Chapter 45 44:
The distance between both battle lines shortened to zero. And the rains of plasma throughout the empty space stained the void with plasmatic fires as burning as the stars themselves in the presence of the great nebula.
What was supposed to be beautiful, was nothing more than the transformation of hell itself unleashed among the stars, where only the silent groan of molten metals was silenced.
Death harvested the life of the first Viltrumite wave, composed of two point four billion colonial infantry, who advanced in wedge formation.
The energy shields collapsed instantly after being saturated by the disintegration beams in only a single instant, in which the flying ships of the Aizir simply rammed through the swarm formations that barely managed to resist before becoming part of the infernal fires.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Lanther squadrons, who served as the true heavy assault, synchronized to act opportunistically.
The constructions of light fused into one and a hand the size of a moon, every part of its structure formed by currents of solidified photons, descended at speeds similar to 10% of the speed of light.
The first slap split three thousand colonial cruisers apart as if they were shells and the imperial losses seemed to skyrocket once more.
The debris became a rain of molten metal that poured over planets light years away.
Then another hand emerged, leaving the same damage that after, clapping together, a squadron of Viltrumite swarm ships in that sector ceased to exist, replaced by a flash that sought to imitate a supernova, only to leave behind a void where only death dwelled.
Every second, millions of bodies exploded in silence, their remains turned into fragments, both organic and inorganic, scattered in the void like a macabre rain.
But the unilateral destruction of the swarm infantry was assisted as soon as the first millions of casualties began to register in the statistics of the Viltrumite strategists.
The Venatici arrived to return twice the slaughter.
Four hundred eighty million hounds deployed their energy shields into a semipermeable wall that seemed to stretch across the entire line in such a way that it appeared to extend into what to the naked eye seemed an infinity.
The Lanther light constructions, which until then had devastated hundreds of thousands of the colonial infantry, crashed against the barrier and were absorbed.
Those gigantic hands barely managed to remain stable, before disintegrating into luminescent fragments.
And the eyes of the Venatici burned with an orange glow while they stored the energy that had been wrested from the force of those builder beings.
That energy, excessive and harmful, saturated their cells to the limit, and then, in unison, they returned it with equal desire for murder and death.
A wall of heat and fusion expanded in such a way that it seemed to advance at the speed of light, embracing the first enemy line. The temperature, comparable to a solar flare, bathed three hundred million kilometers in a merciless fire.
The Aizir ships could not withstand the attack with their protection enchantments, and after being overwhelmed, they melted within moments until the entire structure behaved like a liquid.
The bodies of the soldiers simply evaporated in an instant.
Waves of concentrated energy rushed toward the Coalition ranks.
But even so, the response did not take long, for their leaders did not remain standing idly by watching as their people seemed to fall before these demons.
Thuk-Ooohr, prince of the Aizir, acted in an instant from his position. Performing a high magical energy formation, he spun his Stormbreaker hammer in a descending arc.
A bolt of raw electricity, one kilometer in diameter, crossed space at a fraction of the speed of light. It struck the center of the Venatic formation, overloading them until the liquid in their bodies boiled, killing many, innumerable, of those bloodthirsty warriors.
Eight million hounds evaporated on contact, their bodies designed to absorb energy were incapable of processing such a magnitude of power.
The Lanther general, taking advantage of the breach, ordered the advance of the Cosmic Force who did not hesitate for even an instant to hurl themselves against their enemies.
Four point eight billion warriors in Vanguard suits propelled themselves using the cosmic energy of their suits. Said formations, wrapped in energies of cosmic power, acted as spears and pierced the colonial lines, synchronized until they swept through the flanks, kilometers of them.
The "Eye of Argal" turrets, barely twelve thousand, attempted to respond, but the enemy saturation was overwhelming.
Each turret was being attacked by five hundred swarm ships simultaneously, overloading the protection of their defensive shields.
A squadron of Viltrumite cruisers was positioned in the rear. There were barely some eight thousand, but they did not hold back in assaulting with indiscriminate fire.
The particle cannons fired a volley of disintegration beams toward a squadron of one hundred thousand enemy ships, who were desperately trying to cover their Lanther soldiers besieged by the energetic wave of the imperial hounds.
Despite the first successful hits, unfortunately for the colonials, the tripartite coalition had hundreds of billions of ships that took the places of their fallen, responding with iron defenses.
The Lanther Force who emerged unscathed from the massive attacks, together with the reinforcements arriving from the rear, created security zones, providing defensive coverage, extending for kilometers in distance.
And from their protected positions, they activated four thousand of their sixty-four thousand mobile planetary weapons, flashing like stars that contrasted with the fleeting hell that was unfolding.
Cannons the size of asteroids concentrated energy for thirty seconds, time that seemed eternal in that instant. Then, when the moment came, they unleashed stellar murder upon their enemies.
Beams of solid light, dozens of kilometers in diameter, swept across entire colonial lines.
Two hundred million infantry died in that single exchange.
Nevertheless, the Venatici, despite their losses, continued advancing regardless of the casualties.
A great portion approached close enough to consider launching a secure attack against the coalition line.
Their eyes launched blinding rays toward the Aizir ranks, opening holes in the floating wall of special Nordic ships, and through those breaches, the few thousand surviving colonial infantry hurled themselves into close combat against the magical frozen giants.
And the carnage, from close range, had also been unleashed.
In the space near the command post, a group of Venatici managed to board an enemy cruiser. They massacred the two thousand Aizir crew members and redirected the cannons against their own ranks, while they prophesized their faith to the god Morbus, an interdimensional demon unnameable in his own name who sponsored this bloodthirsty race as the hounds were.
The same cruiser, which previously had been hijacked by the imperial enemy, exploded two minutes later, struck by a Piercing Lance.
However, the damage had already been inflicted, where three hundred thousand Aizir had died by friendly fire.
The battle became a chaotic and senseless frenzy, where only death was the sole meaning for survival.
Reason and thought were reduced to indifference, fear, and the eradication of every existing conscious being through the most primitive instinct demonstrable.
Behold, this is where the civilized disguise was suspended in favor of showing the internalized animal.
All this chaos was seen through the eyes of General Varnak-Sul, suspended within the Viltrumite flagship cruiser that coordinated the colonial forces burning in the cosmos. His face, despite being illuminated by the flashes of destruction and absolute devastation between both forces, the shadow in his heart only seemed to be growing with every second.
The battle, for now, was balanced. But he knew he was at a disadvantage, because at the speed his forces were being consumed, he would be left without soldiers long before the coalition itself felt outmatched.