Chapter 1091
As they approached the first planetary shell, the Lower Realms Alliance targeted weapons emplacements and those parts that were most obviously starports. They remained cautious, but nothing could quite prepare them for what happened. One moment they were approaching the planet, the next moment it was approaching them.
The skeletal structure of the planet bent and twisted, angling more of itself towards their fleets. Waves of attacks propagated along the thin structures, massive projectiles of stone and metal launched at extreme velocities. They targeted not a single ship, but the fleet as a whole.
With a sweep of his sword, Varghese deflected much of the initial burst, at least those made of metal. He couldn’t stop everything from hitting the fleets, and many ships were impacted. Smallers ones were annihilated, and even with their barriers larger ones took severe damage. Their barriers could resist kinetic force, but at a sufficient level it was impossible to completely adapt.
Anton had been hesitant to attack the planet previously. Its structure was doubtless more durable than it appeared, but with such a dense population any damage would be catastrophic. But it was a different story when they were all contributing to the war. It wasn’t a clearly unified effort like the hiveminds or ships controlled by Confluence cultivators- merely soldiers following commands.
Now he didn’t have to worry about impacting noncombatants. Ascension energy gathered between his fingers, drawing into an arrow. It cut through space, arriving among launchers just as they were beginning their volley. For that instant, the barrier was down- a weakness Anton was conveying to the rest of their forces at that very moment. The stone skeleton from which the attacks were coming trembled and cracked all across its width, some hundreds of kilometers.
The shockwaves spread through the structure, rocking it to pieces even as the stone cultivators tried to hold it together- but they were better at destruction than solidity. That was a choice they had made for themselves, consciously or not.
It was just one segment of many, but as it began to crumble the greater planet became more hesitant. No doubt they had felt invincible, but they were not. A planet full of cultivators was certainly a danger, but if they couldn’t perfectly bring their energy to bear it wasn’t beyond the might of the Alliance fleet, who had come ready to invade a planet if necessary.
Varghese seemed to take inspiration from Anton’s assault, flying forward among allied fleets to reach the closest segment. His sword slashed outward with the power of the local sun, thin lines of flame melting through another segment of the structure. The cross pattern he cut destroyed anything it went through, but a moment later the structure settled as his slashes weren’t wider than the width of his blade. But his attack was not finished, the lines of attack becoming magnetic zones that drew in any surrounding metal- including ships, weapons, and armor on all sides of the structure. Everything warped and twisted as it pulled, causing another segment to crumble.
Enemy ships joined in with the bombardment from the planet itself, but they had already been beaten back. The Lower Realms Alliance ships spread out so that the bombardments were less effective, and the attackers from the planet below also split their fire- decreasing the density of the assaults and allowing them to avoid more of the incoming fire.