Defiance of the Fall

The Yphelion hurtled forward at full speed, only narrowly outpacing the explosion triggered by their forceful seal on space. Zac looked at the monitor displaying the position they’d just left.

Two streams of supercondensed energy poured in opposite directions like a miniature quasar. Even if the scales were smaller, the torrential streams already stretched thousands of miles and kept going. Thankfully, neither pointed in their direction. The billowing shockwave of unfettered energy was more than enough to make Zac’s hair stand on end.

It was a churning mix of the greenish energy cluster they’d parked inside and a mottled concoction of purple and grey. The other energy came from whatever dimension pushed against the larvae’s seal until it gave way. The whole thing incessantly flickered from thousands of Spatial Tears forming and shattering every second.

Massive pieces of rubble were also in the mix, rapidly ground to the fine dust that suffused the Imperial Graveyard. Zac suspected a Mystic Realm or Trove had been dragged into the spatial well and torn apart, which would explain the rife resentment. An anomaly like the rotten eye was sure to condense as soon as the mayhem calmed down. Only it wouldn’t get the chance.

Zac turned to the large projection displaying the view ahead, seeing a towering wall peeking through the haze. It was the storm formation they’d hoped to avoid, appearing like a smooth barrier because of the distance. It was large beyond belief, stretching in every direction seemingly without beginning or end.

“It’s like a wall guarding the inner parts of the graveyard,” Joanna said.

“Are you certain it’s thin enough to pass through? Something that size looks like it could take days to traverse,” Zac said.

“The dense section we avoided would have taken us just over an hour to pass. The optimal window was a weak spot that only needed half that time. Right now, we’re looking at a full crossing in forty minutes, with energy intensity roughly in the middle.”

“I don’t know much about space, but can this really be a natural formation?” Kruta asked. “Never heard of anything like it. Seems like it should collapse in this wretched place.”

“Nothing in this place makes any sense,” Ogras grunted. “We’ve seen giant eyes; we’ve walked inside distorted memories. There have been false safe zones trying to lure us in, avatars of cultivators the size of stars. There was even that bubbling ocean that cried when we passed it by. A storm resembling a wall is among the more normal things we’ve encountered.”

“This curtain could hold the remnants of an ancient battlement used during the war,” Zac guessed.

“Brace yourselves,” Mark said just before the Yphelion pierced the curtain.

Zac thought he was prepared. They’d crossed dangerous regions before, where the Yphelion was nothing but a toy before the immense winds trying to drag them away. This was something else entirely. The ship rocked with such force Zac felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He barely managed to hold on by increasing the rotation of energy, rooting him in place.

Not everyone was so lucky. A few of his weaker sealbearers lost control and were hurled into nearby walls. Mark, being the physically weakest person on the bridge, would have shared a similar fate if the pilot’s seat hadn’t been equipped with a special set of arrays to ensure safe operations.

The tremendous push came from the Yphelion suddenly facing the brunt of the stormwall’s velocity. What they’d just tasted was just a fraction of the pressure applied to the outer barriers, and the bridge even enjoyed a second layer of insulation. The E-grade cultivators aboard would have been torn apart if they’d stayed in the less-protected sections of the ship.

Thankfully, they’d already entered a specialized emergency chamber in the ship’s center. The protections there were roughly the same as those on the bridge, though they would also be strapped in for extra protection.

The interiors of the storm weren’t any better. Zac had no choice but to continuously circulate Miasma to endure the turbulence. The whole vessel was constantly groaning from enduring a beating it wasn’t designed for. Zac returned to the screens after ensuring everyone was okay, and the warnings through his link were within bounds. He almost wished he hadn’t.

The outside looked like a psychedelic strobe, flashing with such intensity that even Zac got nauseated. Realizing that a few of the streaks passing by were energy swirls or spatial tears holding enough power to rival a Monarch’s Inner World only made things worse. The Yphelion being a High or Peak Cosmic Vessel wouldn’t make much of a difference in that situation.

A slight delay would damage the ship and exhaust the already struggling barriers. A mistake meant death, especially after a few minutes had passed and they’d forged even deeper. Zac hated the feeling of impotence as he mutely stood there, unable to do anything to help.

The room was utterly silent, with a dozen strained faces silently watching Jaol, Galau, and Mark work in tandem to navigate the constantly shifting winds. Not even the usually talkative reaver dared speak up, afraid he’d cause a slip in concentration. Mark’s soul was lit up like a bonfire from the constant stream of commands sent to the ship. Zac could actually see the air around his head vibrate from the heat.

Jaol had already been forced to go all out as well. Bloody tears ran down his cheeks from activating his Ocular Talent to sift through the mountains of everchanging data and provide Mark with only the relevant information.

Zac felt the familiar fluctuations from the Cartava Clan’s temporal eyes, thanking his lucky stars he’d taken the time to follow through on his promise with the Technocrat Navigator. The agreement was that Jaol would join the Atwood Empire, in exchange for Zac helping him replace the bionic eyes he’d used before.

It had ultimately proven beyond Zac’s ability to perfectly replace the Cartava Elder’s DNA with Jaol’s through Creation Energy. However, by combining some Lich techniques, Creation Energy, a few concepts from [Cosmic Forge], and a body-regrowing treasure, they’d come pretty close. The eyes worked like they should, except Jaol couldn’t utilize the time-based talent without a painful backlash.

Of course, the ability Jaol possessed wasn’t Leviala’s heaven-defying ability to rewind time. It simply allowed Jaol to slow down his perception of time to better observe and analyze the information fed to him through the arrays. Without it, Jaol would have been incapable of warning for sudden swells or spatial tears in time.

Meanwhile, Galau was constantly recalibrating the ship’s arrays to lessen Mark’s burden. He’d already rerouted every morsel of extra energy from non-critical functions to shielding and engines, even if it put the energy circuits under greater duress. He was the reason for the constant jolts that left Zac queasy.

Galau only kept the barriers at minimum strength, letting just enough seep through that it didn’t cause permanent damage to the ship or harm to the crew. That left more energy to crank the shields beyond the safe limits whenever they hit a dangerous spot that was impossible to avoid. Which was more often than Zac would like.

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Zac’s mind was constantly abuzz with an ever-increasing number of warning signals from the administrator’s access. Not a single spot of the once-gleaming hull was spared the ravages. It already looked like something destined for the scrap yard, and there were already damage prompts coming from the interiors.

It was kept within bounds throughout. Zac didn’t care if a kitchen was ripped apart by errant streaks of Spatial Energy so long as the shields and engines remained in working order. Anything else could be fixed later.

The commotion never crossed that critical threshold, though, and Zac slowly began to relax as the other end drew closer. Eventually, they were only a couple of minutes away. Their first month inside the Imperial Graveyard had given them the skills and experience necessary to tide over this tribulation.

“Damn it!” Mark suddenly growled, and Zac cursed himself for his inauspicious thoughts.

Zac infused his will into his connection to better understand the problem. His heart thudded in shock upon seeing a demonic-looking flood dragon dozens of times larger than the Yphelion emerge from a spatial tear. Shock turned to horror upon realizing it was an actual beast and not another entity formed from lingering resentment. It was the first living creature they’d encountered outside the troves and Mystic Realms. To survive inside this environment, it had to be a Beast Emperor—a C-grade beast.

And it was trying to gobble them up like a snack.

‘Don’t!’ Galauurged just as Zac was about to press the panic button to activate the Death-attuned propulsion.

The Yphelion jolted forward the next second, and the dragon’s enormous maw closed around empty space with enough force to cause a series of spatial cracks. Mark had activated an engine overdrive for a burst of speed, which was accompanied by a series of critical warning signals.

Zac swore upon realizing two of the subspace drives had broken down, and the additional pressure on the ship from the acceleration forced Galau to crank the shields to unsafe levels. A deafening roar shook the bridge, and Zac lost connection to his ship as it went completely dark. The shakes suddenly stopped, and Zac didn’t dare so much as breathe. He briefly felt as though time had stopped.

Then, the lights came back on, along with all the other systems. The screen displaying the outside looked starkly different than before. It was uncharacteristically clear, with barely any pollution nearby. The familiar storms were still present but far in the distance.

“We did it,” Galau exhaled as he slumped down on the ground, prompting Emily to hurry over.

“Good job,” Zac said with a hoarse voice while looking for any signs of the dragon. “Amazing, even.”

The desperate dash had simultaneously saved them from the beast’s maw and crossed the final stretch. The C-grade dragon was traveling along the current, so it was long gone since it hadn’t emerged with them. The others hadn’t seen how close to disaster they’d just come, and Zac wasn’t about to tell them. At least not until they were out of this place safe and sound.

“We’re fine for now,” a pale Jaol said, the shock of encountering the beast evident in his eyes. “The wall has absorbed all nearby energy already, creating a temporary pocket.”

“How’s the Yphelion?”

“The shields are mostly fine, just depleted and overheated,” Galau grunted as he got back on his feet. “But we have to bring the subspace crystals back onboard to perform repairs. We can only use the subsidiary propulsion until we’re finished.”

“That’s no different from not moving at all,” Ogras frowned.

The subsidiary propulsion systems were meant for precision maneuvering, such as entering a dock or descending onto a planet. Early Hegemons, let alone Monarchs or cosmic vessels, could catch up since they weren’t designed for speed.

“Not good!” Jaol suddenly exclaimed.

“What in the nine hells is it now?!” the demon swore.

“I just got the long-range scanners online, and they picked up an unidentified vessel. It’s coming right for us!”

Zac glanced at Catheya standing in the corner. She slightly shook her head. It wasn’t Tavza, so they were likely dealing with an enemy unless they’d managed to stumble onto Iz through sheer luck.

“Go!” Zac said while giving the command to retract the subspace crystals, and Galau rushed out of the bridge with Emily in tow.

“How long?”

“An hour, tops,” Jaol said, looking positively sick.

‘I’m here!’ Galau’s voice soon appeared in the intercom.

“Can you fix them within the hour?”

On the other end, the clangor of the Array Master ripping out panels to access the wiring behind could be heard. A few seconds later, Emily unleashed a vitriolic curse, making Zac’s heart sink.

‘No way. It’ll take twice that at the very least,’ Galau answered.

Zac took a steadying breath before sending another order. “Send one of the engineers to perform field repairs on the shields. We need them ready for battle within the hour, whatever it takes. Use our surplus treasures to refill the tank.”

“Shielding won’t be enough,” Kator said. “Any ship able to this far deep is Late D-grade at the very least. They’ll break through long before the repairs are finished. We have even less time if there’s a Monarch on board.”

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Zac finally relaxed upon seeing the rough depiction based on energy readouts on Jaol’s screen. It was an Elite Kan’Tanu Destroyer made by the Chapter of Noble Pursuits. Out of many bad options, it was the one that gave them the best odds of survival. With the Yphelion’s lineup, they had a high chance of victory, even if the vessel was filled with Kan’Tanu elites. The only real threat was if there was a Monarch onboard.

“Finally, some good news. It looks like it’s in an even worse state than us,” Ogras said.

“I’m not surprised,” Zac said. “It must already have been inside the Imperial Graveyard when we entered. This kind of ship can’t match the pace we’ve kept, no matter how many modifications it’s seen. Not to mention the System blew up their base, so where would they have come from?”

“They might have been forced to venture deeper when the Heavens went crazy,” Joanna guessed.

“Either that or a spatial tear gobbled them up and spat them out in this region,” Ogras agreed. “The same thing happens all the time in the Million Gates Territory.”

Zac turned to Jaol. “Have they identified us?”

“Not if their ship followed the Kan’Tanu standard specs, but the energy signature indicates they’ve made some modifications to the base model. I would expect installing better scanners would be one of them. They shouldn’t have figured out our identity, though. The Yphelion’s anti-tracking abilities are quite good, and the storm would have overwhelmed any detailed readings. They probably only discovered us because of the engine explosion.”

“So they might be thinking we’re allies?” Joanna said with a ruthless gleam in her eyes.

“If it were you, would you care whether it was friend or foe?” Kator said. “The only way they’re surviving the next couple of days is by jumping ship. And this deep into the madness, it’s every man for himself. They should be readying themselves for a fight for their lives no matter what faction their target belongs to.”

“Then we need to do the same,” Zac said, activating the communicator. “Can we fire the main cannon while you’re working on the engine?”

‘The cannon? You can, but our circuits are already damaged. The energy surge will cause more damage, weakening our shields. One full-powered blast at most, or we might lose our protection from the winds.’

“One shot?” Ogras grimaced. “The ship has been strengthened and all, but will it be enough? We saw what happened when we tried to destroy that barrier last week.”

Zac wasn’t sure either. The exploration vessels of the Imperial Graveyard shouldn’t be equipped with the Kan’Tanu’s latest countermeasures against the Iliex weaponry. The environment was working against them, though. The stronger one’s attack was, the more damage it would cause to the brittle dimensional layer.

The incident Ogras mentioned ended with their full-powered attack piercing right into another dimension, ending up not hitting their target at all. Kinetic weapons would likely work better, but they didn’t have any, and the few drones couldn’t endure the harsh environment.

“Disperse the maintenance shroud,” Zac said with a somber expression. “Get ready for a blitz. We might have to finish the job ourselves.”

Six hatches opened on the Yphelion and began releasing a shimmering mist. The mist was meant to be deployed during open-space maintenance. The dust was made from a special alloy that created natural isolation, hiding the ship from scanners and predators while its arrays were offline. It also physically obscured the ship, which Zac hoped would make the Kan’Tanu draw closer.

The minutes passed, and Zac’s nerves grew tauter until Jaol finally confirmed there was no Monarch aboard. There was, however, a Half-step Monarch, two Peak Hegemons, and dozens more Hegemons aboard. Zac sighed in defeat, knowing the Yphelion’s weaponry couldn’t take them all out before they abandoned ship.

Kruta looked at the readout, a fierce grin spreading across his face. “Finally. I’m tired of fighting ghosts. About time I see for myself if these Black Heart bastards live up to their reputation.”

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