Chapter 285: It Is Worth It

In a certain star system, composed of a red dwarf star and several gas giants, ice giants, and rocky planets.

Countless ships were stationed in this star system—millions of them, both large and small.

This vast fleet of assorted vessels was divided into two distinct factions. Not only were their stations different, but the design and style of their ships were also completely unalike.

One of these fleets was none other than the Harville Civilization, which had once clashed with Li Qingsong in the Lyra G16 Star System.

At this moment, all the ships of the Harville Civilization were stationed around a massive rocky planet, but they remained entirely in space, making no move to extend their forces to the surface.

All industrial facilities on the surface belonged to the Black Mountain Civilization.

Endless streams of robots, remotely controlled by the Red Dog AI, swarmed like ants, constructing one factory after another. They produced a veritable mountain of materials, which were then transported via space elevators to resupply the Harville Civilization’s fleet.

These basic resources sustained as many as 150 billion Harvillers.

By now, the Harvillers had completely withdrawn from frontline production work.

They had dedicated nearly all their energy to study and research.

Hundreds of thousands of large space research stations and millions of smaller laboratories dotted every corner of the space around the rocky planet. Billions of Harville researchers spent their days immersed in a sea of numbers and symbols, never needing to worry about shortages of materials or consumables.

Sustaining the Harville Civilization’s entire existence—their lives, studies, and research—as well as the immense task of warship production, required a truly astronomical amount of resources. The two sides had previously reached an agreement allowing the Harville Civilization to maintain a fleet of no more than 200,000 warships.

And now, this astronomical quantity of materials was provided entirely by the industrial system of the Black Mountain Civilization, the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity.

Moreover, Haimo Lan knew that the materials supplied to his civilization constituted only a tiny fraction of the Black Mountain Civilization’s total industrial output—not even a tenth of it.

The majority of their industrial production was distributed throughout the rest of the star system.

Within the gas giant, inside the Ice Giant Star, on the dwarf planets, among the space transport fleets, and upon the other rocky planets…

At this moment, the entire star system seemed to be filled with fleets crisscrossing space, and every planet appeared to be covered in factories.

Under this unimaginably vast industrial system, Warship after Warship was produced. Shipload after shipload of Interstellar Mines poured out of the factories. Countless satellites, Missiles, and components were loaded into the Space-Air Carriers.

Even Haimo Lan was stunned by this unimaginably immense industrial capacity.

It was an industrial capacity even greater than what Human Civilization had displayed back in the Lyra G16 Star System!

‘So this is the industrial capacity of an Intelligent Mechanical Calamity…’

A feeling of envy and jealousy inevitably arose in Haimo Lan’s heart.

‘If only our civilization could possess such a vast industrial capacity, what would we have to fear from humans…’

But it was just a passing thought.

He knew all too well the price one had to pay to have all this.

Only by sacrificing a civilization’s future, feeding it to a sapient AI as nourishment and completely surrendering the civilization’s destiny to the AI’s control, could a conventional sapient civilization hope to cultivate an AI so intelligent that it could truly manage an entire industrial chain.

This was a price that not a single Harviller could accept.

‘Thankfully, thankfully, we’ve now reached an agreement with the Black Mountain Civilization. We can wield the industrial power of an Intelligent Mechanical Calamity to a certain extent without having to pay that price.’

‘Our civilization and the Black Mountain Civilization… we truly are a match made in heaven. We have sufficient intellect, and the Black Mountain Civilization has sufficient industrial capacity. Humans, let’s see you win now!’

‘When the time comes, if everything goes smoothly, we’ll be able to capture 10 billion human prisoners. And that number of prisoners will be enough for us to submit as “evidence” in exchange for a reward. Then, our civilization will still have a chance of advancing to a Gravity Civilization…’

‘Once we ascend to the Gravity Level, we can use our technological superiority to turn around and destroy the Black Mountain Civilization. We’ll obtain the complete source code for the Red Dog AI, and after modifying and upgrading it, we might just be able to integrate it into our civilization’s main AI. By then, even if we aren’t an Intelligent Mechanical Calamity ourselves, we’ll still have a chance of possessing an industrial capacity equal to one.’

‘So many hardships, so many setbacks, even losing a full half of our civilization’s population… as long as the outcome is good, all these sacrifices will have been worth it.’

‘Now, it’s time to take the first step of this plan.’

Haimo Lan took a deep breath and opened a communication channel with the Black Mountain Civilization.

“Your Excellency, Red Dog, our civilization has completed the initial phase of digesting and absorbing the technical data you provided. We can now begin development work on a new type of Energy Shield based on this foundation.

“The technological foundation from you, combined with the intellectual concepts from us, will surely merge to create an Energy Shield with superior performance, one that can neutralize Human Civilization’s trump card.”

“Very good. You have 30 years. After 30 years, our combined fleet will set sail.”

“Yes.”

…

「Lyra G16 Star System.」

More than ten long years passed. During that time, two billion Clones worked in shifts day and night, tirelessly restructuring and optimizing. Finally, the work on the overall design, material development, and equipment R&D for the second-generation Unified Force Field system was complete.

Li Qingsong felt as if a lifetime had passed.

The new type of hard drive Li Qingsong had been researching was only the size of a fingernail. Even including the data-reading and power-supply equipment, the entire unit was only a few square centimeters.

But a single hard drive like this could store up to 1 petabyte of data.

And now, the hard drives storing all the R&D data and code for the Unified Force Field system were piled up like mountains, filling an entire Supercomputing Base.

The sheer volume of data was immense, but the critical part was that all the different data sets had to align perfectly, coordinated and matched with strict precision, with each responsible for a different functional area. The complexity was so high that an ordinary Strong Core Civilization, even dedicating its full effort, could never have developed it.

Even if several Strong Core Civilizations joined forces and managed to brute-force its development, the number of failures and bugs would be unacceptably high and fundamentally impossible to eliminate.

Only a Cloning Calamity like Li Qingsong—capable of simultaneously controlling billions of brains in real-time, with perfect synchronization and coordination, and without any communication costs, errors, internal friction, or misunderstandings—could possibly have developed it.

Now, it was time to actually manufacture it.

The two billion Clones, just freed from over a decade of continuous, mind-bogglingly vast data and code processing, immediately turned around and entered the factories.