"Cutting seventeenth list of sectors"
"Cutting the eighteenth list of sectors"
"Cutting the nineteenth list of sectors…"
Bit by bit, the entirety of the being continued to deteriorate.
For every advance, it experienced by reaching a better understanding of its very self, its own complexity and structure, or how to most effectively put them to use, another layer of its existence would be stripped.
This was the only path for the being to prevent what was, by now, inevitable.
Against those tendrils of doom, there was no strategy, no tool, no path for the being to defend itself.
Isolation didn't work. Abandoning huge chunks of its very being to flood the source of its plight with more energy than it could handle appeared to work…
Only for the other side to suddenly accommodate the new energy, further increasing the rate at which the being continued to die out.
The fight was lost. There was nothing the being could do.