An Immature Idea

Many alien civilizations, like the Behan civilization, had been affected by the Amoeba. The Behan civilization was among the luckiest; at least they had encountered the Collectors and had once had a chance to preserve their civilization.

Many more alien civilizations had never had such an opportunity. After a supernova explosion, every trace of them would be washed away.

That was reality, without the slightest hint of romance. When people were killed, they died. When civilizations were destroyed, they vanished.

The faster-than-light biological cluster that had left the Behan civilization traveled aimlessly in one direction. Because time had been short, the Collectors had built only one gravity ring.

They shared a single large gravity ring, using it to construct pipelines and filters for transferring negative matter, thereby achieving faster-than-light travel.

Since they shared the same gravity ring, the Collectors were basically within the same region of normal spacetime and remained relatively stationary. Radio communication no longer needed to be as cumbersome as it had been during previous faster-than-light cluster travel, when messenger organisms had to be sent ahead of the cluster to relay information to their kin.

Since this cluster had only been sent out to sow seeds, it did not possess many material resources and lacked everything.

Before long, the Collectors appeared inside a star system roughly thirty light-years away from the Behan civilization's home star system.

The Collectors swiftly mobilized, mining the matter within the star system before constructing megastructures and accelerating the production of metallic hydrogen, antimatter, solid helium, and more.

About a month passed before the star suddenly dimmed and began to contract violently. It then rapidly expanded, accompanied by an extremely violent explosion, and the Collector cluster fled toward other stars.

After fleeing more than forty times, a Collector individual finally grew weary of it.