Chapter 448: Powers Gone
"The planet looks nice, I wonder what creatures live on it," The voice of the first dragon commander echoed in the halls of the commander chambers.
Due to their inability to access warp signals for communication, cruder methods were employed.
The two arkships had to maintain a certain distance between each other if they wanted to maintain instant communications.
"Does it matter? Let’s just find the owner of the fortune trail and see if it’s a Primordial Lion..."
The two arkships had portal-ed their way into the next star system and were moving fast toward the habitable planet of Kareem.
"They do have a lot of electromagnetic wave emissions though. Look, a large percentage of light bounces off the planet, as if it’s being reflected by glass.
Maybe they’re advanced. Maybe they’re related to that ancient civilization."
"Once again, it doesn’t matter..."
They got close to Planet Kareem’s only moon. Just beyond the moon was the green and blue planet with five clear continents.
"Hmm, what’s that?"
The outer orbit of the planet was eerily silent. Although it had a lot of satellites and space stations, they didn’t enter the eyes of the dragon commanders who merely glanced at them.
What caught their attention was a little object that flew out of the planet extremely fast, breaking out of the atmosphere and continuing into space.
It was a small rocket, no bigger than an ordinary great white shark. Its body was a sleek silver and it had blue lines glowing at the edges.
The emission coming from the thrusters was blue-ish red, like they were formed from the combustion of a very strange mineral.
The dragon commanders could only watch this from the safety of their arkships. After all, the rocket was not aimed at them, it seemed to be going somewhere else.
They just assumed that something interesting was happening on the planet. At best, it was a really powerful nuke, something that their arkships could defend against easily.
"Are they having a war?..." The second dragon commander asked.
However, before the first dragon commander could give his opinion, the rocket exploded.
There was no noise as there was no medium for sound to travel. All everyone, on Kareem and in the arkship, could see was a flash followed by a wave.
The wave spread out faster than the speed of light with the point of explosion being the center.
The wave was semi-invisible and could still be seen with the naked eye as it brushed over the whole planet, the moon, and the two arkships.
It happened too fast.
By the time the dragon commanders understood what was happening, the wave had faded away, losing its powers after traveling a few million kilometers past the planet.
The spreading wave didn’t go past the border of the star system.
*Silence!*
Utter silence.
Planet Kareem had gone silent, the satellites had gone silent, and the space stations that had detected the arkships had gone silent.
The arkships themselves had gone silent, no longer moving.
The two arkships, massive vessels they were, stopped moving beside the moon.
One of them was closer to planet Kareem and the other was closer to the moon.
It looked like a chain of some sort.
Silence.
////
"WONDERFUL!" Kael exclaimed as he quickly let go of Olivia’s hand.
Olivia fell to the ground, unconscious. The aura of the Conqueror Mode Avatar faded from her body.
She was still alive, thankfully.
Ruda, Eidel, and Prya quickly rushed over to attend to her while Kael diverted his attention somewhere else.
His mind spun fast, creating calculations and doing hardcore pattern recognition.
All the electricity in the penthouse had gone out after that wave hit. It was like an electromagnetic pulse, but Kael knew it wasn’t.
His powers were gone.
Kael smiled, knowing that things were a bit complicated. Misfortune had ended up happening to everyone at the same time.
He squeezed his palm, feeling his terrifying strength slowly fading away.
"No!" Kael shouted. His eyes and nostrils burst out with the golden light of Conquering Essence.
Just before all his power faded, Kael latched onto the link with the Lion System and drew on the power.
The world seems to tip over violently, the whole hotel shook from the pressure Kael was emitting.
By now, Ruda, Priy, and Eidel had also lost their powers.
In fact, every superpowered creature on planet Kareem had lost their powers mysteriously.
That rocket that exploded, it didn’t just shut down all the electricity and technology of planet Kareem, it shut down their powers.
Luckily, Kael was here for them.
//////
The city that was built over the origin of humanity.
This place had gone very silent for a while. That rocket had exploded right above them and the inhabitants of the city had seen it clearly.
They had been hit first. All their phones, cars, home appliances, and everything had stopped working.
Helicopters crashed, tanks just stopped moving, and missiles could no longer be fired. The only things that still worked were the basic tools that didn’t need sources of energy.
Most guns still worked.
But Diane had lost her powers, or she was losing them.
*BAM!*
Diane’s body reeled back from being shot in the shoulder. Her eyes widened as she brought her hand to cover the bleeding wound.
It had been so long since she felt pain or saw her own blood that it excited her a little.
The gunshot wound was very shallow. It was strong enough to peel away the soft part of her skin but couldn’t go further.
She might have lost her passive toughness but she was still very very strong.
The sudden loss of her powers confused her but she had no time to think about it.
Her figure dashed to the, taking cover behind the ruins of a tank shale had stomped through. Bullets rained on her previous position and some hit the body of the tank.
Diane was still extraordinary. Her sensitive ears could still pick up the sound of guns cocking or bullets flying. Her reaction speed was on par with air defense military grade systems.
One shot to the shoulder and she had restructured her fight pattern in the blink of an eye.
At the end of the day, she was still a lioness in human form.
Except, now, she was no longer fighting to defend N’bayé, but to stay alive.
As for N’bayé.
Over at the hole that N’bayé had made, darkness reigned.
This was the same hole that had produced that rocket that took power away from the world.
It was dark, and it was deep, very deep.
N’bayé hung by the side of the dark tunnel, her natural night vision allowed her to clearly see her surroundings.
Down below, what little light that came from above, illuminated the metal platforms below.
She narrowed her eyes, feeling her clawed grip on the jagged rock getting loose. Even without the influence of magic, she still operated with cold brutal logic, constantly calculating what was happening.
That rocket had taken away her powers.
The only power that wasn’t taken away from them was their ability to transform into their true forms. Even then, their true forms would still not possess the power they once had.
N’bayé calculated that she could jump down and transform right before she hit the ground. She could latch onto the rocky walls with her claws and slow her descent.
Or she could climb out of the tunnel.
’He should have felt it too, will he do something?’ N’bayé thought. In these troubling and confusing times when so many things she could not have predicted happened all at once, Kael was the only person she hoped to depend on.
Then, there was a flash of gold. A flash of gold that N’bayé was very familiar with.
Feeling her consciousness being suppressed, N’bayé could not help but wear a smirk.
Conquering Essence flooded her mind and body, filling her with his will and intent.
Her irises took on a golden shade. The rune tattoos on her body which had stopped glowing after her powers disappeared lit up again.
This time, the rune tattoos turned golden and bright, solidifying the regal look of N’bayé.
She let go of the jagged rock she had been holding on to, but she didn’t fall.
The levitation runes on her body burst with power.
Right now, as she hovered at the center of the tunnel, in between the surface and the mysterious facility below, her aura rose.
Tier 6.
N’bayé looked up at the sky, her eyes shining with the light of two separate intelligences.
The warp effect condensed around her.
She looked down at the metal plate and platforms. Trouble was coming from above, but mystery waited down below.
Curiosity took over, N’bayé descended into the tunnel.
/////
"Was fun while it lasted," Diane said as she felt her body being flooded with Conquering Essence, pushing her past the limits of her initial tier.
Her body was riddled with shallow bullet wounds which were already healing up.
Shits were still being fired but she now ignored them, there was no use in paying attention to the humans anymore.
They could shoot and bomb all they want, but it no longer mattered in the grand scheme of things.
With the influx of Conquering Essence also came the partial mind of her beloved, and so did information on what was currently happening.
Diane looked up, the moon wasn’t above the city but the distant edge of an arkship could be seen beyond the horizon.