CHAPTER 185: A SYMPHONY OF DESTRUCTION

Nox felt the second node go down, a tremor that shook the entire engineering sector. ’That’s her. One left.’

He moved through the ship, his Void Gaze guiding him toward the weapons sector. The resistance was heavier now. The ship knew it was being attacked from within. Praetorian guards were everywhere.

But Nox was not the same fighter who had struggled against the first one. He had consumed its data, its power. He knew their weaknesses.

He met them not with brute force, but with a cold, brutal cunning. He used his newly-consumed Puppet Strings skill to turn them against each other. He used his Shadow Weaving to become a ghost, a phantom that struck from the darkness and was gone before they could even react.

He was not just a warrior anymore. He was an infestation. A virus in their perfect, logical machine.

He finally reached the weapons sector. It was a massive, cavernous bay, and suspended in the center, held in place by massive energy conduits, was the ship’s main cannon, a weapon capable of cracking a planet’s crust.

The final bio-energy node was embedded in the cannon’s firing chamber.

And guarding it was not one Praetorian, but five.

They stood in a perfect, silent formation around the node, their chrome bodies gleaming, their energy cannons already humming with a deadly light.

’Okay,’ Nox thought, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across his face. ’So this is the boss fight.’

He didn’t charge. He didn’t hide.

He just stood at the entrance of the chamber and held out his hand.

’Liona,’ he commanded. ’Show them what a real king looks like.’

The full might of his Infernal Monarch armor flowed over him. His scepter, Regulus, materialized in his hand. And from his back, his massive, void-black wings erupted.

The five Praetorians just tilted their heads in unison, their programming trying to analyze the new, terrifying variable that had just entered their domain.

Nox just pointed his scepter at them.

"This is my house now," he said.

And the battle for the heart of the Ravager’s war machine began.

---

The five Praetorians reacted as one, a chorus of whirring gears and powering capacitors. Their energy cannons all fired at the same instant, five beams of incandescent plasma converging on Nox’s position.

He didn’t flicker. He didn’t raise a shield. He just swung his scepter, Regulus, in a simple, elegant arc.

The air in front of him warped, the space itself bending to his will. A localized Monarch’s Dominion, not a sphere, but a flat, shimmering disc of pure void, appeared before him. The five plasma beams hit the disc and were simply... gone. Erased.

The Praetorians paused, their internal processors trying to reconcile the data. Their most powerful attack had just been deleted from existence.

’Inefficient,’ Nox thought. He had learned from his fight with Elisa. A defensive Dominion was a waste of energy. A focused, offensive one was far more effective.

He didn’t give them time to recalculate. He flickered, not to attack, but to move. He appeared on a high gantry overlooking the massive cannon. He looked down at the five perfect, identical killing machines.

’They’re a unit,’ Liona’s voice noted in his mind. ’Their attacks are synchronized. Breaking their formation is the primary objective.’

"Don’t have to tell me twice," Nox muttered.

He pointed his scepter at the Praetorian on the far left. He didn’t fire a beam of energy. He just whispered a single, binding command into the psychic space.

"Monarch’s Edict: Betray."

The Praetorian on the far left froze. The red light in its optic flickered, then turned a deep, chaotic purple. It spun around and fired its plasma cannon, not at Nox, but at the Praetorian standing next to it.

The shot hit the second Praetorian square in the back, sending it stumbling forward.

The remaining three Praetorians just stood there for a split second, their logical minds completely unable to process the act of betrayal. Their programming screamed at them. Anomaly. Error. Threat.

That split second was all Nox needed.

He leaped from the gantry, his void wings carrying him down like a dark angel of death. He landed in the center of the four confused Praetorians.

He didn’t use a grand, sweeping attack. He just moved.

He slammed the butt of his scepter into the back of the knee of the Praetorian that had been shot, shattering its leg joint. As it fell, he spun, using the momentum to drive his armored elbow into the neck joint of the one beside it.

He flickered, appearing behind the third, and drove a void-forged blade that grew from his gauntlet deep into its power core.

The fourth one, the one that had just been betrayed, finally reacted, turning its cannons on him. But it was too late. Nox was already gone, leaving a single, perfect sphere of his Dominion in his place. The Praetorian fired, and its own plasma blast was consumed by the void.

The entire, beautiful, chaotic symphony of destruction had taken less than five seconds.

Four of the five elite guards were either destroyed, crippled, or in the process of being consumed by a miniature black hole.

The fifth one, the one under the influence of his Edict, just stood there, its purple optic flickering, its internal systems caught in an endless, logical loop of betrayal and confusion.

Nox walked calmly over to it. He placed a hand on its helmet. "Thanks for the help," he said. ’Void Eater.’

The Praetorian convulsed as its energy, its data, its very essence, was drained away and consumed.

[High-Tier Ravager Entity Eliminated x5.]

[EXP Gained: 250,000]

[Level Up! x5]

[You are now Level 50!]

[All stats increased by 5!]

[You have 25 unallocated stat points!]

He ignored the flood of notifications. He was getting used to them. He walked to the final bio-energy node and plunged his hand into it, drinking its power.

Three down.

The entire mothership shuddered. The lights flickered. The deep, constant hum of the ship’s engines faltered. The three primary power nodes were offline.

The path to the Hive Mind was now open.

---

In the bio-genesis sector, the chamber was on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown. The dead Ravager Queen’s self-destruct sequence was reaching its final stage.

Serian, in her full, angelic-winged glory, was trying to contain the reaction, her hands pressed against the main cloning vat, pouring her own divine energy into it in a desperate attempt to stabilize it. But it was a losing battle.

"It is too much," she gasped, her own power almost completely drained. "I cannot hold it."

Just as the vat began to crack, a figure appeared beside her. It was Nox.

He didn’t say a word. He just placed his hand on the vat next to hers. A wave of pure, absolute cold, the antithesis of her own solar fire, flowed from his hand. It was not the chaotic hunger of the void; it was a controlled, absolute zero.

The violent chain reaction in the vat slowed, then stopped, the runaway energy frozen in place by the power of his will.

Serian looked at him, her divine light and his silent darkness working in perfect, contradictory harmony.

"How...?"

"I learn fast," he said. He looked at her, at the magnificent, glowing wings on her back. "Nice wings, by the way."

She just smiled, a tired, beautiful smile. "I was about to say the same thing."

The immediate crisis was averted, but the sector was still unstable.

"We have to go," he said. "Now. The central core is open."

He scooped her up in his arms—she was surprisingly light in her powered-up state—and with a single, powerful beat of his wings, they shot up through the hole in the ceiling, leaving the silent, frozen laboratory behind them.

They flew through the heart of the dying ship. Alarms were blaring. Emergency bulkheads were slamming shut. The ship was tearing itself apart.

They finally reached the central core. It was a massive, spherical chamber, and in its very center, suspended in a web of glowing energy conduits, was the Hive Mind.

It was not a brain or a machine. It was a perfect, crystalline sphere, a kilometer in diameter, its surface a shifting, shimmering kaleidoscope of light and data. It was beautiful. And it was terrifying.

’So,’ the Hive Mind’s voice echoed in their minds, no longer a chorus, but a single, calm, and impossibly ancient voice. ’The anomaly and the star-child have come. You have dismantled my vessel. You have broken my children. You are... impressive. For primitives.’

"It’s over," Nox said, landing on a service platform before the massive crystal. "Your invasion has failed."

’Failed?’ the Hive Mind’s voice was tinged with something that sounded like amusement. ’Child, this vessel is but a single, exploratory probe. A single cell of my body. My true self is vast, endless. You have not defeated me. You have merely... gotten my attention.’

The massive, crystalline sphere began to glow with an intense, white light.

’And now,’ the Hive Mind’s voice continued, ’I will grant you the honor of being the first of your kind to be personally catalogued.’

The entire chamber dissolved into a sea of pure, white light. The final battle had begun. And it was a battle for the soul of their universe.