Chapter 545: Ch The Resolve and the madness- 5

He might even have wanted to talk things out with the Star Lord and explain that they had never planned to annihilate the star people. At most, they would have sealed off the entire planet, waited for a Star Empire to approach them, and demanded a certain price in exchange for the planet’s freedom.

Outside, the blue-green planet was undergoing catastrophic changes. The instability of the planetary core was now manifesting above the surface.

The planet’s crust was the first to sound the warning bells as the entire world began to vibrate. At first, the tremors were slow and subtle, but they quickly gained speed and intensity.

The instability deep within the planet had finally reached the surface, and the planetary crust was the first to succumb to the immense pressure.

Across the northern plains of the planet’s northern continent—

RUMBLE! RUMBLE!

The earth simply split apart at a single point, releasing a sharp sound, like something snapping in two. Giant, mile-wide fissures ripped open across the land.

Everything in their path was swallowed whole. Buildings, forests, and even mountains disappeared into the ever-expanding chasms as the continental plates collided and ground against one another, fracturing under an immense upward surge of energy rising directly from the planetary core itself.

The seas and oceans fared no better.

The oceanic beds twisted and fractured under the relentless collisions of the planetary crust and tectonic plates.

Along the eastern coastline of the Grand Archipelago, the waters receded at a sickening speed, leaving the ocean floor exposed and revealing miles of reefs, sea creatures, and wreckage that had existed since ancient times.

But not long after, the ocean returned in the form of a towering, horizon-spanning wall of water.

A tsunami hundreds of meters tall, carrying the full force of the ocean, came crashing down on the coastal metropolis, obliterating skyscrapers and giant towers like delicate glass figurines.

Yet, in another coastal region, the ocean didn’t recede and return as a tsunami. Instead, the entire ocean floor began to boil as deep volcanic trenches, stretching across miles, formed throughout the seabed.

Millions upon millions of tons of seawater were heated by the magma erupting from these volcanic trenches, causing the entire ocean to boil to such an extent that it began to show signs of evaporating.

Across the planet, city after city was either swallowed whole by massive fissures tearing through the ground or shaken to rubble by violent earthquakes. Some were even washed away completely by towering tsunamis, taking millions of Star Citizens with them.

In the capital city—the largest metropolis on the planet—panic surged through the crowds like an avalanche. The ongoing battle in their star system hadn’t been kept secret by the Star Lord at all, so everyone knew they were being invaded.

At first, the people were calm and unbothered by the news. As members of the Star Empire and the Star Race, every citizen knew the sheer might their empire commanded. There were only a handful of Tier 3 civilizations that could even compare to them, and the invading force had brought only three ships.

The thoughts of the citizens across the system had been simple:

We’re being invaded?

By only three ships? The invaders must have lost their minds.

Oh, their vessels are over a hundred kilometers long? What does that matter? We have a defense fleet of over ten thousand ships guarding this star system—what could the enemy possibly do to them?

Oh, you’re telling me the invaders are humans from that backwater world? What are humans—such a lowly species—supposed to do to us?

That had been the consensus among the Star Citizens. Completely unconcerned, they looked down on the invasion as if it weren’t an invasion at all, but merely a foolish suicide squad. Some were even confident enough to broadcast the entire battle live.

Then, just minutes later, they watched in horror as orbital obliterators wiped out more than half of their defense fleet in a few barrages.

Two vanguard ships pushed forward, deploying an army of mechs and starfighters that ruthlessly suppressed their own. In no time at all, the entire star system’s defense fleet was gone.

Only then did the citizens realize they had been nothing more than frogs at the bottom of a well.

The invaders were simply too powerful. Panic erupted as the populace realized their military was helpless; no one wanted to wait for reinforcements anymore—everyone just wanted to flee the system.

That terror amplified tenfold when the ground-based planetary defense cannons fired on the human ships, only for orbital strikes to instantly obliterate the batteries from space. In the process, entire halves of neighboring cities were wiped off the map.

They no longer cared about reinforcements, nor did they want to remain on the planet for another second.

All they wanted was to get away from this place of death before it was too late.

Yet before they could even run, towering skyscrapers engineered to endure any tempest and withstand targeted bombardments began swaying violently, like stalks of grain caught in a gale. Building after building collapsed under the relentless tremors. Walkways buckled and crumbled as massive fissures split open, swallowing entire structures along with the throngs of people atop them.

Plates and facade panels tore free from the highest towers, plummeting hundreds of meters into the crowded plazas and thoroughfares below. It was then that absolute pandemonium broke loose. Automatic emergency sirens wailed through the dust, doing nothing to quell the terror—only stoking the frenzy higher.

“D-dammit! Wh-what is happening?! Why is an earthquake this massive hitting us out of nowhere?!” someone cried out while fleeing.

“N-no idea! Just keep moving toward the spaceport! We have to get off this rock right now!” another shouted over the roar of collapsing stone.

Swallowing hard in sheer terror, eyes wide as shadows cast down over the ruins, someone stammered, “The… the sky is literally falling…”

Across the planet, the surviving and uninjured Star Citizens surged in waves toward the nearest spaceports.