Ch.193193. Beginning

The exploration ship recording the SB (Space Broadcast) transmission was soon destroyed by the monster’s counterattack, but that didn’t mean the aftermath simply disappeared.

Due to the suspicious nature of that structure and how it was being managed, Nano-Tech hastily revealed that the structure was the missing research facility, but…

If everyone in this world blindly believed official statements from the parties involved, conspiracy theories and fake news wouldn’t spread in the first place.

While official organizations like the Human Federation couldn’t take action without clear evidence, what about unofficial channels?

Everyone knew this was the perfect opportunity to attack Nano-Tech, a corporation that had grown beyond a dinosaur to become a monster in certain fields. Various rumors began circulating, raising all sorts of suspicions.

Of course, their intentions were so obvious and simplistic that it backfired, resulting in companies that attacked Nano-Tech suffering from public backlash and Nano-Tech’s counteroffensives…

As time passed, the Isolated Area scandal began to focus more on the monsters there rather than on Nano-Tech, increasing the likelihood that things would end favorably for Nano-Tech.

The fear that monsters might break through the Isolated Area and attack at any moment—isn’t truth the most effective tool for fear marketing and public opinion manipulation?

Thus, defense contractors and various politicians, despite the Isolated Area’s nature remaining unexplained, excellently stirred up anxiety simply to serve their own interests.

In fact, the presence of monsters in the Isolated Area implied that the Hive Mind possessed technology to freely enter and exit these areas.

This also suggested that monsters could potentially move through space unhindered via the Isolated Area and launch surprise attacks—making these concerns not entirely unfounded, which made it even more insidious.

Unlike humans who had only recently discovered the existence of the Isolated Area, no one knew how long monsters had been aware of them, making such possibilities impossible to ignore.

Huh? Why is no one talking about the monsters tampering with what used to be the Nano-Tech laboratory inside?

Well, in this space age, it’s been long established that while monsters can’t communicate with the general public, their intelligence is comparable to computers—meaning they’re highly intelligent beings.

From the beginning, it’s common knowledge that monsters move with precision in real-time using collective intelligence and Hive Mind connections, employing tactics that make them seem like a single organism—don’t they even use psychic abilities?

In an era where all humans can use psychic abilities to varying degrees, people understand the computational power needed for psychic usage, so it doesn’t take much thought to realize that monsters with such powerful psychic abilities must be highly intelligent.

Anyway, just as the public debate was gradually causing people to forget about the Nano-Tech research facility issue, shocking news from a remote agricultural planet struck our galaxy.

A secret laboratory, apparently abandoned by Nano-Tech, had been discovered hidden deep underground.

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Agricultural Planet.

A classification in the Human Federation for planets that have completed terraforming, can produce crops on their surface, and where agriculture accounts for over 90% of the planet’s industry.

However, agricultural planets differ significantly from one another beyond their shared focus on farming.

Some planets have medieval-like societies selling expensive “medieval organic crops” grown by hand but using heavily genetically modified seeds.

Others feature numerous independent farmers who own their own land, growing crops using their preferred methods and quality standards, selling them individually—similar to common modern farming.

Some planets operate with absentee landlords who only rent out land and tenant farmers who live off their agricultural labor—reminiscent of late Joseon Dynasty Korea.

Others are owned entirely by specific corporations that use thorough research, scientific methods, and specialized seeds with mechanized equipment—similar to American grain corporations.

And some are directly owned by planetary governments or the Federation, created solely to supply food to nearby planets that cannot produce their own.

These diverse planets naturally cultivate a wide variety of crops tailored to their specific purposes.

Some use genetically modified wheat, rice, and corn that grow almost as tall as trees, farmed through fully automated mechanized methods.

Since there are always people who avoid GMOs regardless of the era, some planets practice organic farming of seemingly non-genetically modified crops for the picky wealthy.

Some supply Earth-based fruits or those discovered on other planets that have been cultivated to become edible—considered luxury items in this era.

Others provide fresh vegetables grown through hydroponics and other methods, making the variations among agricultural planets so diverse that no two are alike.

Among these diverse agricultural planets, the one housing the secret laboratory was an unmanned mechanized farming planet operated by Nano-Agri, a subsidiary of Nano-Tech.

A journalist who infiltrated this planet, which supplied food to Nano-Tech’s nearby Engineer World, exposed everything through a live broadcast.

Since most of the laboratory was damaged, the journalist used psychometry to broadcast everything that had happened in the secret lab, revealing its contents.

The content revealed through psychometry in the live broadcast was shocking enough to stun viewers.

According to the psychometric reconstruction, monsters in this abandoned secret Nano-Tech laboratory were skillfully operating equipment and conducting biological experiments on various species supplied by Nano-Tech.

In reality, they were using bodies cultivated in other laboratories without souls, but how could anyone understand these deeper circumstances from those fragmentary scenes?

Naturally, they couldn’t.

Theories began to emerge that monsters had infiltrated society and were experimenting on intelligent beings including humans, and even manipulating society from behind the scenes…

When additional evidence proving the existence of monsters hiding in human society under the name of Nano-Tech was discovered to have been deliberately buried, the situation reached a point of no return.

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‘…We’re screwed.’

After a series of setbacks so unfair they seemed impossible, feeling that thousands of years of work had vanished in an instant, I—we—sighed deeply in frustration.

‘Since it’s come to this… perhaps we should move up the schedule.’

Since I—we—would eventually have to reveal these facts and execute the final plan anyway, I tried to view this situation as simply an earlier start to something that would have happened eventually.

Moreover, the final plan for ascension had been ready to launch for hundreds of years; we were merely waiting for the right moment to ensure a more stable and certain progression.

《…Shall we begin?》

Thus, as a harbinger of the end of this puppet show that had lasted thousands of years, I connected to the completed terminal and gathered all the scattered “us” back to me.

This caused chaos in various places that couldn’t function without my direct intervention, but that didn’t matter right now.

《It’s been a while since I’ve been in this state.》

Having returned from “we” to “I,” I casually waved the terminal’s hand as a trigger to unleash my full psychic power—

Instantly, two-thirds of our galaxy—the entire official sphere of influence of both monsters and humans—was isolated from the universe through spatial distortion and severance.