Without a single conscious thought, without a mont of hesitation, his body reacted. The sa strange, silverish energy that had carried him across the cosmos now erupted from his wings in a blazing corona. It was not his own power but a borrowed strength, a final echo of the Apex’s will.
With a powerful, concussive flap that tore the very air asunder, he beca a silver streak across the heavens. The world blurred into nothing but color and wind. He moved with a speed that defied physics, a velocity born not of flight but of transposition.
One mont he was high above, a falling star. The next, he was there, his body materializing instantly in the space beside her tumbling form.
Ti seed to slow, granting him a single, heart-wrenching fra... the pale shock on her face, the way her hair whipped in the turbulent air, and the grimace of pain that etched her features.
His arms, still humming with residual cosmic energy, snapped out and pulled her tightly into his embrace, shielding her battered body with his own. He curled around her like a living fortress against the approaching enemies and the unforgiving ground.
There was no ti to slow their descent, no chance for a graceful landing. The montum granted by his miraculous burst of speed was absolute. They hit the ground not with a re crash, but with the force of a teorite impact.
The earth erupted around them, a spray of soil and shattered rock geysering into the air. A crater blood beneath them, a raw, fresh scar upon the land; the sound of the impact sounded like a deafening roar that silenced the battlefield for a single, suspended second.
Dust and shimring silver energy swirled together in a hazy cloud, obscuring the crater’s depths from the two enemies who now landed at its rim.
A stunned silence fell over the two pirate kings, broken only by the whisper of settling debris. They stared at the churning, opaque cloud of dust and shimring, otherworldly energy that now filled the crater.
"What just happened?" the first pirate king muttered, his weapon lowering a fraction of an inch. The sheer, unnatural speed of the impact left him disoriented.
His companion spat on the scorched earth, squinting as he tried to pierce the silver-veiled haze. "How would I know? Looked like so kind of asteroid fell from the heavens. Doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure that pretty girl is pulp by now. Should we go and confirm it?"
"Fine. I’ll go and see," the first one grunted, his bravado returning as he took a cautious step toward the dust cloud’s edge.... but... he never took a second.
From within the heart of the storm, a shape erupted. It was not a person, but a weapon, a massive claymore, hurled with impossible force. It was wreathed in the sa furious, silverish light that had heralded the impact, turning the blade into a screaming lance of pure energy.
It crossed the distance in the space between one heartbeat and the next, its point finding the pirate king’s chest with unerring accuracy.
The force of the blow did not stop there. It lifted the man off his feet, carrying him backward like a leaf in a gale. He was a living projectile, slamd with terrifying velocity into the face of a nearby mountain.
For a single, suspended mont, he was pinned against the rock. Then, the silver energy suffusing the blade detonated. The explosion was not one of re fire and shrapnel but of annihilating light. It vaporized a portion of the mountainside, leaving behind a smoldering, glassy scar where the pirate king had been.
The remaining pirate overlord did not hesitate. His eyes, wide with a primal fear he hadn’t felt in decades, saw the truth in that silver light. This was no asteroid. It was not luck. Inside that cloud was another Tier 5, but one whose power felt denser, sharper, and a whole sub-tier above his own.
"Everyone!" his voice bood, amplified by panic and command. "To ! Now! Call for an orbital bombardnt on my coordinates! Level it! Level it all!"
High above, one of the pirate vessels besieging the planet received the command. A rain of death was unleashed. Massive, city-killer shells, designed to break fortresses and shatter armies, scread down through the atmosphere. They struck the crater and the land around it with the fury of a falling moon.
The world turned to fire and thunder. The initial impact zone vanished, then the mountains that surrounded it were flattened, and the ancient forests were incinerated in an instant.
The barrage did not just destroy; it transford. The very earth was baked and fused, the soil turning to a vast, flat plain of blackened glass and cracked, crystalline rock. Where once there had been a rugged, living landscape, there was now only a silent, desolate, and smoldering wasteland under a sky choked with ash.
The air sizzled, thick with the sll of ozone and scorched earth. The last chunks of molten rock pattered against the pirate overlord’s shimring energy shield. His remaining companion stared, wide-eyed, at the colossal, crystallized wasteland they had created.
"Did we get it?" one of the pirate kings asked, his voice barely a whisper.
The overlord watched the inferno slowly die, revealing the horrifying extent of the destruction. "That level of power is enough to rewrite the terrain itself," he muttered, a sliver of uncertain pride in his tone.
"It wasn’t a world-ender, but it was more than enough to kill any normal Tier 5. Nothing could survive that..." His words died in his throat.
From the very heart of the fading inferno, a silver cot erupted. It tore through the curtains of smoke and heat, a defiant streak of light ascending into the ash-choked sky.
It hovered high above them, its radiance slowly dimming to reveal the figure within. A winged humanoid, his armor scarred but unbroken, cradling the unconscious form of Lilla gently in his arms.
Not a single mark from the cataclysm marred her, shielded completely by the circle of his embrace and the residual cosmic energy that danced along his form.
"I—Impossible!" the pirate overlord stamred, his confidence shattering. "Are you telling it ca out totally unhard?!"
A low, guttural sound rolled down from the heavens, more vibration than voice, felt in the bones of every soldier on the field. "Surprising, right?" It was the growl of a primordial beast, newly awakened and displeased.
Rex’s gaze swept over the three pirate leaders, his eyes burning with a cold, silver fire. "I don’t know who you are," he declared, his voice gaining volu and clarity, cutting through the distance like a blade.
"Or what your purpose is here... but what I know is that you injured soone who is under my protection." He shifted Lilla slightly; his grip on her was both tender and fierce. "So here is my promise. For every injury she has on her body, I will remove one of your limbs."
The pirate overlord threw his head back and let out a forced, desperate laugh. "Hahahaha! So what if you’re a Tier 5! Do you think you’re strong enough to face my entire army?!"
With a theatrical sweep of his arms, the sky above them began to darken. His flagship, which looked like a nacing dagger of black tal and glowing weapon ports, descended through the clouds.
It was followed by a swarm of frigates and a cloud of fighters, their engines creating a deafening roar that promised utter annihilation.
"And by the look of it," the overlord smirked, a hollow triumph in his eyes as more and more vessels revealed themselves, blotting out the sun, "your pathetic fleet can’t handle mine anymore!"
Rex didn’t even glance at the armada. A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips. "Oh? My fleet?" he said, the words laced with mocking amusent. "Those weren’t even mine. But since you ntioned it... I don’t mind showing you what a real fleet looks like."
As the final word left his lips, the universe itself seed to take a breath. Then, from the void high above the atmosphere, a single, colossal beam of pure energy lanced down.
It was not a laser but sothing far more potent, a line of incandescent white and gold that held the weight of stellar judgnt. It struck the pirate light destroyer that was still edging into the atmosphere.
There was no explosion, no slow tearing of tal. The beam simply pierced the ship in a perfectly straight line from bow to stern, and for a mont, the massive vessel glowed from within like a lantern. Then, it silently ca apart, its structure vaporized into expanding, glittering dust.
A profound, deafening silence swallowed the battlefield.
"W-What was that!?" the pirate overlord shrieked, his face a mask of utter disbelief. Such a thing was not just improbable; it was a legend, an event that belonged in the tales of old... a light destroyer, obliterated in a single, contemptuous blow.
And behind Rex, where there had been empty space, the stars began to shimr and move, the vanguard of a true armada now making its presence known.
The laws of physics and interstellar warfare were clear, the creation of a wormhole inside a planet’s gravitational well was strictly prohibited.
The risks were catastrophic; gravitational shear could tear the world apart, spatial paradoxes could unravel its core, and the sheer energy discharge could scorch its atmosphere to ash. It was the first rule taught to every fleet commander, a foundational law of civilized combat.
But.. in that mont, Rex did not give a single, solitary fuck about that law.
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