Legacy of the Void Fleet

On the bridge of the flagship, Barrack stumbled backward, his knees quickly buckling beneath him.

He hastily gripped the railing in front of him, barely managing to steady himself. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. There was no sign of the smile that had been plastered across his face a couple of hours ago.

Previously, it had been the two flanks that suffered. Now, it was the central battle zone that had gone dead, replaced by still-glowing spheres of light.

"Ten... ten thousand warships..." he mumbled.

"In one volley... No, in one attack... they were obliterated completely?" His voice trembled. "What kind of monstrous attack was that...?"

"Dark Soul!" he roared suddenly, the anxiety and fear quickly disappearing from his face as he realized why—why this had happened out of the blue.

"What kind of Grand Marshal he is , damnit?! Useless, vainglorious fool! Why did I even give him fire support?! Damnit! And what happened as a result of the support I gave?! Not only was that useless fool unable to take down even one mech, but now the battle zones that I created are gone. The two flanks are now in a dangerous position. Damnit all! Damnit all!"

Barrack cursed and roared.

Yet even as he roared and cursed, Barrack was quite clear about his inner thoughts.

No. He knew. Barrack knew that his actions were nothing but lies to hide his own foolishness. The fault did not lie solely with Grand Marshal Dark Soul. It was his own mistake as well. How had he not seen this coming? It was his own fault.

He should not have diverted so much of the armada’s combat power just to suppress one mech. It wasn’t worth it at all.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battle, within the 3rd Fleet’s lead vessel, Violet had no idea about the inner struggles of the Republican current commanding officer. And even if she knew, she would not have cared anyway.

Just as the aftereffects of the Nova Cannon finally disappeared completely, she gained a clear view of the damage done to the Republican Armada’s vanguard forces.

Their so-called battle zones were now completely gone. And their armada was also in shambles.

She knew this was the chance.

The Republican battle zones were destroyed, and so were many of their warships. They were in shambles and complete chaos.

The communication nodes of the 3rd Fleet chimed in unison. "They are completely blind."

The 3rd Fleet didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of a heartbeat. Like raging lions, they all surged forward aggressively.

"Flank on the port side and flank on the starboard side! Take down the Republican flanks ASAP! Vanguard, move with me! We’re going to charge straight toward the Republican’s last-standing lunar fortress!"

"CHARGE!!"

The sublight engines flared one after another with violet-black brilliance as the 3rd Fleet’s battleships and battlecruisers sliced through the drifting wreckage of their prior exchange with the Republican Armada, which they had destroyed from miles away and were now nowhere near that position.

At the same time, the two flanks launched themselves ferociously at the Republican flanks in a coordinated assault, directly taking advantage of the exposed gaps in the Republican formation.

Following alongside them, warships and starfighters also poured out from one ship after another like hornets, deploying their plasma cannons and torpedoes at the Republican cruisers, stripping their shields one by one.

Lacking any sustained cover fire from the main armada, the outer layers of both Republican flanks crumbled under the superiority of the 3rd Fleet’s warships, starfighters, and mechs.

"Hi—High Admiral! Do—do something, or—"

"T-this is—"

The captains of the Republican ships on both flanks screamed through the communication channels, but their voices were quickly cut short as their ships were drowned under the crushing fire of the 3rd Fleet’s warship weapon batteries and were rapidly destroyed and sunk.

Before Barrack could even process everything, the catastrophe had already unfolded.

Ship after ship. Fleet after fleet. They were obliterated in a short span of time.

’Bang!’ Barrack’s knees buckled as he heard the pleas of countless soldiers being cut short. He knew what had happened, and that only terrified him even more.

He began to realize his own helplessness—and, even more so, the hopelessness of their situation and the predicament the entire armada was now in.

The Celestial Void Empire’s forces were simply too powerful.

So much so that no amount of numbers could do anything against them, even if they were few.

The gap between their civilizations, their mana technology, and the sheer destructive power of said technology was a chasm that no amount of numbers could ever bridge.

He now had no will left in him to do anything.

"Everything is already too late... We never stood a chance." He spoke those words before fainting from the shock, leaving the command empty.

"High Admiral!" The nearby officers and soldiers shouted as they rushed toward him.

While the Republican command and forces were reeling from the shock of losing more than half of their battle line and both flanks, in the vortex of chaos, the Lances of the Void Grand Fleet members were much calmer. They continued to punch through Republican ships without any reservation this time around.

Ritika, too, had now entered her natural element.

She had achieved what she wanted, and now her fleet could deal with the other matters.

Shuttling around in a dense attack that had not slowed even now, even when the entire Republican Armada was reeling from the shock, the enemy seemed almost dead set on making her pay with her life.

"Hmph." She grunted, and alongside her, the Dark Knights’ eyes flashed with violet light.

Immediately afterward, the battlefield became slow.

Everything within it became slow.

She cast one of the Time Series spells across the battlefield—a spell for which she had been laying the groundwork from the very beginning.

Under this spell, everyone and everything remained exactly as they were, except for her.

Her time had simply been accelerated.

Without dealing much damage herself, Ritika thrust the Dark Knight toward Dark Demon.

Dark Soul, who did not know that he was inside a Time Control-type spell, instead saw the Dark Knight disappear from his field of view.

Even the fleet was far too slow to react.

"Where is she? Where—where?!" Dark Soul’s pupils contracted as he became alert, frantically scanning everywhere to find his target.

White Kalen was even more frantic. "We have lost her! Find her! Find her immediately!" he shrieked inside the sea of consciousness.

Suddenly, he felt a vibration in space behind them.

Having been trained in the soul with that special cultivation technique, he was more attuned to sensing someone—or something—with a soul. Even if they were hidden within millions of spatial folds, White Kalen could still find them.

He immediately shrieked and warned them. "Behind us! Look behind us, Dark Soul!"

Dark Soul immediately turned Dark Demon around while swinging its energy sword, which was already going berserk.

[Dark Demon Series: Dark Void Cut]

Swish!

The dark sword slash tore through the spatial folds themselves, but the expected Dark Knight wasn’t there.

Dark Soul felt a sudden trepidation in his heart, and so did White Kalen. At the same time, they knew they were in trouble.

But now, it was already far too late to do anything.

The Dark Knight had already materialized above Dark Demon at some point.

Ritika overlooked Dark Demon and Dark Soul like a deity who had descended to slay a demon.

Under her control, the Dark Knight drew its violent purple sword once again, causing space to tremble under its power.

She brought it down in a clear, vertical crescent slash.

SLASH!

There was no hesitation and no flashiness in the attack.

It was simply a powerful sword slash.

The sword sliced cleanly through Dark Demon, cutting through the shield that had protected it until now without facing any obstruction.

It severed the right shoulder joint, cleaving through the heavy Dark Demon combat mech’s armor and the hand that wielded its energy sword.

The energy of the sword slash hadn’t disappeared. It continued diagonally across the chest plate of the demon mech.

CRACK! CRACK!

The thick armor was cleaved through, and the inner structure of Dark Demon became visible.

Some kind of thick, gooey fluid and sparks from bio-synthetic cables sprayed across the space.

"AAHHH!"

Dark Soul screamed in agony as his neural interface suffered damage, causing him immense pain.

At the same time, Dark Demon’s power output dropped rapidly. The mech was instantly plunged into a non-functional, crippled state, tumbling helplessly through the vacuum.

Ritika didn’t even pause. She rushed toward the plunging Dark Demon, wanting to finish it quickly.

"Hey! Hey, old man!" White Kalen shouted nervously. "Get a hold of yourself, damnit!"

He roared, "OH NO! She’s coming! She’s coming! Do something, old man! Do something!"

Dark Soul was in so much pain that he couldn’t even properly hear White Kalen, but he caught his last few words.