novelraw Chapter 440: A Pocket of Captives
Chapter 440: A Pocket of Captives
The space between galaxies was filled with enormous fleets facing one another across millions of light-years, with light from nearby galaxies pouring across the dark vacuum and reflecting off planet-sized warships as they drifted through open space.
Energy signatures coloured all perception fields as long-range cannons discharged across the immense distances, their fire threading through space in blinding arcs while defensive shields flickered into view under repeated impacts, turning the surrounding darkness into a shifting lattice of colour.
Fighter squadrons streamed out from their launch bays in disciplined waves, accelerating into the open battlefield as formations adjusted constantly, wings breaking apart and reforming while fire stitched through them and entire platoons vanished in bursts of light and debris.
Command vessels relayed orders to battalion leaders, who redirected lines of advance and pushed flanks wide to stretch enemy coverage and open corridors for concentrated fire, while smaller ships darted between larger hulls and used the mass of their own flagships as partial cover as they returned fire.
Cannon volleys crossed the expanse in overlapping patterns, hitting clusters of ships and erasing them in chained explosions that sent fragments spinning in all directions, briefly catching distant galactic light before being lost again in the dark vacuum.
Once in a while, a rogue planet was caught between converging barrages and blown apart into incandescent debris that drifted silently through the battlefield.
Beyond the immediate exchange, the mass of grey fog filling the fields of vision of all who looked in its direction loomed in the distance, an ever-expanding Dead Zone whose edge slowly crept forward as it consumed more and more of the universe, devouring the universal laws intertwined within the fabric of reality in the regions it overtook and leaving behind echoes that fed the Inverse Comprehensions of the dead lifeforms inside.
Against that advancing Dead Zone, the fleets continued their long-range engagement, trading destruction across light-years over several days.
During that span, the distance between the opposing forces collapsed, and the black vacuum of space grew denser with debris and with drifting wreckage from destroyed vessels on both sides.
When the gap between the two sides narrowed enough, the mode of battle changed, as massive launch bays opened and mid-range fighter crafts poured out in vast numbers.
Simultaneously, Deity Realm Existences of the Intergalactic Accord charged out from their battleships in waves, battalions numbering in the millions and led by High-Tier Deities, with several Race Kings and Queens commanding their encompassing divisions as they advanced to meet the oncoming combatants of the Neo-Extinction Legion.
The first clash between the combatants filled space with a blinding flash of light, and by the time that initial brilliance dispersed, a brutal melee had already erupted, with fighters meeting above and below one another as weapons collided amid overwhelming releases of energy, while smaller crafts shot through the gaps between them.
Some jets were targeted and destroyed mid-flight, some spiralling out of control before crashing straight into dense clusters of close-quarters combatants, their detonations rippling through the melee and throwing bodies and debris outward.
While the blasts weren’t able to kill most of the combatants, all of whom possessed enough durability to endure supernovae explosions, they were violent enough to scatter formations, disrupt concentration, and create openings that enemies exploited without hesitation.
The massive battlefield fractured into countless localised struggles as Deities fought at arm’s reach, law-infused attacks tearing through space while counterforces met them head on, with neither side yielding ground as destruction piled atop destruction.
Soon, the dead lifeforms entered the fray, their corrupted magic and constant pseudo-nonexistence emissions granting them an innate advantage that compensated for the numerical difference between them and the Accord’s forces.
They focused their attacks on combatants wielding universal laws they inverse comprehended, targeting those against whom their law deconstruction abilities worked best.
Among the dead lifeforms were entities whose power rivalled that of the Race Kings and Queens leading the Accord’s combat divisions, and they clashed directly with their counterparts in brutal exchanges that sent shockwaves rippling across space and blew away any nearby weaker combatants.
What followed was a prolonged slugfest that stretched on for several days, with squads, platoons, and entire battalions cycling in and out of combat, rotations managed so that constant pressure didn’t ease while allies were given time to recover wounds and restore depleted energies before returning to the fray.
Fighters threaded through the chaotic battlefield whenever openings appeared, trying to slip past the main clashes to reach rear lines where the wounded gathered, hoping to eliminate them before they could rejoin the fighting.
After over 120 hours of uninterrupted conflict, the dead lifeforms began to pull their lines back little by little, while the regular existences of the Neo-Extinction Legion moved forward to take their place along the frontlines.
Dragons, elves, humans, and members of many other races who’d allied with and served the Neo-Extinction Legion now held the front.
The combatants of the Intergalactic Accord had no difficulty identifying them, not only because of the lingering traces of pseudo-nonexistence clinging to their bodies, the corruption they’d inevitably accumulated from spending extended periods within the Dead Zone, and it wasn’t simply because many of their unit leaders wielded Extinction law energy, but because of a single spell Olivia had cast.
It was a rune that allowed allies to recognise one another, making it natural that anyone who couldn’t be immediately identified as friendly was treated as an enemy without hesitation.
As for Olivia herself, the one who’d applied that rune magic to quadrillions of existences without breaking a sweat, she was fighting directly along the front lines against the withdrawing dead lifeforms of the Neo-Extinction Legion.
She led a battalion of witches while wearing the guise of their commander, with the real battalion commander stationed far to the rear in Olivia’s command station, several million light-years behind the Accord’s rear lines, disguised as Olivia in her stead.
Aside from Richard, no one knew Olivia wasn’t actually in that command station, and that she was instead leading a contingent of witches against the retreating enemy, unleashing powerful magic that wiped out hundreds at a time.
The battalion whose commander Olivia was impersonating belonged to a larger army division, which meant that to maintain the disguise correctly, she had to follow every order exactly as it was issued.
When the division commander gave the order for the battalion to fall back, citing the danger of advancing too far forward and drawing too close to the Dead Zone and becoming affected by its corrupting influence, Olivia didn’t hesitate to relay the retreat command, her tone perfectly matching that of the commander she was mimicking.
As the witches under her command began pulling back, Olivia turned toward the rear guard of the dead lifeforms and gathered cosmic energy around her hands.
She cupped her palms, and within seconds, several hundred magic circles bloomed into existence between them, merging together into a single spell circle that she hurled forward like a discus.
It spun through space, expanding as it travelled, and eventually stretched across nearly a dozen light-years above the rear guard of the retreating dead lifeforms, much to their immense shock.
A second spell circle of equal scale manifested in the space beneath them, and both massive constructs glowed with intricate runic patterns, their light intense enough to draw the attention of distant combatants scattered across the battlefield.
Two runes flashed into existence on the backs of Olivia’s palms, and as she clapped her hands together, the twin spell circles mirrored the motion, crashing into one another and crushing everything caught between them.
What followed was a blinding flash of light and a violent release of cosmic energy, the explosion tearing through the fabric of space that had already been weakened by the nearby presence of the Dead Zone.
Spatial rifts tore open, slicing through clusters of dead lifeforms that survived the initial blast and ripping their existences apart as the overwhelming cosmic energy flooding through the damaged spatial fabric proved far beyond what they could endure.
Amid that destruction, several false spatial rifts opened as well, entrances to Olivia’s pocket universe mixed among the genuine spatial tears created by the collapse of the surrounding space.
Much like Jamie’s pocket universe, which was large enough to store so many things that he didn’t even know what was inside it anymore and could support living beings within, Olivia possessed one of her own.
Again, at their level of power, owning subspaces or pocket universes was kinda the standard.
The captured dead lifeforms were drawn into the rifts Olivia’s spell had created and immediately confined within specialised containment chambers she had prepared in advance, designed specifically to restrain them.
With that completed, Olivia turned away and fell back alongside the witches, who remained completely unaware that the one fighting with them was the ’Rune Archon’ of the Legendary Hybrids.
◇ ◇ ◇
The moment the battalion fell back behind secured lines, Olivia swapped places with the real commander and returned to her command station.
As soon as she reappeared, she grabbed Richard and pulled him into her pocket universe, leaving behind nothing but a single thin line floating in empty space above her chair on the command station’s bridge, the entrance to the pocket universe she had just used.
Inside, Richard stared silently at the scene before him, then turned toward his younger sister and asked, "Didn’t you say you were going to capture a few of them?"
"Yeah," Olivia replied casually. "I captured a few."
Richard’s gaze shifted to the rows of seven-foot-tall containment tubes lining the walls of the hall, arranged in 5 rows and stretching across 30 or 40 columns on either side of the corridor.
Each tube held a trapped dead lifeform, ranging from those based on humans to elves, dwarves, and beastkin, and there were even enormous tubes housing dead lifeforms based on giants.
He slowly looked back at Olivia and asked, "Since when did a couple hundred become a few?"
"Well," Olivia said, "compared to the millions out there, it’s really just a few."
Richard fell silent, unable to argue with that logic. He had genuinely expected her to capture a handful of commanders, maybe a dozen at most, not well over a hundred.
After a moment, he shrugged.
"Oh well," he said. "The more the better."
He rolled his shoulder, winding his right arm as bone made a faint cracking sound, then opened his palm. "Let’s get to dissecting these bastards."
A shining silver scalpel appeared in his hand, and seeing it, Olivia raised an eyebrow and said, "And somehow you and John think I’m the one who’s most like mum."
"Of course you are," Richard replied. "When it comes to this kind of experimental work, you’re even better than I am. I may not look like it, but I’m more of a fighter than a researcher, after all."
While speaking, he stepped toward the nearest containment tube, cosmic energy gathering around his left palm as he phased his hand through the barrier, pulling the wounded dead lifeform inside out.
Grey fog immediately began seeping from its body, attempting to consume his arm, but the dense cosmic energy coating him stopped it, unable to penetrate far enough to reach his actual flesh.
Richard turned and flung the dead lifeform onto the operating table that Olivia summoned alongside several floating cameras, each tuned to perceive different portions of the light spectrum.
As the body landed on the table, Richard’s hand moved, the scalpel rising and falling as blood sprayed into the air, marking the beginning of the Cathedral siblings’ experiments on the dead lifeforms.
The date was July 31st, Year 2020 of the 51st Zanerth General Calendar.