A battle raging on the World Barrier was reaching a fever pitch. The battlefield was terrifying enough to stir up a storm across several light-years, yet ordinary races without sufficient technological prowess could not even see what was happening.
The Fallen Apostles had to shift from a Void state into a physical state before they could launch a full-scale assault on the Imperial Army within the World Barrier; otherwise, the Void environment would severely weaken their weapon systems. That was the defender's advantage. But the Imperial Army likewise could not directly strike Fallen Apostles in a Void state. Only at the World Barrier, this "Critical Point," could we affect the Fallen Apostles' Order Field. That was the defender's disadvantage. This bizarre battlefield was unlike any conventional war. Both sides fought to the death across the Concept Layer, worldviews, mathematical laws, and even universal constants. The sole objective was to destroy the order environment on which the enemy depended, disrupt their Deployment, and make them collapse uncontrollably into the real world. On this indescribable battlefield, conventional artillery had given way to mathematical-law generators and constant adjusters. "Destroyed" warships did not become twisted scraps of steel amid heat and explosions; instead, their Order Fields collapsed, and the Void instantly scrubbed them into basic information units—like a hard drive passing beneath a degausser.
"World Barrier stability has fallen to 80 percent. Light disturbances may occur in this region. All fleets, adjust defensive modes... Confirmed: local light level has fallen to 76 percent. Cosmic background radiation has vanished. The gravitational constant is being reset..."
The Shipboard Mainframe broadcast the environmental changes in the fleet's area. Our main force still hovered quietly in space, around 1.3 light-years from a dark nebula. Distant space carried a faint, dusty red hue—the lingering light and heat emitted by