The battle between Darla and the lone champion had the best effect that anyone could have hoped for. The Myceloids all wandered away after the fight was over, none of them willing to challenge the vicious woman, and the fight had drawn all of the roaming groups in the area over to watch.

What they were left with was an afternoon of uncharacteristic peace, the sort that didn't often happen on any battlefield, much less one against the Myceloids.

But the slow day gave them all the time to catch up on paperwork and get reacquainted with how things were going elsewhere in the universe.

The Koleska region had fallen almost completely calm over the last week. Max skimmed through the reports from the General on duty at the Anomaly, and it seemed that the entire species had seen mostly peace lately, with very few attacks.

It was possible that the Arisen had deemed them worthy of facing whatever was coming. That inevitably led Max back to the thought of what exactly they were thinking they would face. It didn't seem like it was the Myceloids and the greater being that they had bowed down to when he opened the Portal between layers here, but if it were them, it would make sense.

Even compared to the Arisen, these creatures were like a force of nature. There was no good way to get rid of them, and even if you tried, if it wasn't complete, Max had just seen how they could repopulate entire continents in a matter of days.

No matter who it was that the Arisen were expecting or what greater beings were backing them up, a period of no attacks so that they could train more soldiers and advance their society was good news for the Koleska and even better news for the troops that had been sent to watch the Anomaly.

Their only goal for the mission was to make it through without anything drastic happening, and they had already considered it to be a close call when Max and Nico were called away. Anything that called away their strongest warriors was enough cause for concern in their minds, and the fact that they were getting a huge number of Titan Class and Super Heavy Mecha at the same time was barely a consolation.

Without a doubt, the force inside the Anomaly at the Koleska side was the single greatest military force in humanity's known universe, able to dwarf the might of entire species, but when it came down to needing to use it in battle, the Commanders still worried that it might not be enough for whatever had the Arisen so panicked.

But on the other side of the Anomaly, where Absolution was currently wandering around in Alliance space, checking out tourist planets and helping with the construction of a few worlds which had purchased Terraforming Arrays from them, there had been a significant breakthrough.

The Innu-led design teams had made great strides in their analysis of the propulsion methods that the Arisen and Darklings were using to move through the other layer, and they were ready to send a prototype to Max and Nico to test here before they moved on to testing what was different about the layers where they were.

What they had developed was a two-part drive that they had dubbed the subspace drive and the Traction Drive. The first was for primary movement through the other layer at less-than-light speeds. That was an excellent development but limited in usefulness outside of a solar system.

But that was where the second part of the drive came into play. The Traction Drive should theoretically allow the ship to multiply its current speed well beyond the speed of light.

The technical aspects didn't concern Max. He would leave that to Nico and the others. But if it worked, they would have an option for regions where Warp Bubbles were unstable, like the one he was currently in, as well as for missions where not leaving a Warp Trail was essential to infiltration.

The fear that Max had was that the two unstable scientific rules might be related. If the use of the other layer was what had destabilized Warp Travel to begin with, then experimenting in their own home region, where nothing existed in that layer, might make it just like the one in Koleska territory, and that was not on the list of desirable outcomes.

But the testing might actually help them out here. So far, moving between planets in this region of space required direct movement through portals or anomalies since Warp Fields wouldn't stabilize in space. But there was no sign that the other layer suffered from such a restriction.I think you should take a look at

Of course, it wasn't without its own hazards, like whatever being's attention they had grabbed the last time they visited. But the probe was still there and still sending back data, which didn't include any giant monstrous beings looking to crush it to space dust.historical

That meant there was a chance that whatever that thing was had moved on, and they could safely start navigating the region.

There was really only one way to find out for sure, though, and that was to open another portal and see if it caught the attention of whatever was lurking on the other side.

Huntress Khan had reviewed the proposal, as had everyone else on the strategy team since this could affect them all if the same sort of reaction and rapid advancement happened again when they tried to enter the other layer.

"Give me a best and worst-case scenario," Khan demanded, ready to write out the notes and begin calculating the odds.

"Best case scenario, we find nothing there, and we acquire a safe and reliable method of moving between planets in the region as well as acquiring stealthy orbital data," Max replied.

"And worst case?"

Nico shrugged. "Well, I suppose the worst case would be whatever was watching us in the Koleska Territory, and the thing that noticed us here are both within sensory range when it opens, and they both get immensely upset that we're disturbing their beauty sleep."

The Huntress shuddered at the thought. Two unfathomable beings that they had no way to combat, both angry at them at the same time? That was definitely on the worst-case end of the chart.

Khan smiled at Nico. "Thanks for that outlandish scenario. It made everything else that we had thought up so far seem much more reasonable in comparison. Now, what do you think that the outcome of such a scenario would be?"

Max smirked at Nico and gestured for her to answer.

"While we were with the Koleska, we learned about the most likely reason that this region of space is so messed up and why all of the planets are reforged in new Galaxies while the cosmic dust of recently dead galaxies is still floating all around them.

The operating theory on the reason for the way this region of space is, with all its broken and shaky laws of relativity, is that two or more such beings got into a fight, and the aftermath destroyed absolutely everything."

"Hmm, I'm not sure how we can sell this to the others when [Complete Galactic Annihilation] is one of the possible side effects. Perhaps we can pretend we never heard that option."