Chapter 269 – World-eater

The tense flight at boosted speed lasts for just over an hour before they catch the first glimpse of their distant target. It would have been impossible to spot, its skin as dark as the surrounding void, if not for the churning waves of qi rolling off of its hulking mass.

The beast is serpentine in form, long and twisted, curling around itself in tightly-wound coils that are thicker than The Mothership is long. It’s slowly moving towards them, propelled by the dense qi pouring out of it, but its head is hidden within its coils.

“Holy shit,” Pod exclaims in awe, his jaw dropping as he takes in the colossal beast.

“Holy shit indeed,” Silvia purrs in agreement, strain and excitement visible in equal parts on her face.

Emily can feel that the vampire’s qi reserves have dropped by a third, thanks to maintaining the barrier protecting them, and, even without getting closer, it’s obvious from the storm of energy surrounding them that the giant serpent’s reserves will dwarf that remaining amount.

“You should drop your barrier,” Emily says, drawing on a basic array design she’s been working on since leaving the dead merchant ship and weaving together a twisting matrix of runes that rapidly fill the bridge. “You’ll need all your focus to fight that thing, so I’ll protect the fleet. My barrier won’t keep out the world-eater’s influence for long, but if you can distract it, I should be able to hold for a little while.”

“Okay, tell me when you’re ready.”

Emily’s spell expands as she adds more and more runes and stabilising energy geometries, growing until it reaches beyond The Blade’s boundaries, stretching out to touch the edge of the area Silvia’s qi is encapsulating.

“Now.”

Silvia withdraws her qi, and Emily is immediately hit by a wave of crushing pressure. Her array pulses and begins drawing in and converting some of the foreign qi pressing against it, but unlike when they first entered the storm, it's now charged with dense, malicious intent, making it hard to gather more than a small trickle of energy to boost her construct. Seeing that Emily’s spell is holding stable, Silvia and Rotwin begin to make their way towards the bridge’s exit before Emily stops them.

“I can send you out there, just give me a moment.” She begins casting a modified form of Blink, only targeting the two martial artists instead of herself.

Both raise a brow at the masterful display of multitasking, but neither questions it, knowing not to hold Emily to the same standard as other mages.

“We’ll provide covering fire once we’re in range,” Lethia says before Emily can activate Blink.

“Okay.” Silvia nods. “I’ll take all the help you can give, but try not to steal its attention. I don’t want to lose any more of our crew.”

“Understood.”

Emily’s spell activates, twisting space within the bridge and depositing the two martial artists outside her barrier array. They crouch against the bubble of energy, charging their legs with qi before kicking off and rocketing through the vacuum faster than the fleet’s ships, which slow as the pilots ease off on their machina Overdrive.

“How fast is this thing draining you?” Lethia asks, nodding towards the glistening runes still floating around the bridge. “I only have enough left in the tank to Overdrive our main cannon twice.”

“Fast enough,” Emily responds with a small, displeased frown, scanning the other mechanic’s energy signature to work out where her reserves sit in comparison. “I’ll run out of mana in half an hour since it’s still so poorly optimised, but as long as I don’t dip into my machina to sustain it after that, I’ll have enough to boost the cannon for ten shots.”

“That’s insane! Even at full charge, I can only manage five.”

“That’s the nature of a dual awakened. My reserves dwarf those of anyone at the same level as me, even if I don’t mix them”

“Damn. Well, we should be able to do some serious damage then. I’ll scan for weaknesses and set our aim right, just give me some juice when I ask for it.”

They settle into silence as they slowly approach the world-eater. Silvia and Rotwin travel so far ahead they become specs on the horizon, but once they’re near the target, they unleash their qi and burst with light, burning bright like miniature supernovae as they attack. A thin blade of red erupts from Silvia, growing to match the serpent’s width as it flies out, and ten illusory fangs of energy rocket out from the hound at her side’s mouth, following in the wake of her attack.

The colossal blade slams into the serpent, causing ripples in the energy wreathing it, but not cutting deep enough for the damage to be visible to the approaching fleet. Then, the jagged fangs of Rotwin’s attacks dig into the created wound, forcing it open enough to show a thin sliver of pale grey flesh.

The serpent begins uncoiling in response, letting out a bellowing hiss of rage that travels through the vacuum and Emily’s barrier with matching ease, sounding inside their minds and shaking everyone in the fleet to their cores.

“Is that mental magic?” Pod questions, clutching his head in shock and pain as the splitting tone ebbs away.

“It’s not a mage,” Mensacus answers him, completely unaffected by the cry himself, wrapping a tentacled arm around Silica and using his mana to shield her mind, easing her pain. “But that cry was laced with a touch of the mental element regardless.”

“It’s raw willpower and killing intent,” Lethia explains, a crackling wreath of machina sparking across her brow. “Even without the appropriate affinity, most seventh level beings’ minds are strong enough to put pressure on those below them.”

Four more blood-red blades slash out from Silvia’s position, tearing open more narrow wounds that Rotwin works to widen. The serpent’s head finally slips free of its coils, revealing six venomous green eyes burning with anger and a gaping maw that unhinges wide enough to swallow the entire fleet if they were to fly too close. The beast’s fangs are all dripping with a dark green sludge that pools in a floating orb, which it points towards its two tiny attackers.

Silvia and Rotwin split apart, propelling themselves on waves of qi and dodging before the serpent can snap its jaw shut, spraying acid into the void.

“Keep an eye on that sludge and don’t let it touch you,” Lethia commands the fleet.

They finally get close enough for the targeting system of The Blade’s main cannon to ping up a positive range alert, and the head gunner turns her focus to a large holographic image of the serpent’s smooth, scaled surface. She tilts the ship to point towards the first wound their Vice-Captain created, located at the tip of a bulging coil of scales towards the rear of the beast, and begins the cannon’s charging.

“Okay, give her a boost,” she hisses out, her finger hovering over a trigger button. “I’m trusting you not to use too much here. If you burn out my baby, I don’t care how strong you are, I’ll kill you.”

“If she gets damaged, I’ll fix her,” Emily replies, a small, approving smile curling her lips as she floods the ship with machina, directing it towards the cannon’s plasma generator and stabilising rings. “I may not be able to recreate that beauty from scratch as I am now, but I can cover any Overdrive damage we cause, no problem.”

A droning hiss fills the ship, and the cannon’s on-screen charging indicator shoots up, quickly passing one hundred per cent. The bridge begins to quiver as it increases to one-fifty, and the moment it hits one-seventy, Emily cuts off the machina flowing to the generator, and Lethia hits the trigger.

A beam of burning gas half as thick as The Blade shoots out, passing through Emily’s barrier without meeting resistance. The generator fuelling the beam cuts off before it reaches the world-eater, but the long, superheated projectile continues on regardless. The beast notices the dense energy bolt before it hits, but it’s too large to dodge, letting the plasma sink into its open wound uninhibited.

The flesh around the cut bubbles and boils, inky black blood pouring out and instantly vaporising in the heat. The wound has deepened by several metres by the time the plasma is spent.

Lethia grins in satisfaction and begins charging another beam as the rest of the fleet gets within range and opens fire with a variety of weaponry, flinging smaller bolts of plasma, kinetic projectiles, and explosives indiscriminately, aiming for the openings Silvia and Rotwin have already created.

However, before The Blade can get off a second shot, the rear coils of the colossal beast quiver, and it draws out its tail from deep within its mass. Emily's instincts scream an alert of incoming danger, and, instead of a pointed, serpentine tip like they were expecting, the fleet comes face to face with a second, enraged head. In its already opened maw is another luminescent orb of acidic venom.

“Shit! Evasive manoeuvres, now!” the head gunner roars into the fleet’s comms, pouring her own machina into The Blade’s thrusters and trying to separate from the rest of their ships.

They don’t get far before the serpent’s jaw snaps shut, leaving open only a small gap to act as a nozzle, shooting a concentrated, high-speed beam of acid towards them. The acid slams into Emily’s barrier, which holds for only a second before shattering under the corrosive, qi-filled pressure. The beam clips the edge of The Blade, sizzling against her inbuilt energy barrier and melting through to scorch her outer plating. Several other ships aren’t so lucky, catching the full brunt of the attack and dissolving into unrecognisable heaps of scrap.

Every remaining ship, just over three-quarters of what they started with, shoots off in a different direction, flying erratically and trying not to give the beast such an easy target again.

“Damn it!” Lethia growls, her mechanical voice box crackling with rage. “We’ve sustained damage to thirty per cent of our outer plating. If that thing hits us head-on, we’re done for. I’m going to struggle to give you cover if that thing keeps focusing on us.”

The serpent opens its mouth again. Qi and space quiver around two of the scattered fleet’s smaller ships and, within an instant, they’re dragged into its open maw, swallowed whole.

“Keep moving,” Silvia’s voice commands, coming through a speaker and filling the bridge with a tone of seething anger. “Get another hit in if you can, but focus on keeping our ships alive. We’ll try to keep this thing’s attention.”

“Understood. Emily, can you reinforce the new weak points in our hull and charge the cannon again? I’ll fire if I see an opening.”

“I’ll give you some charge, but I’m going out there,” Emily replies, pouring mana and machina into the ship, coating the outer hull with a touch of metal mana and filling the cannon with more energy. “I should be able to redirect one or two of those acid attacks if I’m prepared for them, and I can try stabilising space to stop anyone getting sucked in like that again. Keep the ship on one approach vector, so I know where the attack will target.”

“Really? Okay. All ships converge on me, Emily says she can deal with it if the world-eater shoots again.”

There are a few doubtful murmurs from the other ships, but none of them hesitates in following orders.

Emily Blinks herself out into the vacuum of space, placing herself between The Blade and the hulking serpent, slightly off to the side so the ship can still fire freely. She keeps pouring machina back into the ship, and deploys several of the spatial anchor birds from inside her Dimensional Factory, placing one in front of her, one behind the world-eater, and several around the gathering fleet, before weaving two complex arrays of spatial runes between them, forcefully stabilising space and preparing to rip it apart herself.

Silvia and Rotwin continue slinging attacks at the large beast, slowly chipping away at its scales and letting more and more of its blood flow out into the void as they search for the core of its cultivation. Silvia draws her claws across one of the eyes of the head that attacked the fleet, letting out a dense burst of qi as she does, and the beast uses one head to snap at each of the small, fast-moving targets before it, occasionally spitting out scattered globs of acid to try and catch them off guard. The serpent seems to have dismissed the regrouping ships after its first attack, but when a second plasma bolt from The Blade slams into it, it changes target once again.

This time, Silvia tries to cut the gathering orb of acid before it can be fired. It splits into five pieces as her razor-sharp qi-blades pass through, but the separated segments meld back together as if nothing has happened moments later. The vampire does succeed in carving shallow wounds into the softer flesh at the edges of the serpent’s mouth in the process, but she can’t capitalise on the opening when the beast snaps its maw shut, shooting acid at The Blade.

Emily activates her array, draining a sizable portion of her mana to open two matching portals, one in the path of the acid beam and another behind the serpent’s head. The beam disappears into the first portal, sucking more mana out of Emily as the dense, corrosive energy threatens to destabilise her array, but she holds it steady as the acid shoots out of the second portal, bathing the crown of the beast’s head in its own attack.

It doesn’t do much, but the beast does let out another enraged screech, and when Silvia slashes at the acid-soaked scales, she’s able to cut a few metres deeper than before.

Rotwin isn’t able to do much damage alone, but he does keep the second head occupied, nipping at its eyes every time it considers aiding its sister head and forcing it to focus on him. A few drops of acid manage to catch the chimaeric hound, as he weaves between attacks, but they don’t do much beyond melting off some of his fur and singeing his belly scales.

The Blade manages to fire off four more shots before the serpent decides to try and remove it from the equation again, but Emily once again redirects its attack, this time soaking several wounds just behind its head in acid.

A bloody storm of qi has gathered around Silvia throughout the fight, and the moment Emily’s portals shut, her mana drained to near empty, the swirling storm kicks up in speed, swirling with the vampire’s fury. She spins through the void, flowing through several graceful movements Emily recognises from the woman’s dance-like training and condensing the storm into her hands.

In a bright flash of qi, two thick energy blades lash out from Silvia, curling through space in arcing paths that land on either side of the beast’s weakened body. The blades cleave through scales and flesh alike, severing the head from the rest of the serpent.

The remaining head wails at the loss, snapping out and batting Rotwin aside before turning to face Silvia. The vampire has slowed to a crawl, exhaustion written across her face as she faces down the beast. However, despite the rage billowing in waves off the colossal world-eater, Silvia wears a triumphant grin.

The qi storm surrounding them begins rapidly drawing in, rushing towards its master and lighting up the serpent’s eyes with raw energy as it begins building another orb of acid, this one glowing a vibrant green. Emily can feel how dangerous the building attack is, but, strangely enough, her predictive instincts are completely silent, so she simply watches Silvia with bated breath.

The vampire raises a single hand and smiles at the serpent.

“Too late.”

She snaps her fingers, and the inky-black blood scattered throughout the cosmic battlefield suddenly comes alive, forming into thousands of deadly, pointed blades that rush towards the body they once inhabited. The serpent barely has time to react as it's skewered from all sides, pierced with blades of its own lifeblood that target every single open wound it has sustained throughout the battle.

The light fades from the beast’s eyes as the remaining dregs of the qi storm dissipate, and the battlefield falls silent.

Emily’s mouth falls open in awe, not having noticed Silvia weaving her final attack throughout the battle despite her incredible senses. She turns to the woman in question and steps forward through the void, taking hold of her as she falls unconscious with a satisfied smile etched on her face. The vampire’s robes have been tattered by several close encounters with acid and sharp teeth, but she appears otherwise unharmed.

The same cannot be said for their fleet. When Emily turns back to The Blade, her awed expression falls into one of dissatisfaction.

“You were incredible,” she mutters under her breath, knowing the woman in her arms can’t hear her. “But I failed in my task and lost a large portion of our support… unacceptable.”