Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 375: Nightmare of the Planes
"Weakness? Where is it?"

The survivor responded: "Since you have obtained this communicator, it means you have fought with the Planar Nightmare and found our spaceship."

"Its weak point is where you found the spaceship, the part of its body near the junction of the Plane Nightmare and the black hole."

"That's its weak spot. If you destroy this part of its body, you can kill it."

It just so happened that Chen Ming had carefully observed the appearance of the Nightmare of the Plane before, and was able to construct its appearance in his consciousness.

Of course, the location of the Shining Civilization's spaceship can also be marked on the body of the Plane Nightmare model in his consciousness.

The place where it intersects with the black hole can be said to be the thickest part of the Nightmare of the Plane.

It doesn't seem to make people want to attack, and coupled with the intimidation of the black hole itself due to its proximity to the black hole, Chen Ming didn't think it would be a weakness before.

He also didn't think that the survivors would lie to him about their sincerity, which could be easily exposed.

So we can basically believe that this is the weakness of the Nightmare of the Plane.

I never thought that the part of the body that looks the fattest is actually its most vulnerable part.

"I see. Let me try it and contact you later."

Chen Ming was about to end the call when another message came over the communicator: "Wait a moment."

"We have informed you of our existence. Could you please tell us what kind of existence you are?"

"We want to know the difference between your civilization and ours. We don't need to be too detailed, just give us a basic understanding."

Chen Ming wondered if there were any nouns or adjectives in the language of the Shining Civilization that could describe the empire.

"We are a democratic country, or civilization, with humans as the main species. You can call us the Human Empire."

"When we were developing the ruins of your civilization, we knew that you were an imperial civilization. You should be able to understand what I said."

In the past six months, Chen Ming also went to the Shining Civilization Research Institute to learn the language of the Shining Civilization, and of course he also learned some relevant knowledge about them.

In particular, the knowledge that the Shining Civilization was actually an imperial system left a very deep impression on him.

After all, this is indeed a bit unbearable.

Because the Shining Civilization calls itself Shining, not the Shining Empire.

As for the human side, it is clearly an alternative democratic system with centralized military power, but they call themselves an empire.

It is hard not to be impressed by this contrast.

The survivors didn't seem to pay much attention to this and quickly replied, "Yes, we can understand."

"What about you? What kind of existence are you in your civilization, and what is your relationship with the human empire?"

Chen Ming thought about it for a moment and said, "I want to ask you this question as well."

"We are just a group of hundreds of survivors with only very basic social relationships. I am just a person with some social skills, so I am here to communicate with you."

In the survivors' responses, "human" referred to the Shining Civilization's own species, so Chen Ming directly translated it into an easy-to-understand metaphor.

After noting down their responses, Chen Ming responded to this question in the same way: "I am one of the top psykers in the human empire."

"As for the relationship with the Empire, it is a friendly cooperative relationship."

"Partnership?"

As an imperial civilization, Shining seems to have some difficulty understanding what the empire is all about.

"In a civilization with a democratic system, management of some aspects is more relaxed, and not all psychics have to serve the ruling class."

The survivors seemed unable to accept this situation. After all, the disadvantages of letting psychics run wild were obvious.

"Here, psychics are equated with the ruling class. Our emperor is the most powerful psychic. Only the most powerful psychic can suppress other psychics and prevent them from making mistakes."

Chen Ming asked in return: "Aren't you afraid that the emperor is not capable enough? Or that his virtue is not worthy of the position?"

The survivor said again: "Every powerful psychic has a learning ability far beyond that of any ordinary person. The ability of a psychic who can become an emperor is definitely worthy of his position."

"Moral issues are definitely not shackles that restrict His Majesty the Emperor."

Chen Ming had no interest in arguing with them about ideological and political issues, so he just threw out a question that he thought might be interesting.

"So is there an emperor among your small group of several hundred people?"

There was silence on the other end of the communicator.

He was silent for a long time, obviously choked by Chen Ming's question.

An emperor of a Shining Civilization is indeed worthy of respect. No matter what kind of person he is, as long as he can maintain the Shining Civilization through his skills and power, he is a capable person, or at least impeccable in terms of his ability.

However, the emperor of a small group of several hundred people mentioned by the survivors themselves is simply a huge joke.

Chen Ming was just pointing at them and scolding them.

Whether they have an emperor or not, it's a ridiculous situation.

Yes, it's a joke.

No, they have even given up their own system, so what qualifications do they have to criticize the political system of the empire to which Chen Ming belongs.

The survivors also understood this, so they gave in and said, "We are very sorry. We have rudely offended your system."

Chen Ming himself was not interested in this topic, so he did not pursue it too much.

“I hope we can coexist peacefully instead of fighting over unimportant things.”

"Yes, that's how it should be."

"Then let's talk later."

Chen Ming put away the terminal and looked out the porthole which was at the highest point near the black hole.

The director of the psychic power institute beside him immediately asked, "What should we do?"

"First, go check if the information is true, then pass on the news about the survivors of the Shining Civilization. I'll take the communicator."

"it is good."

The director of the psychic power institute had no objection. Anyway, Chen Ming had the final say on all mechanical-related things that he had touched. It was useless for anyone else to say anything.

Chen Ming spent some time compiling the document, recording the entire process of his investigation and discovery of the spacecraft of the Shining Civilization, and his discovery of the survivors.

After the director of the Psychic Institute had looked it over and found no problems, Chen Ming directly sent a copy of the document to everyone in his address book who was qualified to see it, and let them sort it out themselves.

By the way, Chen Ming also turned off the terminal directly to avoid being disturbed by anyone when he was doing things later.

When the news of the survivor was announced, there would be at least a row of people who would call him.

Chen Ming put away the terminal and asked the director of the Psychic Institute, "Do you want to stay and watch the follow-up?"

"It's not my job to research the Shining Civilization anyway, so I'm not in a hurry."

Chen Ming nodded and gave orders to the Queen of Insects to organize a new main fleet.

He roughly estimated the combat effectiveness of the Planar Nightmare, and finally decided that it should be enough to get three hundred Zerg battleships.

The newly reorganized main fleet appeared near the highest point soon after.

After showing his face, he entered the phase space with the Supreme Point, lurking in the phase space, preparing for another raid.

At this moment, within the black hole's event horizon, the situation of the Plane Nightmare did not seem to have changed much compared to before.

The huge wound that almost penetrated half of its body caused by Chen Ming's Zerg fleet and various weapons' concentrated fire attack has disappeared, and the injuries on the back of its body have almost completely recovered.

It seems that all the black hole matter that overflowed was reabsorbed by it.

This monster really has a very strong recovery ability.

However, the impact was not significant. Chen Ming's target this time was not the previous wound, but its fat belly that was stuck near the exit of the black hole, probably the abdomen.

The Zerg fleet in the phase space was slowly approaching. The director of the psionic department suddenly whispered, "These ships seem..."

"what happened?"

"It feels like they are a little different from the ones you sent before."

"Correct."

Chen Ming admitted: "I changed some of the weapon distribution."

The weapons originally carried by the Zerg were all weapons he intended to use for testing.

In the first wave of testing, Chen Ming has basically determined the effectiveness of most weapons.

So, taking advantage of the time he had just had to contact the survivors and prepare for a new Zerg fleet, Chen Ming specially created a batch of new weapons that had been useful in the test results just now.

On average, it was installed on half of the 300 battleships.

As for the remaining half of the spacecraft.

What Chen Ming installed was a new focused arc launcher that he had replicated after studying the principle of the focused arc launcher. The time that had just passed was enough for him to thoroughly understand the technology of this thing.

This has increased the total number of concentrated arc launchers by hundreds of times.

It can only be said that Chen Ming always felt that this weapon had great potential, but it lacked a suitable combat environment.

Therefore, he planned to test the applicable environment of this somewhat special weapon.

Fortunately, the target hasn't exploded yet, so we can test it again.
It was precisely because Chen Ming's Zerg fleet now had some unified weapons that the Minister of Psionic Energy felt that the fleet seemed to be somewhat different from the chaotic situation just now.

After the explanation, Chen Ming continued to lead the Zerg fleet closer to the location where they had previously raided from the phase space.

Somehow, the Nightmare of the Plane seemed to sense the danger again.

This gift, which belongs to psykers and psionic creatures, can tell him that danger is coming, but it cannot enable him to deal with the danger.

Its limbs were waving wildly, and the cracks were constantly tearing at the surrounding space, but without direct contact with the phase space, it had no way to tear apart the barrier between the two spaces.

Chen Ming even had the time and leisure to adjust the firing timing of each weapon according to the distance of each Hercules in the fleet.

Ensure that every round of ammunition, energy bullet or energy beam fired by a weapon, as well as any form of attack means, can hit the target at the same time.

Try to take it down in one go, without giving it a chance to fight back.

The Zerg consciousness in the Zerg warships are connected to each other through a hive mind, so there is no problem in doing this.

It took less than a minute for the Zerg fleet to arrange the time to open fire.

The Purgatory Rays began to gather energy, and the other energy weapons began to show signs of charging.

All live ammunition weapons opened fire earlier than energy weapons. When the live ammunition that almost formed a steel wall in the phase space hit the Nightmare of the Plane and tore the Nightmare's gelatinous skin.

A red ray, accompanied by hundreds of purple concentrated arcs that seemed to be able to illuminate a black hole, bombarded the wound torn by the live ammunition weapon almost without any time difference.

It penetrated through the fat body.

The Nightmare of the Plane, which had originally turned to defend itself because it sensed danger, froze in its tracks, but did not stop.

Its body... its corpse, was thrown out with inertia and separated from the half of its body that was stuck in the black hole.

The activation of the Zerg's Hercules class directly cut it in half, and the lower half of its body was directly sucked into the black hole.

The upper half of its body twitched a few times, and black hole matter flowed out from the gap.

A gravitational storm immediately arose within the black hole's event horizon.

Chen Ming immediately used psychic power to teleport himself into the event horizon of the black hole. The psychic power released dimensional power to block the surrounding space, restraining all the black hole matter ejected from the corpse, sending it into the phase space, and sending it to the Origin Galaxy at the other end of the wormhole.

Although only half of the Plane Nightmare's body was left, he still had to ensure the integrity of the body to prevent the remaining half from falling into the black hole like the lower half.

He still has a use for this body.

The gravitational surge in the event horizon gradually subsides.

Chen Ming also returned to the highest point and said to the director of the Psychic Institute: "It's solved. There is no problem with the intelligence. That is its weakness."

"Let's continue talking to the survivors...wait."

Chen Ming's movements suddenly stopped because he noticed that on the sensor at the highest point, the position of the wormhole that brought him here was undergoing unprecedented changes.

It's moving.

It is no longer pulled by the black hole's gravity, but instead travels to other galaxies like a spaceship.

"This……"

Chen Ming and the director of the psychic power institute looked at each other, and it was obvious that neither of them understood what was going on.

This strange situation made him alert.

He immediately released his psychic energy to investigate what was happening on the other side of the wormhole, and also observed the situation at the other end of the wormhole.

However, Chen Ming did not sense any special situation, nor did he find any changes on the other side of the wormhole.

But the wormhole seems to be just moving, and the nearest galaxy in the direction of movement seems to be a galaxy with somewhat dim stars.

At the current speed of the wormhole, it would take at least a few days for it to reach that galaxy.

Chen Ming gave him that feeling and he could come back later to see the result and see what would happen.

"Let's continue talking to the survivors."

Since Chen Ming said so, the Minister of Psychic Power certainly had no objection.

Chen Ming also took out the terminal he had just closed and sent a message: "The Nightmare of the Plane is dead, and the information you provided is correct."

The communicator replied quickly: "Okay, then in your opinion, have we demonstrated our sincerity?"

"No problem. I can have some trust in you."

"So, how do you want me to show my sincerity?"

The survivor seemed to have thought of a solution and said, "We can trade."

"You know our situation. Our ancestors came here to avoid some unknown things, and because of the nightmare of the plane, they can no longer return to their original world."

"We don't know what happened in the past tens of thousands of years, nor do we know exactly what kind of existence you are."

"So we can trade some information."

"Use your information and the information of tens of thousands of years that have passed to trade with us."

"We are the remnants of the Shining Civilization. We have many things that we can use to trade with you."

That sounds like it should be fine.

The survivors hold the resources left behind by the Shining Civilization, and it is normal for them to use these resources to trade for information that they cannot obtain.

Just as Chen Ming is actually very curious about the survivors of the Shining Civilization, it is reasonable for them to be curious about human civilization.

And they also said that they couldn't return to their original place because of the Nightmare of the Plane.

It would be the same even if the Nightmare of the Plane had been killed by Chen Ming.

Because after Chen Ming killed the Nightmare of the Plane, Chen Ming became the person who might threaten them.

They can only hope to get more information from Chen Ming.

Then Chen Ming definitely couldn't just tell the news directly, he couldn't just go ahead with the deal like that.

Transactions between civilizations are definitely not just transactions; there are too many things involved.

He couldn't make the decision alone.

So he has to hand this matter over to someone capable.

After thinking about it, Chen Ming responded: "This matter is of great importance. I need to discuss it with the Empire."

The director of the psychic institute looked relieved.

The survivors didn't seem to be too anxious and responded normally: "We are waiting for your good news."

After the communication is completed.

This empire behind the wormhole is the universe beyond the observable universe.

In a certain dark star field, a space station is floating here.

The space station was dead silent at this time, with no signs of any biological activity.

But in a small room in the temporal part of this space, there was a communicator exactly the same as the one in Chen Ming's hand, which was lit up, and a newly recorded recording was played from it.

After the communicator repeatedly played the complete content of the communication between Chen Ming and the survivors.

A hand suddenly reached out from the darkness and turned off the communicator.

This small space station lost all its light.

This is a special hand, its skin shifting back and forth between metallic shine and rust.

Moreover, this hand seemed to have the properties of liquid metal, but it looked completely different from Chen Ming's liquid metal.

The owner of the hand said: "We have initially won his trust."

Another person hidden in the darkness asked, "How long will it take to move forward with the next plan?"

"Patience, be patient."

"The Queen is still asleep. We still have time."

Shortly after.

Chen Ming and the director of the psychic institute returned to the legion headquarters together.

Then they were taken to the Shining Civilization Research Institute together.

The main conference hall of the institute was already full of people, not only from the legion, but also a large group of familiar faces of Chen Ming, as well as people from the Empire's own research institute that specialized in studying the Shining Civilization.

As soon as they came up, they surrounded Chen Ming, making it difficult for Chen Ming to walk to the stage in the conference hall.

After sending out a new communication record, Chen Ming transferred most of his consciousness away, leaving only a part of his body consciousness here to answer other people's questions.

Anyway, the control of the communicator is in his hands, and the Empire will try every means to find the most appropriate transaction method from his transactions with the survivors.

This is the situation he most wants to see after passing back the information of the survivors.

Chen Ming's main consciousness soon arrived at the Origin Galaxy.

In the phase space here, half of the body of the Nightmare of the Plane is placed.

The area was filled with various detection devices controlled by the extraordinary people at the legion headquarters with the help of Chen Ming's power. They were testing the condition of the corpse and confirming the effectiveness of the weapons used before.

Although there are different suitable weapons for facing different enemies, these data can also serve as important references.

Chen Ming took out the results of the previous test, put them together with the results of the second test that was completed almost instantly, and compared them briefly.

The situation with the new data is essentially the same as before.

Basically, Titan-class weapons, live ammunition weapons, and arc weapons performed the best.

However, Chen clearly understood that the live ammunition weapons performed well because the situation was rather special.

Because Chen Ming has discovered that there is a layer of gravity shield on the surface of the Nightmare of the Plane, and the gravity shield has an excellent distorting effect on entities, the actual effect of live ammunition weapons will not be very good.

The reason why live ammunition weapons are useful.

That's because the Nightmare of the Plane itself is under the gravitational constraints of the black hole. It cannot control the gravity of the black hole, otherwise it would have come out long ago.

Therefore, even if the Nightmare of the Plane itself has a layer of shield that can block live bullets, the live bullets will still fly toward the vicinity of the black hole under the pull of the black hole's gravity.

The result is that the effect of live ammunition is very obvious.

The main purpose of the Inferno Ray is to send a brick flying with great force.

So in the end, the most effective weapon of all is the arc weapon.

Although the performance of arc weapons was not good at the beginning.

But as subsequent experiments progressed, Chen Ming also discovered some other damage caused by electric arcs on the body of the Nightmare of the Plane.

It can be seen that these injuries are deep and shallow, heavy and light, which is very strange, as if the damage of arc weapons is random.

And in fact, this is indeed the case.

The nature of the concentrated arc launcher imitates the arc that erupts when the spacecraft's radiation energy system is overloaded.

This electric arc can indeed penetrate armor directly, and even penetrate shields that have not completely dissipated. It is not empty talk, it can indeed cause damage.

However, the actual situation of the arc caused by this overload, or all arcs caused by this reason, are random and unpredictable.

No one knows the angle of the erupting electric arc, its strength, and whether it can penetrate directly after hitting or only hit a part of it, causing a little damage.

It is this property that causes the damage dealt by the Arc Launcher to be highly random.

When it is weak, it may not even be able to penetrate the steel plate, but when it is strong, it can directly penetrate the limbs of the Nightmare of the Plane, and even kill it directly after concentrating firepower.

So Chen Ming felt that this weapon was really one of the most valuable and most promising weapons he had ever seen.

It can ignore gravitational fields, armor and shields to cause ultimate damage.

Then this randomness becomes an acceptable problem.

Because when there are enough spaceships equipped with arc launchers, the expectation of this randomness will become more and more stable.

It can be said that it is a perfect match for the Zerg fleet, which has no shortage of numbers.

Chen Ming felt that he could ask the designer later if he had any ideas for cooperation.

I have seen the value of using the Plane Nightmare as a target.

Chen Ming's attention was focused on the value of the Nightmare of the Plane itself.

For these things that are probably considered psychic species, whether they are psychic creatures or something else, Chen Ming just happens to have a way to deal with them.

(End of this chapter)