Chapter 449: Dragon Commanders
Starry space, the gas planet.
The third mysterious dragon commander closed in on the gas planet with his arkship.
He was unaware of what had just occurred on Planet Kareem.
The gases of the planet moved violently, creating a massive storm with blue lightning flashing here and there. The lightning flashes could be seen from above, it was truly fascinating.
Suddenly, the violent clouds and gases stirred as something moved within.
This immediately alerted the dragon commander who had been paying close attention to the planet.
There was just something about the whole gas planet that had seemed extremely unsettling to him. As a long lived individual who had descended from heaven countless times, he had seen many gas planets.
He had even fought many life-and-death battles on gas planets.
He had seen so many gas planets that he had gotten used to seeing them in a certain way. It couldn’t be described well unless one also had his experience.
That was why he had noticed that something was off when he gave a single glance at the gas planet
He was already on high alert so when the clouds of the gas planet started shifting away, he reacted almost immediately.
Hexagonal magic barriers appeared around his arkship and multiple large cannons were aimed at the planet.
No attacks were initiated, not yet. He was fierce but it was sometimes wiser to know the kind of enemy he was about to engage before fighting.
He saw it, the edge of a saucer-shaped megastructure, gradually bringing its body above the dense clouds of the planet like a shark exposing its fin above the water.
It was an arkship.
Just when the raging commander was about to send out some crude message transmissions to assess the identity of the markship, something happened.
The cannons of the arkship which were already trained at the dragon commander immediately opened fire.
No questions asked.
The cannons of Kael’s arkship were a little different from others. The arkship had been designed by Noel to prioritize stealth above all things.
This intent was naturally taken into consideration when Noel designed the attack systems.
Kael’s arkship was basically an assassin among arkships.
The cannons fired, but there were no visible attack beams, only the intense warping of space and time.
*BAM!*
The arkship of the dragon commander was hit badly. The hexagon barriers that covered the surface flickered in and out of existence.
That single hit was devastating. Not only was it incredibly powerful, but it could not be seen or detected.
The whole arkship rocked, the impact pushing it back a little bit.
Inside the dragon arkship, the command chamber.
A large red dragon gritted his teeth as he looked at the holographic images in front of him.
This dragon was massive, nearly six meters long and three meters tall. His red scales brimmed with the latent power of fire and his yellow eyes burned with volcanic fury.
His black claws gripped the edges of his obsidian command platform, preventing him from falling over after the arkship had been hit.
"I see," The dragon muttered, understanding that this was probably the enemy they had been looking for. There was no reason to attack otherwise.
The heavenly beacon of the draconic heaven churned with power within him, ready to be activated once he had confirmed his guesses.
Summoning Ibadon without one hundred percent certainty was not a wise decision.
As for this sudden ambush, the dragon commander easily reframed his mind and entered battle mode.
Besides a few prisoners and strange alien creatures that had been kept for fun, the red dragon was the only one in the arkship.
The commander’s chamber was empty save for the holographic images and the red dragon at the center of it all.
[MAGIC BARRIER: 30%]
The operating system announced, causing his frown to deepen and his rage to simmer.
That attack was too deadly. A well-timed ambush, shaving off seventy percent of his defensive capabilities. This was the first time he was experiencing such.
It was also at this time that he noticed that the gas planet was actually an Origin World. But that was not a significant detail at the moment.
"Very well then," The red dragon’s aura rose sharply.
Tier 6.
His power seeped into the circuits of the arkship, passing through the amplification runes and energizing the whole arkship.
////
Within Kael’s arkship, the chamber of command.
Nalii wore a grim expression on her face. The surprise attack had been successful but...
"Your Highness, our total Origin Essence reserves are already down by ten percent!" One of the Lion Lords said.
Thousands of lions no less than tier 3 and 4 were in the chamber of commerce, the majority of them were manning different cannon blasters remotely, ready to fire.
That invisible attack they just launched was special, it was meant to disable any arkship to the point where it would be unable to operate normally.
Since the whole arkship was meant to be stealth-focused, most of its attacks were invisible or packed a lot of power.
It wasn’t meant for drawn-out battles, rather it was meant for dealing the most amount of damage in the shortest amount of time.
The arkship Noel designed was marvelous and was supposed to work well. However, it had a flaw at this moment.
It’s commander.
Nalii was just the wrong person to be handling such operations.
"We’re diving back," Nalii said, controlling the arkship to sink back into the dense clouds of the gas planet.
Her plan was simple, use the gas planet as cover and also a means to constantly replenish their Origin Essence reserves.
Alas, she failed to understand that the enemy she had just made was probably not stupid.
The dragon arkship lit up, bursting into a cloud of flames and light. It turned into a disc-shaped mini sun.
The flames spread, carrying the extraordinary properties of warp effect.
The flaming arkship dived straight for the gas planet, chasing after Kael’s retreating arkship with unhidden killing intent.
*BOOM!*
The flaming arkship collided with Kael’s arkship, bashing the latter so hard that it flew through the planet, brushed against the core, and soared out of the planet from the other side.
The flaming arkship tore through the gas planet, in hot pursuit.
The battle had just begun, and Nalii was already thrust into a disadvantageous position.
/////
Planet Kareem, in between the moons.
The two arkships now moved along Kareem’s orbit unwillingly.
Every second that passed, they got slightly closer to Planet Kareem’s outer atmosphere, traveling little by little due to inertia.
With the way things were going, both arkships would eventually crash into the surface and probably cause serious civilization-ending catastrophes.
The arkship closest to the moon, one of its many hatches shook. This particular hatch was an emergency escape route connected directly to the command chamber.
It was one of the few entrances that wasn’t controlled by the operating system of the arkship and could therefore be opened normally.
The lack of an energy source to move the metal plates meant that whoever wanted to open it had to pry it open themselves.
That was exactly what the dragon commander of this arkship was doing.
Black claws pierced through the gaps and slowly pulled at the edges, pushing the metal platforms to the side.
As the hatch widened, the full figure of the dragon commander was exposed as he crawled out of the arkship.
Six meters long, three meters tall, covered black-stripped yellow scales.
Large green eyes looked around, assessing the situation before fully coming out of hiding.
The dragon commander, clearly a fortune dragon, defied gravity, standing on the side of the arkship without floating away.
His two horns pointed to the moon above him and the nostrils at the end of his long snouts flared.
He sniffed, not perceiving air, but fate.
He was familiar with this scent, the scent of Fate.
"The arkships protected us," The Fortune Dragon Commander said to himself.
That rocket had shut down all the active powers and technology of the arkships, but the wave didn’t get to the dragons themselves.
This was partly due to the fortune dragon’s timely intervention at the last moment. Because of him, the two dragon commanders got to keep their powers.
Warp effect gathered around the fortune dragon, condensing around his wings. The two wings on his back unfolded, revealing a well-toned body, unlike the chubby appearance that fortune lions had.
The dragon flapped his wings and flew. There was no wind or water, no medium to carry him except the Warp Effect.
His destination was the moon which was closer to him than Planet Kareem. He needed to assess and analyze what had happened with clarity. The best place to do this was anywhere away from the planet that had produced that anti-power rocket.
*BAM!*
Unlike the gentler Fortune Dragon Commander, the last Commander was not so subtle.
The other arkship which was closest to the planet’s atmosphere echoed with a faint bang.
The remnant little artificial field around the arkship was what transmitted that noise, and it was coming from a big hatch.
A really big hatch. A big hatch for an equally big dragon.
The hatch was big enough for a mountain to pass through, and the dragon that was trying to come through...
"Motherfuc!..."
A gigantic claw tore through the metal plates as though they were paper sheets.