Chapter 67 17:
"These colonists..." said Norr-manh, with a hint of bewilderment. "Do these slaves want to die?"
"It seems so," Tula replied, and her fingers tightened around the handle of the knife strapped to her thigh. "But if that is what he desires, for his insolence, I will make sure to give him the most painful and degrading death possible."
Nouwlan did not wait for someone to give an order, he simply hurled himself toward his enemies with the pure intention of tearing them apart alive.
The air exploded around him when he accelerated, his body turning into a descending arrow that pierced through the clouds of smoke. The city passed beneath him like a blur, and in less than a blink, he was already among the frenzied lithari.
His feet struck the first one directly above a heavily armored lithari who did not have time to react.
The force of the collision pulverized the alien's helmet, and his head exploded into a cloud of bone fragments and organic matter.
The body ended up crushed without offering any resistance, its limbs extended in one final contortion.
By the time the rest of his companions realized it, recovered themselves, and aimed toward their enemy, Nouwl-an was no longer there.
His next target was a squad of lithari attempting to flank a burning building.
He appeared behind them before they saw him coming, and his hands, flat like blades, began to move.
The first lost his head before his brain registered the danger. Nouwl-an simply ripped it from his shoulders with a dry pull, tearing out his spinal column in the process and splattering a stream of blood and marrow over the rest of his companions.
The second received a punch to the chest that caved his armor inward, the ribs piercing the lungs and heart into a single mass of crushed flesh.
Then came the third, up to the seventh, and then the tenth, and more.
The nineteenth he grabbed by both upper arms, the ones wielding a plasma rifle, pulling in opposite directions. The joints gave way with a wet crack, and the limbs were left hanging by strips of skin and tendons.
The lithari fell to his knees, but Nouwl-an did not give him time to scream.
His foot, driven with all the strength of an enraged viltrumite, embedded itself into the alien's pelvis until it split him in half. The body folded in on itself like a sheet of paper, so Nouwl-an kicked it aside.
The rest tried to scatter, but Nouwl-an was faster than them, much faster.
He vanished from his position and reappeared before another lithari, who was still raising his rifle. His right hand closed around the barrel and squeezed. The metal twisted like putty, and Nouwl-an used the deformed rifle itself to strike the lithari in the face. The skull caved in, and the alien fell backward with a gurgle.
The hundred and seventy-eighth managed to fire a plasma beam that passed whistling right by Nouwl-an's earlobe, without leaving even a single mark on it.
The instructor did not even blink; his left hand extended, caught the lithari's wrist, and squeezed.
The bones cracked, splintered, and the enemy's hand was reduced to a sack of bloody pulp. Nouwl-an tore what remained of the arm off with a yank and embedded it into the lithari beside him who was trying to step backward.
The bone fragment pierced the base of the skull and came out through the alien's mouth, who collapsed drooling blood.
The others formed a defensive circle, their plasma axes ignited, their quadruple eyes reflecting fury and malice.
Nouwlan smiled with the grimace of a predator, as though he had found his prey.
He moved in a zigzag pattern, so fast that the lithari could barely follow him with their eyes. His fist struck the chest of a lithari who exploded backward, all his organs bursting out through his back through pure kinetic force. His dented armor embedded itself into his sternum turned into splinters.
Nouwl-an reached two others in only three strides, grabbed both of them by the nape, and smashed their heads together violently. The skulls collided with a shrill sound, and both bodies collapsed, their glazed eyes staring into nowhere.
Nouwlan stopped for a moment, his chest expanding and contracting normally, despite the turbulent rage storming within him.
He was not tired in the slightest, he could continue killing all the insects for days and probably would not feel any fatigue whatsoever.
As he observed around him, the other instructors had also descended upon the lithari plagues.
Instructor Tula moved among the enemies like a mortuary dancer. Her knife, that viltrumite metal blade capable of cutting through any known armor, including the viltrumites themselves, traced silver arcs through the air.
The lithari fell torn apart within seconds, forming bloody rivers that mixed with their fallen people, some of whom lay drowned in their own blood.
As for Norr-manh, despite his age, he was an irrepressible machine of annihilation.
Each one of his blows was calculated to maximize massive large-scale damage, making use of his natural gifts over physics itself.
Norr-manh, in a vertical movement, had performed one of his favorite annihilation maneuvers.
Descending from the stratosphere after accelerating to terminal velocities in a fraction of a second. Only five centimeters above the ground, he stopped his body, but diverted his fist sideways in a semicircular sweep.
The impact against the air generated a plasma front of nearly fifty thousand degrees kelvin if terrestrial terms were used to measure the temperature.
That plasma expanded like a hypersonic shock wall, but that was not the most devastating part.
As his arm moved nearly grazing the ground, the plasma wave reflected off the earth's crust, inducing a magnitude 12 earthquake within a radius of 8 terrestrial kilometers.
Behind the fist remained a vacuum tube whose collapse produced implosions and supersonic firestorms.
As a result of that devastating movement, a fan of destruction unfolded for more than 12 terrestrial kilometers.
The area directly swept by the fist was atomized. The buildings collapsed, burning in the process, leaving behind an immeasurable canyon more than two hundred meters deep.
Norr-manh, immune to inertia and almost invulnerable to friction, suffered no damage whatsoever, not even the slightest discomfort. His endurance was incomparable compared to other viltrumites of his same classification. His ability to violate universal laws maximized the chaos unleashed per square meter.
As for the other instructors, each in their own way, they continued the massacre.
The lithari died by the hundreds, by the thousands, but even before the ruthless attacks of the viltrumites, capable of dismembering with a visceral animosity, guided by an almost instinctive cruelty toward what they considered little more than insolent vermin, unworthy even of their contempt, for having dared to profane the sacredness of their capital, they continued emerging from the crack in the ground like an endless horde of destruction.
Their crude ships emerged from underground and rose toward the sky, only to be shot down by the viltrumites of the city who flew to meet them.
The city burned as nowl-an had never witnessed before, as though he were experiencing firsthand some historical event of the empire, like in the times of the great purge.
But Nouwl-an, despite being immersed in the slaughter, could not ignore that small voice in the back of his head telling him that something was wrong.
The lithari were inferior, much weaker than any viltrumite, the way they died from a simple brush of his hand was sufficient proof legitimizing his thoughts of superiority.
A single imperial warrior could kill hundreds of them without any problem, as he was demonstrating at this very moment.
Then why did they keep attacking? Why did they not flee? Why were they sacrificing themselves in such a stupid, such a useless way?
Nouwlan killed another lithari, and another, and another more, but his mind was no longer in the fight. It was trying to find the missing piece in that puzzle of senseless death.
As for the lithari emerging from the earth like a sea of beetles, they began looking upward, toward the sky. Nouwl-an did not ignore that unusual action and followed their gazes.
And then he understood what was happening. Everything about this pitched battle, this entire massacre, was nothing more than a crude distraction.
"Tula!" shouted Nouwl-an, but his voice was lost among the explosions. "Norr-manh!"
But they did not hear him.
They were too focused on eradicating every last lifeform considered inferior, with an absolute cruel coldness.
Nouwlan was going to try again, fly toward them to warn them, when he felt the air around him change.
From the perimeter of the Dorymathos, a group of litharis formed six equidistant points creating a perfect hexagon around the towers. There, devices emerged from the ground.
Those metallic structures stood around five meters tall, shaped like obelisks, adorned with engravings that Nouwl-an did not recognize. At their tips, spheres of energy began to shine with a bluish glow that grew second by second, which frightened nouwl-an.
"Nooo!" whispered Nouwl-an, flying toward his companions. "STOP THOSE DEVICES!"
But it was already too late.
The six obelisks activated in unison, and from each one emerged a beam of energy that rose toward the sky. In the atmosphere, around one thousand meters high, the beams converged into a single point, and from there, a dome of energy began to expand.
Nouwlan tried to stop what was happening, but the dome descended too quickly.
When he reached the edge, just about to cross it, his body collided with an invisible barrier. The impact was like crashing against a solid wall, and Nouwl-an was sent rebounding backward, his right shoulder numbed by the collision.