CHAPTER 1405: IMPOSSIBLE VEHICLES

In ages past, the sailing ship was often associated with dreams and new lands.

As time moved on, trains became associated with hope and untamed frontiers.

When the age of the aeroplane took shape, it became the embodiment of freedom.

Now, in the age of the space shuttle, we face, for the first time, the embodiment of infinity and impossibility.

And hopefully with it, the complete death of ignorance.

-The thoughts of an engineer, who hoped to travel the stars one day...and did just that.

___________________________________

[Let’s see... I should probably take them apart first...]

In all honesty, Captain Gallop had no idea what he was doing.

He was running entirely on a mix of vibes, instinct, and the mishmash of knowledge that was ingrained into the Gallop Brothers upon their creation.

However, Zhen Liu had a tendency to work better under pressure and this trait passed on to Captain Gallop as well.

Using the avatars in his hands as representations of the real thing, Captain Gallop began to channel a fuck ton of [Chaos] through the [Storm Queen’s Galleon] and the Voyager-1 probe, causing them to unravel on not just a physical level, but a fundamental level as well.

Their very existences began to unravel like a tapestry with a loose thread.

[Alright, now that they’re loose like this, I guess I need to put them back together again...]

Once they were loose enough, Captain Gallop used his [Chaos] to force the loose threads to rewind themselves into new shapes and patterns.

To better summarize what he was doing, one moment, Captain Gallop was holding avatars of a galleon and a space probe. The next, he was weaving them together into what he understood to be a spaceship of unusual and fantastic origins.

Stories across Valresta told tales of ships that could fly through the air, but they were usually empowered by some ancient array that was lost to time or empowered by a powerful aether warrior.

This spaceship, on the other hand, was something that was completely foreign to the people of Valresta. After all, the world beyond the sky was the domain of Heaven, and that was a place that only the Deities could access.

[Hmmm. I wonder what kind of reaction these people are going to have once they see what I finish cooking up?] Captain Gallop mused as he continued to put together his new vessel.

Evidently, if he knew how his actions looked from the outside looking in, then he would already have this answer.

[Eh, whatever. I better inform Nepherage and Blazejudicator that the plans are going to be slightly changed. Wouldn’t want them to freak out on me either...]

...Wait, how did this look from the outside, though? ...

"What..."

^...the...^

~...fuck?~

When the rebel warriors chased after Captain Gallop to watch him fight Dante, they had done so with some expectations in mind.

They had assumed the warrior would continue to beat down on Dante with a variety of flashy moves before finishing the bastard off with some kind of hidden weapon that was beyond their mortal comprehension and save the day.

They were mostly right, but they’re didn’t expect that hidden weapon bit to be way more complicated than anticipated.

Captain Gallop had performed a series of moves that was reminiscent of how the Gallop Brothers fought, and when he whipped out his saber, the watching rebels assumed that that was the secret weapon that the kaijin captain had in store for Dante.

As such, when Captain Gallop suddenly became engulfed by a sudden bright light while releasing and absurd amount of [Chaos], they were all blindsided.

Especially when their eyes finally adjusted and saw a vision out of something like a fairytale.

"Wait... what’s a fairytale?"

^I...I don’t know...^

~Sounds accurate for what we’re seeing, though!~

Before their eyes, they could see that Captain Gallop was being surrounded by the shadow of a giant mechanical being with over a dozen arms sprouting from their back and shoulders.

These arms were working at incredibly high speeds, fine-tuning and manipulating hundreds of tiny components that seemed to be pull out of thin air in order to construct something that the observing rebels and civilians could vaguely tell was a ship. But not like any ship they had ever seen in their lifetimes.

Not only that, but as they continued to watch this construction,they were blessed with visions of another world’s technological evolution.

They saw how people first domesticated animals in order to ride them, invented the wheel in order to travel greater distances, and then refine it’s application to reach even greater speeds.

From wagons, to chariots, to carriages, to bikes, to trains and finally cars, they watched as the people of this world traveled greater and greater speeds across the land.

They watched how these people created kayaks, invented sailing ships to harness the wind, and eventually give floating metal vessels hearts of coal and steam, while at the same time create ones that could traverse the depths of the ocean with hearts that were even stronger.

And they were rendered speechless as these people took to the skies using nothing more than oversized kites on their backs, which were replaced by massice canvas tents filled with hot air, and then replaced with giant machines with wingspans as wide as dragons and great spinning machines that helped them to rip through the sky.

But the thing that impressed them most of all about these technological marvels was one simple fact: none of these people had used aether in order to create these marvels.

Through their senses as aether warriors, they could tell that shadows and images depicted in this moment were all simply mortals that had yet to take the first step in the pursuit of immortality.

Instead, these peoples took on an entirely different task, one that could be summed up with an entirely different word: Legacy.

These images depicted people knowing that they were going to die someday, and so they aimed to not live forever but to be remembered forever.

However, not everyone appreciated this sentimental feeling.

Dante was initially stunned at this giant mechanical being and these visions of some impossible world developing before his eyes, especially when he felt the [Chaos] accompanying such a moment.

However, the longer he watched this unfold, the longer he saw these people work so hard to just try and leave behind some legacy of their existences, the angrier and angrier he got.

Something about the idea of people being able to live on, regardless of whatever tragedy they experienced or caused, irked him in ways he felt on a fundamental level.

As such, after taking a few minutes into gather his thoughts, to confirm his feelings of rage and hate, he finally lashed out.

Tapping into the power of all of his fused kaijin at once, Dante proceeded to try and combine all of them with his [Astra] to create a massively powerful, and incredibly unstable, [Apostasy].

He knew on an instinctual level that doing so would probably destroy him in the process, but he didn’t care at this point.

The only thought running through his head was the desire to destroy this entire place and then move on to other places so that he could burn those down to the ground as well.

[I’ll destroy, I’ll kill you, I’LL FUCKING—GRK!]

Unfortunately, before he could he even attempt to do so, two events happened in sequence that sealed his fate.

First, the [Core] of Arbalest suddenly began to flare up moments before Dante finished performing his impossibly stupid task.

Foreign [Chaos] began to attack the internal workings of Dante’s chimeric form, causing the man’s body to bubble, boil, and break in ways that caused his massive [Core] to pop multiple times in a sacrificial way to prevent his death.

Second, and more importantly, Captain Gallop had finished his task.

The giant mechanical shadow slowly stopped moving it’s hands and the images that accompanied their task began to slowly disappear as it was replaced by a strange, impenetrable fog and accompanied by the most ominous voice that anyone had ever heard in their lifetimes.

Five...

"What the hell was that?"

Four...

"It sounds like a voice, but incredibly unnatural."

Three...

"Like a Mimicking Macaw?"

Two...

"No, that sounds vaguely mortal. This sounds as if someone made metal talk!"

One...LIFT OFF!

An impossibly loud roar echoed throughout the cavern as a giant pointed shadow began to push through the fog and rush towards the convulsing Dante, who had just recovered enough at this point in time to see that he was going to be acting as the giant bull’s-eye for something that he recognized to be something incredibly similar to the missiles and rockets he had fired earlier.

However, this object was actually being actively piloted by Captain Gallop!

Through a little window at the very front of this rocketship, Dante could see the fused kaijin eagerly piloting it towards him.

[Get ready, you bastard! It’s time for us to go on a little trip!]

After he made this declaration, Captain Gallop began channeling all of his [Chaos] into the vehicle.

[Fusion Art: Fantasic Voyage!]