Among the stars, the Collectors' cluster and the pursuing force of their enemy, the Bofur Hegemony, played out an interstellar version of a grand chase.
No matter where the Collectors fled, the Bofur Hegemony's pursuing force maintained its pursuit, using sacrifices to pinpoint the Collectors' exact location before launching Spiritual Domain jumps to attack them.
The Collectors, meanwhile, maintained an evasive stance. Whenever they spotted the Bofur Hegemony's pursuing force, they had no intention of fighting and immediately entered transit, vanishing into the boundless void.
After repeating this cycle again and again, the Collectors had yet to lose patience, but the Bofur Hegemony's pursuing force, as the pursuers, began to grow impatient first, faintly revealing irritable frustration.
"This is already the forty-second pursuit. These Amoebas really are stubborn. Even driven this far, they still refuse to submit."
His words were heavy with complaint, but they also carried a trace of admiration. If the Bofur Hegemony had been subjected to such pursuit and demands for surrender, they would likely have already teetered on the edge of collapse internally, with civil strife highly likely to erupt.
Yet the Amoebas they were pursuing had retreated so many times and fled for so long while remaining perfectly orderly. There was not the slightest sign of internal chaos, something far beyond their understanding.
Even the Bofur Hegemony's pursuing force had to admit that the Amoebas' collective cohesion was far stronger than they had imagined.
However, cohesion alone was useless! Time was on their side! The Bofur Hegemony's pursuing force knew full well that the damage they had inflicted on the Amoebas was real. They would not give the Amoebas much time to recover, and the Amoebas' losses would continue to accumulate.
Under the relentless pressure of inevitable defeat and death facing the entire collective, rebellion