There's no room for morality in a Dark Forest. Nobody is in the moral right. Except Groaxians are because they don't like Dark Forest. But really they aren't because they still participate in it. But they are because they don't want to. It's complicated for a human to understand, okay? I don't get it either. 
In fairness even human morality has proven too complicated for most humans to understand, so this is quite a low bar to clear.
No, humans didn't do such things and doubt they could. It's the difference between biological features again. Humans are individual meanings for whom psionic was a great achievement of science and technology and they could never get to it "naturally", even though according to Arilou they had the potential. Which is why they could achieve it somehow at all, I guess. But with Groaxians naturally posessing a proper brain structure for this, they only required a bit of tweaking to speed up their evolution that would've happened regardless given enough time, so that makes quasi-hivemind projects possible for them. Of course it is not a "true" hivemind and never could be, because Groaxians are individuals, not one coherent consciousness, but their minds are strong enough to at least perform hivemind-like tasks from time to time.
Interesting. So a very strong form of path-dependent evolution, even though both races have developed psionics the way psionics can be used is intrinsically tied to the past eons of evolution and racial makeup.
Huh? It is still here, I just checked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg-AZTTDVj4
It seems to be region-locked, then. That's unfortunate. Fortunately, a name is enough to go looking up some other video, or on Spotify etc.
It seems like certain, but who cares when the very existence is at stake?
Some random economist, probably.
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And now the moment we have all been waiting for...
Almost as if they were sentient on their own and wanted to show the majestic pulse of everything that ever existed, one dying, but still majestic organism.
It's an interesting thought... many have noted that despite the eternal human straining against the inevitability of death, the universe seems to be almost built on a perpetual cycle of life and death at every scale. A seed falls to the ground, and new life springs forth to repeat the cycle again. Perhaps from the perspective of the universe itself and not puny alien races, "majestic" is indeed the word.
In a way, this was the ultimate hiding spot in a Dark Forest - impossible to be detected, and yet at the same time it was about broadcasting one's existence everywhere all the time. Something conventional civilisations could never have imagined.
And thus everyone Ascended and lived happily ever after, the end!
...wait, this just in, I am being informed that there is more to the story. Apparently this is not actually the end just yet even if it sounds like it could have been.
But as the mission continued, things got stranger. In one of the solar systems one Ultraviolet Counterobserver spotted what looked like a flying saucer and its signature matched Arilou starship specifications without any discrepancies. However, making contact with it was impossible. It was like a ghost of the past, still present in the reality, but not being really there at the same time.
And now we remember those perhaps time-travel glitches that led to Archernar appearing in planets they should not have been and Groaxian colonies from alternate realities. Apparently it was not a localized problem.
With the new direction to follow, physicists eventually solved the riddle and concluded that they had greatly underestimated the power of beings reduced to soulgrain state. Being a part of the universe herself, she held the ultimate power - a power of creation, the opposite of destruction. She just thought about something and made it happen, even if it was just a hologram, a ghost of the past, a visualisation of history. But it was enough to simulate an entire solar system together with events that took place in it over an impressive span of time.
Could this be...something
more than a Dark Forest Lord. Maybe, because creation is much more powerful or at least requires much more than destruction. Perhaps there can be some form of hope for the universe after all?
DARK FOREST STRIKE
I guess we are about to find out!
Time inside Singularity passed differently than in conventional spacetime and it was much different even from what Ultraviolet Counterobservers felt. It allowed to see things long gone and simulate the past all the way till the creation of the soulgrains that eventually collapsed into given black hole.
Makes sense even to my feeble human mind.
Time after all is just more physics, if a black hole collapses and compresses space it can also do the same to time, preserving it into a sort of temporal point containing everything. Or something like that.
But simulating the history of mankind wasn't as important as simulating the history of Groaxians.
Agree to disagree.
Ultraviolet Counterobservers could not believed when they sensed the enemy fleet finally arriving after the Groaxian vessel. There was no doubt left - it was the fleet of dreaded Invaders, but not like Humanity remembered them.
hey watched this important chapter of conflict between Zenn and La unraveling in front of their senses, but again, something was wrong. Another fleet arrived in the system. It was Invaders all over again.
The history that unfolded in front of them talked about Groaxians continuing Ascension Program and moving to live within the Crack as hyperbeings, but there were no humans left to share it with. And the reason was that Humanity went extinct, losing its final Bootes War. Groaxians stood no chance either and all perished as well.
Interesting... it almost seems like in these alternate timelines that never happened(?!) the Invaders are a common thread. Which brings up the concept that maybe, the Dark Forest Lords are...the good guys? In a weird, amoral sense, anyways, because perhaps a Dark Forest Strike is collapsing the timeline to prevent the Invaders from Invading, and destroying entire planets and races is the collateral damage.
Or maybe this used to be their purpose, but the Dark Forest Lords grew paranoid and started wiping out any life they could find that might attract the Invaders and supply their war machines?
Dark Forest was a force of balance.
Telling words after all...
The hibernation cycle was 3513 AM,. Exactly 94 light hibernation cycles away from Qi, somewhere in interstellar space, Groaxians fired a Dark Forest Strike at themselves, fixing all the glitches threatening their timeline. Black hole generators were supposed to reach Genesis by the 3607 AM hibernation cycle, giving everyone way more than enough time to safely prepare and propagate their consciousness to the soulgrain state.
Last surviving Groaxians were disappearing from existence with minds full of peace and fulfilment. The universe at large had finally become perfectly balanced, but just like all that is perfectly balanced, it had to start, but also eventually come to a stop. Nothing lasts forever. Even time itself at last had to come to an end.
And so it has.
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I'll make general comments about the whole Groaxian "DLC" (really I think it should stand on its own as another epic story), but I have really enjoyed this work and its bittersweet ending. You might gather from my comments throughout, there has been much foreshadowing throughout but also many twists and turns so that it is not predictable yet the ending makes sense and you could see it taking shape. Very nicely done and I look forward to any future work, whether in the Dark Forest or exploring a different perspective of the universe for a change of pace.
