At this point the battlefield belonged to my daughter.
Obviously, thanks to my ingenious idea.
My mind was always that of brilliant storm~
From the deck of the Landship, I watched as Charis, my dear sunshine, expanded her reach across the Forest of Fallacy. With a steady breath and an unwavering gaze, she extended her arms outward, her will unfurling into reality itself.
A hundred colossal hands of entropy manifested in perfect synchronicity, each one brandishing a spiraling helix spear—the weapons of negation we had forged together.
For a brief mont, the world held its breath.
"This should be enough to change the tide to our course."
With a simple flick of Charis' fingers, the floating hands scattered like lightning, streaking across the battlefield in all directions. Their speed was so absolute that not even the neuromorphic tracking system could register their movent in real-ti.
The Forest's Children did not scream, for they lack the ability to witness imdiate danger and feel hopelessness from them.
Although that too was useless.
They did not react in ti.
Because there was no ti.
The entropy lances punctured their grotesque, shifting bodies with unerring precision, spearing them through before they could even recognize the attack. Where the entropy touched, gaping holes of absolute void ford—deleting flesh, obliterating the unnatural existence of these horrors before they could regenerate.
And again.
And again.
A hundred hands. A hundred spears.
Each one striking true.
The grotesque giants, the lurking shadows—none were spared. No matter how intelligent they had been, no matter how adaptable, they could not counter that which erased their very being.
The Duolos vessels—scattered across the forest in the initial discordant proximity—were quickly retrieved and reinforced, guided by Heavenly Maids who served as the true eyes of reality. With them ca the endless waves of drones, deploying from the Landship's many hangars to provide additional fire support.
The Forest of Fallacy had lost its initial advantage.
We could now discern between illusions and truth.
The turrets of the Landship, now ard with data collected from every battlefront, adjusted their targeting paraters. Artillery rounds that would have previously been wasted on phantoms of deception now found their mark. The forest, once a shifting maze of falsehoods, began to feel more tangible.
And for the next hour.
Charis rampaged.
A silver-haired young goddess of destruction, her entropy hands moved like an extension of herself, a hundred blades of unmaking carving through the ever-spawning horrors of the Forest.
Each strike was precise.
Each movent was flawless.
And yet.
The way her hands trembled ever so slightly. The way her silver eyes, though unwavering, carried a subtle weight of exhaustion. The entropy, for all its obedience to her command, was still an uncontrollable abyss.
My sunshine shouldn't be this overworking in front of her parent.
"Enough, my dear," I said, my voice carrying through the battlefield even as the chaos raged on.
Charis barely faltered, her focus unbroken, but I saw the stiffness in her shoulders.
"I can still continue," she insisted, though her voice carried the strain she refused to acknowledge.
I smiled. Warmly. Confidently. The kind of smile that told her she had already done more than enough.
"You've done beautifully," I murmured. "But I won't have you pushing yourself past your limits. It would hurt to see my sunshine struggle so much."
She hesitated.
Charis did not want to stop.
Of course, she didn't. That was simply who she was.
So I offered her sothing better.
"Let's take turns," I suggested. "You rest for an hour. I'll take over in your place. And when you're ready, we'll switch again."
Her lips parted, as if to protest, but then she paused.
She searched my face.
Found no deception.
Only trust.
Slowly, she gave a small, sheepish nod.
"...Alright," she relented.
I gently placed her back on solid ground, brushing a strand of golden hair away from her face before stepping forward.
One of the floating entropy hands descended toward , holding a single spiraling helix lance.
I accepted it. But only for a mont.
Then, I smiled.
"One isn't enough," I said lightly, rolling the entropy lance in my grip as if testing its weight. "I'll need a second."
Charis' silver eyes flickered with hesitation.
"Father… will you be okay?"
A chuckle escaped . Oh, my dear.
I lifted my gaze, eting hers with absolute certainty.
"I will," I assured her. "After all—it's my responsibility as a leader to ensure the safety of my own bastion."
She hesitated no longer.
The second floating entropy hand descended from above, its colossal fingers curling ever so slightly as it presented its offering.
A second entropy lance.
I reached out, my fingertips grazing the spiraling, void-born weapon before fully grasping its weightless form. It pulsed—not with life, not with power, but with the sheer absence of being. An existence that was only defined by its ability to erase.
With a slow, asured breath, I twirled both lances, testing their balance. They carried no weight. No resistance. And yet, I could feel them. The abyss made tangible. The unmaking given shape.
Then—
I grinned.
"Trust ," I whispered.
And the mont those words left my lips—
I vanished.
Or perhaps, more accurately.
I accelerated beyond recognition.
The world around warped.
The mont I activated Floating Through Life, I was no longer constrained by movent in the traditional sense. My body no longer obeyed conventional physics. I dictated my own axis, my own trajectory, my own position in space.
To the naked eye, I was simply gone.
To the finely tuned sensory cognition of the Theotech bastioneers, I was an untraceable flicker in their augnted perception.
To the Heavenly Maids, with their unwavering clarity of vision, I was nothing more than a vague impression—an afterimage of sothing that had already passed.
To the Forest's Children?
I was an unstoppable force.
A whisper in the wind. A ghost in motion. A nightmare that arrived before the mind could even comprehend its own demise.
The entropy lances in my hands sang with their own silent destruction. With each thrust, they pierced through the towering, grotesque horrors that lurked within the Forest of Fallacy.
Their bodies, twisted and elongated, attempted to adapt. But there was no adaptation to nothingness.
I drove a lance through the chest of one of them—no resistance, no flesh, no blood.
Just erasure.
A blackened void tore through its form, unraveling it from existence itself as its very essence collapsed into nothingness.
I twisted, pivoting in mid-air without inertia, without friction, and spun the second lance toward another.
It tried to move.
It tried to counter.
But my strike had already happened.
The spear embedded into its throat before it even realized it had been struck.
I landed. Not on the ground—on air itself, balancing on the fractured perception of movent.
The Forest's Children twisted in unnatural motions, their heads snapping toward my last known position. Their hollow, socketless eyes flared with sothing resembling intelligence.
They tried to predict .
I let them believe they could.
Then I accelerated again.
I beca a blur—no, less than a blur.
A fleeting distortion in space.
I struck.
I vanished. Explore stories on My Virtual Library Empire
I struck again.
I erased.
Their massive, grotesque forms contorted, shrieking soundlessly as their bodies warped into oblivion. So tried to dodge. So tried to retaliate.
But they could not fight sothing that was no longer there.
They were a step behind, always.
I moved through the battlefield like an untraceable storm, entropy lances spiraling in fluid arcs, cutting through everything in my path.
Minutes passed like seconds.
Seconds passed like eternity.
And then—
An hour had passed.
I exhaled, my feet finally touching the deck of the Landship once more.
Breathless. But exhilarated.
Across from , Charis stood waiting.
Her silver eyes glead—not with worry, but with sothing between excitent and exasperation.
I chuckled softly. "Your turn, sunshine."
She didn't hesitate.
The entropy hands moved.
And then, she was gone—ascending into the abyss.
Her floating hands of void, now numbering in the hundreds, tore through the battlefield, continuing where I had left off.
The Forest's Children tried.
They failed.
And after another hour—I took her place once more.
Then her turn again.
Then mine.
A battle. A dance between father and daughter.
A rhythm of unmaking.
A cycle of destruction.
The bastion followed our lead.
The Heavenly Maids remained as unwavering beacons of truth.
The Duolos Hive Mind adapted, mapping every shifting anomaly, refining its calculations with each passing mont.
The bastioneers, the drones, the artillery—hey had all adapted.
The Forest of Fallacy could no longer deceive us.
It had lost its grip on perception.
And so, as the dawn of Carcosa's dyed sunrise began to bleed across the horizon, I finally felt it.
The shift.
The Forest's Children had stopped manifesting.
The battle had ended.
And in the wake of it all, I turned to my daughter.
Charis stood beside , the last remnants of entropy fading from her fingertips.
She exhaled—a slow, steady breath.
Her shoulders relaxed.
The weight of the night lifted.
I smirked, stepping forward.
"Well done, my sunshine."
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