Chapter 835: Spaceborne Ambush
"I guess I need to start planning that trip home you were talking about."
Arthur muttered as he moved the analogue sticks on his portable game console, his legs resting on the console table of his spaceship while the vessel zoomed through space on autopilot.
A holographic star map hovered slightly to the left of his legs, displaying the blinking target planet and the charted path to reach it while avoiding natural threats along the way, like the dormant 3-quintillion-kilogram black hole Arthur would have flown straight into if his Gravity Authority hadn’t alerted him to the spacetime distortion that caused several planets to orbit ’nothing’.
[Is it because of the Progenitor Dragon?]
Celestia, seated beside him with her head resting on his shoulder, asked in response to his earlier mutter, and Arthur nodded silently.
[I see...]
Aleksas had shown up for a reason that seemed important, and there was a high chance he might take the Levites with him when he left, which would end Arthur’s time with them since he had no intention of being dragged into whatever they were up to.
’I doubt Aleksas would like that anyway.’
Arthur had only known the man for a few minutes, but it was enough to understand that if the matter Aleksas had come for was serious to the dragon race, he’d make sure no one else got involved.
[Then, Master, why don’t we just head to Alpha Sirus for my fragment so we can go already?]
Hearing Celestia’s suggestion, Arthur paused his game for a moment, considered it, and then nodded.
"After I get Berlal to remove that seal, we’ll head there."
Just as he said that, the spaceship’s console alert light flashed yellow, and Arthur turned to the dashboard, noticing the radar blinking.
He slid his chair over and saw a nearby fleet of spaceships surrounding a planet in the star system they were passing through, with some of the ships breaking off and heading straight toward his.
[Master, those are fighters.]
Celestia said, her eyes locked on the display from the ship’s external cameras capturing the flashing lights of the fighter ships streaking through space.
’Wait, flashing lights?’
Arthur’s eyes widened as he snapped to the camera feed, just before the ship’s alert lights turned red.
"Those fuckers are shooting at us!"
He immediately switched off autopilot, grabbed the manual controls, and kicked the engines into full gear, swerving to dodge the laser beams cutting through space and heading for his ship.
The three fighters kept firing even as Arthur maneuvered away, with one even launching cannon blasts at him.
Arthur’s brow twitched, irritation slowly building. He’d just been minding his own business, and now these guys were attacking him, and even when he tried to veer off, they continued the chase, using weapons that could normally destroy a vessel his size in one hit.
He reached out and flipped a switch to engage his own weapon systems, then called out.
"Celestia."
[Already on it.]
Celestia replied, dropping down a hatch and landing in the control seat for the ventral turrets.
She reached out, grabbed the controls, cycled through the turrets, and selected the rapid-fire autocannon that fired armour-piercing, high-velocity projectiles.
[Ready when you are, Master.]
Hearing Celestia’s voice, Arthur pulled back his controls and pushed the ship to full throttle. The sudden g-force didn’t affect him thanks to his Gravity Authority’s passives, so he easily banked into a 180-degree turn while keeping his momentum, while Celestia pushed her weapon controls forward and locked onto her targets.
"Light them up."
[Aye, aye, Captain,] Celestia replied, pressing the triggers and unleashing energy beams that tore through the shields of the fighter in the centre, vaporising its hull in a series of small explosions.
The pulse beams pierced the cockpit, sending its pilot to the afterlife, and Celestia quickly moved her left hand, aiming the two left turrets at the fighter on the left. Faster than it could evade, she pelted it with lasers that pierced through its shields and shredded the ship’s main engines.
The ship exploded in a burst of fiery light, but Celestia didn’t even glance at it as she focused on the third fighter, which fired light-speed lasers that Arthur warped gravity to deflect.
He manoeuvred erratically, alternating between rapid acceleration and sudden stops, making it nearly impossible for the last fighter to aim properly.
Celestia, however, was unaffected by the jerky motions that would have made any normal person with a nervous system nauseous.
Arthur accelerated toward the ship, and just before they could collide, he veered off while Celestia fired flak at it, the high-speed rounds saturating its shields, tearing through them and blasting through the hull.
[Three servings of metallic Swiss cheese coming right up!]
Celestia happily pressed the button beside her seat, lifting herself back up to the main cockpit where Arthur was, but just as she was about to step toward him, her vision spun, her sight faculties switching from ’eyes’ to ’cosmic energy’.
’Huh?’
It took her a moment to realise that Arthur had abruptly returned her to weapon form and had warped out of the spaceship, using it as a springboard to leap toward the fleet the three fighters had broken off from.
Destruction energy flowed from his arm into Celestia as he swung the blade horizontally, unleashing a powerful slash of energy at the same moment a bright light erupted from the mothership of the fleet.
’Planetary Split!’
Arthur’s slash tore through space, colliding with the crackling beam of black light the mothership fired in his direction and ripping through it with immense force.
The impact made the beam explode violently, scattering shards of dense magic energy in every direction and sending shockwaves crashing through the surrounding space, knocking a nearby moon out of orbit.
Arthur, however, cared nothing about this.
His focus was on the mothership that had just attacked him with a planet-destroying beam, and he reached out with his left hand, activating his Gravity Authority as he clenched his fist.
Arthur’s cosmic energy instantly enveloped the 5km-long rectangular battlecruiser as he exerted immense gravitational pressure on it, intent on crushing the vessel and killing everything within.
He would have ignored it if it had just been the three fighters, but a battlecruiser’s main cannon? Arthur wasn’t about to overlook such an attempt on his life without retaliating.
The crushing gravitational force cracked the ship’s shields, crumbling several layers in an instant and overloading the shield generators.
The fighters surrounding the battlecruiser turned and tried to fire at him, but Arthur swung Celestia once, releasing a random slash of destructive energy that consumed the first wave of a dozen fighters in an instant, obliterating them and making the pilots of the second wave hesitate.
They tried firing from afar, but the immense gravitational force Arthur was generating around his body distorted space, sending every laser beam off course.
"Hmm?"
Suddenly, Arthur sensed a burst of cosmic energy from the battlecruiser, and his clenched fist was immediately forced back open, blood spurting from his palm as his Authority’s decree was broken.
The wave of cosmic energy from the ship rippled out omnidirectionally at light speed, reaching Arthur in barely a second and slamming against his multi-layered cosmic energy barrier.
"Wait, this feeling...!"
[Aspect Manifestation! Master dodg—]
**BAAAMM!!
Lostvayne’s warning was cut off as a concentrated blast of black, destructive energy slammed into Arthur, the overwhelming impact flinging him backwards toward his ship.
Arthur immediately activated his Space and Gravity Authorities to stabilise himself, pulling his ship back into his subspace before opening a cosmic gate behind him. He fell backwards through it, and the gate closed up a split-second before another blast of black, destructive energy obliterated the space it had occupied.
On the surface of a nearby planet, in the midst of a rugged mountain range, Arthur’s cosmic gate opened and he leapt out backwards, his feet hitting the ground and skidding across the rocky earth for several dozen metres before he finally halted.
Barely a moment later, a streak of black light slammed into the spot where he’d first landed, throwing up a massive cloud of dust and smoke.
|I was wondering who had the audacity to attack my fleet in the midst of a conquest.|
A deep, baritone True Voice echoed across the land, and through the swirling dust, Arthur made out a humanoid silhouette.
|To think it was a fellow Candidate. How interesting.|
A sudden wave of cosmic energy swept outward, scattering the dust and revealing the figure hidden behind it.
It was an eight-foot-tall, muscular mass of a tanned-skinned man, with long, mane-like black hair, dressed in a suit without a tie, an overcoat draped over his shoulders and billowing in the wind.
Curving from the sides of his head was a pair of brown horns marked with black patterns, and from beneath the coat a long, scaled, spiked black tail extended behind him.
’A Dragonkin? He has Demonic Factors too, so a Demonic Dragonkin, huh?’
Arthur analysed him while silently unsummoning Celestia, then met the man’s slit-pupiled black eyes, brows raised as he asked.
|Audacity to attack your fleet? Were you sleeping under a rock or something? Your fighters fired at me first.|
Arthur unleashed his crimson-silver destructive energy to meet the man’s black destruction, the two forces warping space as they collided and struggled to overpower each other.
Hearing Arthur’s words, the man laughed, exposing rows of black, fang-like teeth as he replied.
|You’re not too far off. I was actually sleeping, so you can imagine my surprise when I felt someone trying to crush my ship with me inside.|
|I just reacted the way anyone would when attacked unprovoked,| Arthur replied with a shrug, raising a brow as he added,
|What? You got a problem with that?|
|Problem? Well, you did put quite a dent in my ship. And I liked that one too. The cabins are really cosy. Perfect for naps.|
The man kept walking closer as he spoke, his eyes scanning Arthur from head to toe.
|But seeing as you’re someone who also possesses a Destruction Aspect and was even able to react to my initial attacks, there’s a way we can avoid any problems.|
The gap between them closed to barely a metre before the man finally halted, with Arthur looking up at the Demonic Dragonkin as the taller figure looked down on him with a grin.
|You... you can use your Aspect’s Authority, can’t you? You’re a step above all the useless rabble I’ve come across over the years.
Makes me wonder how in the Cosmos the Eternals ever thought wastes of space like them would be of any use as Candidates.|
He shook his head, his mane-like hair shifting slightly as he sighed.
|Well, it’s not like I can understand what goes on in their heads. I don’t really care anyway.|
