Chapter 67: Signal from the Central Axis
The main control room of the Zenith felt incredibly cold. The ceiling lights were turned off, leaving only the bright blue glow of dozens of holographic projection screens floating in the middle of the circular room. Sili stood in front of the main console, cold sweat completely soaking his shirt. His fingers danced wildly over the crystal buttons, trying to crack the encryption of the mysterious transmission that had just arrived.
Kanos stood with his arms crossed right behind Sili. His obsidian arm reflected the blue light from the screens. Belida and Papuyu guarded the room’s entrance with their weapons drawn and ready. The atmosphere in the room was incredibly tense.
"I managed to unlock the visual key, boss," Sili said with heavy breaths. He slammed the final button hard.
The giant holographic screen in the center of the room lit up brightly. It displayed a complete topographical map of the entire Yomalvara world. Kanos narrowed his eyes. He finally realized just how small the city of Marrath actually was. Marrath was simply a tiny dot at the southern edge of a massive continent surrounded by a black ocean.
On that map, twelve red dots were spread across the continent. The dot representing Marrath was currently blinking a dark gray color, indicating a total offline status.
"Those twelve dots are Nodes," Sili explained quickly. His pointer stick pointed at the red dots one by one. "Each Node represents a major city controlled by the local Sensor Bureau. They are the main pillars keeping this world’s system from collapsing into the monster abyss."
Sili swiped the map toward the center of the continent. There was one giant dot glowing bright gold, connecting lines of light to all twelve Nodes.
"The Central Axis," Papuyu’s voice sounded incredibly cold from the doorway. The female hitman walked toward the console table. "That is the holy capital of this world. The place where the system creators reside. They are the entities who give direct orders to the local Architect we just killed in the lower server."
Kanos stared deeply at the giant golden dot. His brain worked at maximum speed. This world’s system actually had a much broader hierarchy than he expected. Destroying the local Marrath server was just like pulling a single plug from a massive machine.
"This incoming signal is not a normal threat," Sili swallowed hard. He opened a blinking red text window on the screen. "This is an automated notice. The Central Axis already knows the Marrath Architect is dead. They have officially designated the Marrath territory as an unrecoverable corrupted zone."
Belida snorted roughly. "So they want to send an army here? Let them come. Kanos can just print more shadow hounds to chew them up."
"Not a normal army, old knight," Papuyu cut in sharply. Her dead eyes stared straight at Belida. "They are sending Arbitrators. A global scale wipe."
Sili nodded frantically, confirming Papuyu’s words. "Arbitrators are not human, boss. They are pure weapons of mass destruction formed from absolute light code. Their base levels are well over one hundred and twenty. They do not use elemental magic or physical weapons. They manipulate the laws of cause and effect. If an Arbitrator targets a city, they do not waste time killing people one by one. They completely erase the entire landmass of that city from the existence of space and time."
Kanos listened to the explanation in complete silence. He rubbed his chin slowly with his left hand. There were zero signs of panic on his face. He actually looked like he was trying to figure out the composition of a highly complex drawing.
"What is their estimated time of arrival?" Kanos asked with that flat tone that always succeeded in giving Sili goosebumps.
Sili looked at the countdown timer displayed clearly in the top corner of the holographic screen. The numbers were dropping very fast. Sili truly looked like he was going to pass out just reading the digits.
"Less than fifteen minutes," Sili answered hopelessly. "They do not use normal flying ships. Arbitrators travel through warp gates directly from the Central Axis straight to Marrath’s outer atmosphere. Boss, we really do not have the time to run away. The Zenith defense systems were never designed to withstand an attack from the center."
Kanos laughed quietly. A very dry, highly cynical laugh. He turned around to face Belida and Papuyu. His eyes blazed with absolute killer resolve. He was incredibly sick of constantly being forced into survival mode by a system that casually handed out death sentences to anyone it disliked.
"We are not running," Kanos walked firmly toward the control room exit. "We already took this fortress, and I am not giving my new house to a bunch of arrogant lightbulbs from the Central Axis."
Belida smiled fiercely. The giant knight slammed his fist against his own chest armor. "What is your drawing order for today, Illustrator?"
"Bring all the remaining black steel and monster cores to the front deck," Kanos issued the absolute command without hesitation. His obsidian arm began releasing thick purple smoke, signaling maximum combat readiness. "The Zenith needs a weapon upgrade. I am going to draw the absolute best anti air cannons this garbage world has ever seen."
The wind on the Zenith’s front deck blew incredibly hard. Kanos stood right at the very edge of the white marble runway floating thousands of feet above the ground. Down below, the city of Marrath looked incredibly small, covered in a thin fog from the darkening afternoon weather. Hundreds of Crimson Lions guild members had already been pulled back inside the palace by Belida to avoid an open battle that was clearly totally out of their league.
This was purely a fight between an anomaly and the agents of the world’s creator.
Sili ran out from the palace dragging a pushcart completely filled with black steel ore chunks and monster core crystals. He pushed the cart right behind Kanos, then immediately dropped to the floor, taking cover behind a massive support pillar. Papuyu stood on the palace roof, her daggers already glowing with a highly lethal curse poison.
In the sky right in front of Kanos, the white clouds suddenly split apart forcefully. A low frequency humming sound that severely irritated their ears echoed in all directions, signaling a spatial dimension tear being roughly ripped open.
A giant golden light gate appeared out of thin air. From inside the gate, a massive flying ship shaped exactly like a spearhead slid out slowly. The ship had no sails or fire thrusters. The entire hull was made of pure white metal that constantly radiated a blinding light. This ship was the absolute symbol of the system’s perfect authority.
"Arbitrators," Belida stood next to Kanos, his greatsword already drawn. "They arrived way faster than the system timer."
From the main deck of the white ship, three figures slowly floated down into the air. They looked exactly like faceless angels. Their bodies were completely encased in glittering gold and white armor, and on their backs were six wings made of pure light energy moving slowly. There were no level indicators floating above their heads. The system had completely hidden their status from the eyes of mortals.
One of the Arbitrators raised a hand pointing straight at the Zenith fortress. He did not say a single word.
The space right in front of the Arbitrator’s hand suddenly distorted insanely fast. A massive, highly dense sphere of blinding white light formed in a matter of seconds. Without any warning, the light sphere was fired straight at the Zenith deck like a meteor cannon. The air pressure alone was enough to crush a normal person’s lungs entirely.
"Belida!" Kanos shouted sharply.
The giant knight leaped forward. He swung his black steel greatsword with full power, using the incredibly wide flat area of the blade as an absolute shield.
BAM!
The light explosion slammed directly into Belida’s sword. The kinetic force was insanely brutal. Belida was dragged backward for dozens of meters, his boots carving two long trenches into the hard marble floor of the Zenith. Belida’s shoulder armor cracked badly, but the knight managed to hold back the city destroying attack, stopping it from leveling their main deck. The custom black steel sword Kanos made was truly capable of swallowing most of that pure magic without snapping at all.
"Those flying clowns hit pretty hard," Belida spat thick blood from his mouth. He forced himself to stay standing, even though his arms were shaking violently from the sheer impact.
Kanos did not waste a single second. He turned around to the pushcart full of stolen materials from the fiftieth floor. Kanos slammed his obsidian arm directly onto the pile of black steel and crystals. All the materials melted instantly and got sucked straight into his body at crazy speeds. The purple veins on his black hand pulsed rapidly, indicating his energy capacity had hit its absolute maximum limit.
Kanos walked over to a row of old magic cannons left behind by the Sensor Bureau on the deck. These cannons were originally used to fire basic fire and ice magic.
"Useless junk," Kanos muttered coldly. He placed his black hand directly onto the main cannon barrel.
Thick purple smoke exploded from his palm. Kanos was not just drawing in the open air. He was directly hacking the physical matter of the existing weapon. His purple smoke spread fast, wrapping all ten golden magic cannons completely. The iron and gold melted, forcefully reshaped by Kanos’s brutal artistic will. Sharp lines were drawn together, forming brand new cannon barrels made of pitch black void stone, complete with highly lethal purple vein patterns along their entire lengths.
In less than ten seconds, ten Cannons of the Void were successfully created. These weapons were no longer dead objects. They were alive, breathing, and radiating an anti magic aura so thick it made the air around the cannons literally freeze over.
Kanos did not need operators to fire them. His mind was connected directly to the core of every single custom cannon.
"I do not care if you are gods or just lines of code," Kanos glared sharply at the three Arbitrators still floating in the air. His eyes projected an incredibly dense hatred for everything related to the Yomalvara system. "Come down here and delete me if you can."
Kanos swung his left hand down violently.
The ten Cannons of the Void fired simultaneously. There was no sound of exploding gunpowder. There was no flash of light. What came out of the cannon barrels were massive pillars of ultra dense purple smoke shooting forward at hypersonic speeds. The shots did not burn the air, they completely punched holes through reality itself along their path.
The three Arbitrators tried to dodge by opening spatial distortion gates. However, Kanos’s attack actively absorbed the space and time energy around them. The purple smoke pillars slammed directly into the light shields of the Arbitrator ship.
The double layered shields designed to withstand meteor impacts shattered instantly like thin window glass getting hit by a rock. Kanos’s purple smoke completely devoured the ship’s light energy without mercy. Follow up shots battered the hull brutally, tearing massive holes into the pristine white metal and triggering a chain of massive explosions from inside the engine room.
The holy ship from the Central Axis began smoking and slowly lost altitude, plummeting straight down toward the crater of Marrath city. The afternoon sky, previously dominated by golden light, was now totally polluted by the thick black smoke of the central system’s absolute defeat.
