Dawn of the Clones

"Lord of the Spirit Realm, all things come to an end. When will the end of our Bodu civilization come?"

[The Four Hundredth Cycle]

After their first contact with the Lord of the Spirit Realm, the elite class of the Bodu civilization asked this question. But the answer the Lord gave was far from what they had expected.

Four hundred cycles—four hundred rotations of the stellar ring. For an individual Bodu, that was a long time, but for a civilization, it was the same as being told it would die tomorrow.

The Bodu civilization did not believe it, nor did they accept it. But they became vigilant. Their civilization was now flourishing, blooming in full splendor, without the slightest sign of decline. Even disease had abandoned them, so the destruction could only be caused by a powerful external enemy.

Their first suspect was the Spirit Realm, since the Bodu civilization had never encountered any other intelligent species.

But the Spirit Realm was quickly cleared of suspicion, because the Bodu civilization could not understand why it would want to destroy them. More importantly, without someone from this plane guiding it, the Spirit Realm had no way of reaching their side. In the eyes of the Bodu civilization, the Spirit Realm was controllable.

So the Bodu civilization began to suspect another possibility—an unfamiliar civilization they had yet to encounter would bring about their destruction.

After that contact with the Lord of the Spirit Realm, the Bodu civilization began stockpiling power in great quantities. The scale of the United Fleet expanded further, they consciously accumulated all kinds of antimatter weapons, and actively developed new military technologies.

The second-generation Spirit Realm engine was developed during this period. By reaching an agreement in advance with a Spirit Venerable and paying flesh and blood