Chaper 1093
Since he had been given no reason to stop shooting, Anton continued picking out targets within the system. Unlike Varghese he hadn’t bound the local star. With each step of cultivation taking longer and having covered a much wider range, he simply didn’t have the spare capacity unless there was an emergency. From his current location he could have bound the central star of the cluster and that was still the plan- but he didn’t want the enemy to know he could do that.
His continuous attacks taught them a few things. First, the planets- or what remained of them- were all able to move. Or perhaps it should be said that all the cultivators working together could move them, since those movements were something done by their energy control and not formations or technology. They weren’t terribly fast, but they did slowly make their way out of the system. But as they only moved at sublight speed… they couldn’t make it outside of his range.
Anton didn’t want to let the enemy know his exact comfortable range, but as he was more than fine with shooting into adjacent systems five or ten lightyears away, he certainly wasn’t worried about something in the range of one ten thousandth of that distance. So while they weren’t willing to approach the star, they also couldn’t get away from Anton. Thus, he was able to keep damaging them.
They did have some way to replenish their natural energy- or extremely large stores- so he wasn’t able to bring down their barriers permanently. Instead, he had to puncture them with each shot- or bypass them. The latter he achieved with spectral energy, targeting some of their stronger cultivators.
By the time their fleets had gotten proper rest and were prepared for their next attack, Anton had killed somewhere around ten percent of their Life Transformation cultivators. In addition, he had taken out numerous weapon emplacements at various points around the skeletal planets.
There was one downside of their delay, but it seemed to be an inevitable result. Even since the first planet had mobilized to attack them, the other planets had been converging together. Now, the remaining handful of rocky planets stood as a unified whole. Whether there was any boost in power beyond simple numbers was unclear, but it had to be assumed that they would be more difficult to fight.
Even so, the fleets of the Lower Realms Alliance were far more maneuverable than the enemy’s planet-ships and even their actual spacefaring vessels, so they were able to maneuver into an advantageous position. The enemy being further from the star would have weakened Varghese- if it had been him shortly after he reached Assimilation. But now, the distance the enemy was able to reach in a few days was insignificant. For all they had done, they were still in the effective range of the star.
Anton watched happily as his apprentice led the charge against their foes. Though Varghese had a very different style than himself, he made great use of the concepts of starbinding. Magnetism had been one of his favorites, even before he reached the point of Assimilation. However, Varghese also had control over flames, light, and gravity to various extents.
He used the latter to great effect when the enemies thought they could resist his magnetism. They were right, to some extent. But when their ships suddenly found themselves pulled towards each other- or the planets they were swarming from- they lost confidence in their own abilities. That was when Varghese suddenly turned up the magnetism. As for the stone ships, he had plenty of tricks for them too.