Chapter 25: Nuclear Fusion Lightspeed Fist
Accompanied by the slow diffusion of hazy silver-blue psionic light mist in the cosmic space, the Third Fleet of the Central Colony Star was gradually retreating.
After several hours of rest and cooling, the psionic engines that had been operating at full capacity could be used again. With the emission of one jump-traction ray after another, hundreds of psionic one-dimensional tracks leading to Neptune Star had been set up.
Inside the bridge of the Third Fleet's flagship, the *Shattered One*, the prematurely aged middle-aged fleet commander stared grimly at the psionic channel slowly opening before him. The pale blue glow of the imminent teleportation filled every corner of the ship, casting an even more displeased light on the face of this middle-aged Central Man.
Due to the damage sustained during the earlier exchange of fire with the void monsters, and the full-power launch after their own void creatures arrived, nearly five hundred main warships of the Third Fleet had suffered heavy losses. Almost a third of the ships' engines were completely wrecked, beyond repair. After hastily rescuing the personnel from the scrapped vessels, the heavily damaged Third Fleet had no choice but to begin its return journey to the Neptune Star Fortress.
"Can we... trust them?"
Beside the commander, another Central Man, equally weary and aged from overwork—the flagship's first mate—couldn't help but mutter to himself. The commander nodded and said, "We cannot betray the sacrifice."
The next instant, within the psionic space, accompanied by a series of faint hums and ripples of silver-blue light waves, hundreds of Third Fleet warships vanished into the jump.
Meanwhile, in cosmic space, a psionic fighter burning all its potential had, through rapid consecutive jumps, nearly reached the area where Joshua and the others were located.
Sensing the abnormal space-time fluctuations, the warrior and the old mage immediately turned to look back in the direction of the former Third Fleet. But this time, all they could see was a lone cosmic fighter. It had traversed space-time, arriving before them from several light-seconds away at nearly half the speed of light. Joshua even heard the sound of the crystal psionic engine shattering, but for some reason, the fighter was still performing short-range jumps. This prompted him to move closer to the craft.
Soon, Joshua arrived before the fighter, which had stopped jumping. Behind him, a colossal phantom of a Steel Giant materialized. Four enormous arms gently caught the drifting fighter. Joshua frowned, for he could no longer sense any life force inside.
Why would the Central Men send such a powerful psionic user, willing to expend his life just to meet with us? Just as Joshua was pondering this, a silver silhouette, composed entirely of psionic energy, floated out from the powerless fighter and appeared before the warrior.
"Soul?" Joshua blinked, then reached out and touched the silver soul. But the moment he made contact, the smiling phantom of the silver-haired old Central Man dissolved into a cloud of psionic particles, which were absorbed into the warrior's body.
At the same time, Joshua quickly understood why the Central Men had been so urgent in sending a messenger.
"An ambush?!"
Joshua, momentarily stunned that he had somehow absorbed the other's soul, quickly found the slumbering soul of the old Central Man deep within the Soul Abyss of his own spiritual sea. Realizing the man hadn't disappeared, the warrior shifted his focus and clenched his fist at the shocking news: "Neither Nostradamus nor I detected it!"
He immediately rose to inform the old mage. This wasn't surprising, really. Even though Joshua had constructed a psionic engine within his own body, he was still, at his core, an ordinary human who had never trained in psionics. Naturally, he couldn't sense the lurking monster cluster that even warships needed to activate their psionic observation radars to detect in subspace.
In the distance, Nostradamus watched with a complex expression as Joshua unexpectedly absorbed the Central Man's soul. His lips parted slightly, and he murmured a few scattered words.
"Divinity... Awakening..."
But soon, after Joshua returned to their original area and relayed the news, Nostradamus had no time to dwell on those extraneous matters.
"Terrible!" The old mage's face changed color upon hearing the news of the void monster ambush. "That means we're completely surrounded by an even larger monster cluster than before? These Chaos minions actually possess such intelligence!"
"Not only that. I suspect that the reason the massive void mother-beast hasn't jumped here yet isn't to clear out the Central Men's jump traps, but simply to pin us down and let the monster cluster complete its ambush!"
The two Legendary experts exchanged thoughts at incredible speed. In less than a few hundredths of a second, they had already decided on their next course of action.
When an ambush is no longer an ambush, all traps lose their meaning. In fact, they can even become pitfalls that trap the ambushers themselves!
On the other side of another star system, the colossal void mother-beast writhed, its dozen or so reproductive cavities, each the size of a mountain range, spewing out tens of thousands of void monsters. After waiting for several hours in cosmic space for their shells to harden, these monsters immediately began jumping to the edge of the distant Far Light Star System, joining the ambush force.
Facing two powerful alien beings, even the void mother-beast dared not be careless. So it planned to use its millions of offspring as a tide and vanguard to exhaust the power of those alien lifeforms, before making its own entrance to crush them utterly.
But suddenly, a cluster of void monsters in the midst of jumping emitted a psychic wave of extreme agony. Then, the jump channel began to twist and deform violently, crushing the tens of thousands of void monsters inside into fragments finer than mincemeat and hurling them back into realspace. At the same time, the mother-beast sensed that a small half of the countless void monsters lying in ambush in the distance had suddenly lost contact, and the remaining ones were rapidly decreasing in number.
—Discovered?!
The mother-beast's thinking was simple. The purpose of its descent didn't lie in this aspect, so it hadn't been granted overly high intelligence. The moment it realized the ambush had been detected, the mother-beast knew it no longer needed to remain at the other end of space-time to pin down the two high-level alien lifeforms. It was time to formally enter the battlefield!
Thus, at the edge of the Far Light Star System, the two Legendary experts, who were unleashing their power to annihilate the void monsters lurking in subspace, detected a violent fluctuation. A colossal space-time channel, large enough to swallow a moon, began to warp violently—a deep green psionic vortex twisted and sank rapidly. An icy, immense, utterly emotionless will, bent only on devouring and assimilating everything, swept into this universe, carrying an unparalleled pressure!
"Pfft!" A gigantic tentacle pierced the psionic vortex, bursting out of subspace. Moments later, countless tentacles tore through space, like a sea anemone, causing massive tentacles over ten kilometers long to drift through the cosmos, emitting a dense green psionic glow.
"Boom!" Another thunderous roar. The psionic vortex, propped open by the tentacles, seemed to be stretched, slowly expanding until it was large enough for the void mother-beast's main body and its immense gravitational field to pass through the channel and arrive in this star system!
The next instant, with a sound like a 'pop'—the noise of something breaking through—the sound ignored the vacuum, echoing across the edge of the star system. Vaguely, one could see a ferocious giant eye, like a star, rotating within the vortex at the other end of space-time, shimmering with a deep green light.
Psionic energy was gathering. At the other end of space-time, on the edge of another star system, an immeasurable amount of energy was being compressed and condensed. Space began to vibrate. The jump had begun. The colossal void mother-beast was shaking the coordinates of space-time, about to traverse several light-years to arrive at its predetermined dining table!
But what greeted it was no friendly welcome.
"Disgusting thing."
In the dark universe, a golden-red light blazed like a sun, illuminating the surrounding space. Joshua, having reverted to his four-armed giant combat form, stared at the void mother-beast about to jump in. He clenched all four of his fists. Blazing white, ultra-high-temperature gas jetted from his elbows, accumulating incomparable power like a rocket before launch. Silver light flickered in the warrior's eyes as he shouted his companion's name: "Nostradamus!"
"Ready!"
A blue humanoid form, composed of countless space-time cracks, responded psychically. It extended its mist-like arms, fingers slightly spread. Instantly, four massive space-time cracks appeared before Joshua, and also around the countless tentacles of the colossal void mother-beast at the edge of the star system.
Seeing these long space-time channels spanning several light-seconds, Joshua laughed heartily. The Fusion Core Heart furnace in his chest released an immense amount of energy, enough to slightly distort space itself. At the same time, jets of ultra-high-temperature steam, like solar coronas, erupted from behind his shoulders, elbows, and arms. The force of these jets could cause a typhoon within an atmosphere, creating a natural disaster. But here, they were merely tools to propel Joshua's fists, making them heavier and more powerful. The next instant, as chain reactions began to occur around his four fists, he swung his heavy fists without hesitation, smashing them into the space-time cracks before him!
In that instant, accompanied by the compression, collision, and fusion of countless material particles under the influence of immense energy, the colossal power known as fusion was grasped by Joshua and then blasted out with full force!
"Get—back!"
A point of light flared, illuminating a small part of the star system in the next instant. And on the other side of the space-time crack, before the light from that end could even arrive, a heavy fist, surpassing the speed of light and crossing space, slammed directly into the tentacles of the void mother-beast!
Nuclear Fusion Lightspeed Fist!