The more he studied the Fixed Star in the Ruins, the stranger it seemed.
Ordinarily, once a Fixed Star began to age, shouldn't it rapidly expand into a Red Giant?
Then the Red Giant would explode, shed its outer layers, and become a Neutron Star or a Black Hole.
But that was only under normal circumstances.
There was another possibility: a Fixed Star could begin to age, but the pressure inside it would be too great for its outer layers to expand. It would slowly exhaust its Nuclear Energy, then keep contracting until it became a Black Hole.
Yet the Fixed Star above him showed no sign of shrinking.
Either it was still this large after contracting, or something was holding it up and preventing it from contracting at all.
If it was the former, that was one thing. If it was the latter, it was terrifying.
After flying toward the Fixed Star for a while, he couldn't help slowing down.
At a distance of around forty million kilometers from it, he had spotted a planet.
That discovery meant the Fixed Star wasn't this size because it had already contracted. It had never contracted at all.
A planet too close to a Fixed Star would be swallowed, and forty million kilometers was already close to the limit.
If this Fixed Star had contracted, there was no way a planet could exist at that distance.
"What's keeping this Fixed Star from collapsing under the pressure of its core?"
After thinking for a while, he flew on.
This was only an Avatar anyway. Even if it died, it wouldn't matter much.
Before long, he was just ten thousand kilometers from the Fixed Star.
From here, he could make out some details on its surface.
Many areas had cooled into rocklike ground, but