Chapter 900

Chapter 900

Something about Anrades star felt wrong. Varghese wouldnt quite go so far as to say tainted, because that might imply that the whole of the star was affected. While the Trigold Cluster certainly had some worryingly powerful moments over the course of the war, the tremendous size of even the smallest stars made it rather difficult to actually modify the entirety of its essence.

Instead, here the star itself was more slippery or off balance. It was a disruption meant not for the star, but for him. Like a high pitched vibration in the back of his mind. At the start of the war, Varghese might not have been able to overcome something like that. But hed experienced so many new things since the start of the war all courtesy of them.

He never wanted to experience having a bound star destroyed again. Even though it was a new connection, it greatly disrupted his cultivation. And of course the later attack on Egnos star, disrupting the star and attempting to create some sort of sympathetic destruction of other bound stars that was actually worse. But hed learned much more about connections to stars, and had a stronger bond there.

This one would only slow him down a little bit. He pushed past the disruption, searching for anything hidden behind it but all he could feel was a healthy star. As he began to bind the star, his first active use of its power was to attempt to obliterate the hindrance. He wasnt sure what sort of material could survive inside a star, but it held its form well.

If that was the case then he would simply have to expel it from the star. He couldnt be certain that melting it inside the star wouldnt be a mistake of some sort. It could be the actual trap. Convection currents gathered, pushing the source of the disruption towards the surface where a solar flare blasted out a metallic sphere, carved with runes. How one would carve runes in a formation that could survive in the belly of a sun was beyond him, but he would have experts look at it later.

For the moment, he directed it into a partial orbit where it would drift for some months without trouble. They could pick it up after the battle for this system was over.

The process for Varghese had taken significantly longer than expected, to the point that the rest of the forces were already converging on Anrade by the time Varghese began his return. He left the small fleet assigned to him with the strange object, just in case there was something more to it that they had to watch out for.

Incoming enemy fleets were predicted to be several days out still. But with their current forces, it wouldnt take them a single day to pierce through the barriers around Anrade. And unlike Egnos, they hadnt withdrawn their best cultivators from the Void Scrying Sect.

Then again, they had more than a few factors that made it more difficult for the Void Scrying Sect to predict them. Aside from all of those theyd already killed and the civil war, there were a few important factors. First were Nthanda and the void ants, who did not affect the flow of natural energy in the same way normal cultivators might. And then there were the stronger Assimilation cultivators like Devon. He was nearly at the Enrichment stage, and while that in some way might make his actions more obvious to diviners it also meant slight changes in his actions could easily skew their predictions. They also had ships with anti-divinatory formations flying among them.

With all that accounted for, perhaps it explained the delay of enemy reinforcements. But even if they had been minutes away, it likely wouldnt matter.

The barrier was broken through immediately by the Great Queen, leading a group of void ants. The barrier took a moment to close behind them, but at that point The Wayfarer had already taken several shots. The lead gunner Neven was one of several ascension cultivators bound to the Ascension-class ship. With the power of the ship augmented by General Gabriela and the others it was also equivalent to a late stage Assimilation cultivator.

Each shot from the main cannon blasted a hole through lower defensive barriers, targeting key points of their formations that had been picked out. Varghese could already see the barrier wobbling.

Local fleets were already launched and rapidly made their way towards the wavering section of barrier as it slowly tried to reform. But that wasnt even the end of things. Chains wove around the edge of the hole, keeping open a tunnel a hundred meters wide which allowed The Wayfarer to target more key locations. Soon, the chains became unnecessary as the barrier began to retract, being nothing more than a thin layer for several kilometers in every direction.

Anton pushed himself close to his limits- though as he was heading towards one of his bound stars he had no worries about exhausting himself. He strode through subspace, keeping tabs on them as he moved. He cut them off about a day out from Naewu, approaching close enough to project his energy over the fleet to speak to them.

He had a vain hope that negotiation might be possible. What business do you have here? Anton saw a myriad of attacks fire upon his location. However, even with thousands of ships they could only cover a very small portion of space. Anton took a small step to the side, leaving most of their attacks focused on a point kilometers away from his new location. If youre going to be rude like that, I might not want to talk. More attacks- and some of the others were curving towards his location. If youre just here to fight, know that Im going to kill all of you. This is your last chance.

Their response was another volley of attacks. So Anton turned towards Naewu, fleeing closer. Or at least, appearing to flee. As it was, they were a bit too distant for him to properly fight. Avoiding attacks was one thing, but hed exhaust himself eventually, especially if he had to take them down.

Anton sighed to himself. Sensing all of the lives on the ships, he didnt want to kill them all. But if they were going to come for him, he couldnt help it. And letting them leave to kill members of his alliance was no good.

Anton slowly began to pull away, and they stopped launching attacks. He continued to gain distance, but his pursuers didnt stop. Perhaps they suspected he would stop and fight around his star, but they seemed to have an error in their calculations. Most likely, they thought he had a similar strength to Varghese. He couldnt be sure they were actually aware of his bound star, but it seemed they had some way to detect that.

When he arrived at the optimal distance from Naewu, they were about a tenth of a lightyear behind him. That meant it would take them over around two hours to catch up to him. And that also meant there was no possible way they could escape. Anton shook his head. Such a waste of life, but they were most likely responsible for much more death, either with their own hands or at the hands of their predecessors exterminating their currently occupied planets.

Two hours to reach Anton, perhaps half that if they could move more quickly. And they might be able to attack him from a bit further but not any significant fraction of a lightyear.

Anton took his first shot. If there were five thousand ships, he would only have to shoot once every second to take them out. But he was slightly more limited than that, since his attacks needed at least some time to reach them, even piercing through subspace with their base velocity near to lightspeed. He could cut down hours to minutes but the closer they got, the faster he could attack. And of course, Anton could control a few hundred arrows at once easily enough.

Instead of creating his energy bows, he just fired arrows sequentially. He took a casual quarter second for each shot, until he reached his maximum amount of simultaneous control. Which was quite significant, now that he was in Enrichment.

Ships began to fall, and he fired more arrows. Each one would take out one of the smaller ships, and two or three could take out a larger one. By the time the enemy fully grasped what was going on, hed taken out a tenth of their number. Yet they continued onward until hed taken out a quarter of them, while they were still half an hour away from catching up. At that point, they were certain he wasnt going to tire and began to retreat. But he hadnt picked that distance arbitrarily. He hadnt begun at the limit of his range. Indeed, he could probably accurately target them at about quarter a lightyear.

That was certainly an extreme distance, but compared to shooting into the next system over it was barely a few percent. He couldnt regularly hit anything between systems yet, but at a small fraction of that distance he could manage quite a bit more.

Now that they were retreating, however, he was merciful. He simply shot out their engines- or their sails, for the ships in that style. Whatever formations let them accelerate, and anything that would let them move faster than light.

They would have a chance at life. Except for the Twin Soul Sect members among them, of course. Spectral energy was reserved for them. And the rest could kill themselves, if they wanted to die so badly.