Chương 1326: 1356 - Massacre at Zen'Metrus II

Amidst the chaos, Leon danced through the Void, his blood alight, his lips smiling unabashedly in his broken helmet. The Void around Zen'Metrus was a maelstrom of power, and he was at its center, feeling it whirl and roil around him—indeed, he was the source of much of that chaos as he used his power without restraint. It was thrilling in a way that he couldn't deny. Such expression of power was viscerally satisfying in a way that few other things were, and it was easy to lose himself in.

Lightning flowed from him as easily as it ever had, from soul realm to blade or fingertip—but with Iron Pride's Adamant made from his own blood, magically speaking, there was little difference between the two—and blasting through ark plating with almost startling ease. Without Antipatra, he was practically unstoppable. He was too small a target, and arks were not generally designed to combat individuals—especially those of his power.

He was aware of what was happening around him and felt no small amount of elation at seeing his fleet arrive in perfect formation and begin surrounding Eirenaios' arks, but he didn't stop; he was in the center of the enemy formation, and so long as they were preoccupied with him, there would be fewer arks to combat his fleet. This was war as he'd always known it, at least in a strategic sense.

Even in the Bull Kingdom, where there were no arks to speak of, war had been like this: powerful mages had to be locked down in duels with mages of comparable strength, or they'd run absolute roughshod over the rank-and-file. They could only be taken down with particular tactics dependent on the specific strategic situation, and even then, typically only at great cost. The first salvo was fired from Leon's fleet, but he was moving so quickly that he didn't notice it hit.

Instead, he dove into a destroyer-sized ark, lightning dancing around, several Thunderbirds made of silver-blue lightning following in his wake. Armor and hull melted before him, and in the heat of his power, the destroyer's crew was incinerated. He couldn't help but chuckle as he blasted out the other side of the ark, his lightning Thunderbirds bursting out from other compartments.

The ark was so damaged that fire poured from the holes they'd punched through, and after several seconds, those flames consumed the entire ark, adding its ruined fragments and the ashes of its crew to the rapidly growing debris cloud over Zen'Metrus.

'They call themselves 'Burning Lords', and yet they die in fire…' Finally, he paused to assess the situation despite his blood urging him onward, to keep going, to never stop until all of his enemies were dead. His fleet had engaged the enemy and immediately seized the advantage. Eirenaios had maneuvered his fleet into a close formation where further maneuvering was difficult, which left his arks vulnerable to Leon's fleet. Already, a hundred smaller arks had been destroyed or heavily damaged.

But the larger ones that Leon hadn't yet struck remained. He spied Aristarchos' vast craft, distinguishable by the prominent markings on the hull, marking it as his. Eirenaios' ark wasn't so prominent, and that left Leon to hunt down those that he thought might be his earlier in the battle. As of yet, he didn't think he'd been successful in that particular hunt. And, of course, he saw Antipatra's flag ark.

It was the largest in the fleet, and even now, it remained the most heavily protected, obscured in a cloud of escorts ranging from small fighters to cruisers. Antipatra herself was likely dead. She'd been beheld in the Eye of Calamity; her survival was unlikely. And yet, thanks to Makarios, Leon knew that Eirenaios had claimed Antipatra as still alive, though she hadn't been seen since the last battle.

'She can't escape,' Leon silently vowed. Eirenaios was a great threat as the mage leading Antipatra's fleet, but Antipatra herself was the greater target, especially now that Antipatra's fleet had been surrounded by Leon's. After Eirenaios came Aristarchos, but Leon could see that Makarios had finally made his move, setting off the bombs that he'd been given following Leon's first ambush.

They had ravaged Antipatra's fleet, targeting especially those arks around Aristarchos' flag ark and the rest further in the rear. Already, Makarios' arks were taking full advantage of the situation, attacking the now-vulnerable arks with abandon, and in doing so, erasing any doubts Leon had of his loyalty. So, with lightning sparking around him and three lightning Thunderbirds silently orbiting him, he shot toward Antipatra's flag ark.

Makarios' bombs hadn't done much to this particular corner of Eirenaios' chosen formation, so Antipatra's escort craft did their best to stop him. A corvette physically interposed itself between him and his target, but Leon tore through it with the same ease that he had the rest of the arks he'd destroyed.

He hit the hull, felt the heat of it melting before him, heard the shrieking of the ark's stressed superstructure and the screaming of its crew, and had the stench of burning metal and meat fill his nostrils, only to be overpowered by the stinging fragrance of ozone. Fire bloomed throughout the ark as Leon tore through the other side, his bright Thunderbirds ensuring that his strike against the ark was mortal.

Lance fire targeted him on his approach to Antipatra's flag ark, but given his speed, size, and the need to split fire between him and his fleet, it didn't come at a great enough volume to hit him. No other ark tried what the corvette did, and in minutes, Leon slammed blade-first into the center of Antipatra's flag ark.

The wards in this ark were stronger than in the other arks Leon had hit so far, to the point that he had to pull Iron Pride back and strike the hull again, ripping away molten armor and breaking through the wards. It took a third strike for him to penetrate the hull, and a fourth to create a large enough hole for him to climb through. His Thunderbirds remained outside, raking the escorting arks with their lightning talons and wreaking all the havoc they could.

Glancing around, Leon found the compartment that he'd blasted his way into was empty, save for a few fried mechanical pieces and some lingering corpse ash that hadn't been sucked into Voidspace by his entrance. It seemed to him that it hadn't been empty when he struck the ark, but had been emptied by his power… He didn't let that thought linger too long before he summoned his lightning again and began cutting his way through the ark.

A bulkhead had closed around this compartment, but with his power and weapon, he cut through it quickly, entering a long corridor that looked like it ran the length of the ark—some kind of maintenance corridor, it seemed. The moment he got through that bulkhead, others began sliding into place, sealing off this corridor in a hundred places. Leon didn't wait for this to finish; he charged, flitting under two bulkheads before they closed, and finding himself before a small hatch leading further into the ark.

A quick application of lightning saw him through, and faced with a dozen terrified guards trying to set up a barricade. With a swing of his blade and a wave of lightning, the guards were killed, and he strode past. Now that he was in the ark proper, he took a moment to admire the place. Even in these outer compartments, the walls rippled with beautiful flame-colored light, moving between reds, oranges, and yellows as he walked past.

There wasn't much other decoration, but there were symbols on the walls and colored lines on the floor that he guessed were meant to aid the crew in finding their way around the massive ark. And the ark was massive, with a length of around eighteen hundred feet, and a width of around three hundred feet at its narrowest. Other plates curled off the main body of the ark like tongues of metallic fire, but Leon ignored them, knowing that his goal would likely be buried in the ark's heart.

The ark's main systems, bridge, and Antipatra's personal quarters were almost certainly in the deepest and most heavily protected part of this vast craft. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. The lines on the floor didn't point him toward these specific sensitive locations, but he could sense the wards were getting stronger as he advanced, and he thought just following the stronger wards would eventually bring him to where he wanted to go.

He set off, bolting through the halls, ignoring most of the crew who ran at the sight of him, and only sparing the time to kill them when they attempted to block his way. Unfortunately for them, none of the guards were up to the task of slowing him down, let alone stopping him, and he cut them down like wheat before a scythe. He even killed several tenth-tier mages, men and women who would've dominated a plane like Aeterna, but here, amounted to nothing more than minor roadblocks in his path.

As he moved, the décor slowly grew more ornate. Gold trimmed the corners of the halls, and the halls themselves grew more expansive. Blind arcades interrupted the rippling walls, with intricate reliefs made of light within the arches' shallow alcoves. Had he more time, Leon would've loved to explore this ark in its entirety.

Unfortunately, the occasional shake and boom from the battle outside reached him even as he neared the ark's heart, spurring him onward, until he found himself before a thick bulkhead blocking off the most ornate hallway he'd stumbled upon yet. While he couldn't see for certain that Antipatra lay beyond, he felt this was most likely her personal quarters, given the eleventh-tier mage standing guard outside.

The mage, with a tired look in his eyes and resignation writ large across his face, drew a flaming spear from his soul realm and clad himself in red-gold plate. Leon admired his courage, but when he charged, and their weapons clashed, the mage lasted less than ten exchanges before his head was parted from his shoulders, and Leon's lightning obliterated his heart and soul realm.

The clash had been violent enough to cut all power to this section of the ark, ravaging the walls and bulkhead, but not quite piercing through. Leon fixed that by thrusting Iron Pride into the bulkhead, his silver-blue lightning cutting through the weakened wards and driving through the compromised metal.

A second bulkhead of Aurichalcum awaited him on the other side, but with battle-damaged wards and power in the ark failing, Leon was still able to pry it open using nothing more than his own thirteenth-tier strength—and a spike conjured with origin power within the ark's walls that further degraded the section's protective wards. Within, he found a vision of paradise—polished red stone and orange brick, featuring various murals of Antipatra and various companions in moments of triumph.

Leon saw one of her standing against a backdrop of a burning plane, while another saw her covered in blood, slaying the last of some kind of wolf creature and tossing its corpse onto a pile of its kin. The atrium was relatively bare save for a few chairs around the edge, and Leon sped across the thick carpet to the next door. Beyond, he found a richly-appointed solar, and three more doors.

One door led to a luxurious bathroom, another to a lavish dining room, and the final led him to where he wanted to be: Antipatra's bedroom, where he found the woman herself. She had been a powerful opponent, but one he didn't have much respect for, given the reason for her opposing him. He would've understood if she stood against him on more principled grounds, but as a devout follower of Khosrow's Law, she had fought against him for the sole reason that he bore Inherited Bloodlines.

He wasn't even human in her mind. Now, he stood over her apparently slumbering form, with no trace of humanity left within her. Her head had completely regenerated, but she didn't stir even as he poked at her body with his power. She wasn't even breathing, and if he hadn't been able to sense some measure of power emanating from her, he would've assumed she was dead.

'She is dead,' he corrected.

'Her body just has yet to catch up…' The Great Black Dragon was right, it seemed; Leon hadn't destroyed her soul realm, and so her body remained, but using the Eye of Calamity on her head had rendered her completely comatose, and unlikely to ever recover. When Leon raised his sword and plunged it through her bedding and into her heart, it didn't feel like revenge or justice, but mercy. A pulse of lightning saw her heart explode, and with it, her soul realm.

Her aura flexed one last time before dissipating entirely, leaving nothing more than a corpse behind. Leon took only a moment to feel the weight of this, the death of a thirteenth-tier mage, one who was undoubtedly important to the forces that were moving against him, before he turned away. Antipatra was dead, but her ark, and her fleet, were not…

Eirenaios could almost laugh with relief as he saw Leon Raime charge at Antipatra's flag ark. His blood had run cold when he thought that the monster might use this opportunity to attack his ark, and at this point, there wasn't much Eirenaios would've been able to do to stop him. The fleet as a whole might've been able to eventually whittle him down, though it would've undoubtedly cost a few hundred more arks, but now that Leon Raime's fleet was surrounding him, there was no chance of that happening.

But with Leon moving against his brain-dead Lord, Eirenaios had a chance, and he decided to seize it with both hands. A series of rapid-fire orders was issued, and Eirenaios' arks began to move. Makarios had shown himself a traitor, attacking the fleet from behind, and the bombs he'd—for it could've only been him —set off had ravaged Eirenaios' detachment, but even with most of his crew out of the picture, Eirenaios' arks still moved according to his orders.

Sluggishly, but with appreciable speed, they surged against what Eirenaios determined was a minor weak point in the enemy's formation that was opening as they pressed against his fleet. Fire raked both his arks and theirs, and he sacrificed many of his arks to screen his flag ark's passage. The enemy surged in turn, seeking to plug the hole he was carving through their fleet.

But Eirenaios' ark pushed through, her powerful defenses and the sacrifice of her escorts buying them passage through the charnel house that the skies above Zen'Metrus had become.

"We're through!" the navigator shouted, his voice shaky and his skin pale, the effects of that bomb still weakening him. But he wasn't wrong; Eirenaios' flag ark pushed through the broken remnants of four enemy frigates and a light cruiser, their debris bouncing off her hull, but once the ark was through, she was free.

"Push the engines!" Eirenaios shouted more weakly than he'd intended, his voice wavering almost as much as his legs following the bombs' mental assault.

"Push through! Begin the jump once we're clear of the battlefield!" Unfortunately for his attempts to escape, the sky above Zen'Metrus had become too saturated in magic for the jump drive to successfully generate a teleportation portal. He needed more space, which the enemy seemed unwilling to give as fighters and other light, speedy arks peppered his defenses from the back.

He watched their weapons fire splash against his rear light shield with greater worry and passion than he did the destruction of his final escort ark, leaving him effectively alone, cut off from the rest of his remaining fleet.

'So long as I escape, then it will all be worth it,' he thought.

"Halfway!" his lead navigator shouted, and he smiled, knowing that the enemy wasn't going to stop him. They couldn't stop him now; he was too far away, and they'd lost too much time killing his escorts.

'I'll live… I'll LIVE!' The thought lent his shaking legs some measure of strength, and he started formulating his message to the rest of the nameless brotherhood that Antipatra had belonged to.

'I'll have to emphasize her failures,' he noted, not wanting to look like a coward, and especially not wanting to be blamed for the failure of this part of the operation. He smiled as a portal opened up ahead of his ark, escape momentarily seeming at hand. And then he realized that the portal was too far away, and that his jump drive hadn't yet activated. He stood up in shock as a long, broad, black-colored ark appeared, almost invisible against the blackness of the Void.

It was larger by a hair than his flag ark, and at least as heavily armed, if not moreso. Additional portals opened around it, spitting out two hundred similar-looking arks.

'Reinforcements?' he hoped, his heart stopping for a moment as he waited to see what these newcomers would do. Lightning flashed, the massive flag ark of this new fleet opening up on his ark. His defenses were quickly overwhelmed, his armor didn't fare much better, and soon, he could feel the heat of the lightning on the bridge, and the whine of the power systems as they attempted vainly to hold his ark together.

He collapsed into his command throne, unable to make a sound as his ark was destroyed, his escape, at his fingertips a moment ago, now impossible. He died in that chair, consumed by his ark as it exploded under the withering fire of this new group, and with him died the last piece of Antipatra's fleet.