Gate World

"Attacked? What happened?" The cluster leader was first taken aback, then wary.

The deployment near the star had been a contingency measure. Its activation meant that contingency had occurred, but now the entire contingency force had been wiped out. The cluster leader could not help but think, That star system has been retaken by the Holy Wom Empire.

This was a major matter. Logically, the Holy Wom Empire should have found it difficult to defeat the focusing array, because light traveled far too quickly and a star's energy was so immense. If it had won, then the Holy Wom Empire must have deployed some special new weapon on the battlefield.

That in turn raised questions such as whether this new weapon would affect the current war, or whether it might pose a fatal threat to the species.

However, the cluster leader's tense imaginings quickly subsided after hearing the answer from a fellow member.

"The focusing array struck the gate, and the gate activated its self-retaliation mechanism."

"...They didn't know about the gate's self-retaliation mechanism?" the cluster leader asked.

"They knew, but we never knew where the boundary lay. In the past, even gamma-ray bursts produced by black hole bombs failed to trigger the gate's self-retaliation mechanism. They assumed stellar focusing would not trigger it either. After all, the gate is made of neutron-degenerate matter, which can reflect electromagnetic waves one hundred percent. Logically, it should not have been judged as an 'attack' by the gate..."

The fellow member answering sounded helpless. They had known that attacking the gate would invite retaliation, but what exactly counted as an "attack"? There had never been any specific standard. It was far too vague.

According to the Collectors' understanding, neutron-degenerate matter could reflect electromagnetic waves one hundred percent. Since its atomic nuclei were packed