Chapter 153
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 153
Chapter Title: 15th Floor - Lv. 3000 Blue Dragon Arka (4)
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Surprisingly, not all celestial bodies known as gas planets—or even giant gas planets—are made entirely of gas.
Any object on the scale of a celestial body inevitably undergoes contraction and compression toward its core due to its immense mass and gravitational pull.
In such environments, most gases turn into liquids or reach an ambiguous state where it's hard to tell if they're gas or liquid anymore.
Dig even deeper into the interior, and it becomes solid.
So even the Earth Spirit King or Water Spirit King might have found ways to make use of such a medium, but the problem is that it wouldn't be all that immediate.
The thick atmospheres on a planet's surface—the easiest to manipulate—are all gas anyway.
Sylphid scraped together every last bit of atmosphere from the planet's surface and smashed it into the enemy lines.
In the process, some of the materials reached near-lightspeed velocities, while the violent currents triggered phase changes, turning them into something other than gas.
A lot of that material slipped out of Sylphid's control, no longer qualifying as "wind."
But even the atmosphere that was already in motion amounted to roughly 2×10²² kg according to the federation's preliminary observations—that's two hundred sextillion kilograms.
A good chunk of it broke free of Sylphid's real-time control, but that didn't diminish the power one bit.
They were dealing with a mass of entirely different order of magnitude from the start. Even if just 1% of it remained on target, it could literally wipe a planet from existence.
An overwhelming force that rendered debates over magic versus physics meaningless.
Overwhelming mass.
Before it, all things were equal.
Before an assault from a dimension beyond fleets or dragons, the young Dragon King's reactions went through several stages.
First came outright disbelief, followed the next instant by grim acceptance of the reality unfolding before him.
This was a world where no Spirit King contractors had existed since me.
I figured the true extent of a spirit's power—which grew stronger as eras passed and perceptions shifted—hadn't been properly understood.
So of course he'd walk right into this trap.
The young Dragon King, in near-panic, finally gathered all his strength and charged straight at me.
Repeated spatial jumps propelled his massive, battleship-sized body forward at blinding speed.
But against the tidal wave crashing in from behind, he looked utterly insignificant.
Still, it was a wise call.
No matter how fast he moved, that colossal mass couldn't sweep the federation fleet in a single instant.
If he could deal with me first, he might disrupt the gravity anomalies and save the fleet from being obliterated.
Of course, it wasn't going to be that easy.
Right now, I wasn't just dumping all my mana into Sylphid.
In terms of raw mana capacity, it was on par with the previous run—the one closest to clear and with the highest levels by pure stats.
When a mage has this much mana to work with, they become practically a god.
The problem was that I, the main actor, was still a martial mage at heart, so my range was limited.
But in a situation like this, with mana overflowing, I could just spawn countless projectiles up close and unleash them.
Sylphid served as my eyes and magical conduit.
The silver dragon opened its maw, and radiant mana bloomed before it, coalescing into spheres of flame.
Blazing with deep blue fire from blackbody radiation, the spell was called [Hellfire].
A fire magic crafted by mages imitating the sun in the night sky—one that surpassed even its temperature.
Dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of fireballs erupted.
And those flames formed a barrage wall that rocketed toward the Dragon King like a curtain of shells.
If they were in range, I could directly interfere with his spatial jumps and buy time, but that's the limit of the martial mage class.
On the flip side, no other class could churn out bullet hell as fast as this one.
I burned through mana like mad, spitting out spell after spell like a machine.
Range constraints meant only projectile-based spells—ones that formed and fired a body.
[Refudip's Crystal Spear], launching shards of mana crystallized razor-sharp at the molecular level.
[Minus K], forming and firing orbs at near-absolute zero temperatures via mana mediation.
In magical combat, hammering nothing but damage spells is a bad idea.
Where's the fun without debuffs?
Orbs wrapped in force fields that slowed living beings locally... or ones that slowed time itself.
Black holes sucking everything into the [Abyss].
A feast of every spell I could muster lit up the dark void of space.
Bullet hell shooters? I love 'em.
What about you?
All the dragons grasped the situation through the Dragon King's agonized roar.
The one who needed neutralizing wasn't anything else—it was that horrific Exile.
There wasn't even time for terror to resurface.
When life hangs by a thread, negative emotions tend to numb instead.
Maybe it was the last embers of racial pride refusing to die.
The magic-savvy dragons analyzed the crisis faster than any in the federation army and, like their king, realized the solution.
This phenomenon came from the Spirit King, and Spirit Kings couldn't manifest without their contractor.
Kill him.
Somehow.
By any means necessary.
The dragons broke from the front lines in a flash.
Using every mode of transport available, they blinked through space, converging en masse.
Dozens of dragons hurtled toward the distant Spirit King manipulating a planet's atmosphere—and toward his contractor.
And soon, they slammed into the bullet hell cloud.
Every shot was a nightmare to tank.
They tried punching through with mana barriers, but the spell matrices were viciously designed.
Basic barriers fueled by raw mana got pierced clean through. A few dragons took hits, twisted in pain, and figured it out.
Each spell bore killer code that absorbed and penetrated simple shields.
Instead of charging bodily, the dragons had to dismantle and neutralize them magically, one by one, while advancing.
A few rashly teleported ahead and vanished into the [Abyss].
In mana sight, the whole universe looked drowned in a riot of spells.
The barrage tidal wave filling that kaleidoscopic view resembled an onrushing twilight.
And they had to break through that majestic, beautiful spectacle somehow.
The God of War clicked his tongue with a "well, that's how it goes."
Having racked up diverse experiences as an Exile, he knew roughly how this would play out.
But with the capital fallen, it was hard for the God of War to sway the federation's top brass.
Ogre commanders were smart, sure—but that very smarts made them stubborn in their judgments.
Back in their stupider days, they'd have bowed to the name of a god.
If the kingdom could summon Exiles who were also followers of the God of War, that would have been ideal.
But this tutorial had far too few graduates.
Very few guilds snagged newbies funneled into this server, and even fewer held [key items] leading to the future.
In the end, hardly any Exiles from the kingdom could invade this timeline.
He knew some followers of the Discipline God were here, but they wanted the empire destroyed too. No help there.
They had no choice but to resolve things from within their shrunken cult.
Fortunately, every era had its religious zealots, and among them were always those with exceptional talents.
Most ogres had abandoned the War God faith, and many orcs had followed suit—but trolls were different.
Closest to the word "savage," they shrugged off the revelation that their god was an Exile with a laugh.
Above all, they were dead serious about combat, true to war and savagery.
That's what the God of War loved about them, which was why he rejected all higher-race cards to the end, staying a troll and ascending as one.
And his cult still harbored a warrior strong enough to earn his full approval.
Those clinging to the War God faith faced career ceilings in the military.
The ogres dominating the top saw such "primitive" beliefs as beneath them.
And trolls smart enough to keep rising through the ranks were especially rare.
Generals who were trolls weren't common, and those who existed were sidelined.
A troll general and War God follower was rarer still.
But one such troll had overcome all those handicaps.
The War God devotee serving as commander of the Close-Quarters Combat Command—a grand admiral—was this era's greatest War Champion, possessing a troll body tougher than any other.
For his homeland and his faith, he gladly offered his flesh to the God of War.
Thus, this run's mightiest troll descended into the era's strongest troll vessel.
Ironic as it was, this era's emperor was plenty tough as a warrior, even without real power.
He was descended from the great Emperor Altair, history's greatest warrior, after all.
Being sidelined from governance actually let him invest time and effort into honing his fighter skills.
In an age where might made right like the old days, he'd qualify as a [Hero Unit].
Unlike the past, though, the emperor no longer believed head-on assaults were the only honorable path.
Trusting his own strength was one thing; taking the easier road was another.
As a result of negotiations with the ogre commanders, the emperor boarded a strike craft to lead a special ops team.
Their mission: raid the rearmost lines and eliminate that powerful Exile's allies.
Capturing hostages was a long shot.
But taking out the human woman and vampire bitch who'd appeared in this space before would change history all the same.
Shame?
That had vanished once the ogres seized power.
The emperor just wanted victory.
As chaos erupted at the center between the two fleets, he silently chained warps to the distant rear and struck.
The process might be inglorious, but the outcome would be triumphant.
Ignoring the onrushing material tsunami, countless strike ships pushed forward through pouring fire.
The dragons' efforts proved futile as Sylphid's arm finally swung at tremendous speed into the federation fleet.
Most capital ships trying to warp out beforehand failed.
The sudden motion of that colossal mass warped gravity, disrupting the warp-sensitive vessels.
The planetary fortress here avoided instant shattering thanks to its sheer size.
But this "minor" planet—technically just a moon—was helpless against the sweep.
The massive fortress, rivaling dragons in might, fired up its planet-core-sized mana reactor to raise a mana barrier.
The overwhelming physical force shredded some sections into space.
The barrier tore apart.
A grotesquely overpowering roar echoed through the entire fortress.
It might have held for a moment. But the mass was so immense that the swing took ages.
Finally, even the planetary fortresses began collapsing.
The artificial planet's crust heaved upward.
With the shell gone, packed infrastructure rocketed into the void.
Facilities ripped open across thousands of kilometers hosted scenes of utter hell.
No one could scream for long.
Superheated materials that had formed a planet's atmosphere moments ago erased them.
The planet shaved away at insane speeds.
The colossal mana reactor acting as its core stood exposed.
The fortress core spat its final mana as it shredded.
Crushed, torn, pulverized.
The federation's shrunken fortresses all crumbled to cosmic dust.
A hellscape where debris rampaged, smashing and grinding each other.
A few ships barely warped out at the last second, but in this battleship-and-fortress-dominated space war, losing them meant impotence.
Countless Greenskins died amid the vortex.
It looked like a new star being born.
Spare gases shifted course.
Fresh waves crashed toward the dragons straining to advance.
The alliance watched it all unfold without stirring.
Or rather, they couldn't.
A few commanders toyed with the idea of charging in to mop up federation remnants and claim postwar spoils.
That matched HQ's demands exactly.
But no officer dared suggest diving into that cosmic cataclysm.
They had one life each. No desire to die by subordinates' hands.
The alliance stayed spectators to the bitter end.
Any challenging Exile eventually faces a space battle.
This troll body—someone else's, but well-honed—was satisfying.
In the debris whirlwind, the incarnation of war tossed aside his weapon.
No point if it couldn't handle his strength—fists were better.
Skills honed as an Exile began activating one by one.
Striding the directionless void like solid ground, the God of War snatched a passing hunk of wreckage.
Then he started compressing it.
With high-speed debris everywhere, it was easy.
Shave off some? Grab fresh and mash on.
Steel and stone screamed under his brutish grip.
The result: a freakishly dense sphere.
Blazing from compression heat, but density kept it solid.
He spotted dragons streaking toward that Exile in the distance.
Space war sucked.
Couldn't bellow a proper battle cry, right?
Still, the urge hit, so he snorted in swirling matter through his nose.
Gases sucked in with terrifying force blasted out through his vocal cords.
A battle roar audible only to him echoed everywhere.
"Dieeeee!"
Red divinity like blazing hellfire enveloped the sphere. The God of War hurled it with all his might.
Space warped. A crimson streak slashed across the cosmos.