Chapter 1095
Elder Sudheer of the Silver Rhino Legion may not have seemed like the optimal sort of individual to bring to defend a system from invaders. His armor might have fooled people, but his style didn’t exactly scream ‘defense’. However, just because he wasn’t going to be sitting around blocking people didn’t mean he wasn’t a valuable part of the Alliance’s defensive strategy.
These ‘Imbued Fragment’ cultivators controlled metal, so he really didn’t want to hang around them longer than he had to. But his natural style worked just fine for that. He picked a target- usually a nice big ship- charged headlong towards it at maximum speed, and sent it on a trajectory headed for one of its allies, crushing both ships and optimally sending them towards a third and sometimes fourth vessel. Chain reactions longer than that were difficult to set up when every cultivator aboard actively controlled the structure of the vessel.
Sudheer paid no attention to anything trying to get closer to the local planets. His only job was to find his next target- preferably one of the rock ones- and hurl them at the next target. Rinse and repeat, building momentum and transferring it all to his enemies. It actually took special techniques for him to not simply create a body-shaped hole in the vessels.
Targets were chosen in some part by proximity, but also by power. Strongest first, because that would cause maximum damage and he didn’t want them hanging around. Highest on the list were ships he felt were avoiding him- though at the same time, others were the lowest priority. It relied on snap judgments to differentiate between types, but ultimately Sudheer focused not on those who were shying away from them, but instead those who were trying to slip past. The former were just around- the second had a goal. And whatever the goal was, he didn’t want it.
He slapped his chest to collapse his breastplate back into its place. He was going to need to spend a good long time with some smiths getting the thing ironed out, but even his defensive energy couldn’t completely stop the enemy’s manipulations. They primarily focused on trying to stab him with his armor, but when they found that didn’t work because it had a good sense of form they tried to separate the pieces. Fortunately, nobody ever got to affect him for more than a few instants.
Swiveling his head, Sudheer found his next target. He was breaking all of his guidelines about strength and proximity. Honestly, he almost hadn’t noticed the ship at all… but instincts told him to look. And there it was, a tiny ship flying far away from the other vessels. It didn’t have any notable energy coming off of it… which was actually probably what tipped him off. It was too minimal, as it didn’t even have the fluctuations of natural energy the ship had to have with the cultivators who were effectively shoving it about.
He knew he made the right choice when suddenly other ships tried to block him. And instead of letting them distract him, he just continued to speed up. Anything that got in his way was flung aside callously, unless it was angled right for him to stomp off of and boost his own momentum.
With only ten or twenty layers of ships between himself and the edge of the fleet, Sudheer was out of there in no time. Meanwhile, the little ship was not particularly impressive in its manner of acceleration. It did make a sudden lurch as he approached, but Sudheer wasn’t planning to impact it with pinpoint accuracy regardless. He didn’t have to hit it with his body, just his energy.
Sudheer was an enormous rhino rampaging through the stars, just as he liked it. His presence extended widely, and he impacted the tiny ship… only to be met with a counterforce that sent him flying backwards into the fleet he’d just departed.