Villain: Supreme Parasite System in Another World

The lightning attack formed before the orbital systems could recalibrate.

Francis had spent the last several minutes tracing each cannon's position through the pattern of its attacks — the angle of descent, the millisecond delay between volleys, the slight drift in trajectory as the platform repositioned above the cloud layer.

He had mapped them the same way a surgeon maps a body. Not by looking, but by understanding.

Now he had enough.

He released everything at once.

On board the Epsilon's command deck, Lucien Ark watched the pillar breach the thermosphere on his display and felt something he hadn't felt since the kings were killed.

Alarm.

"Sub-cannons, adjust bearing — now."

His staff moved without question.

Distance saved them. The column of lightning passed several kilometers wide, and the sub-cannons, still repositioning from their last volley, managed to clear the projected impact zone with seconds to spare. For a single breath, the bridge exhaled.

Then it detonated.

Not an explosion in any conventional sense — no heat bloom, no shrapnel, no kinetic wave. Just a pulse. Silent and total.

Every instrument on the deck flatlined simultaneously. Screens went dark. The hum of the ventilation system disappeared. Even the emergency lighting took a half-second to register that it needed to activate, as though the pulse had confused the ship itself, made it briefly forget what it was supposed to do.

Lucien stood very still.

"Sir." One of his technicians turned, voice carefully level. "Electromagnetic pulse. Broadband. We've lost telemetry on Cannons Three, Seven, and Nine."

"Scope of damage?"

"Still assessing—"

The bridge was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that wasn't peace, but the held breath before something worse.

Then a second pulse arrived.

Smaller this time, more focused. It didn't reach them directly, but the sub-cannon it hit went completely dark within the span of a single second. No distress signal.

No emergency shutdown protocol. Just silence where there had been a response — a void in the tactical grid that expanded to fill the space the cannon had occupied.

"He's targeting the sub-cannons," another officer said.

"I can see that," Lucien replied.

A third pulse.

Two more stations dropped off the network. Then a fourth pulse, brief and surgical, and another icon on the display shifted from active green to flat grey.

Lucien watched the orbital cannons he had spent his life building shut down one by one. The damage was only electrical, but repairing it would take time—time .

He had been in this position before — not literally, but the shape of it was familiar. The moment in a battle where continuing to engage costs more than pausing. Where the smart move and the humiliating move were the same thing.

He let the silence hold for exactly three seconds.

"Pull the orbital cannons back. Increase distance until we can reassess shielding protocols."

"Sir, if we retreat that far, we lose firing range on the—"

"I'm aware of what we lose." He didn't raise his voice. He never did, in moments like this. "Execute."

The order left a bitter taste in his mouth. The orbital cannons were designed to eliminate large targets across wide engagement zones — siege weapons, essentially, not suited for small targets.

What they were dealing with now was something else entirely. Something that didn't behave like a large target at all, despite what its capability suggested.

"Give me more details about what we're facing," he said, once the repositioning sequence had been confirmed. "Everything we have."

He paused, then added: "Also run a full diagnostic on the damaged cannons. I need to know which are recoverable remotely and which require physical access."

The staff member nodded and relayed the request immediately to the fifth bridge.

The fifth bridge of the Epsilon was not a quiet place under normal operating conditions.

Seventeen workstations ran simultaneously at full capacity during active engagement. Cooling systems for the computational devices produced a constant low hum that the staff had long since stopped hearing.

-Status report.-

The response came from multiple stations simultaneously .

"Cannons One, Two, Four, Five, Six, and Eight are operational and currently repositioning per your order. Cannons Three and Seven remain offline — the EMP strikes landed directly on unshielded relay points.

We're assessing whether the damage is recoverable remotely or requires physical access. Cannon Nine is partially responsive; we may be able to restore limited functionality within the hour."

Lucien absorbed this without visible reaction. It was better than he had initially estimated, and he allowed himself to register that privately, without letting it show.

"How about the new beast?"

A pause followed. Then one of the analysts from the second row spoke — a younger officer, precise in the way people get when they've been burned before for being imprecise.

"Sir. I've been compiling what we have since the engagement began. Most of it is incomplete, but there's enough to form a partial picture."

"Then form it."

"The first confirmed sightings of this specific target came from the Quinns region. We have field reports from ground units stationed there — reports that were flagged as low priority at the time because we were managing the Kings situation." He brought up the relevant file.

The text was sparse, written by someone in a hurry, under stress, with limited time and context.

He read it aloud.

The unidentified contagion had continued to spread. Infected individuals exhibited extreme aggression, loss of higher cognitive function, and violent behavior toward nearby civilians. Quarantine efforts had failed in several districts.

He glanced at the next section.

In addition, black tendril-like structures had begun emerging from the ground at multiple locations. Initial reports noted rapid growth and movement. Contact with the tendrils had resulted in severe casualties among both civilian and military personnel. The connection between the tendrils and the contagion remained unknown at the time of filing.

The analyst set the pad down.

"Sir — those same tendril structures appeared in the capital during the civil disturbance reports, and again in the airship footage before transmission was lost. The consistency of the pattern across three separate locations and three separate timeframes suggests a single point of origin."

Lucien leaned back in his chair. He had believed, or chosen to believe, that removing the kings would cause the rest of the beast to collapse. The assumption had seemed reasonable. It was wrong.

And now, a new threat had emerged.

"Things are not going to plan," he said, tapping his finger once against the armrest.

No one replied. The observation didn't invite reply.

He turned it over in his mind. The target was mobile, adaptive, and capable of taking out orbital cannons. It had even launched an attack comparable to an EMP, suggesting intelligence and understanding on par with humans—or possibly higher.

No, at this point it was safe to assume it was a creature that did not only grow stronger by absorbing humans, but also smarter. That meant the advantage of human intelligence became a double-edged sword.

He still had one option he hadn't exercised. He had been hoping, genuinely, that he wouldn't need to.

The collateral projections alone made it something that should only ever be a last resort — not for sentimental reasons, but practical ones.

Once released, the virus didn't discriminate. It didn't stop when the threat was neutralized. It persisted, spread, and changed the conditions of the planet itself for years afterward.

But the alternative was leaving a threat on the surface that had already demonstrated it could neutralize orbital assets, disable communication infrastructure, and operate without visible resource limitation.

"Execute Code: VIR."

The silence that followed was different from the others. Heavier. Several of his staff stiffened at their stations without moving.

"Sir." One of the senior technicians spoke, choosing her words carefully. "Are you certain? There are still confirmed survivors on the surface. The affected zone projections would include—"

"I know," he said. Not sharp. Not dismissive. Just flat with the weight of it. "But we have no other option. The virus is the only agent with confirmed lethality across all known biological threat categories — with the exception of the Kings themselves. If we release it now, we eliminate the active threats and wait for natural degradation. Two years, perhaps slightly more."

He looked at his staff directly then. He didn't do it often. He did it when he needed them to actually hear him rather than simply comply.

"Your families are in the space stations. They're safe. But we cannot survive in orbit indefinitely — the stations were never designed for long-term habitation at this scale.

And if we return before the surface is clear, we won't survive that either." He paused. "Even without our intervention, the beast threat will expand until there is nothing left to protect."

He turned back to the display and took a deep breath. Once he activated the plan, there would be no turning back.

"Initiate the sequence."

After six members entered their codes, a new window appeared on Lucien's desk. He held the master key—a USB—and inserted it into the port.

The screen turned red.