Suddenly, Lyra's Mechanical Prosthetic Eye was flooded with red alerts. The fissure spectrum in the Nova Sector was expanding out of control. As she rushed toward the bridge, the starfield outside the viewport had transformed into a boiling ocean of color—the stardust silver of the Mechanical Swarm and the dark green of the Sacred Tree's growth rings were locked in combat within the spectrum. The fearful grey-purple of the Energy Sprites and the rust-red of Panda Star intertwined into dazzling static, while the light bands of the Spectrum Creature's Symbiotic Psalm were sputtering rainbow-colored sparks like an overloaded circuit.
"Ice Drip! Where is the buffer zone for the Symbiotic Fault-Tolerant Zone?" Lyra grabbed a Scorch Gear, only to find that the stardust solder points on its surface had blurred into a haze amid the high-frequency vibration. The arrangement of the solder points eerily synchronized with the chaotic spectrum of the Nova Sector, as if the entire sector was turning into a giant, out-of-control Scorch Gear.
"The buffer zone... is being swallowed by its own resonance energy!" Ice Drip's holographic projection flickered violently, data turbulence materializing for the first time as silver cracks visible to the Mechanical Prosthetic Eye. "The resonance frequencies of the various civilizations' traits have broken through critical thresholds. Right now, they aren't collaborating—they're tearing each other apart. The Observer's residual data is running its 128…
Chapter 126