Chapter 165: Ultimate Destruction

To answer the burning questions in the command center, the closest operational probe to the sun began attempting to magnify its optical feeds.

Even without magnification, the anomaly within the sun was visible to the naked eye. That specific area was exceptionally bright, flaring white like an overloaded solar prominence. Yet, on the standard displays, nothing physical was visible, the blinding white patch seemed to appear out of thin air.

“Zoom in again!” Jason commanded.

The astrophysics team immediately executed a series of commands, switching the telescope’s polarization and cranking the magnification. At this extreme zoom, they could only view a minuscule fraction of the sun’s surface.

Finally, humanity saw the anomaly: a tiny, pitch-black dot on the screen, plummeting rapidly toward the solar core under the crushing weight of gravity.

“Increase magnification by a factor of ten!” Jason ordered.

The scientists were already adjusting the instruments before he even finished speaking. After pushing the optics to their absolute physical limits, humanity finally saw what the black dot actually was.

A… neutron star fragment!

It emitted absolutely no light, making it stand out as a perfect silhouette against the blinding solar backdrop.

Eight small, metallic spheres were spinning rapidly in orbit around the fragment. They seemed completely oblivious to the sun’s unfathomable heat and pressure, operating as if they were in the cold vacuum of space.

No human had ever seen a neutron star fragment up close, but judging by the extreme gravitational shearing acting on the surrounding plasma, there was no other explanation!

Its diameter was a mere ten meters, yet calculations indicated its density was roughly one hundred million tons per cubic centimeter.

Hearing about such things in theoretical physics and witnessing them with your own eyes were two entirely different experiences. This was… weaponized stellar debris!

Jason’s eyes burned, his throat suddenly dry and scratching. Such god-like technology actually existed in this universe?!

What exactly were those eight little spheres? Even the crushing pressure of the sun’s core couldn’t melt them! What were they doing?!

As the tactical mainframes ran frantic simulations, the scientists quickly decoded the mechanics of the neutron star fragment.

Even submerged in the sun, the eight metallic spheres were actively performing their primary function: containing the neutron star. They generated a field that strictly prevented the fragment from releasing its own energy outward, but it did absolutely nothing to stop it from absorbing external matter.

Caught in the fragment’s terrifying gravitational pull, massive amounts of solar plasma were surging wildly inward, compressing and being swallowed by the neutron star. The blinding white light they had seen was the friction of the solar matter aggressively compressing as it was dragged into the gravity well.

Bizarrely, the fragment itself remained pitch black. The eight spheres continued to suppress its energy emissions, trapping all light and heat inside. Aside from its gravitational pull, it was a one-way street, it only consumed; it never released!

It was an outrageous, terrifying display of power!

The entire command center was dumbfounded. People trembled, their hearts pounding in their chests. They felt a profound sense of helplessness, like primitive cavemen witnessing a thermonuclear detonation…

As the fragment absorbed more solar matter, its mass increased. As its mass increased, its gravitational pull grew exponentially stronger, which in turn accelerated its absorption rate.

Everyone watching felt their scalps tingle. It was a profound mix of existential dread and absolute awe!

Science had reached a level so magnificent it was difficult for the human mind to even process.

After inheriting the legacy of The Precursors, humanity was now witnessing the handiwork of a second, unimaginable super-civilization: the architects who had forged this neutron star fragment. It was impossible to say who was more technologically supreme.

The scientists simply couldn’t comprehend how the absorbed solar matter was instantly being converted into a neutron state. Logically, a ten-meter fragment shouldn’t possess enough gravity to sustain neutron degeneracy pressure on its own… Did those eight metallic spheres somehow generate an artificial pressure field comparable to the core of a full-sized neutron star?

It had to be. Only an artificial pressure field of that magnitude could restrain the fragment from violently decompressing while simultaneously crushing the absorbed matter into a neutron state!

As it gorged on the sun’s mass, it grew. Its density remained constant, but its physical volume steadily expanded. Simultaneously, the immense gravitational interaction was rapidly dragging the fragment down into the deepest layers of the solar core.

The deeper it sank, the denser the surrounding matter became, and the faster it fed.

Soon, the fragment plunged directly into the sun’s core, vanishing completely from the probes’ optical feeds.

But everyone remained on edge, holding their breath. They had no idea… what the operational limits of those eight metallic spheres were.

Jason exhaled a long, shaky breath. To witness such a cosmic spectacle… he honestly felt that dying right now wouldn’t be a waste. He had become entirely numb to the fear of death, and looking around, he suspected the rest of the crew felt the same.

Technology had reached the realm of gods!

Unable to visually track the fragment, the scientists collapsed into their chairs and began frantically compiling theories. Only by recording and analyzing every scrap of telemetry could this become a valuable asset for the future.

Assuming, of course, that humanity had a future.

“We have never seen a theoretical model like this,” one astrophysicist muttered. “A supernova artificially triggered from the inside out by a parasitic neutron star fragment… it’s breathtaking!”

“I wonder how massive the fragment will grow before it hits critical mass.”

“I wonder how long those containment spheres can withstand the internal pressure?”

The crew discussed the mechanics fervently, momentarily forgetting their own impending doom. Witnessing such an astronomical miracle injected them with a strange, euphoric rush; their eyes had been opened to the true scale of the cosmos.

Compared to this level of engineering, the Viridians’ planetary-sized spaceships were practically garbage!

No one believed the Viridian Empire possessed this technology. Then again, human technology was even more primitive; they hadn’t even been able to scratch the Viridian ship.

“I wonder who was more advanced? The architects of this weapon, or our Precursors?”

“If they were on the same technological tier, then the Noah should be able to survive this supernova!”

“That’s a fair point…”

Listening to the scientists debate, Jason’s lingering sentimentality faded, and his confidence in the Noah inexplicably solidified.

In standard astrophysics, a supernova explosion is what creates a neutron star. But here, the process was entirely inverted: a neutron star was causing a stellar explosion. It was a phenomenon never before recorded by human science, sparking intense academic frenzy.

There are many classifications of supernovae, but typically, only massive stars—those with at least nine times the mass of Earth’s sunmare capable of a natural core-collapse supernova (Type II).

(In a natural cycle, when the hydrogen in a massive star’s core is depleted, it can no longer generate enough outward radiation pressure to balance its own immense gravity. The core begins to collapse inward. This violent compression causes the core’s temperature and pressure to spike dramatically, eventually igniting the fusion of helium.

The helium fuses into carbon, generating a new wave of radiation pressure that temporarily halts the collapse. The core expands and cools slightly, resulting in an onion-like structure: an outer shell of hydrogen fusion, and an inner core of hotter, denser helium fusion.

Once the helium is exhausted, the core collapses again until the carbon ignites, fusing into even heavier elements. This cycle repeats, with each successive collapse halted by the fusion of the next heaviest element at increasingly extreme temperatures and pressures.

The star becomes a layered sphere, with each shell relying on the thermal output of the layer beneath it to stave off gravitational collapse. Each deeper layer burns hotter and faster than the one above it.

This chain of heavy-element synthesis inevitably stops at nickel-56 and iron. Iron fusion absorbs energy rather than releasing it. If the star is massive enough, the iron core will eventually exceed the Chandrasekhar limit. At this point, electron degeneracy pressure is no longer sufficient to support the core against its own gravity.

The star suffers a catastrophic collapse, triggering the supernova.

During this event, the core can collapse inward at velocities reaching 70,000 kilometers per second (roughly 0.23c). If the original star’s mass was less than twenty solar masses, the crushed remnant becomes a neutron star. If it exceeds twenty solar masses surpassing the Oppenheimer-Volkov limit, the core continues to collapse indefinitely, tearing a hole in spacetime to form a black hole.)

But this impending “supernova” was entirely artificial, triggered by a parasitic fragment!

No one knew exactly how the physics would play out; they could only hypothesize. There were two primary theories:

First, the neutron star fragment would reach a critical mass where its own gravitational pull permanently shattered the hydrostatic equilibrium of the sun’s core, forcing a premature stellar collapse and the subsequent supernova.

Second, the eight super-tech containment spheres would eventually fail to contain the exponentially growing pressure. The moment they snapped, the fragment would explosively decompress, obliterating the star from the inside out.

It would likely be a combination of both.

“It seems neutron stars are the ultimate stellar assassins,” Jason remarked in awe. To weaponize a neutron star was truly god-like. Dropping a fragment into a host star instantly generated a supernova with a kill zone of 25 to 50 light-years. It was a weapon of mass destruction beyond human comprehension.

“…Yes, but a neutron star can only destroy so many stars,” an astronomer chimed in. “Every time it consumes a star, its mass increases. After a few deployments, it would inevitably exceed the mass limit and collapse into a black hole.”

“True.”

The optical feeds showed the sun was now behaving incredibly erratically.

As the fragment at its core gorged itself, its localized gravity spiked. The solar matter plunging into the gravity well was being accelerated to near-light speeds. When that matter impacted the fragment, it should have triggered a catastrophic detonation.

Yet, the resulting kinetic energy was being completely suppressed by the eight metallic spheres. From the outside, the sun simply seemed to dim.

It was the eerie, deliberate calm before a leviathan strikes. Even the star’s surface temperature began to plummet rapidly!

The crew watched in agonizing suspense, engaging in aimless, rambling chatter as their anxiety peaked.

“Where did these super-civilizations go? Did they all just leave their toys behind? If a primitive species finds a relic like this, it’s a free pass to becoming a galactic superpower.”

“Why did they vanish?”

“Could be a galactic war. Or maybe they ascended to a higher plane of existence…”

“Or maybe we’re just lab rats in their petri dish.”

No one knew.

The eerie dimming lasted so long that the crew eventually ran out of things to talk about. But everyone knew the truth: the longer the pressure built, the more apocalyptic the eventual release would be.

Deep within the core, invisible to human eyes, the black sphere fought against its restraints.

As the fragment expanded, the eight metallic spheres were pushed to their absolute limits. Their orbital velocity accelerated faster and faster, blurring until they approached the speed of light!

The more matter the fragment consumed, the more violently it rebelled. Like a caged beast unwilling to be bound a second longer, the dense core began to violently thrash against its containment field.

The sun relentlessly fed the beast, pumping endless mass and energy into the fragment, accelerating the inevitable.

In a fraction of a microsecond, one of the metallic spheres shattered.

Exactly 0.001 seconds later, the remaining seven spheres violently ruptured!

The fragment was not a naturally formed neutron star; without the spheres, its own mass was insufficient to maintain the extreme degeneracy pressure required to keep matter in a neutron state. The absolute instant the containment field failed, the suppressed, violent energy of a billion tons of crushed matter rebounded. Electron degeneracy pressure, neutron degeneracy pressure, and trapped photon radiation violently expanded outward.

The entire fragment instantly decompressed!

The apocalypse had begun.

Freed from the crushing gravity, the neutronic matter instantly expanded back into a supersolid state, and then rapidly decayed back into standard atomic matter. Free neutrons decayed into protons and electrons, releasing an incomprehensible wave of thermal energy.

Simultaneously, the vast gravitational potential energy stored within the crushed nuclei burst outward, infinitely amplifying the shockwave.

In that moment, the sun flared with such blinding intensity that the rest of the Milky Way seemed to dim in comparison. It became the most brilliant, terrifying object in the galaxy!

A catastrophic wave of gamma radiation erupted outward at the speed of light, indiscriminately scouring the entire Solar System.

In a matter of seconds, the sun released the total energy it would have normally burned over several billion years!

At 3 minutes and 13 seconds, the vanguard probes near Mercury instantly vaporized. Mercury itself lasted only a few seconds under the thermal wash before its crust boiled away and the planet was reduced to a cloud of interstellar dust.

At 6 minutes and 1 second, Venus followed suit, completely eradicated from existence.

At 8 minutes and 19 seconds, the shattered asteroid fields that were once Earth and the Moon were swallowed by the expanding ocean of pure light.

At 12 minutes and 40 seconds, the apocalyptic wave finally reached Mars. With a silent flash, every orbital probe was reduced to subatomic ash. The main screens inside the Noah’s command center instantly went black.

Mars was flash-baked into a global magma ocean in a matter of seconds, its sun-facing hemisphere boiling off into space.

Hidden directly behind the planet, the Noah braced for impact. The artificial shielding on its hull immediately began to glow white-hot and melt. The Martian bedrock beneath the ship liquefied into a sea of lava, and the spaceship effectively floated on the molten tide.

Finally, the sheer kinetic and thermal force of the blast overwhelmed Mars’ structural integrity. The planet violently shattered. The tidal wave of magma enveloping the Noah was instantly flash-vaporized.

For the first time, the Noah was entirely exposed to the unshielded fury of the supernova!

But the ship didn’t disintegrate. Instead, it began to accelerate!

When light strikes a surface, it exerts a physical force known as light pressure. As the remnants of Mars were blown away, an unfathomable tsunami of photons, neutrinos, and high-energy particles slammed directly into the Noah’s hull.

Because the vessel was constructed from the Precursors’ impossibly low-density materials, it possessed a massive surface area but relatively little mass. It acted exactly like a balloon caught in a hurricane!

The exotic purple hull didn’t melt under the billions of degrees of heat. It didn’t fracture under the crushing kinetic impact.

It perfectly shielded the last remnants of humanity.

Propelled by the endless, blinding light of their dying star, the Noah was violently pushed outward, its velocity skyrocketing…

Accelerating until it approached the speed of light!

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