it.
Negating other attack methods was already unthinkable, but reversing dimensional reduction itself defied all known logic.
"Is it a temporal weapon? We possess time-based technology as well, but even that cannot counter dimensional collapse. How did he achieve this?"
"I suspect matter and energy creation beyond conservation laws, but such a thing should be impossible."
The Return-to-Zeroers Civilization was left in stunned silence.
"Wait," one voice interjected. "If diplomatic relations were established with him, could the universe be restored to eleven dimensions?"
"That would eliminate the need to return everything to zero and restart with another Big Bang."
The suggestion was immediately shut down.
"Diplomacy can wait. Right now, we must survive whatever comes next, including the civilization backing him."
On the observation screens, Malrick turned his head and looked directly toward the monitoring instruments of the various civilizations.
It felt as though he was staring straight at them.
The moment their gazes met his dark eyes, an overwhelming pressure descended. One by one, their consciousnesses collapsed. Vitality drained away instantly.
On that day, within the Return-to-Zeroers Civilization and countless other God Civilizations, the leaders of their highest echelons died almost simultaneously.
Meanwhile, near the Rose Nebula, Malrick continued forward, restoring order and stabilizing the rules of the universe as he flew.
When it was finished, he broadcast a message across the cosmos.
He announced the fate of the Three-Body Universe, which would soon become a parallel world, to all civilizations above a certain level of advancement.
Before departing, his gaze lingered on Earth.
At that time, Earth was still in the Wallfacer era. Figures like Tyler and Rey Diaz were executing their respective strategies. Neither Earth nor the Trisolaran civilization was aware of the universe-altering events that had just occurred.
Malrick briefly considered intervening, then dismissed the thought.
"The humans of this universe have people like Luo Ji as grave keepers and Cheng Xin as false saviors. Their future will be soft and indecisive. There is little worth interfering with."
With that, he abandoned the idea of direct intervention.
He opened a spatial portal, preparing to leave the Three-Body Universe.
As he did, a new thought crossed his mind.
"Right. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner enjoy that Three-Body virtual simulation. They have played for years without clearing it. Perhaps it is time they experienced the real thing."
Technologies like the dual-vector foil held little value in the Marvel universe. Its function relied on inducing higher-dimensional collapse through lower-dimensional fragments, something that depended entirely on the unique dimensional structure of the Three-Body Universe.
In Marvel reality, lower-dimensional space was represented by the Quantum Realm, home to quantum entities and quantum gods. Higher dimensions were occupied by abstract beings like Eternity and the Celestials. Beyond that existed isolated dimensions ruled by entities such as Dormammu, Shuma-Gorath, and Setorak, realms governed by entirely separate rules.
Introducing the dual-vector foil into such a system would only result in its assimilation, reducing it to nothing more than a pocket space.
However, many other technologies from the Three-Body Universe remained highly adaptable.
Letting Tony study them firsthand would not be a bad idea.