Ch.143143. Burn Everything to Ashes

160 Hive Commanders, who are superior monsters and commanders, were assigned approximately 4,000 humanoid mid-level monsters and about 1,000 various auxiliary troops.

Eight hundred thousand and sixty. Excluding roughly 1 million low-level monsters, it’s no exaggeration to say that a land army—equivalent to a modern corps—of 160 units is being deployed.

Since this plan could completely obliterate humanity’s future, the deployed forces are carefully selected elite troops, and the command is directly executed by the Hive Mind itself.

Therefore, preliminary operations before implementing such an important plan with massive investment of high-quality resources were essential. Following the Hive Mind’s instructions, various incidents began to occur.

An explosion in a warehouse where combat robots and androids were in standby mode vaporized more than half of the 2 million mechanical troops. Harmful substances were added to meals, causing numerous cadets and people to suffer from minor stomach pains, diarrhea, and in severe cases, seizures.

To cut off external connections, an artificial psychic storm was deployed to cover satellites, blocking all communications and movement, thus completing the preliminary operations.

Now, it’s time for the direct offensive.

Monsters leaped through space via warp markers meticulously distributed throughout the satellite, arriving at designated positions.

Thanks to pre-hacked CCTV systems, they could monitor population flow in real-time, verify personal information, and determine deployment positions and ratios based on threat levels. The first action these monsters took upon arrival was—

Naturally, to throw the streets into chaos with synchronized gunfire, then systematically move to slaughter all humans on Titan satellite.

By deliberately equipping large numbers of firearms that produced loud, far-reaching gunshots and firing indiscriminately, they plunged all of Titan into chaos—a place housing not only cadets but also approximately 90 million local residents.

Of course, massacring 90 million people with 800,000 troops would be extremely difficult. Their role was primarily to destroy facilities essential for war, starting with broadcasting stations, communication centers, and military academies, and to kill combat personnel while they were unarmed.

Under the superintelligence of the Hive Mind, they carried out their assigned tasks with almost mechanical precision. Among these forces were engineer monsters tasked with facilitating the transfer of reinforcements.

These engineers, carrying heavy equipment and various materials instead of weapons and ammunition-fuel, began assembling pre-fabricated machine parts. All across the planet, these engineer monsters were handling machines of identical design but varying sizes.

As time passed, the components being assembled by these engineer monsters gradually took their final form—metal-framed platforms embedded with rings.

In other words, space connection gates, commonly known as dimensional doors.

Dimensional doors installed throughout the planet were powered by energy requisitioned from nearby power plants and began bringing in countless monsters.

The first to enter were the so-called “seeds of monsters”—almond-shaped, crimson objects about 2 meters long, half-covered in flesh, which serve as the foundation for monster facilities and the beginning of monster terraforming.

Simply by placing these seeds on the ground, they automatically extended roots to nearby power plants, spreading flesh throughout the facilities to secure energy supply. With this energy, they sent roots deep into the ground—connecting with entities hidden thousands of years ago at the boundary between the mantle and outer core.

These hidden entities were colossal monsters with fluid bodies, placed there when they left Titan to ensure they could take control of the entire satellite at any time.

Having extended parts of their bodies like roots throughout the satellite, these entities activated upon receiving the reactivation signal from the seeds. Using energy they had been absorbing from within the planet, they initiated rapid terraforming.

They extended gas tubes to the surface, expelled massive amounts of toxic gas for quick and efficient cleansing, then began discharging flesh through these tubes. Just one day after they started releasing flesh—

All civilization on Titan’s surface was reset, leaving only flesh-covered land, underground organic mines, and countless monsters produced underground.

After 10 days, when the monster population exceeded approximately 1 trillion—

The psychic storm covering Titan dissipated, and the news that a satellite in humanity’s sacred Solar System had fallen to monster invasion shocked the entire galaxy.

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“…What?! How could this happen?! Why are those things in the Solar System?!!!”

First, the Human Federation Congress literally fell apart.

All representatives retired, taking responsibility for the monster invasion and occupation in the Solar System. The political landscape that had been mainstream until now was thrown into complete disarray, creating political chaos dozens of times worse than the Weimar Republic before Hitler.

The congress established amid this situation produced the shocking result of the ruling party holding less than 2% of the total seats. Nevertheless, all representatives were resolute regarding Titan.

“The plan to use the ‘Armored Moon’ against Titan satellite has been approved!”

“The extinction weapon, seismic bombs, are now being moved for surface deployment!”

By any means necessary, the monsters on Titan must be annihilated.

With this mindset, the Federation Congress dispatched the Solar System Defense Fleet with extinction orders targeting Titan satellite.

Naturally, the first to move under these extinction orders was the Armored Moon.

This massive vessel, named for its appearance of being armored like a moon, was originally designed to protect the entire Solar System by moving around with its built-in warp function, but this time was different.

The Armored Moon deployed its main cannon from within and calibrated its output to “surface peeling” before firing an ultra-high-output laser at Titan. The laser circulated across the satellite’s surface, cleanly stripping away the surface layer.

However, since there had been several cases where monsters survived and operated underground—even within the mantle—this couldn’t be the end of the extinction order.

Therefore, while no monsters were visible on the planet’s surface, tens of thousands of capital ships gathered and positioned themselves at regular intervals—

“Deploying now!”

They released building-sized seismic bombs, authorized only under extinction orders, completely turning the satellite inside out.

While even ships in space reported minor equipment failures and injuries from the explosion’s aftermath, the state of the satellite directly hit by seismic bombs was predictably catastrophic.

With Titan’s surface completely covered in lava like ancient Earth, the incident itself was concluded, but the problems were just beginning.

Since humanity’s publicly proclaimed safest region in the universe had been temporarily occupied, economic crises that would make the Great Depression seem trivial erupted on planets everywhere, and the political landscape collapsed.

But what hurt the Human Federation most was the severe damage to its prestige.

In the recently established Galactic Federation, humanity’s previously almost certain leadership began to falter. Various alien species and pirates, who previously wouldn’t dare touch human fleets out of fear, began to act provocatively.

While an ordinary space nation would attack another power to demonstrate its deterrence and restore prestige… humanity couldn’t do that now.

If the Human Federation, whose justification for leadership in the Galactic Federation was protection from external threats, attacked alien powers like those very threats, the risks would be too great.

A misstep could result in losing both legitimacy and causing the Galactic Federation to disintegrate, potentially losing everything built up in an instant.

As for monsters, which could be attacked with minimal political risk—in the past, 2,000 years ago, humanity might have attacked monster territories to reclaim them, expanding territory and restoring prestige, but the current Human Federation cannot do so.

To understand why, we need to briefly look back at the past.