The ruler of the Colossus Nation hovered in the depths of outer space, like a silent giant beast.
But the scene within his sight was anything but silent.
The depths of space resembled a giant beast's gaping maw. Tens of millions of warships gathered at the star-map coordinates, their engines spewing faint blue flames and forming a steel torrent. Energy matrices flowing across the hulls lit up with crimson radiance, like countless bloodshot eyes staring fixedly at the unknown void rift in the darkness.
When the jump engines activated simultaneously, the entire starfield twisted into a liquid prism. Countless silver blades of light cleaved through the spatial barrier, and the fleet transformed into a meteor swarm before plunging into the chaotic vortex. An eerie hum came from the depths of the void, like the whisper of an ancient god, or the wails of countless souls. Quantum waves shook the warships' shields, raising ripples of energy across their surfaces.
In the early stages of the Void Expedition, this was a standard investment project. Its energy and material consumption would reach a level painful even for a Level Three civilization. But once the project achieved a breakthrough, the benefits it brought would be enormous. Whether dimensional technology, spatial technology, or the yields from void exploration, all of them would cause a civilization's wealth to rise rapidly.
In a civilization war, the civilization that mastered the Void Expedition was also the civilization with the longest reach.
Among the Anti-Insect Alliance, the Void Dwellers were unquestionably the strongest in spatial technology. Beneath them were the Colossus Nation and the Space Empire.
The Space Empire even had "Space" in its name. Its spatial exploration technology was self-evidently powerful, and it was also the only civilization whose interstellar territory extended across three star zones.
As for