The one hundred groups of Protectors kept on pushing forward. They were unstoppable. The power of the Space Smiths made sure they would never need to face capital ships front on, and as soon as the Protectors were inside the vessels, taking over them was just a matter of time.
But the Balius armada was too big. At least 100 capital ships have been cleansed, their occupants slaughtered in countless different ways. Tens of thousands have perished under the merciless blades of the Protectors, but the rest of the ships kept on charging in fearlessly. It was obvious they wouldn’t give up their capital planet without a fight.
And fight they did.
Gradually, the Protectors were starting to get worn out. None of them have fallen, not yet, but some of them were starting to slip up. Jean saw a Protector who was caught in the explosions when three ships fired on a boarded vessel and destroyed it. That Protector failed to get away in time. Luckily, his armor bought him enough time to snap some sort of crystal, which teleported him away to safety.
If this battle kept on going like this, victory for the Protectors would mean quite some casualties. Even a billion pigs needed quite some time to slaughter, much less a billion soldiers armed with powerful futuristic weapons.
This recording was obviously taken way before the present time period. From what Jean saw, just Protector Gregor could destroy everyone involved in that battle. Good to know. Even gods need time to earn their grace.
Suddenly, Jean noticed something. The Protectors seemed like they were just charging forward, decimating everyone in their way, but as she looked down from God Mode, she realized the Protectors were actually going straight for the center of the armada.
There stood one of the largest ships in the armada. Jean could only assume it was the command ship.
That was strange. It would be unlikely that a fleet as large as this would be crippled by a single stab to the heart, but Jean kept her mouth shut and her mind open. She knew her weaknesses, and she wasn’t afraid to admit it.
Ship after ship crumbled before the Protectors. The armor of the Protectors were painted green with the blood of their victims. The command ship might have noticed something wrong, but it was too late. Its size meant moving it for just an inch required the energy to power a city. That was why, in just moments, the first group of Protectors has already jumped into the ship, and the command ship was still making baby steps at the spot.
Instead of slaughtering the hundreds of thousands of Balius on the vessel and destroying the command structure, the Protectors simply defended their position and held their ground.
And then the second group of Protectors arrived. And then the third.
Before long, the entire Fifth Company was inside the capital ship. 1,000 white armored figures easily blended into the miles and miles of the command ship.
The Balius armada might have sensed what was going on, because it started opening fire on its own command cruise. Yet their valiant sacrifice was useless. Explosions appeared throughout the ship, but neither they nor the endless waves of Balius charges did anything to disturb the plan of the Protectors.
Armies and armies perished under apocalyptic flames and lightning. Flames were fine, but how could there be lightning inside a sealed vessel was something that could take physicists whole lives to figure out.
One Protector waved his hand. A legion of Balius infantry collapsed into tiny squares of chopped flesh.
All 100 Reapers and Reapresses came together. Jean watched as they summoned their weapons. Some had scythes. Some had lances. Some had swords. One even had a wand. But whatever weapon it was, they all had one thing in common: they were all surrounded by a dark cloud.
A cloud of souls.
All the Reapers and Reapresses raised their weapons. The clouds came out of the tips and converged together. It was as if a storm was approaching. Jean turned around and saw the Balius were attacking like crazy, but the rest of the 900 Protectors held their ground easily.
The eyes of the Reapers and Reapresses were pitch black.
With a final thrust from the Reaper weapons, Jean felt an invisible wave of energy washing over the ship. Shivers covered her spine. Even she, as an observer, could feel the menace of the attack. She quickly turned around and checked out the Balius infantry.
What could this be? Did it melt all the Balius or turn them into harmless lambs or poisoned them or suffocated them? The Protectors could slaughter legions with the snap of a finger. What could they do with the combined force of a hundred men?
Unsurprisingly, every Balius on the ship was dead. Their bodies laid lifelessly on the floor. Every single one of them, up to the commander of the armada and down to an unarmed janitor. What was really odd was that there was no sign of struggle. They didn't die because their heart stopped or their heads were cut off or their bodies were no longer. They died because they died. That was it.
Their cause of death was...death.
Death came for them.
Wait a second...Jean suddenly pulled herself out of that vessel. As she traveled across the entire Balius armada, she realized something.
The entire armada was destroyed.
Not a single ship was destroyed in that blast, but the entire armada was.
The same wave that changed the status of the Balius on the command ship from alive to dead washed over the entire Balius armada. That must be why the Protectors went straight for the command ship. They didn't want to take out the Balius High Command. They merely hoped to have a staging area where their attack could cover the entire enemy battle group.
The plan worked. The Balius Dominion had 20,000 ships. It had a billion combatants. Jean could see thousands of starfighters in the hangar of every capital ship. Hundreds of thousands more were scattered between the fleets. They were enough to wear out the Protectors. If what Jean heard was true, then the Protectors couldn’t afford an exchange like that.
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But...none of those 20,000 ships or one billion combatants did anything. All it took was a single strike, and they were gone. The ships were still intact, but their pilots have perished. There were still tens of thousands of Balius walkers and fighters, but the pilots to man them weren’t as functional.
Now, Jean truly understood what Assistant meant when it said the Reapers attack the souls directly. Strip away the souls, and no matter how many layers of metal were between the victim and the Reaper, the deaths were already certain.
As the Protectors warped away victoriously and the recording ended, Jean turned back to the Assistant.
“Tell me about the last strike.”
“The Balius were scientifically advanced, so conventional methods would have been ineffective. During the initial engagement, the Reapers harvested the souls of tens of thousands of Balius. They used the Power of Death to enslave and enhance those souls, turning them into wraiths. Wraiths are powerful supernatural beings. They can’t exist for long, but with the Power of Death, they can form a storm and cross large distance quickly. Every Balius soul they touched was washed out of its body and taken along by the storm. The Balius Dominion has never encountered this kind of attack. They were powerless against it.”
“Can it be stopped?”
“Yes, but it has to be via mystic methods. No firearm or energy blast can touch a wraith. If the Reaper is weak enough, then the wraiths he summons can be easily scorched through. But in this case, facing a hundred Reapers, most enemies, even with the proper means, will still be overwhelmed.”
Jean nodded.
As the simulation ended, Jean opened her eyes back in the Arena. At this point, her eyes were already set on the Reapress upgrade. She has had sufficient information. Her current way simply wouldn’t work in the long run. Her primal zerg evolution could no longer follow her footsteps. She needed more power, and becoming a Reapress and wielding the Power of Death was obviously a good choice.
However, she didn't go straight to the SSS. Rather, she entered the Simulation Room.
“Simulate a Protector Reapress.”
She wanted to see the full extent of a Reapress’s power compared to her own forces.
Once again, Jean had the simulation room create everything she would have for the next mission. All of a sudden, a fleet of B-1s, B-2s, and Capitalguards flew in the air, but this time, they weren’t the main course. The main course was the ship in the middle of the Wardens and Purifiers. 100 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide, it made the battlecruisers and Capitalguards look like a group of children.
The Worldship.
Its hull shined of green light. Jean had the simulations worldship powered by a green crystal.
“Attack.” Jean waved her hand and issued the order.
Her fleet complied. The first wave of attacks were done by the runed crossbows. The legacy of the Shieldbearers, mounted on Jean’s hounds, sent runed arrow after runed arrow at the Protector’s direction.
The Reaper didn't flinch.
All things must die.
Runes can be exhausted.
Metal can be corroded.
The Power of Death merely accelerates the process.
As the runed arrows closed in, they started transforming. Ten meters away from the Reaper, and the runes have lost all their energy. Five meters away, the alloy that composed of the arrows corroded as if they have been chipped away for millions of years. Two meters away, all the arrows were returned to dust.
One meter away, the dust were reduced to nothingness.
But Jean wasn’t done. As the arrows were stopped, the Capitalguards started. Energy blast after energy blast were generated from the rune energies and launched at the Reaper.
All things must die.
Energy can be depleted.
Ten meters, the blasts were half the size. Five meters, one third. Two meters, one tenth.
One meter, the blasts were completely gone.
Before Jean could do anything else, the Reaper took a step forward. All of a sudden, behind his Protector mask, his eyes turned pitch black.
The next second, Jean felt herself losing control of her body. She resisted, but it was futile. Her thoughts drifted further and further away. The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was her worldship firing a green energy blast at the Protector, but that blast didn't make it one meter away from the ship before fading away.
Around the worldship, her entire fleet was falling onto the ground. Runes have gone lifeless. Precious metal that composed the ships were rusty and crumbling. Despite being lifeless, these ships were “killed” by the Power of Death.
All things must come to an end.
When Jean regained conscious again, she was back in the Arena.
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Reaper/Reapress
Cost: 25,000 coins
Description: Grants the user the Power of Death, one of the ultimate powers of the Infinite Realms.
Warning: The process of transformation has a fatality rate of 98.9%. Proceed at your own risk.
It didn't take Jean long to find what she was looking for. The Reapress upgrade.
The description part was short and concise, but that was a trend Jean noticed with all the products at the SSS. Whether because they didn't bother to or because they didn't want to give the Voyagers everything, the Protectors and their identification systems only gave a brief explanation of the products they were selling. If the Voyagers wanted to know, they needed to explore.
Thankfully, Jean knew exactly why she should buy it. Visiting the Memorium certainly counted as a form of explanation.
Jean’s eyes skipped across the cost number. The upgrade costed 25,000 coins, which was a huge amount. She only got 1,000 coins from her recruit mission. She suspected if she went the standard Voyager path, she couldn’t afford the price even with a dozen missions.
But the coins weren’t the only reason why Jean has never faced a Reaper or a Reapress Voyager throughout her days in the Voyager Corps. The 98.9% death rate was. Voyagers were survivors. They have committed countless atrocities, and they were willing to commit countless more if it meant they could live another day. Betting their lives on the 1.1% survival rate wasn’t something any one of them would do. If someone could afford the 25,000 coins, they could also afford a much safer upgrade. In a world where coins could buy you almost anything, the rich were never desperate.
Jean was a little hesitant. She knew she needed to enhance herself, but the question was whether the Reapress upgrade was worth it. She had other options. She had enough coins to be a good assassin or psychic or mage. She had more than one path.
She silently did the math.
Take a step back and live to see another day, or move forward and face almost certain death, just fighting for a glimpse of a chance to live.
Suddenly, Jean’s thoughts went to Adam. The man was furious. If he had a chance to take down a Protector, he would see his soul to the devil for it, but as far as she could see, even the devil was no match for the Protectors.
This made Jean think. Sure, she could move slowly and maybe live to see her powers amplified several times, but what good would that do? It would make no difference to the Protectors. No matter how good an assassin or a mage she was, the Protectors could literally crush a world with ease.
Ultimately, she would be powerless.
She needed to gain power. It was a code, a law, encoded in her very genes. It was carved into the deepest and darkest corner of her soul. She would not tolerate living as a weakling when she had a shot at seizing power.
The next second, without a sense of doubt, she tapped on the purchase key on the interface.