Chapter 48 47:
Instead, another flash hindered his vision, and the heat wave that irritated his now sensitive wounds enveloped him.
Conquest burst into the Lanther formation like a meteorite in merely a fraction of a terrestrial second.
Despite being the oldest recorded viltrumite, his figure was colossal. He stood above the average of his own race, far surpassing 2 and a half meters.
And that eternal one, in his eyes, there was only emptiness and death.
The first Lanther, who had managed to stabilize himself, after locating the elder, attempted to fire.
But in just a blink, Conquest disappeared from his position, appeared at his side, and ripped away the light-generating belt with a yank.
Without the technology, the soldier became simple flesh before his eyes.
Conquest grabbed his lower jaw with one hand, the upper with the other, and pulled.
The head split apart like a rotten fruit, the spinal column came out dripping marrow while the helmet rolled away empty.
And all of it had happened in merely a fraction of a fraction of a second that seemed to stretch into an eternity before everyone's presence.
The second and third came together, enraged, but in the same way, at speeds incomprehensible even for Varnak-Sul himself, Conquest pierced the first one's chest with his fingers in a spear formation.
With the same ease as pulling weeds from the earth, he ripped out the sternum with a jerk, and with the bone still dripping, he drove it into the second one's throat.
The latter's trachea exploded in a spray of pulverized cartilage.
The fourth activated his Spear, having taken advantage of his companions' deaths to deliver a fatal attack, but Conquest had anticipated it.
He grabbed it by the tip long before the button was pressed, spun it through the air like a pinwheel, and drove it through the fifth one's eye. The amber energy liquefied the Lanther's brain, and pierced through his cortex and skull in a straight line. His brains dripped bubbling through his nose.
Conquest ripped the shaft from the corpse's bloody eye socket and used it as an improvised spear to impale the sixth, seventh, and eighth lined up. The three bodies remained skewered like kebabs, kicking and bewildered. At no moment did they see him move.
The remaining Lanthers activated their belts to the maximum, willing to overload themselves and immolate themselves with the enemy.
Their suits shone in an incandescent white sufficient to erase great stretches of planetary crust. The nuclear detonations blossomed in the void, shockwaves of heat and radiation that would have incinerated an entire fleet.
But Conquest advanced through the explosions like one walking under the rain.
His skin did not even feel the sensation of charring in the slightest.
He emerged from the fireball wrapped in plasma, and his left hand grabbed the ninth by the face, squeezed until his fingers pierced the skull, and tore upward. The skin of the face came off whole like a bleeding mask, leaving the facial muscles exposed, trembling.
Then he bit the tenth one's trachea in a clean bite that made the breathing whistle through the hole, in fact, he savored his flesh, eating him after feeling the aftertaste of blood on his palate.
A cheerful smile seemed to bloom upon the elder's face, showing his teeth stained with blood and greed for more.
From the eleventh to the fifteenth they attempted to scatter once again, abandon space, but Conquest pursued them through the void like a hungry shark.
He grabbed the eleventh by both legs and separated them in opposite directions, causing the lanther's pelvis to crack.
The femurs came out from their sockets, dying from the shock.
The twelfth received a punch that collapsed his thorax; the ribs pierced both lungs and came out through the back.
He grabbed the thirteenth by the right arm, twisted it until pulling it from its joint, and with the bone still dripping, drove it into his abdomen.
The fourteenth attempted to flee completely terrified.
Conquest caught up to him, grabbed his head from behind, and pulled lightly. The neck stretched like gum, the cervical vertebrae came out one by one, the spinal cord gleamed into the void. The fifteenth saw everything and urinated inside the suit from how bizarre his situation was, the dishonor and the savage way of dying.
Conquest, ignoring his paralysis, shoved his fist through his mouth piercing his palate, skull, and his hand came out through the crown dripping brain matter.
The remaining Lanthers, seventeen disturbed ones, activated their Spears in a volley formation. Thirty-four amber beams converged upon Conquest's chest, but he simply stepped aside, in a manner so lazy it almost seemed as if he had never been there.
The most disturbing thing was that the elder was still smiling. His bleeding fingers pointed at the seventeen remaining.
"nice toys you have there, glitter creatures. Is that all it does? Why am I not capable of using it? Is it perhaps designed so that it only recognizes your signatures?", he suddenly asked through a thought. His thought, just as thick and insidious as his voice, shook the lanthers.
Receiving no response, the elder shrugged, but continued with the massacre.
He grabbed the sixteenth by the waist and squeezed. The spine broke with the sound of a dry branch.
The seventeenth received a kick that tore both legs clean off, leaving him floating in the void with the stumps gushing.
He grabbed the eighteenth by the head with both hands, the left merely held, but the right squeezed, and the skull burst like a grape, brains splattering across the nineteenth's helmet, who barely managed to scream before Conquest tore off his arms with a yank, leaving him like a humanoid trunk.
From the twentieth to the twenty-fifth there was no resistance whatsoever. Conquest rammed through them like a battering ram, his body piercing through the thoraxes of each Lanther until destroying them.
Their heads were separated from their necks by the mere impact.
One was split in half, the spine exposed like a broken branch, while another was decapitated by the edge of Conquest's forearm.
The twenty-sixth attempted to fire his Spear point-blank, but Conquest, making several dodges, caught the barrel with the palm of his hand, crushing his stump into paste.
The shaft bent, and the tip exploded into fragments that embedded themselves into the Lanther's face.
Conquest grabbed his jaw, dislocated it downward as if opening a can, and then inserted his fingers into the oral cavity until ripping the tongue out cleanly, followed by the entire larynx.
From the twenty-seventh to the thirtieth, the berserker limited himself to dismembering. One arm, two legs, some lung or a head.
The thirty-first and thirty-second were the last ones. Conquest grabbed both by the nape, brought their skulls together and crushed them. The helmets caved in, and the skull bones fragmented into splinters that pierced the brains from within.
Blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and brain matter formed a red nebula around the three.
Conquest released the bodies. They floated in the void, thirty-two destroyed, dismembered, unrecognizable corpses to the eye.
He normally took one of the weapons requested by the grand regent for later inspection, and then cast a glance at the general who had been demoted.
Varnak-Sul immediately bowed.
He swallowed hard, alarmed. Berserkers could harm their allies in moments of madness, but the elder merely remained silent.
He kept watching him, expectant, calculating and deciding things only he could comprehend, and then, just as he arrived, he left. Fractions later, Varnak-Sul was able to witness how the elder pierced through an entire stretch of hundreds of millions of his enemies.
He was a fierce elder, many said he had gone insane, but Varnak-Sul had proven that was not entirely true. The elder was sane, he knew what he was doing, and he enjoyed every moment, every instant, every microsecond of his actions inflicted upon his enemies.
He enjoyed the pain and agony of others, the feeling of the death of his victims. He was, without a doubt, annihilation itself.