Chapter 108: Each Purpose (6)
‘What… should I do?’
In that brief moment, countless hypotheses flashed through the mind, all leading to the same conclusion.
There was no formula for victory found anywhere in all the experiences and history.
Even now, in this moment, the nest, sacred tree, and legionnaires that were part of her were being consumed and annihilated by the blazing flames.
The area of the nest lost in that short moment was nearing 20% of the total.
However, Eve didn’t even know exactly where the enemy was. She didn’t know what kind of beings they were.
It was a feeling of helplessness she had never experienced before. No matter how hard she racked her brain, there was no way to win against the enemies bombing from that high cosmic domain.
‘Those bastards…’
[He is, of course, watching this situation. And he is telling you to pull yourself together. Are you going to just let yourself get hit? He is saying you can respond adequately.]
“Don’t, don’t make me laugh. There’s no way for us to win right now.”
[He asks if victory is all that matters. Lower your pride. For now, just ending things with a decent defense is all there is to it. Then there may be a way.]
“…Are you telling me to be the loser now?”
Eve shuddered with rage.
Having experienced overwhelming victories until now, all of Eve’s meticulous calculations had been geared toward annihilating her opponents and achieving ‘victory.’
Naturally, being a loser and being eliminated had become the most despised concept for Eve, who was change and evolution itself, and that feeling had naturally developed into arrogance.
[He said it’s okay to be a loser. A true victor is ultimately the one who survives until the last moment. If you continue to do nothing and disappoint yourself like this, he will command you as a player.]
“…Disappointed? In me…?”
Amongst all this, only Shin Woo’s words could influence Eve’s thoughts.
As the bombardment momentarily paused, Eve transformed her boiling anger into a colder form of wrath.
‘Don’t worry. I don’t know who they are! I will definitely give them a taste of their own medicine!’
‘I can at least go and see who they are.’
Moreover, Subminds Reina and Kang Do-yeon, far from this place, urged her to act quickly.
Having faced a huge crisis for the first time in her life due to the hundreds of bombs casually dropped by the enemy, Eve accepted their suggestions.
“I don’t know who they are, but… I will make them all become one with me.”
She then looked up at the sky with glowing eyes.
In truth, until now, the universe hadn’t captured Eve’s interest much.
After all, if there was a gate, it was possible to move between worlds. Even now, having conquered an entire world, there was no thought of rapidly expanding to other places.
But now everything had changed.
Those enemies from the universe had awakened Eve to the fact that, despite conquering the ground after crawling out of the labyrinth, she remained a frog in a well. She had a powerful craving stretching out towards them.
It was not the simple craving she had before.
This was a very intense emotion, filled with rage and murderous intent.
“To the audacious enemies who dare challenge the great us, death!”
Eve’s fury and malice stirred the entire legion.
Reina, within the base nest that was devouring an entire city and staining the surrounding area, influenced by that rage, unleashed madness as she connected dozens of tentacles to her entire being.
This was so she could directly utilize the energy of the whole nest, which possessed the energy equivalent to an entire city.
‘Multi-Combination Magic: 100-Fold Resonance Artillery.’
A massive magic circle, cast with the assistance of her brain and the collective consciousness, spread out into the sky.
A gigantic magic circle covering the entire city led the way, as hundreds of large and small magic circles overlapped to form one colossal cannon barrel.
It was a transcendent magic encompassing the limits of theoretical magic currently researched.
‘I can see it.’
Simultaneously, Kang Do-yeon, soaring to cosmic territory alone, saw the fleet within the planetary radius.
Naturally, the viewpoint Kang Do-yeon had was shared by the entire legion.
‘Drop it!’
Having finished aiming with Eve’s command, Reina activated the magic.
Kang Do-yeon took in the whole scene with her eyes.
A beam of light shot from a distant land, tearing through the atmosphere, impacting one of the smaller ships among three that were dropping bombs. It exploded, turning it to dust simultaneously.
‘The large one attempted to use momentary formancy for defense to offset the shockwave.’
‘Right. I saw it too.’
‘Reina needs time for her second attack.’
‘I will go.’
Kang Do-yeon took a deep breath. Eve’s intense rage was affecting her as well.
Not as much as Reina, but she was angry nonetheless.
The spaceships that had suddenly invaded were clear obstacles.
And, most importantly, there was a high probability that they were her sworn enemies.
Those beings who had ambushed her friend, cut off her limbs, and pushed her to the brink of death.
Her eyes gleamed from behind the mask.
A blade she gripped, previously used to blow up Dark, the pureblood vampire contractor, along with part of the city, was aimed toward the last remaining escort ship, which lacked an energy shield.
She dashed at full speed towards the unprotected vessel, landing with a thud against the outer wall.
Before the external defense systems could activate, she thrust the blade into the ship.
—
“What, what just happened?”
Aiden, the captain with a generally unflappable personality, repeated his words in shock for the second time that day. He could not believe his eyes or the sounds he was hearing.
“O, Oryx has… been obliterated… our ship’s right energy shield has lost 36%…”
No matter how hard he tried to make sense of the stuttering words from his adjutant sitting across from him, he couldn’t grasp the situation.
One escort ship, no matter how outdated, was still an escort vessel, had been shattered piece by piece. And there were, of course, zero survivors.
No matter how advanced the Alliance’s new energy weapons were, obliterating a battleship in a single strike was beyond possibility.
“The Alliance! Is it those Alliance bastards? Or have those green-skinned aliens broken the agreement?!”
Aiden slammed his fist on the desk.
In his understanding, there were only a few beings capable of such actions.
“We have a big problem! There are intruders on the right escort ship, the Jerez!”
“…Intruders?”
But it wasn’t over yet.
Just as they were urgently trying to increase altitude to evade, screams approaching near their escort ship filled the air.
However, the content of the support request sounded a bit strange.
“Intruder, you say?”
“Y, yes.”
Taking off his hat, Aiden murmured in disbelief at the voice he heard.
But even in that urgent call for support, which seemed credible enough, the flagship Sai Seker, ascending to escape the planet’s area, contrasted sharply with the escorts, which were eerily quiet and motionless.
“Respond! Respond…”
Moreover, communication had been cut off.
They had no way of knowing what was happening inside those ships.
—
“Ugh!”
“Fire! Shoot it down!”
Inside the complicated and somewhat spacious escort ship Jerez, the crew resisted in a frenzy, gripped by fear.
The armor-piercing rounds they fired had an undeniable power compared to Earth rifles, but they merely ricocheted off the barrier created by formancy, only killing their own comrades who were unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire.
“What the hell…”
A man crazily shooting until the trigger clicked found his neck swiftly severed by the figure that had reached him in no time.
Kang Do-yeon wielded the massive sword with no discomfort.
The energy unleashed ripped through the insides of the ship, devastating it, halting the generator and engine, and cutting off communications.
‘Insignificant humans… How could these uncivilized beings…!’
Identifying the attackers through her eyes, Eve went into a state of shock and once again, fury consumed her.
They had properly taken her down, the very species she had dismissed and underestimated all this time.
‘The biggest ship is leaving.’
‘…We currently have no means of completely escaping the planet’s gravity. Instead, make sure to keep that ship you have captured at all costs.’
Kang Do-yeon spotted the flagship departing outside the window. Regaining her composure, Eve gave her next command.
Kang Do-yeon immediately ceased her destruction of the ship.
“Ahhh! Die, monster!”
In the meantime, one crew member aboard the exoskeleton vehicle aimed a large weapon at her.
What erupted was not a projectile, but a purplish beam.
Recognizing it as formancy, Kang Do-yeon lifted her wings to block it.
The power of the draconic breed, which had strong resistance to formancy, helped her here as well.
As that beam, which could penetrate a super tank, was stopped, the stunned crewman was crushed and killed by the force she projected from her outstretched hands.
“Separate the area!!”
The captain of the surviving escort ship forcibly detached the area where Kang Do-yeon was rampaging as a last resort.
However, as if it were a meaningless task, Kang Do-yeon swiftly broke through the outer wall and leaped into the cosmos, sticking to the exterior of the ship.
Seeing this made the captain gasp in horror and fall to the ground.
“Ah… ah…”
With the curtain between them, the glowing red eyes of the inverted face behind the mask met the terrified, trembling eyes of the captain on the floor.
“Uh?”
At that moment, her figure vanished from the window.
Those few people barely left in the partially destroyed ship had to tremble in fear, unable to do anything as the vessel lay immobilized.
—
“Captain, please don’t tell me we’re backing down like this…”
“Wait. That ship is moving.”
The captain, who had been tense alongside his subordinates, widened his eyes in astonishment.
The ship, which should not have moved, was indeed moving.
Not upwards, but downwards.
“U, ugh! It’s going to crash!”
“This is insane! The altitude maintenance device is supposed to be functioning… Respond! Respond! We’re falling!”
Realizing they were plunging down, they clutched the dead communication device and shouted in distress.
‘Reina. Cover Kang Do-yeon.’
Using the second bombardment prepared on Reina, Eve commanded her to provide support for Kang Do-yeon, who was pushing the escort ship Jerez with the force of a propulsion device.
Thanks to that, Aiden’s flagship, Sai Seker, urgently launched its escorts, but could accomplish nothing while losing only their aircraft.
‘What will I get from that burned-out pile of scrap?’
Soon, the Jerez began to fall, unable to defy gravity.
However, as Eve gazed at the burning star falling from the sky, her feelings were as cold as ice.
The fact that the human species gathered was, after all, common sense.
‘They have already been detected, and with the survivors sent away, they will soon come flocking.’
Eve knew well that this was just the beginning.
