The information exchange, completed while avoiding the Great Destruction's detection, forged a tacit understanding of kinship between the Successors and the Collectors. Each side fought desperately for the survival of its race.
Amid nebulae, near black holes, along the outskirts of galaxies—they fought from one end of a galaxy to the other.
Perpetuity did not hold back, nor did the Successors. Both sides employed every strategy, tactic, and weapon at their disposal, striving to destroy the other.
Yet the number and scale of their battles continued to grow. Even a small engagement could stretch the battlefront across hundreds of light-years.
The Amoeba organisms understood each other all too well. Thus, they knew how to exploit gaps in the other's strategy to gather matter and expand the number and scale of their clusters.
Other than entering faster-than-light travel, the Successors could not escape the Collectors through any maneuver, because Perpetuity could use the Spiritual Realm and receive its assistance.
But the Successors were not at a disadvantage either. They themselves were will, and they could command the Collectors, deciding the life and death of an entire group with a single word.
The Collectors' only chance to harm the Successors was to evade their commands through repeated instantaneous relocations using Spiritual Realm jumps before the other side could issue an order.
And if they failed, they would become nourishment for the Successors' proliferating individuals.
Just as Perpetuity and the Successors were locked in fierce battle, Huo Gu finally found a group it had been searching for desperately near a black hole.
They stopped several dozen astronomical units from the black hole and orbited around it. Keeping their distance was for safety; getting too close would let the black hole's gravity interfere with Ming's entry into faster-than-light travel.
Huo Gu took the initiative