Star Citizen Online: Isekai Edition

Similar holding cells were rather common across the Eternal Empire of the Asurya, especially when it came to the prisons that were supposed to hold species like Arachnids or Illithids, as both of them were hard to contain.

It wasn't just about the containment itself; one needed to contain them safely without any possibility of them breaking free from their imprisonment, harming the personnel, or creating more problems.

Arcturus knew that the Empire had even more advanced and exotic prisons that were apparently capable of securing and holding even those at the Beyonder Realm, but only those of the weaker grade.

Anything stronger would be impossible to imprison by the Empire.

In the end, the Empire was rahter young among the High-Level factions, and their foundation wasn't that deep compared to the other High-Level Star Nations and High-Level Civilizations across the Cosmos.

The Desolate Cosmos Territory was rather poor in terms of resources, and there were not many of them. Especially when it came to the resources that were viable between the Beyonders, such ones were very rare.

Even the reseoruces that were classified between the Mortal Realm and Beyonder Realm were pretty rare across the Desolate Cosmos Terriotriy, so everyone was fighting with everything they got for what little bits of strategic resources they could find in the Desolate Cosmos Territory.

The stronger factions, with more powerful Beyonders, were able to send their Beyonders into the depths of the Cosmos to gather such resources for their respective factions. Something that the Eternal Empire of Asurya was doing rather frequently as it had Keter-Class Beyonder in the form of Grandmaster Byrmellir.

Even though the Grandmaster was previously severely weakened and he didn't venture into the depths of the Cosmos for whole decades. However, when he was conducting his trips, he always brought back with him unimaginable riches due to his own power that was approaching that of the weakest Thaumiel-Class Beyonder.

Due to his Super-High Risk Primal Psyker Ability and Godslayer Sword Style, he was overwhelming even for many, many Thaumiel-Class Beoyonders. Due to this, the Empire obtained a lot of precious resources through Grandmaster Byrmellir, but that has now ceased due to his injury.

Arcturus understood that this was another huge reason why the Empire was so eager for the Grandmaster to heal completely. The number of the Keter-Class Beyonders in the entire Desolate Cosmic Territory was only so high.

It was a cruel reality that most Beyonders who advanced would leave their homelands behind to venture into the Cosmos and join more prosperous and powerful factions. This was especially true for the regions like the Desolate Cosmic Territory, where the resources were scarce.

He understood their thought process because going to somewhere where it was more prosperous meant that they had a higher possibility for advancement and more possibility for growth.

The younger the Beyonder was, the greater the chances were that they would leave.

People like Arist Byrmellir, who stayed and helped to develop their factions, were very rare, and it was only due to someone like him that the Eternal Empire of Asurya was able to become this prosperous.

"Now, please be silent for the time. Agent Mercury is beginning the process of memory extraction."

General Rathari Velot suddenly said that when Agent Mercury of the Directorate entered the holding cell, the special mode in the cell was activated.

"As you can see, when someone is in present within the holding cell, we activate the heightened suppression mode on the prisoner. In the most essential words, it basically increases the defenses that are already applied, which are increased around ten times to ensure security and safety."

All of them could see how Agent Mercury came to the bound levitating Brain Bug and used the very same Memory Extraction Skill as Arctruurus did on the Commander Warrior Bug, but the agent of the Directorate was doing it with far higher precision and expertise than Arcturus.

It was also pretty noticeable that Agent Mercury was wearing several pieces of jewelry, all of them encased with something that appeared to be a Psionic Crystal and some Runes; it was clear that these were some defense measures against the possible intrusion into his mind by the Brain Bug.

When one was performing the Memory Extraction Skill on the subject, it was better to be protected and prepared for the possibilities of the subject whose memory was being extracted of counterattacking.

The process was much longer than when Arcturus was using the Memory Extraction Skill on the Warrior Commander Bug, because this time, Agent Mercury was extracting every single bit of memory from the mind of the Brain Bug, and at the same time, he was transferring the memories of the Brain Bug into the Memory Data Bank.@@novelbin@@

From the Memory Data Bank, anyone could safely view the memories stored within the Memory Data Bank. The entire process was very swift, in fact, as it didn't take more than thirty minutes, and then the entire process was finished.

When Agent Mercury was finished with the Memory Extraction of the memories from the Brain Bug, he left the prison cell of the Brain Bug.

Now, after the most important thing was finished, the Brain Bug would be left in the Xeno Containment Unit for further experiments conducted by the Imperial Scientists, who were already very eager to dissect the Brain Bug and research its biology and powers.

Despite everything, capturing the Brain Bugs was a very rare occasion, because if they could, the Brain Bugs would commit suicide rather than be captured by the enemy forces because of how much danger it represented.

"Well... that it... now, we need to view the memories and identify all of the infected within the colony."

General Rathari Velot stated that they obtained all the information needed to clean up the entire colony of the Ziras IV properly. The memories of the Brain Bug and Psionic Tracing and the Psychic Connection between the Brain Bug and the larvae that were infecting the Asuryani within the colony were also included.

"Can we now start the negotiations regarding the price of the Pseudo Queen Bug?"

Zehal asked because previously, Arcturus entrusted a task to her, and she would carry it out perfectly and she knew that they needed to hit the iron when it was still hot. For their collective future, she needed to obtain as many benefits from the Imperial Government as much as possible.

"Well, once the Agent Mercury returns. This is out of my area of influence."

General Velot was the only leader of the Imperial Colonial Defense Forces on the Ziras IV; he was far from enough to represent the Imperial Government. Zehal wanted to squeeze them as much as possible for future development.

"Once you are done with the Directorate, you will be deployed to contain some infected Psionics and Psykers. For sure, there would be a fight, and despite everything, the imperial Colonial Defense Forces of Ziras IV don't have many powerful Psionics or Psykers to help us in the containment process. Preferably, try to capture the targets alive for further study."

General Rathari Velot said as he truly wanted to get his hands on such a specimen. This new method of the infiltration seemed to be specifically developed to infiltrate the High-Level Civilizations and High-Level Star Nations across the Cosmos.

Infiltrating the High-Level Functions was extremely troublesome and arduous even for species like Arachnids or Illithids because of their advanced technology and developed Psionics, which could uncover all of the infiltration attempts almost instantly.

Because of that, both Mind Flayers and Arachnids were constantly trying new ways how to identify other High-Level Factions. Some of these methods were outright terrible, some was alright but not that effective, and some were super effective and dangerous.

Like was the one that the Arachnids employed right now, and it resulted in the infection of the colony of the Empire. Due to the security measures and nature of the Eternal Empire of the Asurya, the Empire was much harder to infiltrate, even when compared to the other High-Level Civilizations and High-Level Star Nations that existed within the Cosmos for many, many years.

Long story short, not everyone was obsessed with the military and had armed even their farthest colony worlds, like any Imperial Bastion of countless High-Level Civilizations and High-Level Star Nations.

And because the relationships between various High-Level Factions were not often that good, as most of them viewed each other as competition or possible enemies, something like information exchange didn't really exist here.

Even in the face of apocalyptic threats like Arachnids, Illithids, or Orks.

Everyone was there for themselves.

The maximum that one could find were some kinds of regional alliances in the face of these extinction-level threats, and even only when the threat was immanent and clear to everyone involved and the leadership of their respective faction was able to work together.

Which wasn't that often.

Arcturus saw firsthand how damaging were pride and arrogance were and how often they led to the fall.

Often, very painful falls.

"Though I must admit, that the fact that there was a Pseudo Queen Bug is rather shocking on itself... Normally, even when the bugs would be attempting to infiltrate the world, they would have never sent out Bug Princess that was in the process of evolution due to their value and the possibility of uncovering their weakness."

General Rathari Velot said this because, in fact, there were some High-Level Civilizations and High-Level Star Nations that managed to get their hands on the complete Arachnid Gene Bank.

One prime example was the Holy Void Dragon Dynasty in the Cosmic Territory, which was next to the Desolate Cosmic Territory. General Velot knew only some bits of the information, but the Dynasty was able to crack the entire Genemome of the Arachnids due to it, and they became Anti-Thesis to the Arachnids.

Holy Void Dragon Dynasty was Level above the High-Level Civilizations and High-Level Star Nations, and its power was enough to crush any High-Level Faction a hundred times over with an only a fraction of their power.

It wasn't without the reason that Dragons were one of the top species in the entire Cosmos, and depending on their race, there were even huge distinctions and gaps in power between various subspecies.

"I can see that the two of you are perhaps behind your education, so allow me to explain."

Even though Arcturus diidn't really liked the condescending tone of his voice, he let the General proceed with the explanaiton, beucase as much as he knew about the bugs, he wasn't really expert on the matters of the Arachnids and some information were even outisde of the reach of Red Queen.

And thus couldn't be found on the Imperial NetSpeher or Extranet...

Ironically, though, anything that was deemed to be Advanced Xenobiology was not put on the Extranet as a form of precaution that was tacitly agreed upon by all High-Level Civilizations and High-Level Star Nations.

"Most, if not all, bug infiltration works in something that we could call a dogmatic state. The Hivefleet would shoot out a bug cocoon into space, where it would fall onto some random planet. These cocoons usually contain several types of bugs and are led by the Brain Bug and also have some parts of the Gene Pools so Brain Bug could command the other bugs to create more low-class bugs."

Arcturus and Jeniael nodded as this wasn't that surprising, and they already knew something similar.

"When they create a proper Nest, they will establish the proper Gene Pool and could create more Bugs and start the whole evolutionary process to create a Bug Princess, which is a specific type of Bug that has the potential to evolve into the full-fledged Bug Queen. They usually create several of them, but only one will evolve into the Bug Queen by devouring the other Bug Princesses and, assimilating their Genetic information and starting her evolution. But the real catch is that... this process usually takes many, many years or even decades. Without a proper Biomass, it could take up even centuries in case of a world like Ziras IV."

As General Rathari Velot let the words sink in, Arctrus and Jenaiel began to understand where the General and Head Researcher on the Ziras IV was headed with this.

"They directly sent here the Pseudo Bug Queen or the Bug Princess, who was ready to begin her evolution straight away. There is no way that the Arachnids on the Ziras IV would have enough Biomass for the dogmatic approach or time for that due to the Imperial presence that would sooner or later discover them and destroy them."

Arcturus said as the General of the Imperial Colonial Defense Forces nodded. Clearly happy that somebody was keeping with his process of thought. Discover more content at My Virtual Library Empire

"This is highly unorthodox according to the Arachnid standards. Really, really highly unorthodox and also a great risk. This isn't something that the bugs did in the past."

Indeed, for the entire history of the Eternal Empire of the Asurya, this never happened.

Asuryani had been fighting the bugs for many centuries, and they knew them well.

They knew how the bugs were thinking, behaving and everything about them in this regard.

The first rule of war.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

"And Arachnids don't behave unorthodox..."

Despite their adaptability and other frightening qualities that the bugs possessed, if there was one great weakness to their race, it was a lack of creativity.

While their adaptability was nice, the lack of creative thinking and thinking out of the box was something that was their greatest weakness that often allowed the other species to exploit them and defeat them, all odds considered.

The Hiveminds were rather rigid in their thinking, all things considered.

"Yes, indeed... this means that either they are changing their strategies, which isn't really that probable... or we could have a new opponent in the form of Hivemind that doesn't suffer from the typical weakness of their species and is able to think as cunning as any Imperial Noble."

Yeah...

The second possibility sounded rather bad.

Truthfully, both of them sounded pretty terrible.