Reincarnated with a lucky draw system

Chapter 593 593: ESCAPE

"What are you talking about?"

"Let me ask you something serious," Nightflame said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous tone.

"What exactly do you need me for?"

"Need you for?

What kind of nonsense is that?" Mad One snarled, though his confidence was wavering.

"You were the one who started this!

You've been hunting my distributors, tearing down my networks, and tracking me across the stars like a bloodhound!"

"I did that because you wanted me captured," Nightflame countered, his eyes scanning the surrounding darkness.

"You also paid a merchant a fortune to take my life.

Everything I've done was a response to your supposed hit on me."

Mad One's expression shifted from rage to a dawning, horrific realization.

"I see... so someone went to a lot of trouble to make fools out of both of us."

"Exactly," Nightflame agreed, his back now turning toward Mad One as he looked out into the deep void.

"And I'm starting to wonder who has the resources to pull those strings."

"Well, aren't you a smart one?

Seeing through my designs so quickly," a cold, mechanical voice resonated through the vacuum, vibrating in their very bones.

"I was truly hoping you two would wear each other down a bit more before I had to make my involvement known."

Mad One stiffened, his face pale with a fear that even Dragon Fear hadn't managed to instill.

"It's you..."

"Him?" Nightflame asked, his hand tightening around the hilt of his hidden blade.

"He is the blight of this reality," Mad One explained, his voice trembling with genuine hatred.

"He appeared in this universe ages ago and turned it into something worse than a defected wasteland.

He is the shadow I've been trying to oppose—the one who has hunted me for years while I scraped by, maneuvering through the cracks to escape him."

"Escaping me?

Please," the robotic entity replied, its voice dripping with an artificial, mocking condescension.

"The fact that I have allowed you to breathe this long doesn't mean you were winning.

It simply means you hadn't outlived your usefulness.

Until now."

Mad One looked at his sensors, his face hardening into a grim mask.

"We're surrounded."

All around them, the silent void of space began to fracture.

Dozens of high-tech warships, ranging from sleek interceptors to massive, jagged cruisers, tore through the fabric of reality.

They emerged from hyperspace in a perfect spherical formation, effectively sealing off every possible flight path.

"Now that the two most wanted pests in the galaxy are together, I believe it is time for the harvest," the robot stated.

A synthetic, unsettling smile peeled back across its metallic visage.

"Get them!"

The hangars of the surrounding vessels hissed open, vomiting out a swarm of countless armed creatures.

These weren't mere soldiers; they were cybernetically enhanced hunters, each wielding heavy-duty antimatter rifles.

In a coordinated burst of light, they unleashed a torrential barrage of antimatter beams toward Mad One and Nightflame.

Reacting with the speed of desperation, Mad One expanded his antimatter shield, crafting a shimmering, translucent dome that enveloped them both.

The incoming fire hissed and sizzled against the barrier, the opposing forces of antimatter canceling each other out in a violent display of sparking energy.

"How long will your shield hold under this pressure?

I'm truly fascinated to find out," the robot laughed, the sound a grating, mechanical cacophony that echoed through their comms.

"We can't survive a war of attrition like this.

We need to move, now," Nightflame shouted over the roar of the energy displacement.

"I'm aware!" Mad One snapped, his teeth gritted as he strained to maintain the integrity of the dome.

"But with this continuous bombardment, I don't see a single opening.

We're pinned!"

"I will create the opening," Nightflame informed him, his voice becoming eerily calm.

"But I need you to draw that iron-head's attention.

Give me one moment where his focus is entirely on you."

"A distraction?

That, I can do," Mad One answered, a familiar, manic glint returning to his eyes.

"Good.

Then let's begin!"

Nightflame's presence shifted.

His eyes, once burning with draconic fire, drained of all color until they were twin orbs of infinite, bottomless black.

Seeing the transformation, Mad One knew his cue had arrived.

He overcharged his suit's reactors, the metal humming with a dangerous, high-pitched whine.

He redirected every scrap of stored antimatter into his gauntlets and unleashed a colossal, concentrated blast directly at the robotic leader.

"Your futile attempts at resistance won't save you," the robot said flatly.

With a bored, casual motion, it swept its hand through the air, manifesting a localized antimatter shield that absorbed Mad One's desperate strike with ease.

The maneuver worked.

For a fleeting instant, the robot's sensors and consciousness were entirely occupied with neutralizing Mad One's frontal assault.

It was all the time Nightflame needed.

Suddenly, the relentless rain of fire from the surrounding army ceased.

A haunting silence fell over the battlefield.

One by one, the thousands of armed creatures froze in place.

Then, as if controlled by a single mind, their heads snapped toward their robotic commander.

Their eyes, previously glowing with mechanical light, were now as black as Nightflame's own.

Without a word of command, the entire legion pivoted their weapons and opened fire on the robot.

The robot's mechanical eyes widened.

Forced into a defensive posture, it frantically expanded its own shields to block the unexpected mutiny.

"You fools!

Aim correctly!

What are you doing?" it hissed in annoyance.

But his soldiers remained deaf to his commands.

They moved with a hollow, puppet-like precision, ignoring his shouts as if he were a ghost.

"You useless grunts!" the robot yelled, its artificial voice cracking with rage.

Swiping its hand with lethal force, it released a specialized pulse of antimatter.

Unlike the standard beams, this energy moved like a living being.

It leapt from one soldier to the next, devouring their life force and their armor in seconds, leaving nothing but drifting ash.

"What did you do?" Mad One whispered, staring in shock as the enemy fleet had turned against the robot.

"I simply wove an illusion into their minds," Nightflame explained hurriedly, his face pale from the mental strain.

"To them, the robot is us.

We need to leave before he breaks the spell and turns his focus back to this spot."

Before Mad One could argue, Nightflame grabbed him.

Nightflame caused them to sink into a shadow underneath their feet.

Within seconds, they had vanished entirely from the physical plane.

Boom!

The final spaceship in the immediate vicinity erupted in a ball of white-hot fire as the robot obliterated the last of his compromised forces.

The mechanical being stood alone amidst the graveyard of his own army, his sensors twitching as he searched for his prizes.

They were long gone.

"Tsk.

They escaped," he muttered, his voice cold with a simmering, toxic irritation.

He floated toward the last surviving soldier, a creature barely clinging to life amidst the wreckage.

"Succumbing to such a low-level mental trick... you ruined years of planning," the robot whispered.

He reached out and gripped the soldier's throat.

A faint hum of antimatter surged through his palm, and the soldier was slowly consumed, his agonized screams silenced by the cold, indifferent vacuum of space.