Chapter 1624: After the Battle
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
To totally annihilate Amantir, the bridgehead of the forces of chaos, Hao Ren had already gotten his droids to make sufficient preparation.
This included a massive sensor array specially used to monitor the outward spread of the powers of chaos, and a doomsday weapon with insurmountable destructive powers.
He had allowed the droids to dismantle CARS’ main defensive cannon, and he had the droids connect it to their fortress-level energy station, turning it into a superweapon that was capable of totally destroying Amantir.
For so long, CARS had served as the main research and development station, but Hao Ren had not forgotten that the thingamajig was actually a multi-purpose Imperial outpost Raven 12345 had provided him by overstepping her authority. Universally multi-purpose was exactly what it was, word for word. That meant CARS was capable of fulfilling any needs for an inspector’s mission in a foreign universe, including providing protection for good civilizations and blasting evil civilizations into oblivion.
Of course, CARS itself was not an offensive weapon. Its firepower was more for defensive purposes, so Hao Ren had to do some modification on it to bring it online. Thankfully, his experience as an inspector for the past few years had worked wonders for his creativity, and he soon made the genius idea of having the automated drones lug CARS’ main cannon over for the fireworks…
“It actually activated.” The MDT was surprised as it looked at the glowing light in space. “Overloading at 300%… It’ll be wrecked after this shot, and it’ll take about half a month to repair it.”
“We only need one shot anyway.” Hao Ren smiled. “We have calculated Amantir’s defensive capabilities and considering that it is already wounded, and the planetary barrier weakened. Plus we have Agodal’s Apocalypse Torrent as back up. If the Annihilation Lance cannot kill it, then Agodal can finish it.”
To destroy an entire planet, one that was being weaponized into a planetary starship, even CARS’ main cannon would be hard-pressed to take out a weapon like that. So the Annihilation Lance that Hao Ren had rushed out was under quite a number of limitations: To use the fortress-grade power station to power the whole thing up resulted in the energy network not being stable, and to get the crystals to produce an off-the-charts destructive power, the entire weapon system was running under overdrive, and it was a one-shot glass cannon. Of course, Amantir’s defense had already been damaged previously, and those factors affected how Hao Ren came to this plan.
Even though there were many restrictions, Hao Ren believed the freshly rushed out Annihilation Lance would be worth it: He would gain valuable experience from this, and perhaps in a not too far future, he can use the data collected to create an even more practical supermassive planet killer weapon, or even upgrade the droids to fight against a space fortress like Amantir.
Thinking of the situation within the Plane of Dreams, and the precarious situation with the Mad Lord slowly breaking out of its cage, Hao Ren felt that having more firepower was a smart measure.
As he considered the future, the Annihilation Lance fired its most breathtaking and only shot.
Words were not sufficient to describe the majesty and terror induced by the moment. Within the heart of the massive space structure formed by the droids, a blinding white orb, like a new sun rose, and the size of the orb was comparable to a small planet, as the energy of the light orb was bound by the crystal array, then collected and condensed before being amplified and at last shot out as a spear of light towards Amantir in the distance.
The spear of light’s trajectory broke all laws of time and space as it traveled without delay across the battlefield and smashed against Amantir as soon as it fired. Amantir’s surface barrier shook violently as all sorts of auxiliary defense systems came online, but all this only serve to prolong its misery by an additional few seconds.
The beam then tore right into the heart of Amantir, and the next second, the entire planet lit up.
“Lit up” was pretty much the only word to describe the scene as the entire planet became a veritable blinding orb of light. Its form became ethereal in an instant as all physical structures disintegrated, the corrupted army, the Lair of Nightmares, the force of madness… all these became a blur and were extinguished alongside the orb of light a few seconds later.
Mere pieces of debris were all that was left. They were Amantir’s high orbit stations and now that the planet’s gravity was gone, the orbiting stations all drifted away and became dust within the void.
The Annihilation Lance too suffered a series of explosions as the unmanned installation used for the stabilizing crystal array suffered a catastrophic meltdown and came apart. The crystals from CARS were also blown all over the place. This was indeed a one-shot weapon.
But thankfully, the crystals itself were very tough and while they were damaged by the explosion, they were not totally destroyed.
Salaman looked on in awe at the astonishing scene until the explosion and the light faded.
This strength of the attack surpassed even Agodal’s Apocalypse Torrent. For such a powerful weapon, it was only set up at the last minute in a few days by a group of droids. Agodal’s doomsday weapon would need at least tens of minutes to charge up before firing, but this odd weapon needed only a few minutes of warm-up before firing…
This was akin to an apocalyptic battlefield where the two armies had been pounding at each other for hundreds of year without any clear victor, and suddenly, a group of engineers came along with hammers, axes, and pliers, setting up a catapult and blasting the opponent’s fortress into dust with the first lob…
Salaman felt that even as a one-use weapon, its overwhelming power was enough to negate any shortcomings.
The Petrachelys had now docked on friendly grounds. After a short rest, Hao Ren and the rest went aboard the Aiur to meet Salaman.
Vivian smiled as she looked at the guardian giant who wore a difficult expression. “The war has ended, Commander.”
“Just… like… that…” Salaman was conflicted as he said the words. With an almost-sigh, he continued, “We have fought for thousands of years, and the sacred ground was almost lost, and it just somehow ended so suddenly. There’s nothing left of Amantir, it’s really…”
“Doesn’t feel real right?” Vivian smiled understandingly. “A thousand-year-long struggle with this sickness is suddenly cured one fine morning. Anyone would feel lost. The same happened with me when both my memory lost and mental split were cured that day. Relax, and trust in the truth. This war has ended.”
Hao Ren looked at Salaman and the other guardian giants standing not too far away. He understood how they felt. “Seems like everyone needs to rest and recuperate. I too need to calculate the losses of my droid swarms and to fix whatever is needed. How about this, let’s go back to the Core and let the soldiers rest. As for the battlefield, leave it to the engineering droids to clean it up, they won’t tire anyway.”
Salaman had no reason to object, and while he wanted to commence the cleanup and reconstruction of the sacred system, he knew his soldiers needed rest, so he agreed to Hao Ren’s suggestion.
Leaving the droids on clean-up duty behind, the two armies warped back to the Core.
After a day’s rest, everyone seemed much more refreshed, and many of the post-combat works were now on course.
The war had ended, and the force of madness threatening this sacred ground was totally wiped out, but the headache following it had just begun.
First, they needed to perform an in-depth and total scan of Star Cluster X: Hao Ren and Salaman were worried if the minions of madness would have escaped from the earlier battlefield. Due to the foul nature of the force of madness, the escape of any high-level mutants would definitely cause trouble down the line. So Hao Ren had ordered the droid swarm to set up high-sensitivity sensor arrays in all control zones and sent patrols with mobile scanning stations to perform a dragnet sweep of the system. At the same time, Salaman had activated the system’s divine power network to search for any data on the minions of madness, not letting anything escape their pursuit.
Then it was the reconstruction works for the Core and the surrounding facilities, and that Hao Ren did not need to worry. Salaman and his army were already pumped up and have busied themselves, with Hao Ren providing a troop of engineering drones to help out.
Next on the agenda was dealing with the Throne of Destiny and the Weaves of Destiny. Now that the war had ended, and the Core was safe, Salaman had to bring the matter up again: even if Vivian would not sit on the throne, the activation of the system for studying was needed.
Hao Ren agreed without any objections but before officially commencing the study of the Throne of Destiny, he had two other pressing issues to attend to—the crystal of Amantir that he had just snatched back, and the sprites within the MDT’s hard disk.
The droids have uprooted and relocated the cutting edge all-purpose research lab from the Executor’s planet to the Core, and while the lab was not as well equipped as the science center in CARS, it was still capable of analysis the three crystals. The crystals of Naqdal, Agodal, and Amantir were finally reunited, and they were placed at the center of the lab’s main hall. Three autonomous anti-gravity platforms held them in place while a large number of droids and analyzers darted back and forth, testing and analyzing the three crystals.
As he looked at the crystal of Amantir on platform three, Hao Ren sighed. “As you can see, the thousand-year-long corruption of the dreamer has affected the crystal. While the goddess did provide protection, the corruption still occurred.”
Salaman was not there personally (his massive frame would make it difficult for him to move alongside Hao Ren), but instead used a floating holographic projection to communicate. His projection also looked up the crystal, his voice solemn. “…The corruption is visible. This is much worse than we thought.”
Hao Ren sighed again. “It’s actually much better than I expected. At least the crystal is intact, and was not turned into fuel by those crazy bastards.”