Chapter 85: Planetary Annihilator
Chapter 85: Planetary Annihilator
The ten descending Sages hovered in midair, their outstretched hands glowing with an array of lethal, multicolored ancient magic and techniques. Yet, the spells remained uncast, frozen in their palms by a sudden, primordial instinct of self-preservation.
The pressure radiating from the figure standing inside the crater had shifted entirely. It was no longer the desperate, fading aura of a dying human warrior. It was an expansive, suffocating weight that felt as though a miniature star had just ignited upon the ruined cobblestones of Atlantis.
They stared in a mixture of horror and profound confusion at the iridescent purple armor that now encased Victor. Its surface was alive, rippling with a fluid, predatory rhythm that defied the laws of ordinary metallurgy.
Thorns as sharp as mythical weapons lined the pauldrons, and pulsing veins of pure mana flowed beneath the bark-like plates, illuminating the dim, dust-choked plaza with a terrifying brilliance.
The sheer majesty of the Sage-rank Cosmic Vine sent an unmistakable message to the masters of the arcane: the entity before them was superior to them in every conceivable way.
Victor did not move. He did not raise his hands, nor did he assume a fighting stance. He simply stood there, a silent spectator within his own protective shell. He didn’t need to do anything. The moment the Sages’ killing intent registered against the armor’s foreign consciousness, the Cosmic Vine responded on its own.
With a deafening roar that sounded like tearing space, the armor erupted. Countless thick, vibrant purple branches burst from Victor’s back and sides, stretching outward like the appendages of a mythic kraken.
They moved with a fluid, impossible speed that completely bypassed the air resistance of the heavy atmosphere. The sky above the plaza was instantly blotted out by a dense, shifting canopy of cosmic wood.
The ten Sages, snapping out of their daze, unleashed their prepared techniques in a frantic, desperate volley. Searing beams of concentrated light, absolute zero frost, and disintegrating waves of raw mana slammed into the oncoming tide of wood.
But the results were catastrophic for the attackers. The ancient spells, capable of leveling mountains, simply shattered upon contact with the purple vines. The cosmic wood absorbed the elemental impacts, its iridescent surface shimmering slightly as it dissipated the energy into the void, completely unharmed.
Before the Sages could recast or scatter, the branches struck. It was not a battle; it was an execution of a different kind. The vine attacked all ten masters simultaneously, its branches splitting into thousands of smaller, needle-like tendrils that whipped through the air with agonizing precision.
A single swipe from a primary branch shattered a Sage’s ancient protective barrier like cheap glass. The blunt force trauma alone broke ribs and ruptured internal organs, sending the proud masters coughing up arcs of dark blood.
Each strike from the Cosmic Vine was laced with an alien, corrosive energy that bypassed magical defenses and targeted the physical form directly. When a branch grazed a Sage’s arm, the flesh immediately withered and tore, leaving deep, weeping gashes that refused to close.
The air filled with the desperate, agonized screams of the ten guardians. They tried to retreat, to fly higher into the safety of the upper atmosphere, but the vines pursued them like living shadows, relentlessly lashing, constricting, and tearing at their flesh. Blood gushed out in torrents, painting the white stone towers of the plaza in a gruesome crimson.
Inside the armor, isolated from the chaotic violence outside, Victor remained perfectly still. The living suit maintained a localized environment of absolute stability, filtering out the shockwaves and the screams.
Recognizing the brief reprieve bought by his new companion, Victor opened his storage ring with a flicker of his remaining mental strength. Ten crystal vials, glowing with a deep, concentrated emerald light, materialized before him. These were his top-grade healing potions, rare treasures he had hoarded for an absolute worst-case scenario.
He consumed them all in rapid succession, emptying the vials one by one.
The effect was instantaneous and violent. The high-concentration life force of the top-grade potions flooded his system like a tidal wave of pure rejuvenation.
The ruptured capillaries beneath his skin began to stitch themselves back together at an unnatural pace. The liquid fire burning through his nerves was replaced by a soothing, icy coolness as the damaged neural pathways were reconstructed.
As his vision cleared, Victor looked through the translucent purple visor of the armor at the ongoing slaughter. The ten Sages were already heavily injured, their elegant robes shredded, their bodies broken, and their faces pale from massive blood loss. They were completely overwhelmed, unable to find a single flaw or opening in the vine’s automated defense.
Yet, Victor felt no arrogance. His eyes remained colder than ice. He knew the history of Atlantis; he knew that twenty-one dead guardians and ten crippled Sages were only the vanguard of a civilization that had ruled for millennia.
The space stabilizing machine was still active, anchoring the fabric of reality around him. If he stayed here a minute longer, if these desperate bastards managed to adapt or unleash some hidden, prehistoric war machines from the depths of their vaults, he would be truly trapped.
His ultimate card, Time Stop, was locked away by the heavy toll on his soul. He had to leave immediately.
"Run. Take me out of the machine’s scanning field," Victor ordered, his voice echoing through the neural connection to the vine.
The Cosmic Vine acknowledged its master’s command instantly. Abandoning its offensive posture, the countless branches that had been terrorizing the Sages snapped back toward the central mass with a resounding crack.
In that brief fraction of a second, the sudden withdrawal left the heavily bleeding, disoriented Sages falling through the air like broken dolls, gasping for breath.
Before they could even register their survival, the cosmic armor compressed its energy. With a blinding flash of purple light and a shockwave that leveled the remaining pillars of the plaza, Victor vanished.
The speed was so immense that it left a vacuum behind, a vacuum that filled with a thunderous boom as he tore through the streets of the capital, a purple blur bypassing every defensive checkpoint in a heartbeat.
"Noo!" one of the injured Sages roared, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and limitless humiliation as he clutched a shattered shoulder.
He dragged himself up into the air, his eyes tracking the faint purple streak receding into the distance. "We cannot let him escape! We need to kill that bastard at all costs! Activate it! Use the planetary annihilator on him!"
The desperate, furious order was not spoken aloud; it was a high-frequency mental broadcast, amplified by the capital’s central array. The command detonated inside the minds of every citizen, soldier, and noble within the grand city of Atlantis, sending a collective shiver of dread through the population.
The planetary annihilator was a weapon of absolute last resort, a relic from the second civilization era.
Far above the ruined plaza, situated upon the floating terraces of the royal palace, the Emperor of Atlantis stood in absolute silence. Beside him stood his three strongest guards, men whose power transcended the ordinary Sages, figures who had remained motionless throughout the entire conflict, observing the destruction of their vanguard with calculating, unreadable expressions.
The Emperor’s gaze followed the purple streak that was rapidly approaching the outer perimeter of the capital’s scanning array. The sheer destruction of twenty-one ancient guardians was a catastrophic blow to the empire’s foundation, but the realization of what Victor represented was far worse.
A man who could survive a grand spell, slaughter the elites in seconds, and command an entity which could pummel sages like children was an existential threat that could not be allowed to breathe the same air as their civilization.
Finally, the Emperor’s eyes turned completely cold, devoid of any human emotion.
"Do it," the Emperor commanded, his voice a low, resonant baritone that brooked no argument. "He alone is enough to wipe out our empire otherwise. Erase him from existence."
The order was processed instantly by the central core of the city.
High above the grand metropolis, atop the peak of the highest, most ancient tower, a massive structural shift began. The crystalline spire, which had stood as a symbol of peace for millennia, split down the center. Massive gears of ancient, star-metal ground against one another, releasing a low-frequency hum that vibrated through the entire capital.
An enormous, obsidian-barreled cannon emerged from the heart of the tower. Its design was sleek, alien, and terrifyingly complex, covered in geometric runes that began to glow with a blinding, absolute white light.
The air around the tower began to warp and distort as the weapon drew immense amounts of power directly from the planet’s core, draining the capital’s grid to feed its insatiable hunger.
The massive barrel rotated with terrifying fluidity, tilting downward and sweeping across the vast expanse of the outer territories. Within milliseconds, the internal targeting matrix of the ancient weapon locked onto the vanishing figure of Victor, tracing the distinct, high-energy signature of the strange purple suit even as he reached the edge of the scanning field.
A cold, synthetic chime resonated within the control chamber of the grand tower, a sound that sealed the fate of the battlefield.
"Target confirmed."