Chapter 82
Chapter 82
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 82
Chapter Title: Double Bind
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Yunes was now facing a double bind.
If he kept manipulating the Black Mamba to strangle the Red Boa to death, the Emperor of Gemini outside the cockpit would burst through the door and kill him.
If he turned around now to kill the emperor, Celia would pilot the Red Boa to counterattack the Black Mamba, killing him just the same.
The sword blade wedged in the door seam flashed with dazzling blue light, the electromagnetic cutter emitting a sharp sizzle as it sliced through the hatch. Yunes gripped the firepower output throttle tightly and bellowed, “Hydra, secrete acid at the hatch—kill him!”
Outside the cockpit, countless scales suddenly bristled upright, swiveling to face the emperor.
Heinrich caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye and instantly realized what was happening. Centuries of battle-hardened instincts kicked in without a second thought—he seized the sword hilt and yanked downward with all his strength. The blade cleaved the entire hatch in two amid a shower of sparks, shaking his palm raw with bloody gashes. Then the hatch burst open with a “bang!”, spinning right into Heinrich and barely blocking the oncoming spray of acid!
Sizzle—thick white smoke rose as the heavy metal hatch melted in an instant. The whole sequence unfolded in the blink of an eye—if he’d been even a fraction of a second slower, the emperor would have been reduced to a skeleton right then.
Heinrich caught his breath, then wrenched hard on the hatch handle, flipping his body upward in a midair swing that propelled him into the cockpit.
The cockpit was pitch black for some reason, save for the neural bands before the control console, glowing faintly red like a tangle of a million fine threads. Yunes stood with his back to the console, his face eerily sinister in the crimson light.
“Fancy meeting you again, Emperor of Gemini.”
Heinrich slowly raised his broadsword, then thrust it into the floor with a ding.
“Fancy meeting you again, Yunes.”
The two stared each other down for a long moment before Yunes suddenly asked, “Are you wondering why I’m still alive, Emperor? Last time at the Alliance, you clearly pierced my heart, yet here I stand, perfectly fine. Even that arrogant Celia admits he can’t kill me... The facts prove I’m immortal. Don’t waste your effort.”
“Sewer rats are always hard to kill. Celia and I are both used to it.”
“...”
Yunes’s cheek twitched violently. He changed tack.
“Why are you here?!”
“To reclaim Celia’s memories. Why are you here?”
Yunes didn’t answer. Heinrich chuckled and answered for him.
“Because you want Celia’s memories too.”
·
High in the sky, the smoke cleared, and the Black Mamba seemed to freeze in place, its stranglehold on the Red Boa growing looser by the second.
Osroed looked around in confusion, utterly baffled, but Celia saw right through it.
“The Black Mamba’s virtual neural lock is losing control. Heinrich has Yunes pinned. Prepare to counterattack now!”
“...How can you even tell?!”
“Red Boa!”
Celia ignored Osroed, barking sharply,
“Divert all power—focus every last bit of energy on blasting their neural lock!”
The Red Boa, battered beyond recognition as a snake, suddenly stirred. Like some rotten prehistoric behemoth, it reared its head toward the Black Mamba and gaped wide. At the same time, the cockpit lights flickered before plunging into darkness—
Every scrap of power was emergently rerouted to the fire control system. Interstellar missiles gleamed with lightning-like green light deep in its pitch-black maw.
The Black Mamba finally reacted, sluggishly pulling back to flee—but it was too late. Four seconds later, the green light erupted with a world-shaking hum. The Black Mamba mech was blasted hundreds of meters away in the explosion!
—Clang!
The cockpit spun like a tumble dryer, neural bands and instruments flying everywhere. Two blades crackled with blinding arcs as they smashed together, cleaving the oncoming command chair in half!
“You overestimate yourself, Emperor of Gemini!”
Yunes parried the sparking broadsword and shouted,
“Do you know why the Alliance could only seal Dark Star Hall in five-dimensional space? Even Celia at his peak couldn’t kill me! You’re just an ignorant whelp!”
Heinrich sneered.
“Why do you want Celia’s memories?”
He soared across the tumbling cockpit like a massive bird of prey, landing right in front of Yunes in an instant. A sly smile crept across Yunes’s pale, overcast face.
“Want to know?”
“...”
“I’ll tell you—it doesn’t matter anyway, since you’ll never get them. Do you know why Celia’s so strong?”
Heinrich’s brow twitched. Yunes said coldly,
“Not this Omega he is now—he’s worthless... But back at his peak, Marshal Gavin Celia’s mental threshold broke four hundred. Have you ever seen some ordinary Beta born of normal parents hit that? Do you know why?”
Heinrich asked, “Why?”
Another explosion rocked them, the cockpit bucking wildly. Their locked blades skewed toward the wall, gouging a massive slash in the metal. Heinrich wrenched his sword free. Yunes spat out each word deliberately,
“Five hundred years ago—the Alliance—Guardian God Project—”
“Alert! Alert! Mech damage exceeds 80%! Alert! Alert! Cockpit ejection imminent—pilots, activate primary shielding immediately!”
Red lights strobed madly in the Black Mamba’s cockpit, but the two fighters ignored it. Then the floor heaved violently beneath them. Both leaped with the motion, their blades clashing with a resounding “clang!”
·
—At the same moment outside the mech, the Red Boa’s bones exploded outward, its six steel wings impaling the Black Mamba straight through along with them. The Black Mamba let out one final piercing hiss, black blood erupting everywhere as it collapsed like a small mountain.
Countless swarms of snakes were crushed into pulp beneath it, the wasteland pocked with massive craters.
The ruined hatch at the Black Mamba’s seven-inch vital—shredded earlier by Heinrich—suddenly sprang open. Whoosh—the cockpit rocketed out like an arrow from a bow. It was a razor-edge escape; without flight thrusters, it could easily plummet from hundreds of meters up and smash flat as a pancake. Celia’s pupils contracted sharply.
“Heinrich!”
The Red Boa lunged to catch the cockpit, but the mech itself had reached its limit—the instant it moved, its entire head sheared off!
“Warning, warning—head severed, firepower offline...”
Red lights flashed wildly inside the Red Boa too, but Celia ignored them, whipping his head to the monitor. The screen showed the Black Mamba’s cockpit plummeting, bouncing several times across the endless snake belly before finally slamming into some towering black scales!
Whew—the cockpit came to a smoky halt. Then Celia’s voice rang out across the sky,
“Heinrich! You okay?!”
Bang! Bang!
The cockpit’s battered door was smashed open—twice in succession. Heinrich and Yunes burst out one after the other, landing on the Black Mamba’s mountain-like corpse. Before their feet even steadied, they exchanged seven or eight furious blows, dazzling arcs nearly scorching retinas.
“What is the Guardian God Project!”
Heinrich demanded, his ice-blue eyes chillingly fierce amid the blood streaking his face.
“Speak! What the hell is the Guardian God Project!”
Yunes laughed wildly.
“You really know nothing, do you, Emperor? How do you think you got your throne? The invincible Alliance fell to a fool like you—hahaha!”
·
Inside the Red Boa, Celia instinctively reached for his gryphon, then remembered it was back in the nearby warship. A spark of inspiration hit him.
He brusquely shoved aside Osroed—who was about to say something—and strode to the cockpit door, kicking it open. Raging high-altitude winds surged in. Gripping the handrail, he peered out to see the warship parked like a black mountain range in the distant wasteland, its top hatch slowly opening. A spatial rift shot skyward like a rocket—
Heinrich and Yunes, locked in standoff far off, hadn’t noticed yet. Then a massive skeletal hand tore the rift open from within.
“Mandetiras...”
A cold smile tugged at Celia’s lips.
Elder Mandetiras slowly squeezed out of the rift, still shrouded in black cloth, legs crossed in midair. His grotesque body had swollen several times over, resembling a beast tens of meters tall.
It was utterly eerie—no sound as this colossal mass forced its way from the black void. Even Heinrich and Yunes below his feet remained oblivious.
Celia didn’t call out a warning either. He simply stood atop the mech, gazing upward as the elder finally descended like a silent nightmare. The skull mask beneath the hood pivoted slowly, locking onto a target:
“Long time no see, Yunes.”
Yunes shuddered head to toe, lifting his head in disbelief.
For the first time, shock and fear cracked his face—raw emotions too intense to hide. Even his voice pitched shrill.
“Elder... Elder Mandetiras...?!”
·
It was a terrifying sight: Mandetiras’s reaper-like form hovering in the sky, vast black cloth billowing in the wind, endless void yawning behind him. The Black Mamba’s corpse sprawled like a hill across the plain. Heinrich and Yunes faced off atop the stiff snakehide, blades still crackling with electricity. Farther off by the warship, the Red Boa lay dying on the ground, its snake bones shattered, reeking of foul ichor.
“Your mission is over, Yunes.”
Elder Mandetiras’s voice rumbled from his chest cavity, slurred and indistinct.
“You’ve done plenty behind the elders’ backs these years. Time to settle accounts.”
Yunes snarled, “Didn’t all that happen with your tacit approval, Lord Mandetiras?! This isn’t about helping Osroed—it’s your greed for my share too!”
A rasping laugh answered him.
Yunes glanced around: Heinrich glaring hungrily before him, Osroed posturing from afar, and surely Celia lurking unseen in the Red Boa, waiting to strike... He gritted his teeth.
“I’ll up your cut by thirty percent on the current split, Lord Mandetiras. You think that fool Osroed can really benefit you? He wouldn’t dare provoke the dying Alliance—you know that. Only if our partnership continues will resources and profits keep flowing! Osroed could never manage that!”
“Not a doubt in my mind.”
The elder said.
“But you’ve got one thing wrong, Yunes.”
“...”
“Dark Star Hall won’t be left with just Osroed after you die—nor am I limited to choosing him. You’re merely my hunting hound: reward it, feed it when the kill’s plentiful. But if the hound steals too much for itself, there’s no need to keep it. Plenty more hounds await outside.”
Yunes’s face paled.
But inside the Red Boa cockpit, Osroed’s face drained even whiter.
Celia, at the hatch, turned back to him with a knowing smile, utterly unmasked.
“You can’t kill me,”
Yunes backed away slowly.
“No one can kill me...”
The elder sneered coldly.
“Unfortunately, I can.”
A rustling slither came from the pitch-black sockets of his horrifying skull mask. A massive serpent—black with green undertones—probed out, head swaying side to side before snapping still, aimed straight at Yunes!
“Just a mere snake—”
Yunes’s shrill voice cut off abruptly.
“Hiss... hiss...”
The serpent slithered down Mandetiras’s face, rearing up to fix on Yunes. In that instant, Yunes’s complexion turned uglier than Celia’s ever had on the warship—positively ashen.
“The... Void King Serpent... How is it still alive?!”
But those were his final words.
The Void King Serpent reared high, its murky yellow eyes flashing venomous light. An invisible arrow seemed to pierce Yunes’s sockets. The world spun, all sights blurring into a vortex. The sky collapsed in a silent thunderclap, smashing down—
In that moment, Yunes’s mind blanked. Only a dusty old image surfaced slowly from memory’s depths:
Hundreds of years ago, he raced down a corridor, sunlight dappling his form. He burst through the door at the end—bang—into an empty, frigid hall.
“The guardian here has left,”
A cold voice said behind him.
“He abandoned Dark Star Hall—went off to the outer stars with some desert wanderer.”
“Why... why?!”
“Because he planned it all along. He didn’t even bother notifying you on his way out. A true betrayer who forsook you.”
Who? Who was saying this?
Young Yunes whirled, rage freezing as his eyes met the shadow behind him—that tall, cold figure, face twisted in hatred, pupils bloody with malice.
It was Yunes himself, centuries hence.
“Aaah—!!”
A hoarse scream tore across the wasteland. Yunes convulsed, collapsing and clawing at his eyes, rolling desperately!
“Osroed!”
Elder Mandetiras bellowed.
“Now!”
Osroed stiffened, a flicker of struggle in his eyes—but then he bared his teeth, shoved Celia aside, drew his electromagnetic blade midair, and roared as he leaped down onto the Black Mamba!
Heinrich retreated swiftly from a distance. Osroed landed with a thud, lunging in an arrow-step to the frenzied Yunes and hacking off his head!
—Crack.
The snap of severing vertebrae was soft, but everyone heard it clear.
Time stretched infinitely. The gale froze. Silence reigned. Only after an age did the head tumble from the body, landing with a soft plop.
“Yunes,”
Elder Mandetiras said coldly.
“This is your end.”
Shock rippled faintly across Heinrich’s face. Osroed panted ferociously. Mandetiras reached out to the serpent coiled on him, as if to recall it.
But then Celia moved.
Celia thrust his hand toward the warship on the distant plain, fingers blanching ghostly white from the strain. His pupils quaked as his mental power surged. As golden light flashed inside the ship, he roared:
“Gry—phon—!!”
The gold swelled explosively, blasting a massive hole through the warship’s top! Golden arrows of razor shards streaked the sky, piercing the serpent’s head like meteors—“whoosh!”
It happened in a flash. Mandetiras’s hand still hung midair as serpent blood splattered him!
“Celia...”
The elder trembled, erupting in fury.
“Celia!!”
He spun and lunged, hurtling straight at them. Heinrich flashed in at the same instant from one side, a golden arrow morphing into an army blade flying to Celia’s hand from the other. Both swung in unison!
Clang!
The blades rang as one, intercepting Mandetiras from left and right without a split-second’s difference!
—But the standoff didn’t last.
At the same moment elsewhere, the headless Void King Serpent plummeted, crashing rigidly to the ground like taut meat fibers.
If anything, the thud was like a signal—catching everyone off guard, it rang down the curtain on the vicious battle.
Mandetiras’s skull mask cracked sharply, spiderwebbing under the blades. His massive hand bones crumbled to ash inch by inch. He threw his head back in a despairing roar—but the wind snatched the sound skyward as his shroud-like black robe dissolved into toxic smoke with a hiss.
Heinrich grabbed Celia.
“Back!!”
The poison smoke swirled away on the wind, corroding the metal hatch before them to dust. Fortunately, they staggered clear of its spread at the last instant. Heinrich shielded Celia as they retreated into the cockpit. Suddenly, something in his peripheral vision made his pupils shrink:
Beneath the robe lay only a twisted snippet of dry bone—nothing else.
No flesh, no organs—that bone segment was Elder Mandetiras’s entire true form!
“What kind of tech is this...”
Heinrich murmured in shock. Then his side sagged. He whipped his head around, face draining.
“Celia! What’s wrong?!”
Celia half-knelt, pallid, his army blade clattering to the floor. He reached for his head, but even that slight motion split it with agony. Cold sweat soaked his face in seconds; he couldn’t muster a sound.
“Celia? Celia!”
The emperor’s blood ran cold, roaring without knowing what he said.
“What’s wrong? Talk! Gryphon, get the med pod out—Gryphon! Get your med pod—”
A familiar breeze whispered past his ear mid-sentence. Heinrich froze.
“He’s fine! He’s fine!”
“He just overdid his mental energy—why so worked up?”
“We’re saved at last—thanks, human marshal!”
Heinrich twitched.
“Voi... Void Star People?”
Countless Void Star People enveloped them in the breeze, chittering voices overlapping like transparent sprites blanketing the hills:
“See you again, human marshal!”
“Long time no see—remember us?”
“But why’s the emperor here too~ Emperor~”
“Finally handing back the legacy— so excited, so happy!”
Celia panted, lifting his gaze to the void. Wariness in his eyes softened to daze as a gentle power trickled into his mind.
Heinrich keenly sensed it, going still—
It was Celia’s memories.
The Void Star People had waited half a century. Now they would personally return this sealed treasure to the Alliance Marshal.