Death… And Me

Chapter 4382: Anyone’s Guess

The barrage continued for another full minute. Throughout that entire time, Kentucky never took his eyes off the guardian while Celis concentrated solely on the fluctuations of its Godly Energy.

"It has become quite small..." Kentucky commented as he observed the guardian’s shrinking figure.

"Its energy concentration is dropping as well," Celis followed. "It is definitely consuming far more energy than it can recover."

Rean, however, wasn’t interested in the guardian’s size. What mattered to him was how much offensive power it still possessed. "Just tell me when it is about to run out of energy. Celis, especially you. If you notice the lasers getting weaker instead of merely fewer, that’s our signal."

"Leave it to me," Celis answered with a nod, never taking his attention away from the guardian.

The change happened sooner than anyone expected. As the barrage continued, the number of lasers gradually decreased, and even the remaining ones no longer contained the terrifying amount of Godly Energy they initially carried. Their destructive power was visibly dropping.

Celis immediately informed Rean through their soul connection, and Rean didn’t waste a single second before shouting through the airplane.

"Senior! Come inside, quickly!"

Harksha reacted instantly. While continuing to fuel the Light-Bending Plate with her Godly Energy, she flew straight toward the airplane without looking back. She crossed through the open hatch just before it closed behind her, while the plate itself was released to fall toward the ground below.

"Full speed ahead! Hahaha!"

Rean pushed the controls forward, and the Celestial Thrusters roared to life.

*Zuuuummm!*

The airplane shot directly toward the incoming barrage.

The reinforced Light-Bending Arrays immediately began redirecting every laser that reached them. Unlike the previous encounter, the strengthened arrays managed to bend every single beam away before any of them could graze the fuselage. Of course, the fact that the lasers themselves were weaker and fewer also made a huge difference.

Even so, Rean wasn’t simply defending.

When the airplane was roughly one hundred meters away from the barrier, he rapidly adjusted several options on the control panel. The arrays at the airplane’s nose instantly changed the way they manipulated light, and the countless lasers that had previously been scattered harmlessly into the surroundings suddenly followed entirely different trajectories.

Instead of merely being deflected...

They were reflected back.

Rean carefully adjusted each array so the redirected lasers spread evenly across the entire front of the airplane. Looking toward it from ahead, the aircraft itself completely disappeared behind a curtain of broader, much weaker laser beams.

Then the airplane reached the barrier.

Just as Rean expected...

The barrier opened!

That had been his plan all along.

Since the barrier itself created tiny openings that allowed each laser to pass through, it obviously possessed a way to recognize those attacks. If that was the case, then there was no reason they couldn’t disguise the airplane behind the lasers themselves.

The barrier obediently opened a passage.

It wasn’t particularly generous, though.

The opening was just barely large enough for the airplane to squeeze through, and as Mark forced its way inside, Rean heard an unpleasant scraping sound coming from the left side of the fuselage.

His heart ached.

"My baby..."

Still, he gritted his teeth and kept pushing forward.

*Zash!*

The airplane finally crossed the barrier and entered the protected ruins.

The instant it did, Rean altered the Light-Bending Arrays once again. This time, instead of spreading the lasers to the front of the ship, every redirected beam converged toward a single destination.

The guardian’s core! he wanted to force the guardian to defend and attack at the same time, using even more of its energy.

Warning after warning immediately filled every screen inside the cockpit.

Rean ignored every single one of them.

He already knew what the alarms meant. At such a short distance from the source, the lasers were considerably stronger, forcing the Light-Bending Arrays far beyond the limits they had been designed for. The closer they approached the guardian, the greater the strain became.

"Senior Harksha!"

When the airplane closed to roughly fifty meters, Harksha immediately shot out through the hatch while carrying another one of the specially made Light-Bending Plates.

The guardian instantly detected her.

Part of its barrage changed direction to target Harksha, but the airplane remained the larger threat. The overwhelming majority of its lasers continued focusing on Mark as it rapidly advanced.

Harksha’s heartbeat accelerated.

She poured every bit of Godly Energy she could spare into the plate, forcing it to bend each incoming laser away from her body.

Naturally, the guardian wasn’t simply standing still.

Once it judged both the airplane and Harksha to have approached too closely, it immediately began retreating, attempting to move its core farther away while continuing its attacks.

Rean smiled faintly.

"Too late."

He was right.

The guardian had already spent the overwhelming majority of its Godly Energy.

Now that Harksha and the airplane had closed the distance, it couldn’t simply stop attacking without exposing itself. Every additional laser further drained what little energy remained.

Eventually, its reserves approached exhaustion.

No...

Just before completely running dry, the guardian suddenly ceased firing altogether.

Rather than wasting the last traces of Godly Energy on one more attack, it diverted everything into movement, desperately trying to pull its core away from Harksha.

Too bad Harksha had anticipated exactly that reaction.

She had been charging forward at full speed from the very beginning.

Her momentum greatly exceeded the acceleration the weakened core could produce in those first crucial moments.

Before the core could gather enough speed to escape, Harksha thrust one hand out from behind the protection of the Light-Bending Plate and slammed it directly onto its surface.

*Tap!*

The core was quite big, larger than a human head, but its size didn’t matter.

Hidden within her hand was one of the simplest items anyone could purchase back in Besgol.

An Energy-Blocking Talisman. It was especially used to seal the energy of cultivators who were captured.

She immediately pressed it onto the core.

As though someone had severed every invisible connection surrounding it, the core instantly lost contact with the Godly Energy of the world. Even the energy contained within itself stopped circulating.

*Tun... Tun... Tun...*

The core immediately lost its ability to remain airborne and crashed onto the ground, bouncing several times before rolling to a stop.

Even then, Harksha didn’t recklessly rush forward.

Although one arm extended beyond the protection of the Light-Bending Plate to place the talisman, the rest of her body had remained safely behind it. If the seal failed and the guardian resumed firing, she intended to retreat immediately instead of gambling with her life.

Fortunately...

The core remained motionless.

No more lasers appeared.

A moment later, Celis’s voice came through the airplane’s directional speakers.

"It is over. There is no circulation of Godly Energy anymore. Grab it, and let’s leave before any more of those things appear."

Harksha finally allowed herself to breathe.

The plan had worked.

Not only had they defeated the guardian, but they had captured its core completely intact.

Unfortunately, everyone knew the truly dangerous part of the operation was only beginning.

They were now inside the barrier.

Without the guardian’s lasers to fool the barrier into opening another passage, they had effectively trapped themselves within the ancient ruins. Entering the barrier and defeating the guardian had never been what Rean considered the greatest danger. He had warned everyone about that from the very beginning, yet every member of the group had still agreed to proceed.

After all...

Risks and riches had always walked side by side.

Harksha quickly picked up the core before attaching several additional Energy-Blocking Talismans across its surface, making absolutely certain it couldn’t reactivate unexpectedly. Only then did she return to the airplane.

Without wasting another moment, Rean reactivated the Light-Bending Arrays and immediately flew away from the area. Even if more guardians eventually arrived to investigate what had happened, he wanted them to be somewhere else by then.

Whether those other guardians would be capable of tracking the airplane afterward...

That was a question none of them could answer.