Chapter 293: The siege of Saphigia (2/2)

These compressed wells of gravity enacted a destruction absolute, tearing enormous swaths of their forces apart in seconds. Those alive sent back vital information to the further reinforcements, and their portals split apart into multiple directions. From these vantage points, their Hybrids, Blighted, and mind mages advanced.

I shifted to Rise of Eden, and I partitioned myself into several minds once more. One of these minds generated singularities on clustered enemy forces. This split their offensive apart. Beyond those, others came riding in, forming a telepathic link with me. Their blighted shot out orange plumes of acid, and their Hybridized leviathans swam into combat range.

One of my minds chased these telepathic links down, and I didn't launch a mental assault back. Instead, I smothered the source with Event Horizon. Though still somewhat useful on Hybrids, Event Horizon disintegrated the squishy mages, all the flat damage overwhelming them. This proved much more helpful than fighting them at their own game.

Another mind focused on dismantling the telepathic connections between Hybrids and espens. Unlike their controllers, the Hybrids lacked any real intellect to beat. They obeyed like puppets pulled by unseen strings. Copying Alpha's strategies, I tugged at those strings while surging bursts of ascendant mana through them.

This created short lapses in the espen's control, which became deadly from the ascendant mana's influence. The Hybrid's orange pustules pulsed red, and they attacked everything nearby, often each other. This made for an efficient, targeted approach instead of brute-forcing them to death like I usually did.

Despite my onslaught, some of their ships escaped my singularities long enough to fire at our troops. This was where I made yet another mind control my dimensional shield. I generated my pocket dimension, swallowed the dreadnought's blasts, and reversed the artillery back at them. This left little for our troops to dodge as they rolled in.

And even those that passed beyond this decimation, they fought with me in hand to hand combat. Magic or not, I could still crack skulls with my fists, and it required little thought to do so. Dwarfing these foes, I tore the blighted apart. I charged through bodies, awash in red and orange blood. I siphoned the life from enemies coming to close, and I gored enemies through telekinesis.

My all-out offensive gave our ground troops free rein. They rode into the warzone without doubt or pause. They secured Vagni, letting them escape from my carnage. Others killed Hybrids, silvers, and Elysium soldiers left behind. They went in all directions, the golems acting as vanguards. Behind them, the gialgathens carried mind mages and power armor wearing humans.

Between these ranks, the Omega division came through. These members crashed over the seafloor, dashing at the Hybrids. A woman from our guild crashed into these metal monsters first, and the Omega Strain pierced its chest. It sucked the life out of the Hybrid, the twisted monster howling out in agony.

It died seconds later, the Omega Strain's thirst quenched. The strain division continued this breach, devouring the metal within our enemies. We used this saturation tactic to fully charge our Omega Strains, and it gave us a tremendous headstart in this battle. Their individual efforts cleaned the few remaining forces I left behind.

But this was only the beginning. We walked a bloody path of many miles, and this was the first step.

Leaping around, I cracked the earth and glass all around me. These jumps gutted the ground, making craters large enough to swallow buildings. My armor grinned with joy as I indulged it with Event Horizon, running through the enemy ranks. I throttled the minds of their mages. I snapped necks and bit through bone. I boiled the blood in their bodies. I crushed arteries in their skulls, and I inundated the sea in their corpses.

Little remained from my passing, but what I left behind, my guild conquered. Torix commanded the mass of our army, and he did so with intelligence and ability. His mind operated at a supernatural speed, commanding various forces with fluidity. At the same time, he controlled our enemies' corpses, giving them wills of their own with his newfound primordial mana.

Torix didn't stop there. He bolstered our soldiers with quintessence magic, granting them enhanced attributes. These soldiers and super golems ripped gaping holes in Elysium's defenses where I wasn't present. Torix used his ascendant mana as well, flooding Hybrid's minds with the desire to kill. Many Elysium troops died by being devoured and by their own Hybrids.

This was still only a part of our victory. Althea took out the strongest members of the enemy army, one at a time. Usually, she just shot these spears that were easy to forget about. Though significant, they weren't exactly flashy. Well, something drastic changed, and now her spears unleashed these massive explosions. They would pierce into an enemy before exploding outwards with tectonic shockwaves.

These aftershocks left ripples in the ocean like children playing in a bath. The sheer size of these waves sent apocalyptic shivers up my spine, and they scattered the light above us. This cast innumerable shadows that Hod abused to his fullest extent. He took out elemental mages, snapping necks, tearing jugulars, and ripping heads. They left plenty for me to do, and I continued battling for hours.

In this war, I acted as our juggernaut. I ran forward, unveiling my full arsenal as I did. Wielding multiple magics, I generated acts of absolute ruin. Earthquakes spawned under my feet. Tsunamis covered the surface as I passed. The ocean boiled into an abyss. It was a display of my potential, realized to its fullest extent at this moment.

I wanted this fight to be a milestone for our guild, one where we carved our names into history. If I had my way, Schema would write out how we began a complete pushback for the war. An essential piece of that, my guildsmen secured the territory I left behind. Super golems acted as unmoving constructs, our omega division handling stragglers.

They leveled rapidly, many of our members capping their levels in the process. They began stabilizing the territories we passed as the fighting died down. Each golem could monitor a one-mile radius, its vision and senses sharp. Humans helped, each of them offering judgment to certain situations. This gave us the ability to rescue the Vagni, many of them just looking for a way out of this endless war.

I offered a solution as we bodied their lines. Despite this rapid progress, we eventually slowed down. Our assault coursed out like a blitz, but so did Elysium's eventual retaliation. They summoned new foes for us to face, many upgraded Hybrids joining the fray. Like us, Elysium prepared for battle, and they began bringing out larger prey for me.

Version 2.0's appeared, their strength formidable. Not formidable enough for me, however. Their mental tricks no longer phased me, and without that edge, I could put all of my focus on taking one out. It was as simple as pinning one down and blowing it up with a singularity. It took all of seconds, and those that closed in, I simply crushed with my hands.

A Version 2.0 couldn't beat a super golem, we found out, though they got close. Our guildsmen turned the tide in that regard, giving us an edge. The gialgathens as well, they gave us a superiority in mobility that proved invaluable. From scouting to transport, they offered urgent utility to the rescue services, Kessiah leading the charge with her healing. And aside from their utility maneuverability, the gialgathens connected to the Vagni, something I hadn't expected.

The gialgathens had controlled the espens long ago, even before the espens had language. This was due to the gialgathens innate, telepathic communication. Comparatively, the espens showed a refined edge similar to humans while the Vagni mirrored animalistic warriors. Because of that, the gialgathens herded the Vagni with relative ease. Seeing the Vagni's reaction reminded me of when I first saw the flying amphibians.

Gialgathens, they struck a memorable scene. That immediate awe gushed from the Vagni as the gialgathens drifted overhead. It didn't hurt that a gialgathen's wings enabled superior swimming, giving them a grace similar to when they were in the sky. I could tell they were once aquatic, and they hadn't altogether left those adaptations behind.

I abused these factors to the fullest, giving us a controlled territory exceeding the Empire's grasp at its fullest. Within hours, we contained the center point of the city, and by the end of the day, we safeguarded nearly twenty square miles. This gave us a bastion to launch from, giving us innumerable advantages.

Spear created warps for supply chains, giving our troops fresh food, unsalted water, and resting places. Torix established a non-aquatic zone with his magic, letting our members move and breathe with ease. The super golems established a baseline perimeter for this depot, and I generated rows of wild plant life.

I did so at random, culling the non-edible varieties. Afterward, I created a swarm of crabs to feast on the various plant life in our underwater terrarium. This established a farm, one the Vagni immediately got to work in. The gialgathens commanded while offering them protection, allowing the Vagni to begin founding new lives here.

Yeah, all in eight hours.

The speed of our establishment defied reason, our plan working better than we imagined. Our resources converted to this planet perfectly. In particular, many of the gialgathens preferred Blegara to Mt. Verner. This gave them a bit more oomph when fighting, their typical laziness replaced by ferocity. By the time we finished establishing a fully realized camp, I peered at the beginnings of a colony.

Finalizing the effort, I established a tower covered in runes, some enchantments cipheric and others every day. I pulled out a blue core at the top of this lookout, one of the two I had remaining. Planting it down, I went through the system menus before stamping our position onto this world. My palm placed, I began charging.

The elemental furnace on my chest roared, and my own mana funneled into the device. By the time I finished, the blue core sizzled to the touch. I finished in only twenty seconds. The dungeon heart's protective barrier washed over our new colony, our members flabbergasted that it was already here.

I stared around at that point, finding my super golems finishing off Hybrids in the distance. Twenty of them kept this central camp secure, protecting us as explosions radiated in the background. Gialgathens swam and carried our members across the seafloor, ensuring few casualties came out.

It was a thing of beauty.

Wanting to focus on construction, I honed into my working mode. Talking with a few engineers on the scene, we drafted up a few ideas. As they sketched onto blueprint paper, an explosion radiated from overhead. I peered upwards and found one of my super golems falling in pieces. Its eyes shattered; it no longer sustained life, having been the first casualty of its kind.

It was Alpha.

A burst of rage roared into my mind as I stared up at whatever did this. Standing outside of a dimensional rift, a Sentinel stared down at us. It loomed like a forerunner, one that beckoned forth a second wind for Elysium. It mirrored Spear in both demeanor and appearance, so I believed our Sentinel had gone mad. Looking closer, I found signs of this Sentinel's corruption.

It carried a single dimensional slicer, the magenta-colored blade humming underwater. Its armor cracked, though gray graphene soaked between the aged fractures. Eyeless and without a face, a remnant wore the armor, but it was no longer its own being. Nanomachine laden fluid pumped through large exposed veins clustering in its joints. It twitched at random, an ever-present fight for control booming in its mind.

I analyzed the creature, trying to ween as much information out of it as possible before running in.

Hybridized Sentinel(lvl 21,019) - This mockery of Schema's glorious troops results from a Sentinel being Hybridized. While still retaining fragments of its previous mind, it has been wholly neutralized via a psionic solution. Whether or not this is the same means of controlling Lehesion is unknown.

What is known is this is a harrowing foe. It wields the graphene armor that most Sentinels boast, further augmented by implants. This monster also wields a dimensional slicer, using the absolute weaponry to enact harm onto anything it touches. There is almost nothing known that can withstand a dimensional slicer's attack head-on, so evasion is recommended.

Outside of this, the years of training also assist the Sentinel in becoming exceptional. This gives it a tremendous hand to hand combat ability and mental prowess. Sentinels can cast a variety of magic, most of it non-absolute in nature. Some arcane magic can be used, and this is the most deadly of these sorcery based abilities.

Last of all is the Hybridization process. As disgusting and filthy as the monsters are, Hybrids are incredibly tenacious. They carry regenerative abilities exceeding almost every known species. Combine that with their metallic constitutions and nanomachine laden blood, and they are physically strong while being difficult to kill.

Most would need to run. I ask you to show this monster what you're capable of.

By Personalized AI-C90

It was interesting that my perception got high enough to see which personalized AI was making my statuses. That being said, the Hybridized Sentinel lost in its mental war, so it banged its chest with its spear. A vast echo rippled across the landscape as mana flooded through its tear in dimensions. Like Lehesion before him, a sacrificial ritual empowered this being beyond its limits, and it radiated with energy.

Rearing back its spear, it let out a swipe that launched out a dimensional wave. It tore across the blue core's defenses, leaving cracks in the hexagonal barrier. Before it swiped again, I propelled myself towards the attack. Reaching out a hand, the slice snapped against my palm, unable to harm me. I gripped the slicing energy, draining it. The Sentinel leaned back from my presence, and I glared at the poor sap stuck in that armor.

It telepathically linked to me, speaking on conversational terms,

”Ah, it's you again. The so-called Harbinger.”

It was someone I wasn't familiar with, but that didn't matter. Staring them down, I roared back, ”You're going to die here...You know it. That meat puppet can feel it.”

The Sentinel they controlled trembled, but its psionic controllers repressed its urge to run. My armor grinned, ”I cannot wait until after I'm able to reach you all.”

The voice replied, ”You will never be able to find us.”

I shot a mental bombardment it's way, just a raw burst of will. The mind's resolve wavered as I gripped my hands into fists harder than iron,

”I will, and when I do, there'll be nowhere left to run.”

It feigned confidence, but I pressed on,

”Have you ever thought about how fragile you are? One pulse of so many different forces, and you die. It's a miracle you can even survive, but you still chose to make me your enemy.”

It replied, ”We've made far greater enemies than you, like Schema.”

I narrowed my eyes, ”Schema hides on an unseen planet while I fight on the frontlines, and I do so without fear of death or failure. I can walk across stars without burning, and I can drift across the cosmos without breathing. They do me no harm, not them nor the monsters you wield.”

”Those monsters will be the death of you and your guild.”

”But they are only monsters to you. See, unlike Schema, I need not hide, for I can face anyone in battle. Unlike Elysium, I need no puppets, for the body I wield is invulnerable.”

Event Horizon crept towards the creature as I seethed,

”You, you may bide your time, but know that I am eternal.”

The runes across my armor shined crimson,

”And I will find you.”