Chapter 704: Unknown

**Chapter 704: Unknown**

The radiance of three stars intertwined in the void, forming an eternal storm of light.

This was the core region of the Tentacle Tree Civilization’s plane.

The stellar density was absurdly high, dyeing the surrounding cosmic space an unnatural bright white.

Millions of stars were so close that their immense gravities pulled and tore at one another. Prominences stretched into tongues of flame spanning millions of kilometers, slowly twisting and licking one another in the cold vacuum like burning behemoths probing each other.

Three starships emerged simultaneously from spatial teleportation states from different directions and rendezvoused at the outer edge of the three stars’ combined gravity.

The hulls were entirely pitch-black, without serial numbers, insignias, or even the slightest unnecessary decoration.

Thick, irregular absorbing materials covered their exteriors, swallowing all the dense stellar radiation around them and refusing to leak even a trace of reflection. All three ships were relatively small, comparable in size to standard escort vessels.

Yet in this region torn apart by stellar storms, their engines remained suppressed at the lowest cruising power, their hulls gently swaying amid violent gravitational tides.

They resembled three withered leaves pushed along by currents—fragile, as if they could be torn apart at any moment.

The flagship’s encrypted communication channel was established the instant they rendezvoused.

Three light screens lit up simultaneously, revealing three faces with bark-like cracks and deep furrows.

They were the Supreme Consul who had fled ahead of time, Furnace Core the Planetary Governor of the homeworld, and the former Director of the Tentacle Tree Civilization Academy of Sciences.

All three trees maintained calm expressions. Even after such a massive upheaval in their lives, they still preserved their most basic composure.

“Furnace Fence has indeed surrendered.”

Furnace Core narrowed his crystal eyes slightly. His tentacles tapped lightly on the edge of the control panel, his tone carrying a hint of mockery.

“From the moment he said ‘preserve the civilization and race,’ I knew he wouldn’t hold out.” The Academy Director’s voice was hoarse. “He was never someone who could harden his heart. Ask him to watch civilians die and he would hesitate. Ask him to press the button releasing nerve gas and he would still hesitate.”

“If we told him the true stockpile of Divine Armaments, he would only think we had gone mad.”

“There is no need for him to know now.” The Supreme Consul slowly unfurled his tentacles. His canopy swayed gently, casting large patches of shadow.

“Let him lead those surrendered civilians in survival. It will conveniently tie down that monster for us.”

The three trees fell silent for a moment.

It was not sentimentality. The nutrient fluids flowing through their bodies had long since washed away such superfluous emotions hundreds of years ago.

They were confirming each other’s hidden cards.

Behind Furnace Core hovered two small escort ships carrying the core technical team he had evacuated early from the homeworld Academy of Sciences, along with the complete reverse-engineering database for the Divine Armaments.

The Academy Director had brought the backbone of the entire high-energy physics department and three prototype energy emitters dismantled from the laboratory. The Supreme Consul had the fewest people—only a dozen or so veteran personal guards.

Yet the star charts, plane coordinates, and escape routes he controlled were the most complete among the three.

“Compared to the entire civilization, this manpower is far too little,” the Supreme Consul spoke first. “Even if we find an undeveloped habitable planet, restoring our civilization with our current population and technical team would take at least four hundred years… and that doesn’t even account for rebuilding the colonial industrial system.”

“So from the very beginning, this was never about ‘starting over.’ Besides, with that monster present, hiding in this world means we would eventually be discovered.”

Furnace Core let out a low chuckle. His tentacles traced an arc in the air, his crystal eyes reflecting the overlapping blazing light of the three stars outside the window. “We need to leave this plane and find a new one.”

“…But not now. Not fleeing like stray dogs with our tails between our legs.”

He suddenly raised a tentacle and pointed at the main screen.

“Before we go, we need to give that monster something to keep it busy.”

On the screen, at the outer edge of the three stars’ intersecting orbits, a small, unremarkable satellite hung quietly near the edge of a gravitational equilibrium point. It was grayish-brown, rocky in texture, with a diameter of less than three hundred kilometers.

In this core region where stellar storms intertwined, it was so insignificant as to be nearly worthless, as if it could be torn apart by the immense gravity of the surrounding stars at any moment.

Yet in the deep scan data Furnace Core pulled up, the satellite’s internal structure was pulsing with an extremely faint but incredibly stable frequency.

“Is it this satellite?” Furnace Core’s voice carried clear excitement. “Are there really over a hundred Divine Armaments sealed inside this satellite?!”

“I have no reason to deceive you. According to the investigation, over a hundred Divine Armaments were indeed concentrated and packaged together, stuffed entirely into a single satellite.” The Academy Director took over.

“This intelligence was known only to me and the Director. Even other members of the Supreme Command had no right to access it.”

“That’s why I had you choose to sacrifice the entire planet directly rather than expend the reserve life force. Those life forces were originally meant to be used here.”

“Activating each Divine Armament requires vast amounts of biomass.”

“Over the years, I secretly transferred sealed life force storage tanks from various colonies through multiple channels. They are all in the cargo holds of our three ships—enough to simultaneously activate over a hundred Divine Armaments.”

Listening to the former Academy Director, the Supreme Consul’s crystal eyes slowly swept across the grayish-brown satellite on the screen.

Then, his canopy swayed gently.

“Over a hundred Divine Armaments… quite the nice gift. That monster already has to go all out against just one.”

“If these things weren’t so dangerous, perhaps we could have reclaimed our civilization with them alone!”

“But it doesn’t matter anymore. Let him taste the flavor of a hundred at once. Even if it can’t kill him, it will be enough to tie him down for a long time!”

The three trees’ tentacles rapidly tapped across the controls, quickly locking in the drop coordinates for the life force storage tanks.

“Enough for us to find another plane.”

“Enough for us to change places and start over.”

The three ships ended communications almost simultaneously.

In the next instant, they split up and streaked toward the grayish-brown satellite.

The ships hovered above the satellite. Cargo bay bottom plates slowly opened, exposing neat rows of life force storage tanks to the stellar illumination. Each tank was roughly the size of a small starship, with semi-transparent deep-green shells. Thick liquid inside churned and flowed slowly. The massive life force contained in each tank was equivalent to the total vegetation biomass of an entire colonial planet across one complete growth cycle. The combined cargo holds of the three ships held over a hundred such tanks.

The storage tanks detached from the cargo bays and drifted slowly downward along the satellite’s weak gravity.

The moment the first batch of tanks struck the satellite’s surface, their semi-transparent shells burst apart.

Deep-green liquid splashed in all directions and rapidly seeped into the grayish-brown rock layers.

Immediately afterward, the satellite’s surface began to crack.

Power erupted from within, forcibly prying open the rock strata from the inside.

Over a hundred Divine Armaments, forcibly suppressed in dormancy, simultaneously sensed the presence of biomass energy and began struggling to awaken from their deep sleep. More storage tanks fell in succession.

Deep-green liquid flowed across the surface and rapidly permeated downward under the pull of some unknown force.

Cracks spread outward like spiderwebs in geometric progression.

The three trees stared fixedly at their screens, ready to disengage at any moment.

As the cracks across the entire satellite grew denser, the edge of the first Divine Armament slowly emerged from the depths of the rock strata.

The familiar dark-gray armor reflected a metallic sheen under the intense stellar light.

The external armor of the warframe was beginning to light up bit by bit—the precursor to activation.

The three trees excitedly waved their tentacles upon seeing this and prepared to press the spatial jump button to leave.

Then, the anomaly occurred.

All three starships—along with every tentacle tree inside them, every piece of metal, and every encrypted communication channel in transmission—vanished from the universe in the same instant.

It was not that they had left via spatial jump. Instead, the entire ships began to disintegrate evenly at the molecular level, after which even their most basic particle states were directly erased from the physical system by some force.

The final image captured in Furnace Core’s crystal eyes was of the original rock formations above the satellite’s surface abruptly vanishing, revealing the Divine Armaments clustered together inside.

The way those Divine Armaments were bunched together gave him an ominous premonition.

But he had no time to react. His consciousness was erased along with his body.

At the exact same moment.

The hundred-plus Divine Armaments that had just emerged from inside the satellite were all activated.

Their shells lit up simultaneously upon sensing the intense high-energy fluctuations around them. Dark-red pulses flickered and crossed in the void. The nearest warframe raised its right arm, seemingly preparing to release some weapon.

But in the next instant, most of its arm along with its core vanished.

Immediately afterward, precise attacks landed on every single Divine Armament almost simultaneously.

The attacks did not originate from a single point but were launched simultaneously from hundreds of different spatial angles.

It was as if an entire invisible fleet had surrounded the satellite in the void, yet this “fleet” leaked not a trace of energy fluctuation.

The warframes’ energy cores were pierced through, weapon interfaces were severed, and drive units exploded from within.

Fragments had barely flown a few meters before subsequent precise follow-up strikes reduced them to even finer debris.

Over a hundred explosive flashes of fire appeared almost within the same millisecond, then extinguished at the same time.

The hundred-plus Divine Armaments were completely destroyed before they could launch a single proper attack.

From the moment the three starships were erased to the complete destruction of the hundred-plus Divine Armaments, the entire process took less than a single breath.

Finally, silence returned around the satellite.

All that remained were over a hundred clusters of slowly expanding warframe fragments drifting soundlessly in the never-ending radiance of the three stars.