Ch.194194. Supply Line Blockade

And my course of action, as obvious as it might seem, did not end with this spatial isolation.

Using the flicking of my terminal’s finger as a medium, I used my psychic power for the second time, and this time, the flow of time within the isolated space began to accelerate rapidly.

Even if more than a month passed inside this isolated space, on the outside it would be at most 30 seconds.

In other words, with time accelerated to the level of 1 day equaling 1 second, even if I dragged things out inside, it would take at most 1 year, which in external time would be finished within 6 minutes.

Even someone like me, upon first encountering this isolation space I created, would need at least several days to analyze it and several more days to destroy it, so by the time any countermeasures could be prepared outside, I would likely have already resolved everything.

Especially concerned that they might try to break through or tamper with time, I installed a field around the isolated space that interferes with time and spatial manipulation, so I decided to believe there would be no problems for the time being.

Given that I had unleashed a monstrous fleet of over 3,000 capital ships that I had left outside, they should be able to keep things occupied for at least a few minutes.

Anyway, once I was confident that I had completely blocked external intervention, I used the surveillance nanomachines I had scattered throughout the galaxy to observe the state of the world.

[Communication blocked. It appears to be completely isolated… Prime Minister.]

[…I see. Then what happened with the Nano-Tech?]

[It’s gone. Whether it teleported or not, it disappeared in an instant.]

First, it seems the Federation Congress, recognizing the extensive involvement of Nano-Tech in their affairs, has temporarily transferred all authority to the current Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister, who coincidentally had nothing to do with my intervention, appears to be trying to resolve various problems that arose when I moved Nano-Tech to my predetermined location, and as a first step, he seems to be attempting to normalize the situation.

To put it in real-world terms, it’s as if the entire first world suddenly became isolated, and most major corporations vanished with only a few exceptions, so normalization procedures would naturally be necessary.

However, I was not one to quietly observe this process. No, I didn’t even need to step in this time.

[C-Captain! The psychic dimensional route has been blocked!]

[What? Then how do we…]

[The only option is to travel at subluminal speeds…]

Originally, I had blocked movement through the psychic dimension to prevent intrusions from the outside into the isolated space, but this unexpectedly turned out to be a masterstroke.

With this method alone, humanity found 80% of their long-distance travel impossible, paralyzing their logistics.

※ ※ ※

The navigation methods chosen by current humanity could be divided into roughly three types.

The first method was subluminal travel riding psychic currents flowing in reality without entering the psychic dimension.

It takes about 5-6 hours to cross a planetary system, and if one rides the psychic currents—the cosmic ocean currents—well, one can travel to nearby planetary systems in about a week…

But naturally, these currents aren’t conveniently located everywhere they’re needed, and even with currents, a deliberate long-distance journey would take about 10 years, making this method suitable only for short-distance travel.

The second method uses an artificial passage created by a ring-shaped spatial connection device called a Waygate.

These Waygates, averaging nearly the circumference of a planet in size, are placed at major hubs and serve as the main arteries of human logistics, with thousands of ships passing through daily despite the expensive toll fees, making them extremely convenient facilities.

Of course, the astronomical cost of constructing such massive structures was prohibitive, but when the planet housing the company that monopolized this technology was attacked by monsters, the technology for creating Waygates was lost.

Moreover, existing Waygates are such critical facilities that they cannot be tampered with, making reverse engineering impossible.

So if goods move to major logistics hubs like main arteries, these goods then spread throughout the galaxy using the final and most common method: psychic dimensional navigation.

And this method is quite complicated.

First, if the coordinates of the destination are known in advance, a psychic anchor is fired along a pre-calculated route based on those coordinates and various variables, fixing it at the destination.

Once the anchor—that is, the anchor—has followed the calculated path and connected the destination with the ship, the ship enters the psychic dimension—or more precisely, a virtual dimension overlapping with it—through an engine equipped with psychic knights.

It’s the psychic dimension but not quite—a dimension formed along the path the anchor has traveled.

And in this state, by navigating back along the virtual dimensional path formed by the psychic anchor’s trajectory, one eventually arrives at the destination.

Of course, as one can see at a glance, this method is quite unstable, complex, and highly dangerous.

First, since the psychic dimension itself is so anomalous, even in a virtual dimension designed to minimize variables, it’s impossible to calculate when one will arrive.

With good luck, one might traverse the galaxy in a week, but with bad luck, traveling to a neighboring planetary system might take thousands of years, with only a hunk of scrap metal arriving. Moreover, the perceived time and actual time elapsed often differ.

In other words, it’s definitely unstable—people navigating directly might experience a week of travel only to find that 10 years have passed outside, or vice versa.

In rare cases, psychic entities as large as ships might break through the virtual dimension’s walls and attack, or the Hive Mind might detect and devour the ship.

Given these drawbacks, it would seem this method should never be adopted, yet surprisingly, it was the Federation’s primary method for long-distance space travel.

Despite the dangers and instability, this method allows travel to any destination as long as the coordinates are known, and its high versatility—being able to be initiated from anywhere—made it an inevitable choice.

Moreover, given that humanity had no other options—the most decisive factor—this psychic dimensional navigation method accounted for 80% of all Federation travel…

But with the simple countermeasure of the magnificent and great phantom thief Hive Mind Man, this method was blocked, instantly making over 80% of all logistics untransportable.

If any country were to lose 20% of its logistics transport system, it would fall into chaos, but wasn’t the Federation dependent on this transport method for virtually everything except the most critical areas?

Furthermore, the more recently colonized—that is, relatively peripheral—planets in the Federation were often structured to operate in groups of several planetary systems, each specializing in different functions for convenience.

One planetary system might be an Engineer World specialized in industrial production, another might be rich in minerals and designated as mining planets, and yet another might be filled with agricultural planets for food production.

But now that the psychic dimensional navigation method primarily used for transporting goods in these outer regions was blocked, wasn’t it essentially the same as cutting off all logistics for these places?

Being disconnected from the central government was already shocking and terrifying for these regions, but having logistics cut off was even worse.

The immediate problem wasn’t just the accumulation of finished industrial products or minerals for export, or the decline in production and efficiency due to lack of additional supplies.

The biggest issue was the food shortage on planets that had no independent food production methods.

While planets with few mouths to feed, like mining planets where a small number of humans use machines to mine vast territories, could at least run hydroponic farming using internal facilities, many more planets—especially residential planets—faced severe food shortages.

On planets that were such wastelands that food production was impossible even after terraforming, where people lived indoors in structures built on the surface, there were many mouths to feed but no way to produce food.

As a result, they had to conserve their dwindling food supplies until logistics transport normalized.

They were truly pushed into the most extreme of extreme situations.