Chapter 227 - 192: Frantic with Rage, a Narrow Escape

Manon watched Reinhardt’s retreating back and let out a long breath.

The worry in his eyes wasn’t just for Reinhardt’s personal safety. There was another reason for his concern.

At that moment, Raphael was still trying to contact the Imperial Administrative Region. Matthias glanced at Manon and said coldly, "Your worrying is pointless. Reinhardt isn’t a one-track-mind like you lot from the Emperor’s Shield."

The honor of his Battle Group had been slandered, but Manon offered no defense, only giving an awkward smile. "I know."

Reinhardt was undeniably powerful, but Manon was deeply worried that their captain would become lost in combat and slaughter, completely ignoring the Technician Soldier’s advice and plans.

Because that sort of thing was all too common in the Emperor’s Shield.

Battle Group Leaders or Battle Group Commanders would stubbornly stick to their own opinions, believing combat was the only way to resolve any conflict. They had suffered considerable losses because of it.

Thankfully, Reinhardt wasn’t like the leaders from his memory.

Just then, Raphael finally managed to contact the Imperial Administrative Region. Although the signal was extremely weak due to the Space Dragon Race’s blockade, he had received a response.

A handwritten parchment reply flew out of the Radiant Beacon and landed in Raphael’s hands.

He strode over to Reinhardt and presented the parchment with both hands.

"Sir, a reply from the Grand Governor."

Reinhardt took it and glanced at it quickly. The message on the parchment was very brief: an Imperial Administrative Region Legion was stationed on the remote world of Lelag, where they could find reception and aid.

Due to the Radiant Channel’s extremely weak signal, there was no mention of the Space Dragon Race or the Demon Legion on the parchment.

He passed the parchment to Agate.

Agate glanced at it and gave a slight nod.

Not far away, a biomechanical warship of the Space Dragon Race charged straight for them in a suicidal ramming attack.

Meanwhile, no sooner had the Radiant Beacon switched back to planetary communication mode than it received a "greeting" from the Space Dragon Race.

Though they couldn’t understand the language, the furious and exasperated emotions were conveyed perfectly.

It wasn’t until Raphael translated the jabbering alien language that the voice of the biomechanical warship’s pilot finally became intelligible to Reinhardt and the others.

"This is Centurion Kerks of the Gamu Fleet! Imperial Humans, the Orbital Port is sealed! You have nowhere to run.

I order you to halt your vessel immediately and submit to inspection! Otherwise, you will face my wrath!

Humans! Acknowledge immediately!"

Reinhardt was completely unmoved. He replied indifferently, "Noted."

The Centurion on the other end, who had previously been on the receiving end of Reinhardt’s middle-finger salute back on the ground, felt as if its blood vessels were about to burst. But before it could utter another threat, the Radiant Channel abruptly cut off.

With no outlet for its fury, the scales on Centurion Kerks’s back bristled. The fire in its eyes looked as if it could burn right through the hull of the Punisher Ship!

’This cunning, hairless ape!’

After cutting the transmission, Reinhardt looked to Agate.

They had three minutes until the Space Dragon Race completely sealed the planet’s orbit. In the distance, the Energy Barrier was visibly closing, leaving only a tiny gap leading to the Orbital Port.

Although Agate had the Punisher flying at full speed, there were still too many enemies trying to intercept them.

In fact, the aftermath of the war in the Cosmos had reached Kemola, and the overwhelming field of space junk and ship wreckage was even denser than the enemies blocking their path.

At their current speed and trajectory, they wouldn’t reach the Orbital Port in three minutes—they couldn’t even make it in fifteen.

After a series of meticulous preparations, Agate nodded slightly and said in a cold voice, "The Punisher is ready for a short-range warp. Initiating in three seconds."

The biomechanical warship was a mere eight hundred meters away from the Punisher.

In fact, the Centurion Kerks, its belly full of unvented fury, was mustering all its strength for a head-on collision, the perfect moment to deliver a fatal blow to these irreverent Imperial Humans.

Just then, the Punisher, which had been flying at high speed, seemed to be sucked in and compressed by a black hole, vanishing from its spot in an instant.

The next moment, it reappeared thirty kilometers away, high in the sky near the Orbital Port.

On the command star-chart of the Space Dragon Race’s orbital barge, the Punisher’s signal instantly traversed a distance of thirty kilometers. The Dragon Race Prophet in charge of the command felt a tightness in its chest as the Elemental Power in its bloodline ran wild through its flesh and blood.

’How is this possible?!’

’Didn’t short-range warp technology disappear with the destruction of the Wizard Civilization?’

’Where did these damned hairless apes dig up this ancient technology?!’

But what it found most unacceptable was that, as the Legion’s supreme commander, it could only watch helplessly as these Imperial Humans slipped away right under its nose after killing so many of its elite Centurions.

The thought of being held accountable by the Gamu Flagship...

Deep within the Dragon Race Prophet’s mind, only a single word remained: Doomed.

「Elsewhere」

After completing the short-range warp, the Punisher’s hull was caught in a high-frequency vibration, at risk of disintegrating at any moment.

At this moment, the ever-silent Irenia walked to the control console, glanced at Agate, and said pointedly, "If you are using the transcendent knowledge from within the Ancient Black Box...

...I suggest you hand over control of the ship to it.

This technology and knowledge are not something you can control yet."

Agate’s lies might deceive the Vengeful Angels, but they could never fool her.

Hearing Irenia’s suggestion, Agate seemed to notice the suspicious glances from his teammates. He said coldly, "I really should have handed you over to the Judgment Court, Wizard."

Clearly, the short-range warp technology hadn’t been excavated from some ruin by the Mechanical Order. It came from the Wizard’s Divine Artifact that now served as his heart: the Ancient Black Box.

Although this decision was blasphemy against the God of All Machines, Agate had originally chosen to bear this sin in silence so that his Battle Brothers could escape Kemola.

Until Irenia exposed his lie.

And the truth was, if he didn’t let the Ancient Black Box take control of the ship now, the Punisher would be reduced to a pile of scrap metal by the immense strain of the warp jump in twenty seconds at most.

And so, the power of the Ancient Black Box—a power considered a great blasphemy in the eyes of the Mechanical Order—flowed through Agate’s neural interface, transforming the Punisher Ship in a stream of ethereal blue energy.

The hull, which had been trembling uncontrollably, finally began to stabilize.

There were no longer any pursuers directly in front of them. In the depths of the Cosmos far beyond, a magnificent, Legion-scale war was raging.

The Space Dragon Race’s orbital barge was even close at hand. The Dragon Race Prophet stood before the barge’s viewport, watching in a flustered rage. Right under its nose, the Punisher crossed the ring of space junk, passed through the Energy Barrier, and burst into the Orbital Port, vanishing without a trace.

Although a number of Interceptor Ships entered the Net Path to continue the pursuit, it was already futile.

The Imperial Humans had already evacuated Kemola and escaped the fleet’s control zone.