The descent into the Sector 12 crater was a three-mile freefall through an atmosphere choked with pulverized concrete, vaporized steel, and heavy cosmic radiation.
Corvus dropped like a meteor, his charcoal suit snapping violently in the supersonic wind. Flanking him were Lyra, Jax, Rook, and the newly inducted Lieutenant, General Vane. They did not use parachutes or Vanguard levitation spells. They manipulated the Origin Qi flowing through their hyper-dense meridians, turning their own bodies into localized gravitational anchors to accelerate their fall.
Below them, the crater was a vision of hell. The molten bedrock bubbled and hissed, the residual heat of the orbital strike turning the massive depression into a cauldron. In the center of the molten lake, the Sovereign of the Apex Realms was regenerating.
The cosmic entity, stripped of its arrogance and half its celestial mass, was pulling the chaotic ambient energy of the destroyed sector into its mangled chest. Its severed arm of blinding blue starlight was rapidly reknitting itself, bone by glowing celestial bone.
INSOLENT DIRT, the Sovereign's telepathic voice roared, a sound that bypassed physical hearing and vibrated directly against the soul. It looked up, tracking the five microscopic figures plummeting toward it. I WILL BURN YOUR GENETICS FROM THE CHRONICLES OF TIME!
The Sovereign raised its newly formed arm and unleashed a torrent of concentrated stellar plasma. It was a beam of absolute, searing white destruction, wide enough to vaporize a Vanguard dreadnought in a fraction of a second.
"Vane!" Corvus commanded over the comms, not slowing his descent.
"I am the shield!" Vane roared in response.
The massive former General overtook Corvus in the freefall. He crossed his thick arms over his chest and channeled the totality of his Origin Qi outward. He didn't build a static wall of blue Mana like he used to. He created a wedge of absolute kinetic density—a physical manifestation of sheer, unyielding cosmic gravity.
The plasma beam slammed into Vane.
The sky above the crater exploded into a blinding halo of redirected energy. The heat was so intense it instantly evaporated the smog layer for fifty miles in every direction. But Vane did not burn. The Origin Qi in his cells held firm, splitting the stellar plasma like the prow of an icebreaker ship slicing through a frozen sea. The devastating beam harmlessly washed over the rest of the Eclipse strike team trailing directly behind him.
Vane hit the molten floor of the crater first. The impact generated a localized shockwave that blew the sea of liquid magma back hundreds of yards, exposing the scorched, solid bedrock beneath.
"Scatter and engage!" Corvus ordered, landing lightly on the cooling stone a microsecond later.
Jax was the first to strike.
The heavily tattooed gladiator let out a feral, blood-curdling laugh as he touched down. He didn't run; he used localized spatial folding to instantly teleport directly to the Sovereign's left flank. The fifty-foot-tall entity towered over him, but Jax felt no fear.
"Let's see if gods bleed!" Jax screamed, channeling all of his Origin Qi into his right fist.
He punched the Sovereign in its massive, starlight-forged kneecap.
The sheer kinetic force of the blow triggered a localized sonic boom that shattered the remaining glass in Sector 7 miles away. The Sovereign's knee buckled inward with a sickening, crystalline crunch.
The entity shrieked, swatting downward with its massive hand, attempting to crush Jax into a smear on the bedrock.
Jax didn't dodge. He raised his arms, catching the Sovereign's descending fist. The ground beneath Jax instantly cratered another thirty feet deep from the transferred kinetic weight, but his Origin-reinforced bones held. He was physically wrestling with the physical mass of a dying star.
YOU ARE NOT MANA-USERS! the Sovereign roared, its telepathic voice finally registering genuine shock as it stared down at the tiny human holding its fist at bay. WHAT PARASITES HAVE INFECTED THIS SECTOR?!
"We're the exterminators!" Lyra yelled, appearing on the Sovereign's right flank.
She raised her glowing, golden phantom arm. She didn't strike the entity's body. She targeted the localized space around its remaining arm. With a brutal, twisting motion of her ethereal wrist, Lyra forcibly crumpled the atmospheric pressure into a hyper-dense, invisible vice.
The Sovereign's right arm was instantly pinned to its side, the celestial matter groaning and sparking as it fought against a gravitational lock that rivaled the core of Jupiter.
In the shadows cast by the blinding light of the struggling god, Rook made his move.
The assassin had phased entirely out of the visible spectrum. He scaled the Sovereign's colossal body like a spider scaling a glowing monolith, his boots finding purchase in the microscopic imperfections of the celestial armor.
Rook reached the entity's neck. He drew a pair of combat knives—standard Vanguard issue, but currently infused to the atomic level with cold, merciless Origin Qi.
Rook drove both blades directly into the Sovereign's glowing blue optical sensors.
The telepathic scream that followed was so agonizing that Vane and Jax both bled from their noses. The Sovereign thrashed violently, tearing its right arm free from Lyra's gravitational lock through sheer, frantic, cosmic panic. It swiped blindly at its own face, trying to dislodge the invisible assassin.
Rook simply phased through the massive hand, dropping gracefully back down to the crater floor.
"The target is blind," Rook reported, his voice devoid of breathlessness or emotion.
"Bring it down to my level," Corvus commanded, standing calmly fifty yards away.
Vane and Jax moved with flawless, unspoken synchronization. They flanked the blinded, thrashing Sovereign, targeting the backs of the entity's colossal knees. They both delivered simultaneously devastating, Origin-laced kinetic kicks.
The celestial armor shattered. The Sovereign's legs gave out, and the fifty-foot god was forced to its knees, the impact shaking the bedrock of the entire capital.
Corvus walked forward slowly, casually adjusting the cuffs of his charcoal suit.
The Sovereign, though blinded and kneeling, was still a being of the Apex Realms. It sensed Corvus approaching through the heavy, suffocating gravity the proxy leader radiated.
YOU DARE! the Sovereign transmitted, a final, desperate surge of arrogant fury masking its terror. I AM AN ENVOY OF THE TENTH REALM! IF YOU DESTROY THIS VESSEL, MY BROTHERS WILL TEAR THIS SOLAR SYSTEM APART AT THE QUANTUM LEVEL! YOU WILL ALL BE ERASED!
"Tell your brothers," Corvus said aloud, his voice amplified by the Origin Qi to match the volume of the god, "that Earth is closed for business."
Corvus leaped into the air, hovering directly in front of the Sovereign's ruined, mangled chest plate.
He drew his right arm back. He didn't just channel his own Origin Qi; he tapped into the direct, unadulterated drop of cosmic power the Master had implanted in his core on the night of his rebirth. His fist became a blinding, golden singularity, radiating a light that entirely eclipsed the Sovereign's fading blue celestial glow.
Corvus drove his fist directly into the center of the Sovereign's chest, plunging deep into the chaotic, burning mass of stellar plasma that served as the entity's heart.
NO! the Sovereign shrieked.
Corvus gripped the core of the god. "Yes."
With a brutal, tearing motion, Corvus ripped the Sovereign's primary energy matrix completely out of its body.