Novel Full Chapter 894 - 894: Phase I
Six months later.
A full half-year of intensive planning, negotiations, amendments, and rework inside the Conclave’s VR, translating to over a decade’s worth of accelerated time, finally bore fruit. The final plan, after countless revisions and compromises, had been unanimously accepted by all participating civilizations. Every representative, regardless of their status or influence, walked away satisfied with the outcome, marking a rare moment of total consensus in Conclave history.
Yet, during this time, the empire had not remained idle or overly focused on diplomacy alone. It had worked in parallel, quietly and efficiently, laying the groundwork for the implementation phase. By the time the final plan was ready, the empire had already amassed a massive stockpile of mana stones, enough to power the creation of the first round of wormholes across the Conclave. Alongside that, thousands of tower stations had been preassembled and were ready to deploy.
More significantly, the empire had taken a bold initiative: it would provide basic VR access devices to over half the population in the soon-to-be-connected territories. Free of charge. Absorbing the full cost. This aggressive rollout was designed to break the traditional slow-adoption curve, using sheer ubiquity to make the devices indispensable almost overnight. Once enough people integrated them into daily life, others would follow naturally, socially, economically, and logistically, compelled to adopt or risk falling behind.
These devices came in multiple inconspicuous forms, glasses, bracelets, necklaces, watches, even behind-the-ear pieces, and more, each operating on a modified access method that allowed connection to the towers through mana. Unlike earlier VR tech, which relied on bulky headgear or proximity hardware like glasses, these sleek accessories worked by enhancing and syncing with the user’s mana signature. This innovation replicated the natural ability of the Zelvora to interface with tower networks simply by attuning to a certain frequency, albeit in a more universal form.
Supporting all of this was a vast mobilization of human personnel, millions of trained government workers, prepped and ready. Their initial responsibility would be overseeing the construction and operation of wormhole gateways and signal towers. For the first year, they would manage the early stages full-time before transitioning into stabilized weekly shifts once the systems reached maturity and the second-phase automation protocols could be activated.
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“Looks like we underestimated their production power,” the Zelvora representative muttered, eyes locked onto the sprawling hologram in front of him. The data feed, synced to the observation sensors of their ship, displayed an immense cargo fleet, ship after ship, stretching far into the void, hauling the empire’s pre-produced infrastructure meant for the first wave of installations.
They were currently stationed in a seemingly barren region of space. No nearby stars. No planetary systems. Just the endless silence of the void. The closest star systems were three light-years out in each direction, forming a perfect triangle with Earth and Proxima Centauri. The new nexus, what would soon become the core of all inter-civilizational travel, sat at the third point, the critical keystone of this grand triangle. Its future connections would link the empire to the broader Astral Conclave and redefine travel across known space.
When the representatives received the absolute coordinates for this site, the top fifty delegates were stunned. Not because of the location, but because of the how. As far as they were concerned, no one had shared the knowledge of how to derive coordinates usable for wormhole opening, a procedure they were sure no one had provided to the empire. For a moment, suspicion turned to alarm. Had the empire somehow cracked Trinarian secrets?
That fear dissolved once Masimbi reminded them of a detail most had overlooked or dismissed: Xalthar. The rogue who started the entire chain of events. His ship had been the one that first transmitted coordinates leading to Earth. It stood to reason that the empire had gained the needed knowledge through conversations, in return for offering improved prison conditions and extracting data from his captured ship. A perfectly reasonable cover story. Logical enough to settle everyone’s nerves.
“If they can produce that many devices in such a short time… and their mines can output this volume of mana stones…” The Zelvora rep trailed off, watching the subtle glow of golden mana signature radiating from the cargo fleet. Even from this distance, he felt invigorated by the sheer density of ambient mana in the area, rising simply due to the massive reserves of raw stones aboard those ships. The amount dwarfed even their initial mana stone exchange. The implications were staggering: the empire’s mines weren’t just vast, they were deep and rich.
Their original plans, carefully crafted, built around keeping the empire in the dark about the true value of mana stones, had been quietly upended. The wild card had been played. And it was a trump.
Yet, even as one strategy collapsed, another, perhaps more lucrative one, rose in its place.
Yes, the empire was about to learn the true worth of mana stones far sooner than intended. But in exchange, every member of the Conclave was gaining access to something just as valuable: a permanent wormhole highway. More importantly, they were also getting access to the imperial economy, where they could earn END (the empire’s currency) in staggering amounts through this new infrastructure, then convert that to mana stones legally and effortlessly.
None of them were regretting the shift in plans anymore. Not when the trade-off was this good.
He then glanced at the clock. The scheduled time had finally arrived.
As if responding to his gaze, the sensors flared to life, recording an enormous spike in spatial activity. In an instant, fifty colossal wormholes, each tens of kilometers wide, began to open in space, one after another in rapid succession.
The sight was marvelous. Even the Trinarians, pioneers of wormhole technology, had never dared to open gates of such scale. To them, it was an impractical waste of mana unless absolutely necessary. But the empire had no such limitations. They wanted them this large, to allow fleets, not just individual ships, to pass through side by side without hindrance. It was over-engineered by design.
As the swirling gates stabilized, a small group of cargo ships approached each wormhole, not to pass through, but to deploy. From each, large mechanical pieces were ejected into space, resembling massive curved segments of a ring. These pieces were precision-engineered to clamp onto the edges of the wormholes from both ends.
To an outsider, the machines surrounding the wormholes might appear to be responsible for creating them, but their true function was far more nuanced. These devices were control rings, meticulously engineered to serve dual purposes. First, they acted as shield generators, safeguarding the wormholes, controlling passage through them, and forming a critical last line of defense. Second, they operated as mana interfaces, expertly channeling controlled streams of mana into the gates to stabilize and maintain their operations indefinitely.
The process didn’t stop at fifty.
It was repeated twice more, until each member civilization of the Astral Conclave had a dedicated, empire-connected wormhole. Each one stabilized, each one outfitted with its own ring system.
And yet, this was only the beginning.
The floating wormholes, adorned with luminous structures, now scattered across space like ethereal beacons, would not remain unguarded for long. The empire had already set plans in motion to construct space stations at every wormhole established within the Conclave territories. These stations would act as toll and security stations controlling the traffic going through those intranational(within a single nation) wormholes.
At the heart of it all would rise the main nexus station, a colossal mega-structure designed to encompass and manage all international wormholes. Towering above the rest, it would serve as the ultimate regulator of interstellar traffic
With the framework established, each civilization’s fleet advanced toward its designated gates. Alongside them traveled cargo ships laden with additional mana stones and ring components, tens of thousands of imperial human personnel assigned to oversee and spearhead the projects, and the shipment of VR tower systems destined for installation on the target star systems.
Once ready, they passed through their assigned wormholes, crossing into the territories of the various civilizations, ready to initiate installations on their end.
Left behind was the imperial military, a formidable force of over fifty million soldiers strong. Their mandate was clear: to safeguard the nexus and swiftly respond to any unauthorized activities emerging from the open wormholes. This was despite the presence of each civilization’s own security forces stationed on the other side of their respective wormholes. Redundancy, in this instance, was not considered a flaw; it was deemed an absolute necessity.
The plan had finally transitioned from theory to implementation.
The first phase was now underway: the goal was to establish wormholes and install VR towers on key star systems. Only once that groundwork was stable would the second phase begin, the construction of the orbital stations, and the expansion of the wormhole highway and VR infrastructure across more regions.
The empire knew what was coming: chaos, upheaval, transformation. And so, the rollout would proceed in stages, allowing each civilization time to adapt to the magnitude of these revolutionary technologies phase by phase.