Chapter 49 48:
The development of the great battle was at its highest point.
And at the center of the battlefield, Thragg waited in silence, awaiting what he anticipated would be the challenge of the sector's highest representatives.
He had not moved since the beginning of the combat and his arms remained crossed over his chest, keeping his eyes closed as if he were meditating.
But he felt everything happening far and wide, witnessing through his presence how the war burned like stars, how space was dyed with plasma and death.
As he had anticipated, the three figures arrived, even at the same time.
The lanther general, wielding a Piercing Spear in hand, appeared before Thragg. His command suit, white and golden, shone with the energy saturating the field collected precisely for this crucial moment.
At his back, prince thuk-ooohr raised the Stormbreaker, the runes on his body pulsing with a fury that seemed to want to burn the prince's very skin.
To his right, captain Cosmos activated her miniature Dyson core, turning herself into a small living sun that enhanced her abilities to levels that made her capable of annihilating a dwarf moon with her own fists in a single blow.
The three commanders of the Luminus Coalition had come to kill the devil that came from outside their sector, with obvious signs of conquest, massacre and slavery.
But the moment Thragg opened his eyes, he nodded, saying.
"Finally, "I was getting bored."
"How dare you?", the first to react to his provocation was captain Cosmos, who attacked first.
Her arms opened and the void ignited. Eight beams of pure fusion, each four hundred kilometers in diameter, erupted from her Dyson core as if the sun itself had made an appearance.
Fifteen million degrees were launched in his direction, waiting to use the temperature in her favor. Viltrumites were virtually invulnerable and resistant to almost everything, but among the few recorded weaknesses they possessed, extreme temperatures such as heat, given some time, could indeed surpass their tolerance.
The strategy was simple, roast the viltrumite under any circumstance.
The ships within a radius of a thousand kilometers, both enemy and allied, melted within the incandescence and the metal had turned into gas and the gas into plasma.
But Thragg did not even blink.
The tongues of cosmic fire trembled centimeters from his skin, incapable of advancing. Captain Cosmos clenched her teeth and poured in more power, but it was all useless, though she was right that exposing a viltrumite to extreme temperatures was a feasible way to kill them, the truth was that Thragg was not just any viltrumite. He was the regent himself, emperor in all and of all, except in name.
Ignoring the blaze, the regent launched a punch directly to the stomach, followed by a hook to the liver, followed by a cross to the jaw.
The three impacts sounded like bells of metal against metal. Although Thragg did not flinch, he raised an eyebrow, after recognizing that the alien woman, unexpectedly, had been able to withstand the blow.
As for the captain, who had avoided being sent flying, with adrenaline in bloom, and feeling her body destroyed from within, she chose to concentrate a great amount of power into her fist, but after attempting to strike, she was met with the surprise that her blow had been caught by the regent.
Cosmos' fist remained imprisoned in his palm. Thragg squeezed, and her knuckles cracked with an audible crack. The hand was turned into a sack of pulverized bones, causing the captain to howl with a heart-rending scream.
But she did not surrender. Despite her desperation, she took advantage of the moment and launched a barrage of a thousand liquid iron projectiles, each wrapped in a reverse inertia field.
Thragg released her, moving between them.
Cosmos channeled her Dyson core into a single point, deciding to give everything and more. A gravitational pulse compressed the area before her and the void itself seemed to wrinkle.
Thragg received the wave head on but his body did not move a micrometer. Gravity licked his face like a simple breeze, that cheap attempt at a black hole was nothing more than that, a mere imitation.
"did you seriously believe that something like this could do anything to me?". He asked with a raised eyebrow, disappointed.
Furious, and having regenerated her destroyed hand, captain Cosmos launched herself into close combat once more. Her discharge ports emitted a continuous torrent of energy.
A beam of light fell upon Thragg, but within the beam, the regent advanced toward her, hiding within the incandescent brightness his intact skin. Upon reaching her, he merely raised a finger.
And with a simple touch from his part at the center of the Dyson core, captain Cosmos' mega powerful and advanced super suit shut down. The lights went out and the power that elevated her strength far above her companions in the forces disappeared in merely a sigh. She floated inert, alive by miracle, though not for much longer.
The regent went for her, with the intention of ending this circus, but one of her companions did not allow it.
Prince Aizir, taking advantage of a moment of cover to charge his weapon, brought down the Stormbreaker with all his strength.
At the same time, the commander leader of the lanthers had manifested a colossal construct, a giant with a thousand arms, made of pure energy, each hand the size of a moon. The thousand hands descended upon Thragg, each one firing a disintegration ray capable of splitting planets.
The rays swept across the battle lines and friendly and enemy fire perished equally. Millions of soldiers from both factions disintegrated upon contact, although the Aizir swarm ships managed to weave a protection matrix that succeeded in isolating part of the destructive energy attempting to evaporate them.
Such colossal power, capable of imposing presence upon planets across galaxies, did not make the regent hesitate in his decisions. In fact, he had already planned his battle strategy, modifying it in real time.
Thragg moved immediately.
His speed was so high that not even the sensors could follow it. He ascended vertically, evading the rays by centimeters and then descended in a spiral, crossing between the giant's arms until reaching the height of the construct's chest, he extended his hands and plunged them into the energy forming it.
The giant roared upon contact, and more.
Pulling with overwhelming strength, he tore the giant in half. It dispersed in an explosion of light that blinded every sensor within a radius of one hundred thousand kilometers.
The lanther general, connected to the construct, felt the pain as if his arms had been torn off, but he clenched his teeth and advanced.
As he advanced at relative speeds, he formed an X with his arms, materializing this same thing into a defensive construct of pure disintegration energy.
The lanther hoped, believed with all his heart that, If he managed to strike, even the Great Regent could die. For that energy was composed of the energetic properties of the piercing spears, these being extremely difficult to shape, though not impossible, not to mention highly dangerous for both parties.
Thragg, of course, did not allow himself to be struck. At the same time, after seeing how the regent evaded his charge, he drew his piercing spear and aimed precisely toward the chest. A single shot, just one effective one, and he was more than certain the destabilization energy would begin acting upon his intelligent atoms.
Thragg felt how his ceremonial battle suit seemed to decompose from the mere exposure to the luminous photons of said weapon, but he felt neither fear nor risk of death over what he considered was nothing more than mere toys to him.
This weapon of annihilation could very well be considered a good kitchen knife within the empire. Only viltrumite metals cut viltrumite skin, therefore, it was only a matter of avoiding the cut, and killing the attacker from an unprotected flank.
So he decided to attack. His fist rose with the force of a meteor and struck the lanther general's face. The commander's head exploded, just like that, dying in that instant.
The regent seemed ironic, for he had expected this general, the most powerful force of the tripartite coalition, to withstand somewhat more of his strength.
But ironically that had not been the case.
Apparently, the energetic and physical shockwave that was supposed to keep him virtually armored, traveled through his skull and pulverized it from the inside.
The general's body fell inert, his Spear still glowing. The regent looked at the creature with disdain, took the supposedly key toy and broke it in half.