Chapter 12
Chapter 12
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 12
Chapter Title: The Fall of the Vanguard
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“““————!!!!!!”””
The entire legion roared in response to the will.
“What’s that?”
“Looks like the bugs are throwing a fit. Fire.”
The moment the soldier pulled the trigger, Hunterak sprang into motion.
A red laser erupted from the rifle with a ferocious screech, punching a hole straight through Hunterak’s elongated head. But Hunterak didn’t care—it lowered its stance and charged.
Using its wing scythes like legs, Hunterak closed the distance in a flash and thrust its long claws at the soldier’s throat.
The soldier stumbled backward in panic, somehow dodging the claws that whistled through the air with enough force to split it in two. But right before his eyes loomed Hunterak, its massive maw gaping wide.
The soldier beside him raised his weapon to help his comrade, lining up a shot on Hunterak. But Killerak, already clinging to the ceiling, pierced his throat before he could fire.
“Gurk.”
Crunch, crunch...
Hearing the short scream, the vanguard captain—who had been heading back to command the fleet—halted and turned. His two loyal knights were being devoured by the bugs in the most gruesome fashion.
Unable to hold back a sigh at their failure to handle just two bugs, the vanguard captain drew his sword.
His mind expanded, granting control over every peripheral nerve in his body. He contracted his stem, then expanded it explosively to propel himself forward at tremendous speed.
The ship’s deck groaned and cracked under the force as he closed in and swung his blade.
Recalling Hihirak, who had been decapitated without even realizing it, Hunterak didn’t dodge. Instead, it lunged straight at the incoming sword, jaws wide.
Kwa-ga-ga-kak—
Even without full acceleration due to Hunterak’s sudden charge, the vanguard captain’s immense strength pulverized it into an unrecognizable pulp, severing its biosignal link. But his sword couldn’t cleave through the Hirak’s toughest part—the jawbone—and lodged deep in the corpse, refusing to budge.
As if waiting for that exact moment, Killerak barreled in, jaws unhinging to swallow the captain’s head whole.
With no choice, the vanguard captain released his weapon and thrust out his right branch to shield his head. But the jaws, designed to chew through any organic matter, shattered the wooden plate armor and tore off the branch entirely.
“Kuuk! You filthy bug!”
The vanguard captain’s mind surged with power, and an inexplicable psychic force lifted Killerak’s body into the air.
Killerak thrashed wildly to break free, but the captain’s psionic ability proved stronger.
He then smashed Killerak’s head repeatedly with his remaining left branch until its skull caved in and it moved no more.
“Huk… huk… Adjutant! Adjutant, you there?! Adjutant—!”
Fuming with rage, the vanguard captain stormed toward the bridge. For an inferior race commanding mere small warships to inflict this humiliation—he’d request the main fleet from headquarters and wipe these bugs from existence.
“Adjutant! Are you here?! —Kuk!”
As he approached the bridge, a powerful gust dragged at his body, trying to hurl him into space. He grabbed a ship pillar to anchor himself and peered in. The sight exceeded his worst nightmares.
The ship—crafted from his mother’s strongest offspring, nurtured on the richest nutrients from Nualalkaima—was being eaten alive by bugs.
The legion’s fleet wasn’t ships at all. They were monsters. The moment combat began, they latched onto the knight order’s vessels and started devouring them hull and all.
No matter how powerful the legion monsters’ jaws and teeth, eating an entire ship was impossible for most. But for a plant species that grew ships as living organisms, it was the exception.
Worse, these beasts somehow knew when they were targeted—as if they had eyes in the back of their heads—they’d slip away effortlessly just as gunners tried to fire, like they hadn’t been feasting at all.
Those shots then punched holes in allied ships instead.
The knight order couldn’t suppress the monsters rashly for fear of friendly fire. Meanwhile, their hulls were gnawed away, and crew were sucked into the void by the pressure differential from the breaches.
Despite the overwhelming numerical disparity, the clash devolved into brutal close-quarters chaos.
The Bahilila species, unable to breathe or maneuver freely in vacuum, depended on spacesuits against monsters that swam space effortlessly. The legion dodged the sluggish plants while targeting cannons, engines, or bridges first, neutralizing ships one by one.
Witnessing their failure to crush the enemy swiftly as expected, Vanguard Captain Nualala refocused on his priority.
Using psionic power to affix his body to the deck, he crawled toward the communicator on the bridge’s far side.
Chanting vows to incinerate every last bug, he finally reached it and stood to connect to headquarters.
At that moment, right beside the Bahilila cruiser, the lair whale doubling as a space station began to rampage.
Its whale-like head smashed through the bridge viewport and lunged at the captain.
Already channeling psionics to avoid being sucked into space, bereft of sword and right branch, the captain flailed desperately at it with his left.
“Uuuuk!! Uoooo!!”
His wooden plate armor groaned, cracking under the strain. His stem and branches screamed in agony.
In the end, even the mighty first vanguard captain couldn’t withstand the whale’s brute mass. Pinned and briefly knocked unconscious, his psionics faltered. The force holding him vanished, and he drifted into the void, lost forever.
Arrogance, complacency, ignorance—whatever the reasons, the knight order paid dearly.
But they ultimately exterminated every bug that had come to the meeting.
The deputy commander, realizing this couldn’t continue, took full responsibility and ordered indiscriminate fire, ignoring friendly hits.
Regrouping ships with intact cannons, they purged the bugs—and claimed victory.
The problem? With bridges and engines devoured, they couldn’t move or communicate.
The knight order was patching their gaping bridges bit by bit, reorganizing the fleet.
“Deputy Commander. What now?”
Aside from a few total losses, many ships still floated properly, merely crippled and partially eaten.
Excluding the self-proclaimed diplomats, most monsters swam space freely. Few had breached hulls to attack knights directly, so casualties were minimal beyond those vented or caught in friendly fire.
“Repair the ships and await reinforcements from home. They’ll send help once they notice the silence.”
“Deputy… what’s that?”
Looking where the soldier pointed, a fleet approached.
Reinforcements from home already?
No—not from the hyperlane to headquarters.
“God preserve us.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the knight order the deputy desperately hoped for.
And not just one group. Who would call a packed mass stretching beyond sight “one group”?
Legions waiting in neighboring systems had jumped the hyperlanes and arrived at the battlefield.
I already knew their engines were gone. They couldn’t escape. And I had no intention of giving them time to repair.
All that remained was the feast.
Every cannon blazed instantly, desperate to deny approach. But there were simply too many.
The knight order’s firepower was elite. A single precise laser could pierce a space whale and incinerate its crew.
But they were endless. Every ship in a force spanning dozens of systems bore down like an all-out assault. Kill one beast with care, and the next—then the next—poured in.
And once they closed the gap, monsters flooded through the gaping bridge holes.
The first takes a bullet and dies. The next charges. Slash an incoming one with your sword. Another lunges from the side. A fellow knight covers with fire. But the ceiling breaches, and more cascade down.
A hippo that chews steel rips out an entire bulkhead. A massive gorilla crushes soldiers’ skulls. Outside, space whales and flying beasts cling to the hull, gnawing away.
“God preserve us.”
The deputy clung to his faith to the last, fighting until his bark peeled away. Then he was torn to shreds and swallowed into legion bellies.
Afterward, that star system held nothing but scraps—no knights, no ships.