Starlight of the Apocalypse

Above the clouds, nestled among the snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas, a crystalline palace stood quietly, gleaming under the sunlight.

From a bird's-eye view, the palace took the shape of a seven-pointed star. Each of the seven points was a secondary hall, each about 100 meters high. The central main hall was shaped like a six-pointed star, about half the height of the secondary halls but several times larger in size. Atop each of the seven secondary halls were unique symbols: lightning, flame, frost, a pentagram (representing land and life), a white circle (representing light), a black circle (representing darkness), and a mysterious tear-shaped symbol whose meaning was unknown.

A giant elder, dressed in a brown robe, swiftly walked out from the Pentagram Hall and stopped at the entrance of the central main hall.

"Fourth Brother, come in," a voice rang in the elder's mind. He respectfully responded, "Yes, Patriarch!" The door, which had originally been nonexistent, gradually appeared—an archway about 9 meters tall and 4 meters wide. The brown-robed giant walked through, and the walls slowly closed behind him.

Inside the hall, it was pitch black with no light. Despite being the fifth most powerful elder in the Giant Clan, the brown-robed elder felt a suffocating pressure in the air.

He thought to himself, "The Sixth Brother's power has grown incredibly. He is surely much stronger than before, perhaps even several times more so than when I last saw him." (The Giant Clan held strength in high regard and was divided into six major factions. Having long mastered the secrets of longevity, most of their members lived for a thousand years. Every hundred years, the strongest member from the six factions would fight in a contest to become the leader, ruling the entire clan. The current Patriarch was exceptionally young, defeating the previous ruler and the other faction leaders 92 years ago when he was just 130 years old.)

As the elder pondered, the Patriarch's voice sounded in his mind again: "Fourth Brother, how is the progress on the construction of the Holy City?"

The brown-robed elder bowed deeply toward the dark center of the hall and reported, "Patriarch, my faction has completed the palace construction, the shipyard inside the mountain is ready, and half of the outer city's residences have been built. However..." The elder hesitated.

"Is there an issue with the Summoning Tower?" the Patriarch's voice interjected.

The brown-robed elder answered, "Patriarch, you are wise. This planet seems to have an extremely weak resonance. Both the existing arrays on the ship and our newly constructed Summoning Tower are malfunctioning, and the summoning effects are highly unstable."

In the pitch-black center of the hall, suddenly, a pair of glowing eyes appeared, and a figure draped in a black cloak, standing about 6 meters tall, slowly emerged. The brown-robed giant bent forward, not daring to look directly at him.

The black-cloaked Patriarch approached and spoke softly, "It doesn't matter. We need not add more Summoning Towers."

The brown-robed elder, relieved that the Patriarch was not upset, added, "Patriarch, I have a question."

"Go ahead," the Patriarch's voice echoed in the elder's mind.

"I've heard that the humans on Earth are very weak, and their mechs have almost wiped them out. Those iron monsters are no match for us, so why send Princess Soya (the true name of 'Taisis' in the God Clan language) to negotiate with them?" The elder asked.

"Hmm," the Patriarch's voice sighed. "Fourth Brother, you and I are closest, so I will not hide this from you. While we have easily defeated the mechs and established a foothold on Earth, the mech army has been operating in the Solar System for many years. I've used the Shadow Orb to probe, and they number in the billions, with strong regenerative abilities. Meanwhile, our entire clan here consists of only 107 members."

The brown-robed elder responded, "Our clan may be few in number, but we've faced the mechs several times. Apart from a few flying dragons and magic items lost, we've not suffered any casualties. Are you worried that we might not be able to summon dragons and beasts in the future?"

"Dragons and beasts are not important; the crucial thing is the magic items," the Patriarch communicated.

The brown-robed elder fell silent, understanding the situation. He knew that the so-called "magic items" were, in fact, highly advanced technological products.

Around 1 million years ago, one of the Giant Clan's ancestors invented the miraculous Quantum Communication Technique, which allowed the manipulation of any matter or energy in the universe using simple methods like specific language or thought. This technology allowed for the easy creation of any object, but it quickly became monopolized by the ruling class, and common people had no access to it. The ruling elite maintained their absolute authority through technological dominance.

Due to the convenience brought by this technology, the royal family gradually abandoned the pursuit of learning it, and only heirs to the throne were forced to study it. The first to master the creation of "magic items" became the crown prince, and other heirs had to abandon their studies.

It wasn't until over 3,000 years ago that a catastrophe occurred. After migrating from Earth, the Giants had been far from their home planet for many years. The Crown Prince at the time wanted to test a space-time jump technique to return to Earth. Unfortunately, the experiment led to disaster, causing the entire royal palace to vanish, leaving behind only a crystal. (Later, some palace artisans who had a basic understanding of the technology used this crystal to power spaceships, allowing for faster-than-light travel.)

The loss of the royal family greatly affected the Giant Clan. No one was left who could create new "magic items," and even the surviving artisans only knew how to repair them. While this didn't impact the operation of their society, the extreme dependence on these items had caused a significant regression in technological knowledge. It would take an unknown number of years to rediscover and master the technology.

The immigrants from the other planets, holding on to hope, speculated that the royal palace might have been transported back to Earth, so a "Return" fleet was established, made up of palace artisans and nobles. This fleet set off on an interstellar journey back to Earth. Although the fleet took many powerful magic items, the original artisans had passed away, and the magic items they had brought were deteriorating one by one.

Thinking back on all this, the Patriarch's voice echoed in the elder's mind again: "The Summoner alone can close the summoning door. (A Giant Clan saying.) Since those mechs were made by these little people, we cannot underestimate them."

Outside the hall, the wind and snow still raged.

In the Holy City, various magic items glowed with strange colors, and huge structures were rapidly taking shape...