Chapter 1085
Redirecting magnetic pull to a small portion of their ships’ mass was an interesting trick that this new Imbued Fragments Sect managed to pull, but Varghese wasn’t about to quit just because he didn’t utterly annihilate them with his first attempt.
Seeing that they had methods to counter that only made him more interested. How would they deal with that if their own ships were the epicenters of the magnetic fields? Varghese shifted in space until Azun stood precisely on the opposite side of himself and the fleet. Perhaps that didn’t matter, but they had fastidiously avoided the neutron star, which happened to be the greatest source of magnetism Varghese had ever interacted with. Even if the angle didn’t matter at all, it certainly wouldn’t hurt for him to feel that everything was aligned properly.
In his head, Varghese saw each ship as a blot in between him and the neighboring- and rather tiny- star. He imagined its connection to him settling on the ships as his aura flooded over them.
Immediately, the loose fragments that they had unleashed onto the crossed planes that Varghese had first created began to flow towards the nearest ships, but that was not the end of things. Each ship began to drag towards each other. Having so many nodes made none of them quite as strong, but soon enough ships were crashing into each other.
Surprisingly, they molded together like waves, once again revealing how the structure of the ships were not as they seemed on the surface. But even as ships tried to fuse with each other, Varghese felt death. The material might have survived, but not everyone could get out of the way of the process.
Against an entire fleet working together, Varghese wasn’t certain he could take them out in a short time- but their concentration was solely focused on him and their own survival, without even the opportunity to attack. Meanwhile, their other fleet was likely waiting for them to break through and help with the assault on In’istra.
The local defensive fleets had split between those providing backup for Varghese- even an Assimilation cultivator could be overwhelmed with numbers- and those chasing down those who tried to bypass them. In their eagerness to attack the planet directly, the stone ships of those referred to as the Broad Eyed Harvesters had foregone their potential to flank and had instead found themselves in nearly the same situation, with ships behind them and orbital defense platforms in front of them.
In’istra actually found the enemy ships to be surprisingly effective, holding together under their assaults. Their cultivators even managed to disembark the ships and begin hacking pieces off of the orbital platforms, using picks to break apart the structure. But for all their haste in dismantling, they couldn’t withstand the continuous assaults forever.
Soon their ships began to crumble, though they still managed to carry random bits and pieces of the orbital platform to their ships, killing some of the defenders along the way. But they swiftly lost momentum and were beginning their retreat about the time that the Fragments began to flee.