Chapter 330: Ch.

“Why? Why did this even happen? And to me, of all people…”

“How am I going to have my revenge now? How… how?”

These words rang through Jarkon’s mind, continuously deteriorating his mental state once again. The raging soul-fire within his consciousness was slowly but surely being consumed at an extremely fast rate. As it slowly disappeared, the containment field created by his soul power grew weaker and weaker. The darker thoughts of his inner demons were slowly unraveling themselves once again, as faint whispers began to surface in his mind.

It made him feel more confused and defeated. If nothing was done to change this, there was a high potential that he would fall completely into the grasp of his inner demons—and then, who knows what he might do?

But before that could happen—before Jarkon or the inner demons could completely break their shackles—a sudden ringing of alarms echoed within the small shuttle. It had just touched down on the Taurus-class battleship.

This was followed by a tremendous shaking of the whole vessel, then a creaking noise, as if metal were being strained or forcefully bent. That sudden turn of events woke Jarkon immediately. He couldn’t help but shout, “What?! What is happening?!”

It was a question he spoke unconsciously, and the same thought was in the minds of everyone else as well.

Zyth felt it, as did Mimosa and the others. They were now in the hangar bay and had no idea about the changes on the battlefront or what had happened to cause this. They all knew the flagship had suffered an attack, though the extent wasn’t clear; even if the shields had survived the impact, whatever hit them was putting the hull under tremendous pressure, causing the metal to groan and creak.

Zyth knew he didn’t have the luxury of time to make his way to the command bridge to get a status report on the battlefield. He needed to know the situation right here and now. He was confused; the flagship was positioned well behind the front and middle battle lines. It was at the very edge of the rear line, under the protection of six gigantic Star Battle Fortresses and a massive fleet of Heavy-class ships.

It should have been practically impossible for his ship to be under enemy attack—unless something bad, something extremely bad, had happened to the front and middle lines. He needed to know. He quickly established a direct connection with the command bridge of the main Star Battle Fortress, where the Rear Admiral he had spoken to just minutes ago was stationed.

A small holographic figure of the Rear Admiral quickly appeared, joined by Grand Admiral Agnaros on his wristband. It took Zyth by surprise—how the hell had Agnaros intercepted his comms? But he quickly doused whatever thoughts came to mind as the serious faces of his right-hand man and Agnaros appeared. Not only were they serious, but their faces bore a resemblance to extreme fear, which he could see clearly in their eyes.

Seeing that, he couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows. He was completely oblivious to what had instilled such emotion in the eyes of these two men—especially the Grand Admiral, who was just as, if not more, capable and strong-willed than him. Yet even his eyes contained a hint of fear within.

This had completely captured his attention, but he didn’t immediately ask about it. That wasn’t why he was here in such a hurry, and his instincts told him he would have his answer soon enough; he just needed to confirm the current situation.

“Grand Admiral,” Zyth said, nodding briefly at Agnaros before turning to the Rear Admiral. “Tell me, Rear Admiral, what’s happening? How did my flagship suffer an attack? From the intensity, it wasn’t just a small strike, but an intense one. Tell me what has changed on the battlefield that has caused the aftershocks to reach even the rear line—which is, to my understanding, still very far away from the line of attack, right?”

Narrowing his eyes, Zyth asked about the things he was oblivious to at this moment.

The Rear Admiral gulped, his fear coming completely out into the open. With terror in his voice, which broke here and there, he said meekly, “Commander… those… those human… the human fleet…”

“They… they are complete monsters! What they have shown us so far was nothing but a performance. And… and not only that… they have things even more fearsome than those ships that are impervious to our attacks…”

“And that… that is a Mecha,” the Rear Admiral said. All the while, he watched Zyth, whose expression was growing confused. There was a look of total misunderstanding on Zyth’s face—even a hint of contempt—when he heard the word “Mecha.”

“What are you saying, Rear Admiral? A Mecha? Are you sure you know what you’re saying?” Zyth interrupted, his voice a blunt display of disbelief.

But before the Rear Admiral could answer, Grand Admiral Agnaros interrupted. “Listen to him before you judge, Commander. What he is speaking about is not something you should be so casual about. What is happening right now was done by that thing…” Agnaros said, and by the end, there was a unmistakable hint of terror in his voice.

Zyth felt a bit displeased, but catching the genuine terror in Agnaros’s tone, he maintained his silence and controlled his voice. He nodded, saying, “Go on, Rear Admiral. Go on…”

he Rear Admiral nodded toward Agnaros with appreciation, then turned back to Zyth. “It is like this, Commander… After I ended our talk a couple of minutes ago, at the main line, we detected a strong—an incredibly strong—energy signature coming out of the enemy line. It was approaching us at a speed that can only be described as impossible. It was no different than teleportation.

In a couple of seconds, it had covered the distance from its point of origin to the front of our main battle line. It appeared directly above one of our battle cruisers. We don’t even know what happened; we just detected the signature, confirmed the location, and in that tiny time frame, the battle cruiser burst into flames, completely destroyed.

That was followed by the disappearance of the enemy, which we belatedly discovered was a Mecha. With each disappearance and reappearance, it destroyed one ship after another in mere seconds. We were only able to detect its presence once a ship had already been destroyed. But… but that wasn’t even what concerned us most at first, frustrating as it was…”

“Frustrating as it was, our inability to quickly discover and lock onto this single Mecha to destroy it was a nightmare. But as I said, forget locking onto it—while it was ravaging our main battle line on its own, we weren’t even able to do anything to minimize the destruction it was causing.

But then, as if to rub salt in our wounds, the enemy fleet stopped their attack for no reason. Instead, they shifted completely to defense. Not only that, they even began to leave the battlefield and move toward the habitable planets and resource-rich zones, leaving only a small portion of their fleet behind.

Though that lessened the burden on us, we felt no relief at all. Because it looks like the enemy… the enemy…” The Rear Admiral shuddered at that moment, unable to finish his sentence.

Zyth’s expression had turned grim as the Rear Admiral continued his story. But as he listened to the blunt arrogance of the humans—disregarding them and shifting their attention elsewhere while leaving only one Mecha, just one Mecha, however strong, to deal with them—his anger flared.

“They are disregarding us? How dare these humans do that… are they so confident that we can’t even deal with one Mecha? This arrogance and ignorance of theirs is bound to bite them!” Zyth said. He looked at the Rear Admiral and commanded, “Continue. Tell me, what happened next?”

Hearing Zyth’s words, the Rear Admiral felt his face heat up as if he were on fire, or perhaps out of sheer embarrassment. “Commander, it… it is like this. As I said, we weren’t able to react to the Mecha quickly enough to do anything, and because of that, it ran amok through our lines, causing a rampage. But then, suddenly, at one moment, it appeared in front of our main line and remained stationary…”

“This was our chance to take it down. We launched an all-out attack; every single weapon, whether on our ships or from our fighter squadrons, was launched and fired at it.

But after the clouds of fire cleared, the Mecha—which we thought would be destroyed, or at the very least, if it possessed the same defensive quality as those ships, should have suffered severe damage—was still there. After all, no matter what, a Mecha can’t make up for the difference in scale, right?”

Zyth nodded, completely siding with the Rear Admiral, as what he said was indeed the truth of warfare. But the next words from the Rear Admiral stumped him completely.

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