Chapter 128: An Emperor’s Fall
The duel began with a roar of silent fire.
Inside the cockpit of his Apex Mech, Lord Valerius’s face was a mask of triumphant fury. "Die!" he screamed, jamming his thumb down on the firing stud.
The plasma cannon on the mech’s right arm unleashed a torrent of energy, a brilliant, blindingly white beam that shot across the blackness of space.
It was a spear of pure destruction, hot enough to melt the hull of a starship, fast enough to cross the distance to its target in less than a second. For anyone watching, it looked like the end. A tiny human figure was about to be completely erased from existence.
But Ryan didn’t move. He simply watched the beam of death approach. As it got closer, he raised a single, calm hand. His eyes glowed with a soft, silvery light. System, he commanded in his mind, Impose Rule: Temporal Field. Slow.
The effect was subtle, yet reality-bending. The space directly in front of Ryan warped. The spear of white-hot plasma, which had been moving at a fraction of the speed of light, suddenly seemed to hit an invisible wall of thick, cosmic molasse.
It slowed dramatically, its ferocious energy becoming a lazy, almost graceful river of light. It was still deadly, still impossibly hot, but it was now moving so slowly that Ryan could have sidestepped it with ease.
Instead, he did something even more unbelievable. He didn’t just dodge it. He phased. His body became translucent, a shimmering outline of a man made of starlight.
The slow-moving river of plasma passed harmlessly right through him, the deadly energy washing over his ghostly form without touching a single molecule.
A second later, his body solidified, completely unharmed, as the plasma beam continued its slow, harmless journey into the void behind him.
On the bridge of the Odyssey, a collective gasp went through the crew.
"Did you see that?" Chris breathed, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. "He just... phased through it. Like a ghost!"