Across the endless earth stood giant mushrooms like Stone Pillars. Each rose straight into the sky like a towering stone tower, black stone towers standing in dense groves that stretched endlessly toward the horizon.
Ranging from hundreds of meters tall to mere meters, they rose and fell across every inch of space, squeezing its utilization to the limit. Constantly bombarded by high-energy particles from space, their pitch-black chitinous skins occasionally flashed with faint blue pulses of energy, gently throbbing like breathing.
In truth, they were breathing, greedily absorbing the gifts of the cosmos—the baptism of high-energy rays and radiation—transforming them into the energy and nutrients they needed.
At this time, giant mushrooms covered the entire planet. Their caps had opened, following the sun's position and turning with the passage of time, casting vast shadows over the barren earth.
There was not a trace of green on the ground. As far as the eye could see was desolation. Other than the giant mushrooms, there seemed to be no sign of any other life.
The planet's magnetic field had shattered into chaos. Without its protection, high-energy particles mercilessly bombarded the earth. Howling frigid winds were like Wind Blades, while endless storms formed and died away, creating enormous cyclones that plowed terrifying, savage scars into the land.
The sea had frozen solid. Endless glaciers spread out, forming peak after peak, crisscrossing like frozen waves. Vast stretches of black covered the glacier surfaces like blankets, faintly rising and writhing like living things beneath the sunlight.
Above them, a great hole had been torn through the heavens. An endless void filled the entire field of vision. At the enormous breach, stretching who knew how many thousands of miles, countless rocks of every size hung in the sky like stars.
Those fragments had once been the