1021 -1022

1021 - Surprising Discovery

The Zelvora mental network was currently chaotic as they watched one imperial attack after another without the ability to do anything about it, as all of the attacks pointed to the empire having planned and preemptively dispatched them years ago, and were only now being brought online.

With each attack that the empire brought online, causing devastation on the scale of a solar system at most or a planet at the least, they combed their systems for similar signatures but always ended up finding nothing. The empire came up with a new means of attack every five hours, and they kept their promise.

It had been a week, and they were starting to feel exhausted from repeating the same thing, as nearly all of their forces were forced to be on standby in case the next attack was targeted at their star system. Even if it was not them who were targeted, they were then forced to mobilize to start looking around for similar means of attack that might have been placed by the empire, not giving them enough time to rest and recuperate. 

While they were still in the middle of combing through to check for the previous attack, the next one would erupt, increasing their backlog. To anyone outside looking at it, they would realize that the empire was using an attack on a single star system or planet to force the entirety of the remaining conclave forces to move and expend their manpower and mental energy.

Together with all of that, civilizations were also forced to try and think of what other means the empire might use on them, and to try and look for them.

Although many of those endeavors acted as nothing but a waste of manpower and resources, one of them had finally shown results, as something out of the norm was finally discovered by a Zelvora military scientist. He was responsible for combing through the body data of those who had visited the empire and were forced to receive the vaccine that was mandatory, as it was required to avoid killing each other from diseases that might be no different from a cold in one civilization but extremely deadly to another.

That vaccine was the cause of the biological virus's spread that had already taken out more than seventy percent of Erythian monsters, who were expected to go extinct in the remaining three days. The week that had passed since the empire unleashed the attack was enough for the top ten civilizations to pinpoint exactly where the spread started, and they had discovered that the vaccine was the cause.

The empire had given them the chemical and atomic structure, and even a sample and the recipe of the vaccine for each civilization to look into. They also took the responsibility of producing them for their masses to take before heading to the empire. Through the scrutiny of the vaccine, nothing lethal or dangerous was discovered, which was true, as what the empire did was introduce a new chemical that caused the materials in the vaccine to undergo changes that would then be fatal to their specific target.

Immediately following the discovery by the military scientist, a meeting was called, and a meeting network was set. All those vital individuals attended the meeting taking place in the mental network, as it seemed like the empire had another avenue for using the same vaccines, but this time targeting the Zelvora. This new threat was even more deadly than the one on its way to kill all the Erythian monsters, which had already resulted in them losing more than half of their manpower.

“What the fuck is going on in their minds? What goes on in the minds of a civilization that would come up with something like that?” Those were the sentiments and questions that spread all over the private mental network meeting when the scientist finished briefing them on the potential route the empire could use to directly attack their entire civilization.

The scientist had discovered that if you introduce a few chemicals into the body of someone who had taken the vaccine, the antibodies in the body of the individual who took it would undergo a mutation. This would result in the mutated antibodies releasing a few different elements that will follow the bloodstream and mimic the way oxygen leaves the blood and goes through the blood-brain barrier through diffusion. 

Once through that barrier and into the brain, they will be attracted to specific brain tissue to combine with it and cause a clog and act as a sponge of sorts. This will act as a noisemaker for their mental network, turning anything they send out to one another into nothing but scrambled and indecipherable noise, which will be no different than killing their mental network that they relied on for many things in their daily lives. To add insult to injury, that same noise will also permeate into their mental abilities, reducing their effectiveness to less than thirty percent of their full capabilities, which is no different than crippling them.

Although at the moment it was just a theory of what the empire might be capable of doing to them, and it would need a few external chemicals to induce it, only one of those external chemicals was missing from their bloodstreams: a chemical that would act as the bonding agent, bringing everything together and triggering the avalanche that would lead to the end goal. All of those other chemicals were introduced into their bodies through different imperial products, making it obvious that the empire was more than likely aware of the attack and was ready to activate it at a moment's notice.

The only consolation for them was that the binding agent was not capable of living exposed for long, and none of it was found in any of their star systems. But none of them were consoled by the news of it at all, since it meant that the empire could just spread it during their actual invasion and weaken them moments before a face-to-face face-off, immediately taking away both their connection and most of their mental attack capabilities, which were a nightmare to deal with in a normal circumstance.

For a moment, the private mental network was filled with chaotic thoughts of people trying to come up with a good way to deal with such a situation, but none of them could come up with a possible solution. Had they not been on the receiving end of such a preplanned attack, they would have agreed it was a masterstroke of an attack, a foresight in planning, and a cunning mind that the empire had that called for marveling.

1022 - Difficult Decision

“So we are confident that they are not going to create the final bonding agent in the same way they converted some obscure chemicals into the final chemical they wanted, as they did during the attack on the Erythians?” the leader heading the meeting asked the scientist amidst the chaotic mental network, immediately silencing it.

“We can’t say for sure that there is no way for them to forcefully synthesize the binding chemical through multiple compounds, each producing chemicals which then combine to produce the binding chemical after two or more rounds of different chemicals combining. But discovering that is going to be nearly impossible, as there are more than ten thousand different chemicals in our bodies, and if you include external chemicals that enter our bodies, the number of possible mixtures increases exponentially. 

That is not counting if their synthesizing method includes the external atmosphere as a factor as well, so it is very difficult to say at the moment. We don’t have a compass pointing us in the right direction, so we will have to venture in all directions in the possibility of discovering the possible answer, but we don’t have that much time on our hands,” the scientist said, feeling the headache of knowing the problem but not having any solution on hand.

“Isn’t it limited to those who have taken the vaccine?” the leader asked.

“No, the vaccine was just the way we discovered it could be used to do that, but the same process can be done through the available chemicals in our bodies, though through a much longer and complicated route, which the empire seemed to have wanted to avoid, hence the vaccines making it easier. But that doesn’t mean they can’t do it without someone having a vaccine,” the scientist said. Although he had discovered it, he was just a few hours past the discovery, so he was still having to fill in the holes in the theories while imagining the worst-case scenario. If he ended up underestimating it and the government moved forward due to his underestimation, the fault would fall all on him when they failed and suffered heavily.

“What if we purge all of the chemicals and things introduced into our bodies ahead of time, before they are triggered to cause the problem?” someone else asked, trying to see the possibility of it.

“Unrealistic,” he answered, short and brief, not even bothering to go into a lengthy explanation that doing so risked removing essential chemicals that might cause catastrophic failure of the body. But before even doing that, he would have to tell them that their entire body is made of chemicals.

The leader touched his imaginary body's neck as he felt the stress of knowing a dangerous opening while having no capability to do anything about it at all. It was like watching a brakeless train coming to the end of the line; there was nothing you could do, leaving you to watch the catastrophe happen.

Silence followed for a few minutes before the Zelvora leader said, “Try to initiate contact with the empire,” earning him weird looks from all of those in attendance before he added, “discreetly.”

Their current alliance should have resulted in all of them being very close to each other, and it had actually happened, as they were sharing even their fighting forces. As Zelvora, they were always considered to be the rational civilization who many trusted. As a rational civilization, all of that cooperation was sent out of the window as their rationality told them that there was no benefit in remaining in the cooperation when their entire civilization was on the verge of being weakened to the level prior to their evolution, which gave them the mental abilities that brought them to their current level.

“Are we surrendering?” one person in the room asked.

“No, we are not. I’m trying to see if we can get some concessions in return for betraying our allies and aiding them in the war,” the leader said calmly, showing that he had already made up his mind.

“Why would they accept our offer when we have not managed to do them any harm over the past week, as they caused us untold damages from a distance?”

“At the moment, although they are dealing painful damages, all of them, barring the Erythian attack, are limited to single star systems. For those with thousands of star systems, they can handle the gradual loss of star systems, as it buys us time to potentially come up with a solution. But us joining them will allow them to gain internal information and even use us to misdirect the allied forces to a location where they can come and deal with them as fast as possible,” the leader answered, pausing for a moment before he added, “They can’t sustain their forces for too long, as they are expending resources that would strain even us to fight against all of the previous conclave civilizations. Now they have to fight us for more than a month, and although they can sustain it for longer, they would opt for a much shorter fight if it were available to them. That’s why they are trying to force us to surrender.”

“What if they are just playing with us?”

“What do you mean?” the leader asked the one who suggested that.

“While they were supporting Dreznor to take over a hundred star systems, there wasn’t even a hint of them suffering or straining their resources. And hours after we launched our surprise, they somehow, out of nowhere, deployed more than twenty billion avatars, and more of them kept being produced and sent to different star systems, with all of them being unique from one individual to another while looking completely new, indicating that they were recently produced. This means that the empire has a means of rapidly producing them at a faster pace than the entire Yrall coalition production line can produce. Not stopping there, we can say the same is for their fleets, which are now heading towards us at a crawling speed. So I don’t think any of our offers will be acceptable to them other than surrendering.”

“We are not surrendering, even if we have to fight to the last man, but I would be open to conceding territories and a few clauses,” the leader said after taking a moment to consider the man's words.

“Let’s hope I’m wrong,” the man's words were heard a moment later, knowing the likelihood of that happening was little.