1326 Hanging In Balance
Hundreds of overlapping verticle and horizontal lines split the space. The sharp space lines reached Princess Sonya.
The green light covering her managed to bounce away only half of the space lines. The rest sliced through her.
A moment later, more than a hundred thin red lines, horizontal and verticle appeared on the Princess' body.
Like a bread under the hands of a skilled chef, her body spliced into hundreds of little parts.
The dark space was covered with rich, bright and glowing blood, flesh and bones. What was just a beautiful woman turned into a gore sight.
The Orion didn't stop.
The six rank 7s worked together, as if their six bodies were operated by a single mind and poured out attacks with practised precision.
No attack crossed another and they all landed on the 'remains' of the princess at the same time.
Boom!
Like someone crushing a sheet of a paper in their hand, the space bent and folded and crunched.
The Veyans didn't stop their attack even when they felt the flesh, blood and bones of the woman get crushed to tiny particles.
They folded their hands together and the stars on their body glowed with an even more brilliant white light.
Six beams of light hit the impact region. The folded space began to fold once again, and again.
The Veyans' began to shake as they struggled to advance to the next fold.
Beautiful, glowing white blood began to leak out of their bodies. The starlight all over their body began to dim, as if they were running out of fuel.
But the squad of six kept on.
"Push!"
"Push!"
"Push!"
Their hands began to crack apart and the space around them turned unstable.
It was like folding a paper.
It's effortless on the first fold. Hard on the sixth. Very difficult on the eight. But the thirteenth time? That's near impossible.
And they were folding space—definitely much harder to fold than a sheet of paper and each consequent folding was exponentially more difficult.
Worse, they weren't folding empty space. That's still hard but not this much.
They were folding space containing the full vitality of a peak rank 7 Life Spirit.
It's an absurd task that other teams would not like attempting.
But to kill a 'Life Spirit'— a path very notorious for its inability to die, they had to go this far at least.
Not a single drop of blood was left out, neither was a single bit of flesh.
Everything that constituted Princess Sonya was blocked off from leaving thanks to the thick space barriers they set up around her.
Now, they kept folding and folding until they reached a point where they couldn't anymore.
'Six times!'
The team knew what they were thinking.
This was their new personal best! They just set a record!
"Come on! We can do it!"
With a grunt, the Veyans pressed their hands together and released their powers one last time onto the folded space.
Boom!
The space exploded.
The Veyans were blasted away due to the sheer force from the collapse.
A huge void appeared in place and the surroundings began to be sucked in. At the same time, a shockwave of aura more powerful than any of them could've given shot out in all directions.
It was like a tsunami that would drown planets, swallow asteroids and devour stars.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The aura began to shake the fabric of space-time. Through the cracks it created due to its high concentration, it reached places it would've taken years for even light to reach.
In a matter of minutes, the aura storm reached more than a dozen star systems in the borders of the duchy.
The people of these star systems, impoverished due to the state of Centaurus, were still happy.
Ever since the Regent took over, the Duchy as a whole got a lot of reforms and the kingdom transferred developmental funds. Unlike the previous ruler, Baldur didn't neglect the people living at the border.
It was slow, would take a long time to reach a good state, but their lives were definitely improving.
Objectively, not much had chagned for the people living in these ten star systems.
But they had hope.
And they thanked the stars that they got to experience another day.
… But the stars went off.
The huge stars that bent the fabric of space-time itself were swept away by the torrents of aura.
Like a man struggling against waves of a flood overpowering him, the stars struggled against the waves of aura.
And then, they exploded.
It was the most beautiful and horrifying light the citizens had ever seen and would ever see.
And then it all turned dark.
People panicked and hit the streets.
But before they could do anything more, it came for them.
After travelling such large distances and destroying stars no less, the aura had subsided. But not subsided enough to spare the planets.
"Arghhh!"
"Mom!"
"D-Dea—"
It didn't matter how old they were. From the kid who was just born to the old man on his last breath, everyone was struck at once.
Like balloons popping, they exploded.
The strongest awakeners in these planets, the rank 1 celestials rushed to the spaceports.
But they weren't working.
Eveyrthing shut down.
The aura destroyed everything.
"No! No!"
The Sovereigns survived just a second more than the normal people before they too exploded.
Watching all this, the celestial rankers tried to stop their body from bleeding.
But the aura flooded their bodies, the aura they usually wished more of now became too much to bear.
"Please! Save! Save usss!"
The celestial rankers were the last to die.
Ten star systems that were brimming with hope and life turned into dust in a few seconds.
And the aura storm, like a vengeful cosmic beast that still hadn't had its full, continued for its next target.
Amidst this situation, Varian got a message from Baldur.
"Why now? I don't want to take the call…"
