Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 664: Clash (4/5)

Across the battlefield, Almond raised his other hand.

Golden threads of his own spread outward.

Wherever a Suryax soldier fell, threads converged. Where a Dreadling Monarch was torn apart, threads converged. Where a Spirit Lord overextended and was burned out, threads converged. Bodies reassembled. Forms returned. The allied force did not lose anyone for longer than a breath.

This was the asymmetry of his deck.

Velsenir had resurrected through a network of anchors that required maintenance, calibration, and external support. He had been a powerful resurrector, but a finite one.

Almond resurrected because he could.

There was no anchor network. There was no maintenance cost. There was no upper limit visible to anyone on the battlefield. The Grimblade and the Fabricated Spirits drew from something deeper than a fixed reservoir, and the reservoir had not yet shown a bottom.

Lily worked the same way. Her Dreadlings did not deplete. They reproduced. Every Dreadling that fell fed three more from the gates she had planted across the ruins and the surrounding ocean. Her army grew while the enemy army shrank, and the curve of that growth did not flatten.

And Ainen, somewhere behind the lines at the central platform, had not stopped cooking.

The buffs his food carried had not weakened across the hours of engagement. They had layered. Each successive feast distributed through the allied force compounded with the previous one, and his exotic flames had begun integrating themselves into the food in ways that no longer resembled cooking at all. The latest dish, served thirty minutes ago to the Suryax frontline, had granted them a form of partial flame regeneration that allowed injuries to seal themselves through controlled internal combustion.

The next dish, which Ainen was finishing now, would be worse for the enemy.

Three deck holders. Three limitless engines. The enemy fleets had brought finite arsenals against an alliance whose three central pillars did not have a ceiling that anyone present knew how to find.

---

The Asura Executives had not been idle.

They were, by combat power, among the weakest named individuals on the field. The strongest among them sat at the lower edge of the hundred-million bracket. They should not have been able to contest the Tier-50 elites that the enemy fleets were now committing to the engagement.

They were contesting them anyway.

Vael Drakhar stood at the center of a Kezryx boarding action on the third Mega Dreadship. His fabricated constructs had fused beyond their original forms. Around him, a rotating cylinder of overlapping blade-shield-cannon hybrids spun at controlled velocity, each component shifting function mid-rotation. A Kezryx elite attempted to phase through his defensive radius. The cylinder reconfigured before the elite finished phasing. He arrived in the radius and found himself inside a sphere of inward-facing artillery that did not give him time to think about what came next.

Seris Vanthell moved through the lower deck like a stain spreading across cloth. Her Dreadling-derived constructs no longer needed her to direct them. They erased what she pointed at. A Virexion infiltration team that had managed to breach the lower hull found themselves disassembled in segments before the rear member realized the front member was gone.

Kaedor Ashenveil stood on the upper observation deck with his three layers of exotic flame extended outward in a cylindrical column around his position. Incoming attacks entered the column and were sorted by his flames’ triple response. Energy projectiles froze. Kinetic strikes bent. Beam weapons were consumed entirely. He did not move from his position for the entirety of the engagement. He did not need to.

Lyxara Bloomreign had grown the third Mega Dreadship’s outer hull into something half-vessel and half-orchard. Massive vines extended outward from the ship’s flanks, each one terminating in a multi-headed plant construct that tracked targets with disturbing precision. Anything that flew within fifty meters of the ship’s exterior was caught, crushed, and absorbed into the hull’s biomass.

Tharion Fluxbane held the airspace above the second Mega Dreadship by himself. His rotating weapon systems had reached a configuration where each weapon shifted form mid-rotation through six distinct functions, and the cumulative pattern produced a kill zone that no aerial unit had successfully crossed in twenty-four minutes.

Nyrelis Gravewhisper moved through enemy boarding squads with her echo-blade technique evolved beyond simple delay. Her echoes now anticipated. Each strike she landed produced a follow-up strike at an angle her opponent would have moved to defend against. Two seconds of engagement against her produced four points of damage, and her opponents typically did not survive long enough to learn the pattern.

Vokren Ironpulse held the lower hull breach point alone. His shockwaves had stopped expanding outward in conventional patterns. They curved now, wrapping around obstacles and pulling incoming attacks into reverse trajectories. Three Velkarion war-beasts attempted to push through his position simultaneously. All three were turned around mid-charge and slammed into the boarding craft behind them.

Elaris Thornshade maintained a rotating lattice of spell formations across the second Mega Dreadship’s primary corridor. Enemy attacks that entered the lattice were processed, redirected, and returned with interest. A Kezryx heavy beam meant to gut the ship was multiplied, curved, and sent back to its origin point. The Kezryx platform that fired it ceased to exist.

Zevran Hollowflare laid down a delayed minefield across the upper aerial corridor leading to the central command platform. The mines did not exist when enemies passed through them. They appeared shortly after, in the spaces the enemies were moving toward. By the time the first Virexion squadron realized they were inside an active field, they were inside an active field.

Maevra Duskwaltz fought in the deck-to-deck corridors of the lead Mega Dreadship, locking incoming boarders into combat sequences they could not exit. Each of her strikes forced a specific reaction. Each reaction opened a specific angle. Each angle was already prepared for. Five Oblivion Tyrant berserkers entered the corridor she was holding. None of them reached the door at the other end.

Ten subordinates. Ten zones of denial. The enemy alliances pressed harder against the Suryax-Ananta line and found the line did not break in the places they expected.

After all, those ten wielded powers belongling to the strongest of Regalons, and to lose while wielding such power would be a topic of utter shame.

---

Jaskrit Kezinos crossed blades with Rudra for the eleventh time.

They had been fighting in the air above the central battlefield for the past nineteen minutes without either of them landing a decisive strike. The space around them had become unstable from sustained contact. Every clash produced a shockwave that rolled outward across the ocean for kilometers, and the cumulative effect had carved a roughly circular zone of flattened sea below them where no other combatant dared to enter.

Jaskrit was Tier-42. He carried three hundred and forty-one million combat power. He had refined his deck through years of careful cultivation, and every component of his arsenal had been integrated into a unified personal combat system that bordered on perfect.

Rudra was Tier-20.

He had no deck refinement. He had no decades of careful work. He had bare hands, Absolute Breaker, and an utter refusal to be the one who stepped back first.

They were even.

Not in raw power. Jaskrit had more raw power. The numbers said so clearly. But raw power was not the only variable in a sustained engagement, and Rudra had been the kind of person who turned even disadvantages into stalemates since long before any of this had begun.

Jaskrit’s eyes narrowed again. "How are you still standing?"

Rudra did not answer.

He stepped forward and struck.

His fist connected with Jaskrit’s guard, and Absolute Breaker spread from the point of impact outward through Jaskrit’s defensive layer. Structure failed across that layer for one full breath. Jaskrit’s storm-armor came apart at every seam, and for one full breath Jaskrit was wearing only flesh.

Rudra’s second strike was already coming.

Jaskrit reformed his armor in mid-collision. The strike landed against rebuilt armor instead of bare flesh. He was forced back through the air by a meter and a half. His armor reformed faster than it should have been able to, but it reformed thinner.

"...I see," Jaskrit said. His voice had lost some of its earlier ease. "Your domain doesn’t just break. It teaches itself."

Rudra closed the distance again.

The shockwaves resumed.