138 Expedition Arc 23 The Truth of Naihyūmu

A bit short.

"Big brother, look—"

A station-type fortress ship floats in the satellite orbit of Elusion III.

Inside that fortress ship was my residence, as the planetary lord.

Technically, my lordly residence, so it's grown larger than before.

The door to my office within the residence bursts open, and Kaede suddenly tumbles in.

Family, so I’ll let it slide—but how’s the security on this estate even working?

In Kaede’s hand is an information cube, which she hurls directly at me.

"Whoa—what’s this?"

I fumble to catch it, raising an eyebrow.

"It’s data on Naihyūmu."

"Kinda fast, aren’t you?"

"You know that thing you sent? The scientists checked it right away and copied the data straight away."

"Could it really be that we didn’t even need to look into Naihyūmu’s info?"

I groaned, forehead in hands. Classic case of light under the lamp post.

Right, back in the Old Empire, they’d managed to hold back Naihyūmu’s invasion—hence the expansion into the neighboring galactic arm.

Now, under the New Empire, those defenses vanished. The neighboring arm got wiped out.

If the True Empire still had the Old Empire’s tech… Naihyūmu wouldn’t be worth a damn.

"I don’t know," I said. "But she said we’d find out if we checked the info cube."

"Right..."

I decided to just open the info cube, no hesitation.

Report on Aggressive Machine Lifeforms

Purpose of machine lifeforms: conquest.

Devour resources. Multiply. Seek new territories.

This behavior is driven by expansion as the ultimate goal.

They have a caste system—queen and her underlings. Individuals are part of the swarm. The swarm is the individual.

Kind of like ants or bees forming a single colony centered around a queen.

Once the group exceeds a certain number, it splits—producing a queen candidate and a contingent of followers, breaking off into a new cluster.

That’s another trait they share with ants and bees.

Their core is a silicon-based lifeform called a core, and they use machines under its control to form bodies.

The shape is basically that of a starship, but by parasitizing stray starships or our own vessels, they can take on a form nearly indistinguishable from ours—making identification tricky.

If their starship extends tentacles and implants a split core into our ship, the ship becomes overtaken by a mechanical lifeform.

The mechanical lifeform then contacts us, fights us—seems confused by our irrational, illogical behavior.

Having recognized its own weakness, the mechanical lifeform evolved by assimilating us humans as components.

The battle momentarily favored the mechanical lifeform—but once we’d established core identification technology, the eradication effort gained momentum.

Just as we thought our victory was assured, they created terminals that fused human and machine, slipped them into the city, and began parasitizing people.

To them, turning into humans was just another way to multiply—no problem at all.

The cores embedded in humans were hard to detect, but the mechanical bodies left no room for denial—strip them bare, examine each one individually, and they’d be found in seconds.

We thought humanity was saved—when suddenly, our organic android fell into enemy hands.

They’re humanoid in appearance, organic bodies just like us, with a core nestled inside their skulls—pseudo-humans, essentially.

Because of their organic forms, parasitism became impossible. They came to us as a new kind of humanity.

Since they’re close to humans—near-humans—they’re called Niahyūmu.

Our war with the Niahyūmu, who stopped expanding parasitism, ends here.

“End? Feels like we already knew most of this.

But the part about their organic bodies halting parasitism? That’s new.

And the fact that the conflict ended through dialogue? That’s news to me.”

I ponder. The Niahyūmu, as recorded in the True Empire, are no longer seen as humanity’s arch-enemies.

But why… why were they ever called arch-enemies? Why were they said to be irreconcilable?

And why’d the Nahyūm, who stopped parasitizing and found peace through dialogue, start aggressive parasitism again?

What’s the point of trying to kill the Emperor, or hijacking the imperial prince? Doesn’t make sense.

The Nahyūm the True Empire knows—got organic bodies, became docile.

The Nahyūm currently invading? Hostile to organic life, merciless. What’s changed?

For now, the know-how to identify even body-possessed Nahyūm was acquired from the True Empire.

All that’s left is handing over the current invading Nahyūm’s analysis to Gail’s lab.

“Would love to talk if dialogue’s possible… but the lack of mercy toward people’s worrying.

They *did* just turn the people in the neighboring spiral arm into spare parts and marched right through, no hesitation.”

Six thousand nine hundred and ninety points. Just shy of seven thousand!

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