Following the orders of the man who was likely their commander, Verthalz’s fleet moved into position. The Krishna’s optical sensors picked up something resembling a crest of light emerging at the bow of each warship.
“What the hell are those movements?” I asked. “Creepy.”
“You’re not really one to talk,” Elma quipped in return.
That was uncalled for, Elma. My maneuvers are nowhere near as weird as what they just did. The Verthalz ships had moved into formation, but rather than flying into position, they’d slid in, coming to a halt immediately without ever facing in a different direction. These ships were larger than the Lestarius, yet they slid around without even firing their thrusters. Freaky. My movements with the Krishna are nowhere near that unsettling. How can they even change location without using their thrusters? Do those six conspicuous wings allow for some kind of movement?
“‘Planet Eater’ and ‘Soul Crush,’ eh? Those are some impressive names.”
“Do you think that monster really eats planets, as the name suggests?” Mimi asked.
“Who knows. Given how the thing can vaporize an EML projectile before it lands, and how it can just completely ignore laser strikes…it might really be capable of melting and absorbing whole planets.”
As Mimi and I discussed the astral jellyfish—which I’ll now call the “Planet Eater”—the crests Verthalz’s immediate-response fleet had deployed began to glow dazzlingly.
“Oh—it seems they’re about to attack…Master Hiro?”
“That’s bad news.”
I wasn’t sure how to explain why that was; still, I’d broken out in goosebumps. This attack was bad news. It wouldn’t be the type you could block with shields. That jarring light didn’t simply kill; it destroyed the source of life itself. As its name suggested, this was likely a weapon that really did crush souls.
“Kugi, is every ship in Verthalz equipped with a weapon like that?”
“I am not very familiar with military matters in my country…but I would imagine so, yes. I’ve heard that my homeland’s ships are armed with magic-based weapons. The Soul Crush weapon they are currently deploying derives from the second magic.”
“The second magic can create terrible weapons like that?”
At that point, the crests deployed in front of Verthalz’s ships fired white lasers that pierced the Planet Eater.
‹Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!›
The Planet Eater let out an earsplitting scream as it writhed and trembled. Sound didn’t normally travel through space, so the shriek was seemingly some form of telepathy.
Mimi looked over at me; we were both grimacing. “I feel like I just heard something screech.”
“You didn’t hear it clearly? I definitely just heard that thing scream in pain. So did you, right, Kugi?”
Kugi nodded, wincing in discomfort. Her ears were drooping; that scream must’ve sounded quite loud to her.
After eating the barrage of Soul Crushes, the Planet Eater appeared to writhe in agony. It must’ve realized that Verthalz’s fleet had attacked it, because it responded by shooting countless light orbs in their direction. That volley of light orbs was significantly denser than the one it had fired at us earlier; it must just have been testing the waters when it attacked us.
“Oh man, that’s way too many. There’s no way—wait, what? They’re getting hit…right? So how come it looks like the orbs are just going through them?”
An overwhelming swarm of light orbs had assaulted the Holy Empire’s fleet, but the vicious barrage simply passed right through as if the fleet weren’t there. The ships hadn’t blocked the orbs with shields, nor evaded them, yet those light orbs that clearly landed direct hits simply passed through.
“I don’t get it… Are they using dimension shift or something?”
“Demenshun shift?”
“It’s a defensive maneuver that involves temporarily taking refuge in a misaligned dimensional space to avoid an attack… Are those Verthalz ships we see even real, or just phantoms? I guess that wouldn’t make sense either.”
It was possible that the ships we saw were simply illusions created in an alternate location, with the fleet’s actual location hidden from our eyes. Either way, some sort of abnormal technique had to be at work.
‹Gweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!›
Once the onslaught of light orbs ended, the immediate-response fleet launched another Soul Crush barrage, further damaging the Planet Eater. Considering how energetically it could still scream after being subjected to that terrifying attack multiple times, the Planet Eater was impressively sturdy.
“I doubt Soul Crush is the only weapon those ships are equipped with…” I commented.
“Yes, my lord, I believe you are correct. My understanding is that these types of expeditionary forces are responsible for repelling invasive space monsters and dimensional monsters. Some such monsters invade in swarms, so these ships must have weapons capable of dealing with whole groups as well.”
“You mean they have a separate weapon designed to deal with multiple enemies at the same time?” Mimi asked.
“There are only eighteen of those ships, and they don’t get advance warning about what kind of situations they’ll find themselves in. It makes sense that they’ve prepped weapons to handle multiple enemies too,” I told her.
Watching the intense but one-sided battle between the Holy Empire’s fleet and the Planet Eater, I pondered what that weapon might be. I honestly had no clue. The fleet had no way of knowing what kind of enemies they’d encounter. Maybe they had some weapon that could destroy everything within a specific area of space, or maybe they’d just use a wide-range telekinetic attack.
Wait a second… Won’t them showing off like this freak out the Grakkan Empire? Or, rather than “showing off,” is this just a fraction of Verthalz’s true power? Either way, they’re not people I’d want to mess with.
“Looks like it’s over.”
In the end, I wasn’t sure how many times the immediate-response fleet fired. After eating quite a number of Soul Crushes, however, the Planet Eater finally shuddered one last time, then dissolved into the void of space and vanished. The high-energy sensor signal representing the Planet Eater disappeared as if it’d never existed; it simply vanished. The thing was likely dead.
“I expected a huge explosion or something when it died,” Mimi said.
“Quite an anti-climactic ending,” I agreed.
I really hadn’t been able to do anything this time; I hadn’t fired my laser cannons even once. The enemy had been far too powerful. It was a foe that the entire Pirate-Hunting Unit combined couldn’t have hoped to defeat in a direct confrontation, so I supposed that was to be expected.
“All that’s left is some boring post-battle cleanup,” I said. “I’ll leave that to Colonel Serena. Actually, no… That’s a bad idea.”
Kugi, Konoha, and I had been responsible for summoning the Holy Empire’s fleet. I didn’t have the right to butt too much into discussions between the fleets from the Grakkan Empire and Verthalz, but I should at least act as a mediator.
“Let’s head back to the Black Lotus for now and regroup with Konoha. I’ll get in touch with Colonel Serena while you and Konoha contact the Verthalz fleet.”
“Yes, my lord.”