Ch.105105. Encounter

Shortly after hundreds of colonization ships filled with massive amounts of bio-energy crashed onto Titan’s surface, I quickly took control of the entire moon by manipulating the flesh fragments—terraforming flesh—formed from the destroyed ships.

The atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s moon, is contaminated with methane and ethane clouds to a level similar to a planet polluted with toxins, with seas and rivers made of hydrocarbons—an environment where even formidable monsters would struggle to survive—

But the adaptability of my terraforming flesh exceeded all imagination. The flesh rapidly adapted to Titan’s environment, using hydrocarbons and nitrogen as energy sources to multiply and spread quickly across the entire planet.

Since hydrocarbons include petroleum and natural gas, Titan was filled with resources perfect for nourishment, allowing the flesh to multiply rapidly and transform its shape.

On the surface, flesh-trees grew in massive numbers, absorbing the methane and ethane clouds and the excessively high atmospheric nitrogen to transform the environment into something similar to Earth’s. Beneath the ground, tens of millions of root-tentacles burrowed deep into the soil, absorbing harmful substances—especially hydrocarbons—and converting them into energy.

Like cloth slowly absorbing the color of paint, the entire planetary surface was now completely covered with dark red flesh, and the atmosphere had somewhat stabilized.

And within this planet now completely dominated by flesh, operations were just beginning for mining, excavation, energy collection, and the production of various monsters and carrier-class hive ships to be housed inside the main hive ships.

Being the largest of Saturn’s moons, Titan offers abundant space, and its gravity at only 1/8 of Earth’s is useful for reducing energy consumption during operations.

However, since this moon generally has very low temperatures, I considered installing heating facilities throughout, but due to high energy consumption, I instead maximized the cold resistance of internal facilities while artificially releasing greenhouse gases to accelerate warming.

Separately from this terraforming, to prevent others—especially Earth—from discovering our current state, I deployed millions of biological satellites around Titan and used them to create a massive psychic hologram covering the planet’s surface.

While humans talking about going to Mars wouldn’t invade here anytime soon, I still concealed Titan from them.

Human space expansion must be strictly controlled by my hand—led by Nano-Tech. If humans discovered Titan’s sudden transformation, they would undoubtedly cause a commotion and venture into space earlier than planned.

If a battle with them erupted during this crucial base establishment period, we would inevitably suffer losses.

Yet I can’t simply exterminate humans, as there are countless ways to utilize them for space expansion.

What I particularly expect is for humans under my control to handle interactions with aliens who likely also have humans under my control. Simply put, I want to dominate humanity’s space expansion and use them as my alternate identity.

If my monster fleet represents a “predatory hive species incapable of communication,” then humans represent an “emerging civilized species that can interact with and oppose such predators.”

Humans would handle negotiation, diplomacy, trade, and when force cannot be openly used, the monster side would move in under the guise of an alien invasion.

When approaching civilizations that haven’t yet left their planets and have closed their doors to the outside, we could stage a scenario where monsters invade and humans defeat them, building goodwill and creating debt. And for space-Nazis that cannot be reasoned with, the monsters could simply overwhelm them with force.

Humans had sufficient value and purpose to be utilized.

Anyway, even while busily terraforming Titan, I activated facilities left on the Moon to complete a migration fleet bound for Mars, using even psychic time reversal to conceal the fact that I had been on the Moon.

After completing this concealment, I moved the migration fleet to Mars and used the biological migration ships that burrowed into Mars’ underground to secretly transform Mars into a monster lair.

I created spaces across Mars that could be mistaken for “areas protected by natural psychic phenomena,” and within these spaces, I introduced newly developed monster species to form an artificial ecosystem—while also releasing so-called “fake Martians.”

Their skin tissue is silicon-based, muscles are nitrogen compound-based, bones are hydrocarbon similar to plastic, and instead of consuming food, they absorb psychic energy produced by silicon plants in the artificial ecosystem.

Releasing these visibly alien life forms on Mars serves both for legitimate reconnaissance and surveillance, and to prevent humans from freely interfering with Mars while producing forces inside Mars that could conquer Earth should it ever escape my control.

But no matter how much I try to control humanity with Nano-Tech’s power, eventually humans will escape Earth, and human factions beyond my control will emerge.

So I changed my approach.

If I can’t control them completely, I’ll give up trying and instead only bring along humans I can definitely use as my limbs.

The concept of Nano-Tech, which would later become humanity’s first and greatest space-faring corporate nation, began with such a trivial matter.

※ ※ ※

Time passed, and I completed most of what I had planned.

At this stage, I had grown to the maximum possible—5 hive ships developed to interstellar travel capability, exactly 149 battleship-class hive ships, at least 8,000 cruiser-class ships, and countless destroyer-class and carrier-class vessels.

With enough power to surround Earth and reset its civilization with a single barrage, it was finally time to venture beyond the solar system into the sea of stars.

To prepare for contingencies, I decided to divide this force into three fleets.

First, the 1st Fleet—the “main fleet” including three hive ships—aimed to establish outposts outside the solar system by visiting planets with environments suitable for terraforming, as observed from Titan.

Meanwhile, the 2nd and 3rd Fleets were focused on exploration rather than settlement, charting unknown regions, creating navigation maps, and establishing a kind of “multi-presence.”

The planetary system where the 2nd Fleet was headed was surrounded by a psychic storm of unknown origin, and through this exploration, I might discover the cause of the storm and the secrets it concealed.

And so, the three fleets set off in their designated directions.

The 1st Fleet systematically visited nearby planetary systems, confirming the absence of life forms before immediately terraforming. The 2nd Fleet was still en route to the distant psychic storm, too far to arrive before the 1st Fleet’s bases were completed. And the 3rd Fleet moved freely according to Seia’s judgment.

Each with their own objectives, they began expanding faster than light, repeatedly folding space to move—until one day.

‘Oh? What’s this?’

Just as my 1st Fleet had completed its 17th terraforming and moved to another planetary system, near the second planet of that system—hundreds of box-like artificial objects were floating.

It was the first sighting of alien spaceships.

‘Now, how should I handle this…’

Should I immediately attack these non-standard ships that seemed confused by our presence, or should I observe them and then retreat, or perhaps attempt friendly contact?

As I accelerated my cognitive abilities to observe them with interest, at that very moment—

‘Oh? They’re attacking first?’

Ships roughly between destroyer and cruiser class suddenly rushed toward a nearby battleship-class hive ship, blasting its outer hull with frontal plasma weapons before ramming into the damaged armor.

Though initially surprised by their appearance, I had already figured out their identity by the time they charged.

A fleet partly made of products from an ultra-advanced civilization, partly cobbled together with patchwork parts—clearly more like pirates than any civilization’s regular military.

So I allowed their forced docking—boarding—which I could have easily prevented with shields or destroyed with side guns.

These grasshopper-like alien pirates who eagerly jumped into the ship’s interior were quickly dissolved by monsters specialized for internal ship combat, armed with thick psychic shields and overwhelming close-combat capabilities.

The mere pirates were overwhelmed by the sheer number of internal combat monsters pouring out from the boarded battleship-class hive ship, turning the tables as their own ships came under attack.

The battleship-class hive ship physically devoured the attached ships using tentacles or easily shot down pirate ships with laser guns.

‘—Fire.’

A volley from several cruiser-class ships obliterated all the pirate ships that hadn’t yet attached themselves—

And thus, by annihilating this pirate fleet, we made our first contact with the interstellar civilizations of this universe.

End of Part 1.5.