Chapter 330

Chapter 330

A month.

Capturing Gan Le bought them almost a month of tentative peace before the Harmony Accords ship started forward. They immediately stopped moving when Joy changed their trajectory and the elites teleported outside the ship.

Darrow had mentioned they would do something like that, but it made sense. Either fight them, or they would leave.

That was the threat, at least.

It was incredibly unlikely that the Harmony Accords would actually leave the system, but it was possible. Team Zero couldn’t allow even that possibility, which meant meeting them on the field of battle.

There had been a few skirmishes where one person, mostly a Liz, slipped out and tried to drop onto the planet full of soldiers, but all of those attempts had been rebuffed. The Harmony Accords had sent Ari Kai out a few times trying to sabotage their ship, but all attempts had failed.

They had run simulations about how the Harmony Accords would deal with the loss of Gan Le, but it was obvious they had a plan B. Gan Le had said as much, and had even given some information about it, but he’d never been personally involved in the training.

What was most interesting was who was the backup Matt-check. Specifically, Lorlael. Matt hadn’t had much experience fighting the woman, as she and Zack usually checked one another, but he was curious how exactly that would work. Everything he knew about the woman indicated that she needed a fair amount of time before she could match Matt’s power output, and while her maximum was distinctly higher than what Matt could reach, that was even rarer for her to reach.

The answer, apparently, was power armor.

Or at least, Matt would call it power armor. A mech might be a better description.

Lorlael had shed her normal long, brown coat for a crystalline suit of armor flooded with more mana than even Matt could safely handle, and that was just the first layer. Some kind of solid magical construct, iridescent with the sheen of arcane mana and interwoven with a shimmering robe made of solid light and shadow. Atop that was a gleaming purple metal that Matt didn’t recognize, alight with enchantments. She was twelve feet tall, and was armed with a staff forged from a living lightning bolt. Matt couldn’t glean much information from it himself, but Ai’la and Darrow were both quite impressed at the workmanship, and agreed that it likely exceeded the raw magical output of Matt’s own armor.

Flanking her was Maven and Darkness Eternal, a void-specialist Dao Child that Matt hadn’t been able to fight during the so-called Day of the Long Shadow. Maven wasn’t in power armor exactly, but she was completely surrounded in some kind of almost liquid-like blue metal that was likewise overflowing with power, to the point Matt could feel it from where he was thousands of miles away. Darkness Eternal, meanwhile, was in something closer to what Matt would call power armor, albeit one made out of crystal.

Matt was almost tempted to just... completely ignore the trio. Sure, they looked intimidating and could probably unleash a fair bit of damage if unchecked, but Team Zero didn’t exactly have weak targets for them to pick off. Still, he was really curious as to just how well he’d do against his supposed ‘counters’. Gan Le had just been annoying, but this one would probably be quite fun.

A tremor of danger rippled through Matt’s spiritual sense, and he teleported to the side, whipped his left hand up, cast [Bulwark], and turned the spell to crystal while simultaneously reinforcing his armor with the second layer of [Cracked Phantom Armor]. He even pulsed his Intent to make himself immobile for good measure.

A metallic screech rang Matt’s armor like a bell as an arm-thick bullet of depleted metal slammed into Matt’s hand, carrying with it a shockwave that Matt felt in his very spirit.

He was impressed.

His left hand hadn’t felt pain in decades, and his Intent had never been attacked in quite that manner before. But, between all his defenses, the net result was just a cloud of shrapnel deflected away from Matt, and a roughly hand-sized lump of metal clutched in his hand.

With an armor-powered flick of Matt’s wrist, the ball of metal was shot off like a cannonball at a nearby Peak elite. They dodged, but that didn’t matter. The message had been sent.

They had a name for the sniper now, and if Valentina thought her comparatively minor impact in the last few fights meant they’d forgotten about her, she was sorely mistaken.

Torment, who had been the target of the latest shot, sent a pulse of gratitude through Darrow’s mental link. Liz queried as to whether she should pursue, but Darrow responded in the negative. Valentina would be inaccessible, whether she was in the ship itself or off on some distant asteroid, and even a Liz body whose absence wouldn’t be felt would simply reach the end of its range before she reached the likely-abandoned sniper post, if what Allie had found the first fight had been followed once more.

No other shots came while they closed the distance to the Harmony Accords, but that didn’t stop Matt from casting a [Barrage]d [Breach] as an opening salvo, while also keeping himself ready to teleport to the other side should a shot come from that direction.

He immediately followed the attacks up with a sweep of [Mana Beam].

While the defenders dodged or deflected the [Breach]es, they had no such recourse for [Mana Beam], and they were forced to turtle up behind spells or promptly pull out barriers.

Matt happily continued to cast more [Mana Beam]s, and in just seconds, two peak elites were out of the fight, forced to burn their escape tokens.

Matt and the rest of Team Zero were more than happy to sit there and let him whittle them down, but things were never so easy.

As soon as it became clear he would be happy to cast [Mana Beam] forever, another ripple of space pulsed and a massive mana crystal appeared a few dozen miles behind the battleline. It was fifty feet tall and fifteen feet wide. If it had only normal mana capacity for a Tier 25 rechargeable mana stone and didn’t use some specialized construction, which, considering it was the Harmony Accords pulling it out, was likely, that thing contained at least a billion mana. That wasn’t what surprised Matt. Not in and of itself, at least. What really surprised him was the plethora of runes carved into it.

There were dozens of glyphs and formations carved into each facet of the mana stone; Matt wished he could inspect it and see exactly how they were managing the feat without everything exploding. It might help his own efforts of making talismans out of his excess mana production.

The mana stone’s appearance also signified the absolute shutdown of his [Mana Beam].

The moment the beam entered within a hundred miles of the mana stone, it fizzled out as the spell was torn apart from the inside. A quick test from Light showed that all neutral mana spells were disrupted inside the mana stone’s range, in addition to anything based on [Mana Beam], no matter the aspect.

Annoying, but not the end of the world. They had known the Harmony Accords would have some method of countering one of his most used abilities besides Gan Le’s redirect, but they hadn’t known what form it would take.

Another glance made Matt wrinkle his nose. It was something he could run out of mana, as the enchantments were based on complete and total forbiddance and therefore had a set expense no matter how much it disrupted. Very expensive, but it wasn’t directly contesting Matt’s mana with its own, and that meant he couldn’t just overpower it to show off, and would have to actually play around it. Or, he supposed, he could just break it with a solid punch.

But it wasn’t like Matt was useless or limited to neutral mana spells.

Since his successful meld, he had noticed two things.

The first was that he was now able to use the powers of his Concept and Intent at the same time without issue. The second was that he could now use his Domain to directly reinforce gravity spells.

He’d picked up a small set of gravity spells to complement his Intent, which already played well with the aspect, but now that he could use his Concept to enhance them, they’d become one of his new favorite toys.

[Gravity Manipulation] wasn’t quite on the same level as [Air Manipulation] or [Ice Manipulation] for ease of use... but it wasn’t too far behind them, and his proficiency and power behind it had shot up past his other manipulations practically overnight. [Gravitic Bolt], meanwhile, was now practically solid even to Matt’s enhanced strength, and [Cosmic Pressure] had become strong enough that he could instantly apply normal gravitational pull to the entire battlefield, as though they were on the surface of the planet below them, practically at will.

Whether it had any practical uses remained to be seen, but Matt was looking forward to trying it out.

Spells started to be traded but Matt ignored most of it, hoping to slip along the fight and reach the Harmony Accords’ mage core.

Sadly, the trio of replacements for Gan Le darted right for him, and Matt was either forced to let them reach his backline or engage them.

With a blast of [Embody Colossus], leaning primarily on his rubberfruit and other body-enhancing natural treasures to enhance his backup strength buff spell in a way that nearly doubled his height, Matt clashed with the mech-encased trio.

By and large, Matt preferred to remain his normal size. He’d had a lot of practice fighting massive monsters without size increases of his own, but there were times when his normal height just wasn’t quite sufficient. His sword didn’t grow alongside him, but he quickly made himself a makeshift sword out of mana crystal, and using [Reinforce Mana] on an energy blade made with a combination of [Telekinesis] and [Tribulation Strike].

Maven was the first to act, transforming into a giant, metal-encased, feathered manticore and shooting a barrage of metal feathers like so many darts with a flick of her tail. With [Bulwark] inaccessible, Matt simply manifested a mana crystal shield. [Reinforce Mana] strengthened it, but the attack still crashed through the barrier and clanged into Matt’s armor, leaving dents but not breaking through. While [Cracked Phantom Armor] served as a huge portion of his defense, the armor itself was still incredibly durable, and he’d gotten a whole array of miscellaneous armor skills to further enhance it. Simply shutting off a single spell wasn’t enough to stop him, and hadn’t been for a long time.

Lorlael fired off a trio of lightning, ice, and lava spells at him, which Matt smacked aside with his sword and retaliated with [Dragon’s Breath], sharpening the blast of air into blades. Darkness Eternal waved his hand, and the air returned to vacuum. Maven’s body shifted, a patch of glowing green metal bubbling up from below the surface and enhancing her claws as she swiped at Matt, which he met with a [Tribulation Strike]-empowered attack.

As his sword met the claw, the metal coating lit up, pathways running along the exterior to divert his lightning around Maven and turning Matt’s attack into no more than a bunch of showy lights. He had enough spare awareness that he was able to identify the green metal claws as an absurd amount of the Tier 25 natural treasure Mountain’s Hate, which when forged into weapons made them incredibly sharp and durable. There was a bit in the alloy making up his current sword, but it was far, far less than the amount Maven was swinging around. The mana circuits were Tier 25 enriched gold and the conduits were almost as wide as a hair, which would have been overkill for even ordinary copper, let alone an enriched metal.

Either of the items could have sold for a planet's worth of wealth, but they were just parts of the greater whole.

It was a shame too, as Matt intended to wreck it all.

Matt’s normal sword was only like a dagger at this size, but Matt charged it with [Hypersonic Edge] and sliced into the liquid-metal. It cut a deep furrow, but closed up quickly thereafter. Unfortunately, that opened up Matt to a set of new attacks from Lorlael and Darkness Eternal.

The former’s [Fireball] was already fairly impressive, carrying a sudden detonation with a shockwave that left him encased in sticky ash. He overpowered it easily enough, but Darkness Eternal’s spell ate into Matt’s spell like a plague, turning the frozen lightning purple and eating away at the mana crystal with an explosive ferocity. Matt threw it at Lorlael, but the mage teleported to the side to avoid it.

While everyone thought she was going to rush Long Zhiyuan, she instead used the dead Liz’s blood to cast [Scarlet Plague].

As the blood rippled, another Liz cast [Blood Charge] and burst forward into the center of the rune soldiers. That particular Liz let herself get hit with a blow that cut deep into her abdomen, but she didn’t let the body fall apart.

That would be too obvious.

Instead, the dead Liz’s blood burst into a mist and spread out across the battlefield like a wave.

All the elites had their own protections against the infecting spell, but the cast of it had only been a distraction.

No, the real target had been on the rune soldiers. The blade that had cut into her abdomen looked like it came out with an ordinary amount of blood, but that was far from the truth.

[Blood Storage] had originally been a failed experiment to replicate her long-destroyed glove with an [Inventory] skill shard, ideally letting her store more blood in a pocket dimension. These days, that functionality wouldn’t be needed, between her Intent and [Reduce Person], or rather [Condensity]. Instead, she was getting much more use out of its ability to temporarily turn items into blood.

The blood on the rune soldier's sword was one of Matt’s mana stone talismans stored a moment before it detonated.

As it reformed, the explosion pushed everyone nearby, but Liz was already moving.

The Liz who was fighting Long Zhiyuan used the explosion to propel herself close and used her spear like a quarterstaff.

She blocked a claw strike to her face while lashing out at his leg. Just before impact, the butt of the spear blossomed and the wrapped feathers formed another spear tip which cut deeply into Long Zhiyuan.

As her feathers were made from her blood, Liz could taste every part of the foul man. But more than that, she noticed the absence of what she had been hoping for.

She had been hoping to find one of the boosters' blood inside Long Zhiyuan, or more likely, the same space as him. Some possessions had the possessor absorbed into their ally’s body physically, while others were more spiritual, and they hadn’t known which type Synoid and Crastor’s possession was. If she had gotten her hand on some of the boosters’ blood, she was pretty sure that could work as a vector of attack. It seemed unlikely that one of the twins could have robust defenses while occupying another's body.

Still, she did have some of Long Zhiyuan’s blood, and that was useful in its own right. While that Liz used the blood and tried to dismantle the man's wards by using his blood as an access point, another two Lizzes rushed to the place of the explosion.

Two of the rune soldiers had been vaporized, and Liz smiled as the remainder were infected with [Scarlet Plague]. The spell ate at them and converted their very bodies to something she had access to.

She wanted to get down into their bones and have just a single drop of her hide inside their bone marrow, but either the damage the bomb had done was too much, or the threat of the [Scarlet Plague] activated their lifelines. The remaining six badly injured rune soldiers teleported away, severing her connection to the blood in the process.

They would undoubtedly be purged before they came out again, and none of her had been able to dig in deep enough to really get a chance to hide. It had been a bit of a longshot with the rune squads’ bones being the very base of the soldiers’ enchantments, but it was a shame the attempt failed so early on.

Still, she learned something in the attempt and another possibility opened up.

Their bodies were so entwined with their spirits that they might as well be fused.

They weren’t technically fused, but it was a near thing, and Liz suspected there was a weakness there. In the instant of a core shattering a nearby rune soldier's spirit, bolstered and led by the runes, another reached out and grabbed hold of the other soldier's spirit, pulling it into themselves for safe keeping. But when she tried to interact with their spirits to cast curses on them, the runes created a shell around them, keeping them safe without the need for pesky training or specialized skills.

The rune designers had probably seen the flaw in that just as she had, but she suspected they either relied on there being nine others who weren't dead, and at least one of them should be not under attack and therefore able to make the grab. Unlikely, but a fair assumption most of the time. You really needed to threaten the rune soldier’s spirit to bring out the shield.

The more likely option was that there were metaphorical bolt holes that would open in the shield for the briefest of moments when another rune soldier died nearby. That, if true, meant there were ways to open the shields even if they were protecting themselves.

If Liz was going to make something like the rune soldiers, that’s what she would do.

It just meant she needed to burn through their armor's spiritual protection, their innate spiritual protection, the rune's spiritual protection, and kill another rune soldier at the same time, but if she did all that, she believed she could take down the whole collective in one fell swoop.

She’d need some time to plan and test a few things, but Liz thought she had a working idea. Sadly, the retreat of the rune squad seemed to signal the retreat of the Harmony Accords as a whole, and they all vanished a few moments later.

***

Two more months. One more major battle and a dozen small skirmishes just as inconclusive as the last. At least if the ravaged mech suites weren’t considered, Matt had probably cost the Harmony Accords at least a dozen planet's wealth at this point in repair cost alone but that wouldn't win the war. At one point, his AI had managed to point out a way in which he could turn Maven’s armor into part of a talisman, when the stars aligned in the right way. That had resulted in a very fun fight, but he hadn’t been able to replicate the feat since. He still kept a spare set of the custom talisman blocks he’d made for the purpose on hand, just in case the opportunity presented itself once more.

As each day passed and they got close to Allie’s eventual recovery, Matt found a sort of zen state in it all.

Hone a skill or two while simulating and planning for scenarios they had encountered in their fights. He even had a few ideas that worked well in the simulations that Darrow asked him to hold off on using until they could have better chances of a decisive victory. Ai’la had been working on a way to bypass the Harmony Accord Ship’s primary shields, and that project was encountering difficulties. Light and Matt had been tasked with testing the shields a few times per fight, and their findings kept refining the shieldbreaker. It wasn’t ready yet, but Matt was looking forward to the day they had their final showdown.

It wasn’t time quite yet, but once the day came he would be so ready. He’d tried to break the anti-[Mana beam] formation a few times, but it kept staying just out of range, like the end of a rainbow. Aster suspected it was based in illusion, Zack insisted it was spatial-based, and Matt didn’t care. It was only hard-locked against him, meaning that someone else would have to break it, and he was sure that would be eminently doable when the time came. They just couldn’t test it, as it would be better to have their enemies over-rely on it for now. Besides, being without [Cracked Phantom Armor] was a bit of a pain, but in practice it mostly meant he had to spend a bunch much time fixing his armor after each fight.

But other than that, they spent their time practicing or working on various projects.

Matt thought that the whole two and a half years of Allie’s recovery would pass like that, but the realm wasn’t so kind.

A brave or stupid merchant ship appeared inside Gol’Ru’s real space and spread news that shocked both sides and the civilians alike, just two months into their standoff.

A Tier 35 armada just passed Gol’Ru on its way to the Citadel.

Fifteen Tier 35 armies was bad enough in any situation, but the armies were the five best each Great Power had to offer, and proudly displayed unit heraldry as they passed through Empire space uncontested. Each army was comprised with far more elites than usual and represented a substantial portion of the Great Powers might at Tier 35.

Beyond that, Grand Shaper Maya, The Unyielding Anvil Yun Me, and two groups of Tier 35 rune soldiers, the Alpha and Bravo squads, were leading the charge.

All rushing for the Citadel and Aiden.

No one had expected them to move so quickly, and Matt felt a pulse of panic he ruthlessly quashed at the thought of Aiden still being in the Capital’s rift. From what he had seen, none of the higherups had expected an all-in move like this.

Allie could hardly teleport the man when she was in peak condition, and she was far from that, which meant if Aiden wasn’t already in Rusty’s capital system, the world was as good as lost.

To make matters worse, the instant the news was spread the Harmony Accords changed their plans, and the ten armies stationed on the fortress planet picked up and abandoned the place. Their job of securing passage to the citadel was complete now that the armada had passed by.

Helplessness like a bucket of cold sewage hit Matt and stunned him.

He wanted to have an answer, but there was nothing he could do.

He had to hope that his senior Ascender really did have a plan.

***

Far below the surface of the waters, where light had not shone for millions of years, a great and terrible monster rested. It was weary, for while its domain was inviolate, the terrible beast had been worn down from contests for its territory. And now, one more such contest arose. Far, far above its lair, above the black waters, above the sea’s stormy surface, beyond the sky and beyond the stars themselves it came.

An armada approached, its wake sending ripples everywhere. Most petered out, lost into the void of space but a scant few made it into the unfathomable depths where it noticed. Explorers and conquerors ventured upon uncharted waters, unaware or uncaring of the dangers which lurked below. Their arrival was not unnoticed, and the echoes of their passage reached the terror in the depths. It stirred from its slumber, awaking.

Aiden opened his eyes, looking to the battleground above. A wide, unsettling predatory smile stretched across his face as he prepared for the fight of his life.