Chapter 900


    Something about Anrades star felt wrong. Varghese wouldnt quite go so far as to say <em>tainted</em>, because that might imply that the whole of the star was affected. While the Trigold Cluster certainly had some worryingly powerful moments over the course of the war, the tremendous size of even the smallest stars made it rather difficult to actually modify the entirety of its essence.


    Instead, here the star itself was more slippery or off bnce. It was a disruption meant not for the star, but for <em>him</em>. Like a high pitched vibration in the back of his mind. At the start of the war, Varghese might not have been able to ovee something like that. But hed experienced so many new things since the start of the war all courtesy of them.


    He never <em>wanted</em> to experience having a bound star destroyed again. Even though it was a new connection, it greatly disrupted his cultivation. And of course theter attack on Egnos star, disrupting the star and attempting to create some sort of sympathetic destruction of other bound stars that was actually worse. But hed learned much more about connections to stars, and had a stronger bond there.


    This one would only slow him down a little bit. He pushed past the disruption, searching for anything hidden behind it but all he could feel was a healthy star. As he began to bind the star, his first active use of its power was to attempt to obliterate the hindrance. He wasnt sure what sort of material could survive inside a star, but it held its form well.


    If that was the case then he would simply have to expel it from the star. He couldnt be certain that melting it inside the star wouldnt be a mistake of some sort. It could be the actual trap. Convection currents gathered, pushing the source of the disruption towards the surface where a sr re sted out a metallic sphere, carved with runes. How one would carve runes in a formation that could survive in the belly of a sun was beyond him, but he would have experts look at itter.


    For the moment, he directed it into a partial orbit where it would drift for some months without trouble. They could pick it up after the battle for this system was over.


    The process for Varghese had taken significantly longer than expected, to the point that the rest of the forces were already converging on Anrade by the time Varghese began his return. He left the small fleet assigned to him with the strange object, just in case there was something more to it that they had to watch out for.


    Iing enemy fleets were predicted to be several days out still. But with their current forces, it wouldnt take them a single day to pierce through the barriers around Anrade. And unlike Egnos, they hadnt withdrawn their best cultivators from the Void Scrying Sect.


    Then again, they had more than a few factors that made it more difficult for the Void Scrying Sect to predict them. Aside from all of those theyd already killed and the civil war, there were a few important factors. First were Nthanda and the void ants, who did not affect the flow of natural energy in the same way normal cultivators might. And then there were the stronger Assimtion cultivators like Devon. He was nearly at the Enrichment stage, and while that in some way might make his actions <em>more</em> obvious to diviners it also meant slight changes in his actions could easily skew their predictions. They also had ships with anti-divinatory formations flying among them.


    With all that ounted for, perhaps it exined the dy of enemy reinforcements. But even if they had been minutes away, it likely wouldnt matter.


    The barrier was broken through immediately by the Great Queen, leading a group of void ants. The barrier took a moment to close behind them, but at that point The Wayfarer had already taken several shots. The lead gunner Neven was one of several ascension cultivators bound to the Ascension-ss ship. With the power of the ship augmented by General Gabri and the others it was <em>also</em> equivalent to ate stage Assimtion cultivator.


    Each shot from the main cannon sted a hole through lower defensive barriers, targeting key points of their formations that had been picked out. Varghese could already see the barrier wobbling.


    Local fleets were alreadyunched and rapidly made their way towards the wavering section of barrier as it slowly tried to reform. But that wasnt even the end of things. Chains wove around the edge of the hole, keeping open a tunnel a hundred meters wide which allowed The Wayfarer to target more key locations. Soon, the chains became unnecessary as the barrier began to retract, being nothing more than a thinyer for several kilometers in every direction.


    It was only a tiny portion of the as a whole, but it provided an opening for fleets to begin breaking through, after which they could assault the formations from inside the barrier and precipitate its destruction. That wasnt happening on just one side of the, but all around it, vulnerabilities spreading as the local cultivators tried to deal with all of the breaches.


    Varghese crashed enemy ships into each other where he could, drawing upon the power of the local sun. He didnt even have to attack them individually.


    So far, there were no signs they had some sort of superweapon to get them out of this fix. After just a few hours, theary barrier had all but copsed. The various sects most involved with the Void Scrying Sect were being sieged at their numerous locations around the. Their Life Transformation cultivators were falling one by one, something they couldnt make up for easily.


    Twin Soul Sect members at first didnt appear worried about their inevitable demise. After all, should they perish they were promised a better position in the upper realms. Whether or not those promises were exactly true or not might be another question, but they certainly believed that.


    Until they realized that a portion of the fleets was creating their <em>own</em> barrier around the, one meant to catch specifically the souls of the Twin Soul Sect members- wherever the attackers couldnt directly destroy their souls. Both the Shining Cooperative and Lower Realms Alliance had no tolerance for the Twin Soul Sects continued existence. If they wished to steal from others to achieve some sort of reincarnation, that hope at life was the thing that should be taken from them first.


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    The battle was thergest Varghese had participated in, with many thousands of ships on both sides, and many more cultivators. Even if it wasnt the whole poption of the against them, there were still tens or hundreds of thousands of members of the most prominent enemy sects.


    The reinforcement fleets did not arrive before the sects were leveled. Meanwhile, anywhere not directly associated with them was left more or less intact. There were asional ships that had crashed into their cities, but there was no intent to purge the poption as a whole. Instead, things would be just like on Egnos- though they held off on proper upation for the moment, to determine conclusively what the enemy fleets were up to. Because if they came to the system, they would dly be met by the natives of the lower realms.


    -----


    After his first container catch, Anton soon got his second, third, fifth, and tenth. Perhaps with the thousands of systems in the upper realms it did not appear arge expense to them to send so much, but the Trigold Cluster also wasnt known for its generosity- not even to its own people. Most likely, the lower realms was in need of the various weapons and other supplies to continue the war properly, and they would have none of them.


    He heard about the sess of the assault on Anrade. A few months passed, and with the retrieval ships having dried up Anton knew they were onto him. At least, they realized that <em>something</em> was happening. There were a total of three months with not even a single ship- outside of his alliesing to pick up bundles.


    Then he felt it. A vast number of ships approaching. Thousands of them- though most were sized for a single person. He wondered what their purpose was. Or rather, what they <em>thought</em> their purpose was. Because clearly they werent equipped to face him, in particr.


    Interster ships could cover a lightyear in a single day. Less than that if they were particrly quick, several times slower for certain bulky ones. These were moving on the faster side of things. They were converging on Naewu, his star. He had no idea if they had the capacity to destroy it, but either way he supposed he should head them off.


    Anton pushed himself close to his limits- though as he was heading <em>towards</em> one of his bound stars he had no worries about exhausting himself. He strode through subspace, keeping tabs on them as he moved. He cut them off about a day out from Naewu, approaching close enough to project his energy over the fleet to speak to them.


    He had a vain hope that negotiation might be possible. What business do you have here? Anton saw a myriad of attacks fire upon his location. However, even with thousands of ships they could only cover a very small portion of space. Anton took a small step to the side, leaving most of their attacks focused on a point kilometers away from his new location. If youre going to be rude like that, I might not want to talk. More attacks- and some of the others were curving towards his location. If youre just here to fight, know that Im going to kill <em>all</em> of you. This is yourst chance.


    Their response was another volley of attacks. So Anton turned towards Naewu, fleeing closer. Or at least, <em>appearing</em> to flee. As it was, they were a bit too distant for him to properly fight. Avoiding attacks was one thing, but hed exhaust himself eventually, especially if he had to take them down.


    Anton sighed to himself. Sensing all of the lives on the ships, he didnt want to kill them all. But if they were going toe for him, he couldnt help it. And letting them leave to kill members of his alliance was no good.


    Anton slowly began to pull away, and they stoppedunching attacks. He continued to gain distance, but his pursuers didnt stop. Perhaps they suspected he would stop and fight around his star, but they seemed to have an error in their calctions. Most likely, they thought he had a simr strength to Varghese. He couldnt be sure they were actually aware of his bound star, but it seemed they had <em>some</em> way to detect that.


    When he arrived at the optimal distance from Naewu, they were about a tenth of a lightyear behind him. That meant it would take them over around two hours to catch up to him. And that also meant there was no possible way they could escape. Anton shook his head. Such a waste of life, but they were most likely responsible for much <em>more</em> death, either with their own hands or at the hands of their predecessors exterminating their currently upieds.


    Two hours to reach Anton, perhaps half that if they could move more quickly. And they might be able to attack him from a bit further but not any significant fraction of a lightyear.


    Anton took his first shot. If there were five thousand ships, he would only have to shoot once every second to take them out. But he was slightly more limited than that, since his attacks needed at least <em>some</em> time to reach them, even piercing through subspace with their base velocity near to lightspeed. He could cut down hours to minutes but the closer they got, the faster he could attack. And of course, Anton could control a few hundred arrows at once easily enough.


    Instead of creating his energy bows, he just fired arrows sequentially. He took a casual quarter second for each shot, until he reached his maximum amount of simultaneous control. Which was quite significant, now that he was in Enrichment.


    Ships began to fall, and he fired more arrows. Each one would take out one of the smaller ships, and two or three could take out arger one. By the time the enemy fully grasped what was going on, hed taken out a tenth of their number. Yet they continued onward until hed taken out a quarter of them, while they were still half an hour away from catching up. At that point, they were certain he wasnt going to tire and began to retreat. But he hadnt picked that distance arbitrarily. He hadnt begun at the limit of his range. Indeed, he could probably urately target them at about quarter a lightyear.


    That was certainly an extreme distance, butpared to shooting into the next system over it was barely a few percent. He couldnt regrly <em>hit</em> anything between systems yet, but at a small fraction of that distance he could manage quite a bit more.


    Now that they were retreating, however, he was merciful. He simply shot out their engines- or their sails, for the ships in that style. Whatever formations let them elerate, and anything that would let them move faster than light.


    They would have a chance at life. Except for the Twin Soul Sect members among them, of course. Spectral energy was reserved for them. And the rest could kill themselves, if they wanted to die so badly.