The Predecessor Civilization's consciousness entity vanished into ash inside the sacrificial facility.
Meanwhile, in his office in District 25, Jonas was recalling what had happened.
"I remember I was about to call Celine and Beigong Ling over to help deal with it, so we could trap the Predecessor Civilization's consciousness entity inside Dorothy's body and sacrifice them together. But in the end, it seemed Dorothy's consciousness held it back. That was what made the sacrifice succeed. Otherwise, we would've had another brutal war on our hands."
Jonas sat in his office chair and tapped his pen against the paper.
At the very end, when the Predecessor Civilization's consciousness entity tried to escape, it could no longer spare any attention for Dorothy. It struggled with all its strength to break out of her body, only for Dorothy, who had awakened, to trap it herself. That brief delay as it tried to escape left it unable to get away, and in the end, it could only be sacrificed.
During its war with the Zerg, the Predecessor Civilization had originally intended to trap the Zerg and sacrifice them, just as had happened now. But the Zerg had outmaneuvered it, leaving the sacrifice incomplete. Its people could only become beings caught in the interstice between the third and fourth dimensions and fall into slumber. Before they slept, however, they had created a plan called the Forerunner.
They had left behind the Predecessor Civilization's Technology Tree, waiting for suitable people to acquire it. Through those people, they would sacrifice this world's civilization once again and become true fourth-dimensional beings.
To perform the sacrifice, the designated offering certainly could not be oneself. Only a handful of people qualified, and the Predecessor Civilization's consciousness entity had no humanity whatsoever. So when it saw Jonas taking Celine and