Chapter 2233: Portal status
"What is this...?" Robin’s eyes widened to their limits as he approached the edge of the cliff.
The gate was still standing wide open.
ROOOOOAAAR—
Within the first few seconds after stepping outside, Robin spotted no fewer than five thousand nascent space beasts.
And when one considered the size of those colossal creatures, it was easy to imagine the sheer darkness and destruction that filled Robin’s vision at that moment.
The battlefield had expanded enormously.
It had expanded enough to encompass the mountain Robin lived on...
And everything beyond it as well.
BAM BAM
Several indirect attacks descended upon the mountain from a flying space beast attempting to shake off the Royal Soul Master pursuing it.
Each attack was powerful enough to erase the entire mountain.
Yet Hooom.
A luminous dome appeared for a brief instant, redirected the attacks back toward the beast itself, and then vanished once more.
Even without activating the Eyes of Truth, Robin could tell that the number of defensive arrays protecting the mountain had increased many times over since the last time he had seen them.
Without those arrays, his home would not have survived.
Beyond the overwhelming numbers of nascent space beasts, Robin gradually began noticing other things.
For example...
There were no fewer than twenty thousand Imperial Guards present now.
A large portion of them moved in formations of three hundred guards, protecting one another and executing both offensive and defensive maneuvers together.
It was obvious that they were inexperienced.
Yet despite that, they marched through the battlefield like armored tanks.
They selected a target, attacked it together, brought it down through sheer coordination and overwhelming force, dragged the corpse away to be processed at the slaughterhouses, and then returned to the battlefield as a unit before searching for their next target. Their movements were not elegant, nor were they particularly sophisticated, but they possessed something equally valuable: discipline. Hundreds moved as one, advanced as one, attacked as one, and retreated as one, creating a scene that resembled massive grinding gears relentlessly crushing everything caught in their path.
Beside those human war machines, the veteran guards operated in much smaller groups.
A squad no longer consisted of twenty-five guards as it had three months ago.
The number had been reduced to fifteen.
Only three members from each team.
These veterans formed the primary striking force of humanity.
Unlike the larger formations, they moved with frightening efficiency. Each small group slipped through the battlefield like a sharpened blade, appearing wherever pressure became greatest, eliminating troublesome targets, rescuing endangered formations, and disappearing before the enemy could properly react.
But they were far from the only force present.
Robin managed to count ninety Royal Soul Masters.
Fifty of them stood along the designated perimeter of the battlefield, preventing the conflict from spreading farther and causing additional damage to the planet.
The rest hovered above the battlefield itself, forming a living dome across the sky to prevent any beast from escaping.
And every one of them attacked any creature that approached, contributing to the suppression effort while supporting the Imperial Guards below.
The sight alone would have been enough to shock most planetary rulers. Royal Soul Masters were figures capable of supporting entire powers by themselves, individuals whom great academies competed desperately to recruit. Yet here, ninety of them were gathered around a single battlefield, carrying out coordinated duties as though they were officers in a larger military machine.
There were also several fleets built by the Supremacy Note ships floating above and behind the Royal Soul Masters.
Their cannons moved with remarkable speed and precision.
The admirals selected their targets carefully.
Sometimes they crippled the wings of flying beasts.
Sometimes they bombarded a limb belonging to one of the larger monsters.
And in some cases, they completely eliminated strange creatures that the guards struggled to handle and that repeatedly attempted to flee.
The fleets themselves never advanced recklessly. They maintained disciplined formations, constantly adjusting their positions according to battlefield conditions while streams of information flowed between ships, commanders, and observers. Every volley appeared deliberate, every movement calculated, every sacrifice minimized whenever possible.
HOOOOOM
A tremendous roar suddenly drew Robin’s attention.
Immediately, he looked toward the source.
"..!!"
A space beast far larger than the average was tearing through the skies toward the upper atmosphere.
It belonged to a serpentine species.
Several pairs of leathery wings stretched from its body.
And the aura surrounding it vastly surpassed everything nearby.
"Is that a young space beast?" Robin’s eyes widened even further.
That creature had taken advantage of its own physique.
Its true size lay in its length rather than its bulk.
At only a few hundred kilometers long, it was obvious that it had evolved not long ago and had exploited its relatively small size to slip through the gate alongside the nascent space beasts.
A single creature like that required someone with the strength of a Dominator to suppress it.
Even now, merely watching it was enough to understand the difference between it and the surrounding creatures. Wherever it passed, weaker beasts instinctively moved aside. Its aura distorted the air around it, and every movement carried enough force to send waves of pressure rolling across the battlefield.
Quickly, Robin followed the juvenile beast’s trajectory upward.
A Royal Soul Master stood waiting for it.
But that would not be enough.
He would certainly be injured.
Or killed.
Robin immediately opened his mouth to shout a warning and save the young man’s life.
"..."
But he closed it again almost immediately.
Something had happened above.
He felt a sudden disturbance in the surrounding atmosphere.
A fluctuation so subtle that almost no one else would have noticed it.
Yet Robin’s senses immediately locked onto it.
Somewhere above the battlefield, an invisible force had begun moving.
And judging by the pressure it emitted...
Whatever was about to happen would not be ordinary.
FROOOM
The air beneath the Royal Soul Master suddenly condensed into the shape of a gigantic fist.
Then BAM!
It slammed directly into the serpent beast’s face, halting its ascent and sending it crashing back downward.
"...Was that the Planet Spirit?" Robin let out a low whistle. "It likes fists as much as its owner does."
"It has eaten quite a lot over the past few months thanks to your promise of giving it one crystal out of every hundred beasts killed, so the spirit has become much stronger and intervenes frequently whenever it sees situations like this."
Theo explained.
Then he continued,
"And the planet itself has started attracting comets, meteors, and materials from outside its orbit."
"Extremely durable and rare resources."
"It deliberately crashes them into empty regions, absorbs them, and grows."
Theo pointed toward the distant horizon before continuing,
"The Planet Spirit swallows those meteors and slowly guides them toward the planet’s core, causing the entire planet to increase in size without producing any noticeable changes on the surface."
"According to our estimates, Planet Dunara has grown by roughly seven percent since we buried the first crystal within it."
"Hmm." Robin nodded.
"That girl is demonstrating her usefulness to tempt us into investing more resources in her. There’s nothing wrong with that."
Then he smiled.
"Fine. Increase the investment whenever possible. Nothing spent on Dunara is wasted. It carries the gate, after all, and it is Holak’s personal planet."
Theo nodded without argument.
Strengthening this planet would bring nothing but benefits, and had they not reinforced it beforehand, it would never have survived the current tide of monsters. The scale of the invasion had long since surpassed what an ordinary planet should have been capable of enduring, yet Dunara continued standing firm, absorbing shock after shock while gradually becoming stronger through the process.
\Thank you!!\
Robin smiled when he heard the excited voice of a little girl inside his ear.
Then his brows immediately furrowed.
He had sensed killing intent.
It was not directed at him.
Yet it was so intense that he felt a prickling sensation of danger.
Robin immediately turned toward its source.
WOOOSH
Like a ray of sunlight streaking across the horizon at dawn, someone moved at tremendous speed toward the juvenile beast that had just been struck by the Planet Spirit and was still struggling to regain its balance.
Then—
ZZZZNNN
The instant the figure arrived, a tremendous sound erupted.
It sounded like a sheet of paper being sliced by a blade.
Except amplified thousands upon thousands of times.
The next moment—
SLAAAAAASH
The belly of the gigantic serpent split open.
A vast wound stretched across its enormous body.
Black blood poured downward in endless torrents.
It rained upon the already-dark ocean below like colossal waterfalls, staining the sea and the sky alike with darkness.
"RAAAAAAAOOOOWW—!!"
The young beast released a deafening scream that shook the battlefield.
Then it immediately lunged at the hostile shadow responsible for the attack.
But its movements were already slower.
Weaker.
Its aura had become unstable.
The single strike had inflicted far more damage than anyone present had initially realized.
The battle lasted only a few more seconds.
A few seconds of desperate resistance.
A few seconds of violent thrashing.
A few seconds of futile struggle.
The gigantic serpent never stood a chance.
Each attempt at counterattacking was cut apart before completion.
Each movement was anticipated.
Each opening was exploited.
Its massive body, which should have inspired fear in countless opponents, became nothing more than an oversized target being systematically dismantled. Every exchange widened the wound running through its body, every attempt at retreat was intercepted, and every moment made the difference in strength increasingly obvious.
Finally—
The creature’s aura collapsed.
Its resistance ceased.
And its enormous body began falling toward the sea below.
Only then did Robin’s gaze settle completely upon the person who had been fighting the entire time.
The source of that horrifying killing intent.
The source of that merciless assault.
The figure moved through the sky like a streak of white light stained by darkness.
Her snow-white garments were splattered with black blood.
Her sword dripped continuously.
Her aura churned with such hostility that even distant beasts instinctively avoided her.
There was no joy in her movements.
No excitement.
No battle-lust.
Only anger.
Cold.
Relentless.
Unending anger.
The kind of anger that had been accumulating for months without release.
The kind of anger that transformed a battlefield into an execution ground.
Robin watched her silently.
Then he finally understood why even the killing intent had felt dangerous.
It was because the person emitting it had stopped fighting like a warrior.
And had begun fighting like someone searching for something to blame.
It was Althera.
