Chapter 335

Chapter 335

Matt reached the shields of the Harmony Accords' ship in what felt like an instant, propelled by Light’s travel mana and an acceleration formation he and Origami had cobbled together after much planning. In all of their strategizing, they kept running into the same issue; they were outnumbered.

That, especially when combined with the giant neutral mana blocking crystal, made it difficult to push through not just the elites, but the corporation mercenaries supporting them. If they wanted a decisive win, they needed a way to reliably stop the Harmony Accords from retreating.

Which led to Matt moving through space with wisps of illusion trailing off his straining armor.

His acceleration ended when he bounced off the shields, but he at least had the wherewithal to flick his Intent to lock his backward momentum for a moment. Cursing Origami and his past self for insisting they needed the fifth amplifier, Matt started unfolding the formation they created to get through the shields.

His work was slowed as a significant portion of the Corporation mercenaries turned their cannons onto him, but Matt just flared his white hole repulsion to push the attacks off his work area.

The pilots of the ship, seeing he wasn’t driven off their hull, started to rotate the ship to take him away from the formation that was already digging into the shields. But Matt just used his Intent’s ability to lock his position relative to the ship to keep himself next to the formation. Before his meld, he wouldn’t have been able to do that while keeping up the repulsion defense, but now it was second nature to use both his Concept and Intent at the same time.

The rotation actually worked in his favor, as he was brought away from the attacks, and he used the opportunity to finish deploying the formation.

The formation he was using to create a hole in the shield was conceptually simple, but the actual execution was insanely complex. It was complicated enough that Matt had only been able to follow the general idea of it, and had relied on Origami to do most of the hard work.

The first part of the formation was meant to dig into the energy projection of the shield, which was easy enough for Matt to understand. A ship’s major weakness had always been sappers or anyone getting close to their hulls, where their point defense systems weren’t able to fire upon said attackers. On typical ships, it wasn’t impossible to just use explosive formations to blow a hole through the shields, but this behemoth of a ship had the capacity to carry enough reserves to withstand even Matt’s mana output. No simple bomb was going to get through the shields without more than Matt could reasonably carry. But that wasn’t the only method.

Another often used method was to use a formation to dig a hole through the shield projection and slip in that way. Despite the major weakness of doing so being that the stronger the shields were, the more advanced the formation had to be, it was still the method they went with.

The formation’s fractal-like pattern was a dark and menacing overlay on the bright blue shield, but Matt hardly noticed as he tracked energy shunts and their outputs. The whole time he adjusted the formation variables, trying to bring the formation into resonance.

Part one was done, but that had been the easiest step by a mile.

Matt tossed a mixture of alchemical ingredients they had postulated would solidify the formation into the shield, even as the ship rotated back to face the battle where Matt came under attack again.

His [AI] warned him that Maven and Long Zhiyuan, along with a few other pinnacle elites, were racing to his location. Even so, Matt ignored it all, trusting in Bolt and Torment who were distracting the majority of the weaker attackers. Bolt’s shots at Maven and Long Zhiyuan slowed the elites down just enough that Torment's summons were able to get in close and engage the lesser elites in melee. The two Sect Pinnacle elites, reluctant to break free of the main group pursuing Matt, were forced to divert attention from Matt to manage the distraction.

This bought Matt the precious seconds he needed to break through the shields. The moment the shield turned into a jelly like substance, Matt’s [AI] pinged again, and he followed its instructions as he activated the secondary and tertiary effects at the same time.

His own mana pool plummeted to almost zero as all of his forty one million mana generation was pulled into the formation, transforming into desolation mana. His armor flickered as it switched to backup power, and his [AI] and other boosting skills only kept running thanks to the endless sub-aspect of his mana.

A billion mana later, the entire ship's shield pulsed as the energy stored in the formation pushed down the shield projectors. They instantly and automatically changed over to their backup units, but that was where the tertiary effect came into play, as it kept the now jellified shield stable and partially connected it to the backup shields.

Matt drove his armored fists into the shield and screamed into his armor. The billions of mana flowing through the shield not only scorched his armor, but his very mana channels. While rare, mana back feeding like this was ill advised in the best of times. Still, Matt needed to keep pumping his mana into the shield to keep it in its gelatinous state.

It was like sticking his hands into scalding acid, but Matt didn’t let that slow him, even as he dug through the five feet of shielding.

Once he breached the other side, Matt dropped his connection and flared [Regeneration], almost shuddering with relief as his scorched mana channels were soothed and repaired.

As his connection to the formation was cut off, the gelatinous substance was ejected outward, and Matt couldn’t help but grin as his spiritual perception was able to see Maven and Long Zhiyuan impotently stuck just outside the shield.

They vanished in unison, and Matt suspected they had activated some recall system to return to inside the ship, even if he couldn’t feel it quite yet.

From their spies’ reports, Matt knew the physical shielding of the ship was going to be incredibly thick and made of both Tier 25 exotic materials and natural treasures. Still, he was taken aback at just how true that statement was. The hull of the ship was probably worth more than what a dozen Tier 30 star systems made in a millennium.

It was a work of wonder, but Matt didn’t hesitate to use [Telekinesis] to rip a hole in the side of the masterpiece.

Matt wasn’t Harper by any means. They would have found a small seam and used that to peel the ship like an orange, but that wasn’t his style. Matt didn’t bother with finesse and instead grabbed the side of the ship and wrenched as hard as he could.

When that didn’t immediately work, he gave himself more leverage by activating his Black Hole to lock his place in the realm.

For a brief instant, Matt’s world seemed to slow and narrow down to this moment as his unstoppable force was put up against the immovable object.

It felt like that even with Matt’s power, the enchantments running through the hull of the ship would be able to resist, but he didn’t give up or stop.

He was dauntless. He was endless.

The armor might be strong, but it was made of enchantments and items, and it lacked a living spirit that could react to changes and pressure.

Slowly, so slowly that Matt almost wasn’t sure he was really seeing it, he started to notice micro fissures form in the armor as the stress began to build and overcome the material’s structural strength. Those failures were almost instantly healed as the repair enchantments flooded the area with mana, and if someone was simply battering at the armor, it would have been able to heal all of the damage. With Matt pulling with constant, overwhelming pressure, the fissures never got a chance to fully repair themselves. Slowly but surely, the fissures started to grow larger until all of a sudden, the contradiction ended and with a burst of air, and a two hundred foot wide section of the ship's hull was peeled back.

A few support personnel were pulled out of the hull from the sudden decompression, but he ignored them first in favor of tearing his way deeper into the ship. He ran past the internal locks meant to compartmentalize the hull breach, and then right past Maven, who was rapidly approaching in her latest suit of armor.

Her armored form was larger than the ship's corridors, but neither of them cared. While the outside of the ship was made with materials strong enough to block every conceivable T25 attack, the interior, non-structural components of the ship were made out of ordinary Tier 25 metal. With a quick application of [Metal Manipulation], Matt shredded a wide swath of the internals to make room for his next move.

Matt avoided engaging with her even as she tried to tie him down and flew forward with his best speed. Doing so, he did notice that his neutral mana shields were still down. They had hoped that the Harmony Accords wouldn’t be able to use the same effect inside the ship since its systems had to run on neutral mana, but it seemed they had a method to work around the effect. Or at least selectively disable it.

Maven jumped at him, claws gleaming, but Matt dodged to the side and slightly downward through another two walls and a floor, sword aimed right at Long Zhiyuan, who had been poised for a flank.

The slippery man dodged to the side and tried to entangle Matt with a glowing spider web net. Matt didn’t stop to engage, using a pulse of his repulsion to force the net to miss. Instead, he kept flying towards the ship's engines.

The pinnacle elites who had been with Maven and Long Zhiyuan were already in place, with a Federation army scattered through the paper thin corridors and blocking every trajectory to the engines, which even now were gathering and cycling energy.

In their plans, Team Zero had worried about the ship trying to leave real space and fleeing, trapping and effectively capturing Matt. But Drifter had rightly pointed out that a ship of that size would take a lot of energy to move, let alone rip through reality.

So long as Matt was fast enough in disabling the chaotic space engines, he could strand the ship.

Even in the worst case scenario, he could always fight his way out, which was the reason he was alone and why they were willing to risk this play.

Presumably, Aiden’s fight had concluded, but he wasn’t sure what this attack meant about the outcome there. Not that it mattered. Win or lose in the higher bracket, a crushing victory on the Tier 25 warfront was still their job, and right now, that meant crippling the Harmony Accords.

A dozen smaller shield units came on, trying to block Matt’s path. But even though they were connected to the massive ship reserves, the projectors were small enough to be deployed inside, which meant they had no chance of being strong enough to stop Matt.

He barreled through the first dozen shields head first, and just as he was beginning to slow, he slashed out with his longsword. The [Wind Cutter] was almost a mile long and cut through compartments like they weren’t even there, but Matt didn’t just let the spell fly forward uncontrolled. Instead, he activated [Air Manipulation] and sent the spell on a spiral, letting it cut forward like a blender tearing through metal and flesh.

Before any of his opponents got themselves back under control, Matt activated the [Sheer Cold] he had been charging.

The ship around him turned white as metal tore and fractured, and the surroundings echoed the screams of metal cooled suddenly to well below zero. The soldiers who were nearest didn’t even have time to realize how they died, and Matt had to shunt dozens of streams of essence away from himself and out into space.

Feeling the artificial gravity plates trying to counteract his working, Matt changed his pressure from a simple downward force into an ever consuming point centered on his Heart Of A Black Hole. The anchor happily absorbed everything that came close to it, and fed that power back to Matt.

The soldiers who weren’t sucked into the gravity well started vanishing until it was just Maven and Long Zhiyuan left to face Matt.

Still affected by the neutral mana suppression field, Matt didn’t have access to a large portion of his kit, but he didn’t let that bother him.

Darting forward, Matt sent his anchor off to the side before recalling it like a yo yo, causing gravity to change unpredictably.

Maven summoned her full moon image, which tried to twist Matt’s flesh into something unrecognizable. It was a new application of her power, but it was far too weak to do more than inconvenience Matt.

Long Zhiyuan slashed out with his claws and dug deep cuts into Matt’s back armor as he was ducking, which caused several force amplifiers to lock up and limit his movement. Without [Cracked Phantom Armor] reinforcing the physical armor, it was susceptible to attacks such as that, and Long Zhiyuan seemed to have an eye for those opportunities. But Matt still mostly ignored him.

Long Zhiyuan wasn’t his target.

No, that was Maven.

Matt slashed out, aiming for Maven’s head and heart with every blow.

While her armor boosted her strength, it was nothing compared to Matt’s, and it seemed that she hadn’t been chosen to fight with the boost of Synoid and Crastor because she was slower than him at every turn.

Still, she was no slouch and kept to her defensive posture, minimizing damage to her armor while trying to keep Matt occupied. Long Zhiyuan used that to land attack after attack on Matt’s less protected rear, but Matt didn’t stop his assault on Maven.

He was tracking the fight and waiting for one specific moment.

While he wasn’t normally one to talk mid fight he couldn’t help himself. “Do you have any regrets, Maven?”

When she didn’t answer, he kept his attacks up. “I have a lot of regrets. So many. But one of them ends here and now. I’m going to bring your head back with me to Ventillyria for all the pain you caused. Whether or not you were breaking the rules, that was wrong. It was vile.”

As Maven’s arm came up and deflected his sword, it swung into a structural pillar that was far stronger than the weak metal they had been pushing through like it was tissue paper. With his blade stuck firmly in the pillar, Matt let it go even as Long Zhiyuan drove a claw into his heart, taking advantage of the damaged sections he had created while Matt was focused on Maven.

A burst of his repulsion shoved Long Zhiyuan back, but his Intent’s grip on Maven prevented her from leaving.

Matt used the moment to dump twenty million mana into the surroundings, solidifying it, preventing the neutral mana destabilizer from dispersing the mana with a good deal of effort. It was worth it, though.

They were now locked in a box of Matt’s making, and when combined with him locking down space, there was only one way in or out. Through him.

A few short and brutal exchanges later, Matt had his moment. He seized it, ignoring Maven’s desperate counter attack that attempted to cut off his head.

“So many lives lost as a distraction. Ventillyria didn’t ask for your attack. It and its people didn’t ask to be just a chess piece in your games. They were normal people who just wanted to live. Instead, you brought pain and suffering to generations. Do you know how painful it is for children to be ripped from their parents? Do you know how hard it is for mothers and fathers to grieve for the loss of their children? To walk through the ruins and only see the corpses of everybody you ever knew? To see the blood of your loved ones pool on the floor? Do you have any idea how it feels? Because I do. I've been there. I've been one of those orphans, one of those people trying to put their life back together and put it behind them. I know how hard it is. How it always stays with you like a stain only you can see, but that can’t be scrubbed away no matter how much you try. But you don't. You have no idea. You can justify anything as long as it furthers your aims. Can you even understand how it feels when you have no power? How it feels to be at the whims of others? Can you, Maven?"

Matt finally looked at Maven’s corpse, hanging limply in his grasp, as he asked the last question, her essence long since returned to the realm.

He had been saving the void modified [Mana Claws] from Frederic for this very moment. He had saved it through a dozen opportunities for a possible revenge like when he had turned Maven’s armor into a talisman. A massive part of him had salivated at the idea of going for the opportunity in that moment, but while they fought outside the ship, there had been the chance that Maven could activate some lifesaving treasure that would teleport her back to the ship before the claws of void mana could dig all the way through her specialty made armors.

Even that fleeting chance had been wholly unacceptable, which was why Matt had waited. He knew he only had one shot at using the spell before Maven and the rest of the Harmony Accords would be aware and prepare for it.

So he had held back until he was guaranteed to land a decisive blow.

With the deep purple glow from his fingers fading as he unclenched them from their place deep inside Maven’s skull, hand still tingling from the void mana that had coursed through it even with his Stygian Gossamer. Matt felt empty but he kept looking, not for himself, but for Ventillyria. Some of those who had experienced the attacks would still be alive even now, almost two hundred years later, and Matt hoped this moment could put to rest at least some part of the hatred they must feel. He knew that, when the Junipers had been taken to task, he had been able to breathe easy for the first time since the incident.

He just wished he could have delivered on his promise earlier than this. So many would have grown old and died without ever seeing vengeance wrought on their behalf.

Without Matt’s constant reinforcements, Long Zhiyuan was able to break through, but Matt ignored him for long enough to take one last look at Maven.

Dropping her, Matt turned, blocking Long Zhiyuan’s slash with his forearm and letting [Regeneration] close the wound even as his Millennium Willow Lifesap broke the curses that had tried to take root in him.

Now that it was one on one, Matt reached for Long Zhiyuan’s head just like he had Maven’s. The skill was still on cooldown, but Long Zhiyuan didn’t know that. Long Zhiyuan retreated with a burst of flames, but Matt ignored him in favor of retrieving his blade from the pillar next to them.

He needed to break the pillar to free his blade, but, as he got a message from Darrow, Matt turned his attention from Long Zhiyuan to his Intent’s Anchor.

His Heart Of A Black Hole pulsed with power, and Matt threw his Intent into working.

He crushed and condensed.

His mana turned ink black.

[Overcharge] allowed him to boost the amount of mana he cast a spell with and he paired it with [Cosmic Presence]. Reality started to warp as the gravity increased, but Matt kept himself at the center of the power letting it crush him down. He even added a healthy application of [Metal Manipulation] to rip and tear anything that refused to bend.

Matt hardly felt the pain, but he pushed the feedback loop until his organs started to be crushed into mush. Right as he felt himself reaching his limits, Matt switched to his repulsion effect and pushed everything away from himself as hard as he could. He didn’t just use his normal repulsion effect, but added the Minkalla given explosion effect as well.

Together the outward wave of pressure was too much for the ship to handle, and Matt felt his spiritual perception finally free itself from the confines of the ship as it popped like an overfull balloon.

Long Zhiyuan vomited out a mouth full of blood, as he had taken a majority of the attack head on being so close to Matt. Before Matt could finish him off with a burst of [Dragons Breath], he surrendered and vanished into his own shadow.

The ship was still twisting and turning as it tore itself apart, but Matt made everything worse as he flew out to join his team.

Before he even rejoined the fight, the overall surrender went out.

The Harmony Accords had run out of back up plans and had finally given up.

Matt was just processing that when he got an even more shocking message.

The war was over. An armistice had been agreed upon to sign an official peace deal.

He had no doubt that the Tier 50s had been watching this fight, and their victory had signaled the end of the war. It was just a question of whether it had been enough. Had Aiden won in the Tier 35 bracket? Had their victory been enough to tip the scales in the Empire's favor or had they only been clawing back some modicum of war score for the Empire?

No matter how it turned out, they had done their best, and that was genuinely enough for Matt. Even with all the power in the realm they couldn’t do everything. So long as they did their best that was all anyone could ask for. Even his own conscience.

Seeing that both Liz and Aster were alive Matt finally let himself fully relax for the first time since Eric's death.