Chapter 615: 594: The Purge Begins
Chapter 615: Chapter 594: The Purge Begins
The twelve-day rest period passed in the blink of an eye.
Having replenished his troops and ammunition, Allen immediately boarded the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine, flew out of the G-771 Plane, and returned to the D-25 sector of the Gray Channel.
The lighting on the bridge was dim.
Allen leaned back in the commander’s seat. On the Star Map before him, multiple locations in the vast area representing the latter half of the Gray Channel had been marked.
“Commander, the intelligence has been updated.”
Jarvis’s voice sounded. “The news of the Skeleton Duke’s Fleet’s annihilation has completely spread over the past twelve days. According to the latest data transmitted by the North Wind, the merchant ship traffic in the D-20 to D-30 sectors of the Gray Channel has increased by eighteen percent in the last three days. Multiple chambers of commerce are tentatively restoring their routes, and an unknown organization has even sent a letter of gratitude to our public frequency.”
Allen’s fingertips lightly traced across the Star Map; he was completely unsurprised by this outcome.
With the roadblock cleared, profit-seekers would immediately fill the vacuum. Who could blame him for being such a warmhearted person who loved doing good deeds?
His gaze swept past the six heavily marked red zones, ultimately settling on the closest point of light.
“The D-23 sector, ’Bone Eater’ Ragnar.” Allen softly read out the name of his first prey.
Relevant intelligence immediately popped up on the Star Map. “Ragnar, a Dawn Star Level Black Wizard, commands three medium-sized Floating Battleships and has entrenched himself on a peculiar floating continent in the D-23 sector for years.
“According to a comprehensive analysis of past intelligence, the Law he controls is the Evil Poison, estimated to have reached the second stage. He possesses another highly destructive Law with vague intelligence, suspected to have reached the third stage.”
“We’ll make him our first target. Correct course to the D-23 sector, activate signal camouflage, and maintain speed,” Allen ordered.
The hunt officially began.
Two days later, in the D-23 sector.
A floating continent over three hundred kilometers in diameter hung silently in the Sea of Magical Power, its surface riddled with massive holes and ravines.
Ragnar’s lair—the Nest of Corruption—was a cobbled-together megastructure that didn’t even qualify as a Half-Plane.
At this moment inside the Nest of Corruption, a skinny Wizard with skin a foreboding, ashen gray and surrounded by a green, poisonous mist was staring at the projection before him.
A sleek battleship was slowly sailing into their detection range.
“A 1,500-meter class…”
Ragnar’s greedy gaze almost spilled out of his eye sockets. “Another solitary piece of easy prey?”
“My lord, should we attack?” an apprentice beside him asked cautiously.
“Attack! Why wouldn’t we?” Ragnar spun around abruptly. “Deploy everyone! Press all three battleships forward! Don’t let it escape!”
Soon, three battleships with hideous designs—their hulls covered in a mass of overgrown bone and flesh tissues—slowly emerged from the massive caverns of the Nest of Corruption, lunging straight for the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine.
“The enemy fleet has left their nest. All three battleships have been deployed and are rapidly approaching us,” Jarvis reported.
“Distance?”
“Three thousand kilometers.”
Allen watched the three red dots surging forward on the Star Map. “They certainly have a big appetite.”
Just as Ragnar’s fleet closed the distance to less than two hundred kilometers, thinking they had firmly locked onto their prey, a familiar scene played out once again.
“Activate the Cybertron Space Anchor Point and deploy the Legion.”
Ten spatial rifts were suddenly torn open near the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine. In the next second, a torrent of steel poured out in full force!
The thruster glow of the Dragon Cavalry linked together to form a dazzling sea of stars in the deep void.
On the bridge of Ragnar’s flagship, alarms instantly blared.
“Large-scale spatial fluctuations detected!”
“En-Enemy forces! The numbers are… rapidly increasing!”
But it was already too late.
“Fire.”
The Dragon Cavalry Floating Cannons and twelve thousand Golem Chest Cannons fired simultaneously.
A suffocatingly dense torrent of energy wove into a web of firepower spanning hundreds of kilometers, instantly swallowing Ragnar’s fleet.
There was no suspense whatsoever.
Two escort ships failed to even push their defensive barriers to maximum power before they were blown into two violently expanding fireworks of metal shrapnel and flesh during the first saturated volley.
Ragnar’s flagship was thoroughly encircled by the Steel Legion from all directions. Not a single gap was left for escape, leaving it to merely await capture by four Peacekeepers.
Just as Allen thought he could wrap things up easily like last time, a figure flashing with a foreboding gray light flew straight out from the isolated flagship.
Single-handedly, he intended to face the entire Golem Legion alone.
The Bone Eater, Ragnar, reached his hand directly toward the densest PX-3 square formation ahead of him.
A ring of gray ripples that seemed capable of twisting light itself instantly spread outward.
Wherever the ripples passed, dozens of PX-3s rapidly disintegrated in silence, turning into a sky full of iron sand!
Allen stared at the swathes of friendly light dots dimming on the light screen and immediately sat up straight. Even the Skeleton Duke hadn’t displayed such fierce methods last time.
“Jarvis, analyze the characteristic data of that Law.”
“Analyzing… The target Law possesses the characteristic of ’disintegrating the integrity of material structures,’ directly destroying the metallic structures of our Golems. Threat level… extremely high!”
Ragnar laughed maniacally as he ruthlessly crashed through the Golem Legion.
Wherever he went, whether it was the heavy armor of the PX-3s or the Titan Magic Steel of the Freedom Gundams, it all shattered at the slightest touch of the gray Power of Laws, as fragile as paper.
Ragnar closed in on a Gabriel and punched its chest armor. The holy mech instantly began to disintegrate, turning directly into a handful of flying ash.
Three Freedom Gundams executed a coordinated attack, slashing their High-Frequency Vibration Ship-Slicing Blades at Ragnar. However, they were blocked by the gray halo emerging on his body’s surface. The blades were subjected to Destruction at a visible rate, snapping inch by inch!
“Warning: The number of destroyed PX-3 Combat Golems is two hundred and forty-seven.”
“Warning: Destroyed Freedom Gundams: three.”
“Warning: Destroyed Gabriel: one.”
Cold battle damage reports continued to pop up.
Allen’s expression darkened completely. He had thought this would be a swift, zero-loss sweep, only to find that Ragnar’s Law was the absolute nemesis of hard materials.
Right at that moment, the PX-5 Xiong Da finally arrived. To cover the other units, it used its massive eighty-six-meter-tall body to tank a long-range Law impact from Ragnar.
CRACK!
Xiong Da’s left arm—forged from Silent Extinction Silver and capable of withstanding the bombardment of Dawn Star Level Laws—rapidly lost its silver luster starting from the elbow. Spiderweb-like gray cracks surfaced before it disintegrated into a cloud of dust in utter silence!
“Even Silent Extinction Silver can be destroyed in a single hit?”
Allen’s gaze hardened, instantly overturning his original tactics. “All units, fall back! Open up the distance and switch to kiting tactics!
“Four PX-5s, activate your chest-mounted Zero cannons and blast him to death from afar!”
He completely abandoned the idea of sending No. 18 into battle. Her combat style was simply too dangerous against a Law specifically designed to disintegrate material structures.
With the orders issued, the battlefield situation changed drastically.
The massive Golem Legion swiftly retreated, forming a giant spherical encirclement net with a radius exceeding three hundred kilometers, and began employing kiting tactics. Meanwhile, the four Dawn Star Level Golems—Xiong Da, Xiong Er, Xiong San, and Xiong Si—locked onto the furiously but helplessly raging Black Wizard in the void from four different directions.
Their chest armor slid open, revealing miniature versions of the Zero main cannons with complex internal structures that flickered with annihilating light.
“Fire!”
Four blinding pillars of light tore through the void, sealing off all of Ragnar’s evasion routes from four different angles.
Ragnar’s expression changed drastically. The shadow of death drove him to frantically squeeze every drop of his Magic Power. He fully expanded his Law Domain, known as Destruction, attempting to disintegrate the incoming energy beams.
However, pure, high-density energy bodies were not as easily subjected to Destruction as physical matter. Although the light pillars were weakened by nearly seventy percent, the remaining energy still smashed ruthlessly against his protective Force Field.
BOOM!
Ragnar was blasted back for several kilometers, the poisonous mist surrounding his body dissipating in a flurry.
Before he could catch his breath, the second and third volleys arrived.
Under a saturated bombardment of a full twelve Zero shots, coupled with the endless long-range harassment fire from tens of thousands of Golems, Ragnar ultimately couldn’t hold on.
The final pillar of light completely engulfed him, and his body turned to dust, just like those disintegrated Golems.
A dark shadow silently appeared at the spot where he vanished.
Thanatos raised the Soul-Trapping Lantern, skillfully storing away the Dawn Star soul that had just left its shell and was still in a state of dazed confusion.
The battle ended.
Allen stared at the battle damage report compiled by Jarvis and fell into deep thought.
This time, the losses far exceeded expectations, sounding an alarm in his mind. Even if the intelligence made them appear as “weak enemies,” any Wizard who could survive to the Dawn Star Level might possess a Law that could pose a lethal threat under specific mechanisms.
One had to know that the technology of the PX-5 chest cannons originated from the Suzheng Technology of the Mechanical Realm. Although they were a downgraded version, a single shot could easily vaporize an island. Even with this, it took half a day of continuous bombardment to completely obliterate this troublesome guy.
“Commander,” Jarvis’s voice interrupted his review, “the preliminary analysis of Ragnar’s soul has been completed.”
Allen sank his consciousness into the analysis report.
[Destruction Law (Third Stage)]: Its essence is precisely “disintegrating the integrity of material structures.”
The moment he read this line of text, the slight displeasure Allen felt earlier due to the battle damage vanished into thin air.
Disintegrating material structures…
His mind instantly recalled the scene of No. 18 shattering everything with pure brute strength in the Bone Prison.
No. 18’s combat philosophy relied on pushing speed and strength beyond their limits to destroy the enemy on a physical level.
The Destruction Law, on the other hand, disintegrated matter on a conceptual, rule-based level.
If these two were combined… Allen’s breath hitched slightly.
“It’s simply a match made in heaven,” he said, pleasantly surprised, looking at No. 18 standing quietly behind him.
It seemed the eradication operation had to be accelerated. On one hand, he needed to catch those Black Wizards off guard before the news of his mobilization spread.
On the other hand, he couldn’t wait to see just how brilliantly this brand-new “plugin” would shine once it was installed on No. 18.