From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 839 Amber Prays to the Gods

This was a clash that defies description.

In the psionic dimension, the will of Colfax is a boundless golden ocean, ancient and vast, carrying a pressure powerful enough to crush stars.

As a member of the Jeram Thirteen Council, he has witnessed the rise and fall of countless civilizations, and his psychic powers and will have been tempered through countless trials.

Amber's will, however, is like a reef that stands firm in the storm.

The golden ocean roared and crashed in, trying to completely submerge and crush this arrogant reef.

Amber's consciousness was instantly filled with immense pain and countless chaotic hallucinations.

He witnessed the birth and rise of civilizations, and their descent into dust before the Jeram people.

Those were fragments of memories from Colfax's long life, each one carrying a despairing weight.

"Kneel down, you worm! Feel your insignificance!"

Colfax's will, like a divine oracle, echoed deep within Amber's soul.

In theory, Colfax's psychic power and willpower are superior to Amber's, and the psychic clash between the two should be decided quickly.

But Colfax discovered that when facing Amber, the power gap between them was somehow somehow brought to the same level.

A human being who can fight to a draw with one of the Thirteen Council members in terms of psychic abilities.

This was a situation Colfax had never imagined.
Meanwhile, Amber, under immense pressure, also began her next move.

He didn't have time to think about why he was able to fight his opponent on equal terms.
"Lilith! Connect the entire fleet's real-time tactical data stream to my consciousness!"

In the next instant, the operating parameters of tens of thousands of warships, the trajectory of each main gun, and the causal chain of the entire battlefield—a massive torrent of data large enough to overwhelm any supercomputer—was transformed into a tidal wave of logic and emotion through Lilith's assistance and poured into Amber's consciousness.

If Colfax's will was a pure and powerful energy, then Amber's response was a mudslide carrying countless shards of glass and steel needles.

Chaotic, complex, yet incredibly sharp!
The golden ocean collided with this data-driven mudslide.

In this battle, Colfax experienced 'surprise' for the second time.

He can understand energy, he can understand will, but he cannot comprehend the 'information' contained within this torrent that belongs to mortals in an instant.

Fear, anger, hope, despair, tactical deception, firepower allocation, engine overload warnings—these 'distractions' that he considered to be the 'minds' of so-called inferior beings pierced his pure consciousness like countless poisonous thorns.

"What's this?"

Cole-Fax's will froze for a moment.

For the first time, his perspective, which had been one of looking down on all living beings, was lowered, and he was forced to deal with these "noises" that he considered meaningless.

God's blind spot does not stem from a lack of power, but from arrogance.

He never imagined that a "mortal" would fight against him in this way.

It's now!

Blood gushed from Amber's eyes and nostrils, and his brain was nearly boiling from overload, but he seized that one-in-a-million second opportunity.

At the most intense moment of the clash between the two sides' psychic energies, he used Colfax to reverse-locate his own actions and also precisely locked onto the source of the other side's will—that flagship that resembled a throne!

With his last ounce of strength, he let out a roar towards the being whose soul was connected to his.

"Lilith!"

"Fire!"

No extra instructions are needed.

As Amber roared, the 'New Requiem' hidden in the shadows behind a distant star field had already completed its second charge.

Its energy has reached its peak at this moment.

Another beam of pure light, powerful enough to tear the universe apart, pierced the darkness.

But this time, its goal is no longer to carry out a large-scale cleanup.

Instead, it was like a spear of judgment, gathering all its energy and precisely aimed at the flagship of the Vanguard fleet—the Throne of Judgment—that Amber had locked onto!

Lilith: "This shot pierces through the teeth of a star!!!"

Wherever the light spear passed, all the Forerunner warships affected along the way were instantly vaporized.

Colfax snapped out of his shock at the psionic clash and immediately sensed a deadly threat from the real universe.

"defense!!"

His will transformed into a tangible shield, instantly adding thousands of layers of energy barriers to the space around the flagship. The dark golden hull of the entire warship shone with unprecedented brilliance, almost turning into a small sun.

This is the ultimate defense for the council members' vehicles, personally overseen by one of the 13 strongest Jerams, and theoretically strong enough to withstand the explosion of a supernova.

However, it faces a supreme blow from which human civilization has staked everything.

The spear of light collided violently with the shield of the 'Throne of Judgment'.

There was no sound, only a pure, all-consuming white light.

In the center of the white light, Colfax's energy shield, like glass struck by a heavy hammer, began to crack wildly, spreading like a spiderweb, starting from a single point.

one second.

two seconds.

Cracks covered the entire shield.

In the third second, the shield shattered!

A devastating torrent of gamma rays struck the hull of the Throne of Judgment squarely.

Unlike other warships, this mountain-like behemoth did not instantly perish. Under the onslaught of the beams of light, its sturdy hull began to peel away, melt, and decompose inch by inch.

Bow, bridge, energy core.
Under the shocked gaze of everyone in the combined fleet, the flagship of the Pioneer Fleet, the throne that symbolized the majesty of the gods, was forcibly cut in half!
The wrecked ship tumbled through space, violent streams of energy gushing from its fractures, like a decapitated beast making its final, death throes.

The entire battlefield fell silent once again.

The once seamless energy network of the Pioneer Fleet collapsed instantly due to the loss of control from the central node.

The deadly 'light spears' that were sweeping across this space came to an abrupt halt.

Their offensive has stopped.

Inside the command center, Franklin, Agnes, Sally, and all the other holographic images froze as they stared blankly at the shocking result on the star map.

They damaged the car of a pioneer council member.

They really did pull a 'god' off his throne.

After a brief silence, the combined fleet's communication channel erupted with an uncontrollable, thunderous roar of joy and cheers!

"We did it!"

"Victory belongs to the league!"

On the bridge of the Endless, after shouting out his last command, Amber's body went limp and he fell straight backward, where he was caught by the medical personnel who had been standing by his side.

Blood was flowing from all seven orifices of his body, and his vital signs were extremely weak, but there was a relieved smile on his lips.

He won this crucial first move.

But he also knew very well that this was just the beginning, and the war was far from over.

Just as the morale of the combined fleet reached its peak and they were preparing to press their advantage,

From the depths of the severely damaged wreckage of the Throne of Judgment, a consciousness colder, more ancient, and devoid of emotion than that of Colfax slowly awakened.

It showed no anger, no surprise, but calmly surveyed the entire battlefield, assessing the losses.

Then, a faint consciousness resounded simultaneously in the minds of all the pioneer warships and Salih.

"The Arbiter Colfax is ashamed of his arrogance."

“I, ‘Secretary’ Isriel, shall now assume command of the fleet.”

"Assess threat level. Upgrade to 'Extinction'." That cold, indifferent consciousness announced the arrival of 'Scribe' Isriel.

It was like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing the cheers that had just begun to rise on the Combined Fleet's communication channels.

On the bridge, the smiles on Franklin and Agnes' holographic images had not yet completely faded before they froze.

Salih's body trembled slightly; she knew better than anyone the weight the word 'scribe' carried in the Jeram civilization.

If the 'arbiter' is the sword of the council, then the 'scribe' is its brain.

They are responsible for recording everything about civilization and deducing the course of all historical branches; they are the ultimate embodiment of logic and reason of the Jeram people.

The value of a clerk far exceeds that of a judge.

Even more frightening is that the appearance of Isriel means that, according to the Forerunners, the nature of this war has been escalated.

"warn!"

Lilith's voice echoed in Amber's mind, carrying for the first time an uncontrollable, sharp warning.

"The energy reaction in the warp field is expanding abnormally! Similar follow-up signals have been detected flowing in! The exact number cannot be calculated!"

Before the words were even finished, the dark singularity that had been torn open in the center of the battlefield did not shut down because the flagship was severely damaged. Instead, it expanded outward in an even more violent manner.

It was no longer a 'portal', but a breach that was pouring floodwaters into the real universe.

More pioneering behemoths emerged from that bottomless darkness.

They are no longer simply mountain ranges; there are also more ferocious attack ships resembling the skeletons of deep-sea behemoths, and motherships with unknown functions whose surfaces are covered with countless honeycomb-like openings.

Ten thousand ships.

50,000 ships.

One hundred thousand ships.

In the end, even Lilith's tactical counter turned into a blurry, wildly jumping string of gibberish.

Quantity has lost its meaning.

When the series of spatial fluctuations caused by the warp subsided, looking out through the bridge windows of the 'Endless', all that could be seen in everyone's field of vision, besides the flashing identification lights of friendly ships, was the dark golden hull of the Pioneer.

They filled every inch of space, obscuring distant stars, forming an endless steel dome constructed of metal and energy.

The huge breach that was just made in the 'city wall' now seems like nothing more than a drop in the ocean, ridiculously insignificant.

Those were pioneers who directly projected their world from another universe.

The more than 20,000 giant ships that were there before were merely the vanguard of this mobile world.

The combined fleet of tens of thousands of warships appeared disproportionately small in the face of this newly emerged, endless steel canopy.

The tactical victory they had just achieved, and the pride they felt in having dethroned the gods, now seemed like an incredibly ironic joke.

despair.

A pure, emotionless despair permeated tens of thousands of warships, gripping the throats of every crew member.

When a civilization already possesses a technologically advanced, disruptive edge, and also has an unparalleled numerical advantage...
Any tactics, any courage, all seemed so pale and powerless.

Lying on the medical platform, Amber's body was suppressed from collapse by a forcibly injected stabilizer, but his consciousness had never been so clear.

He could sense that along with that steel dome descended twelve new, powerful consciousnesses, as cold and heavy as black holes.

Each one of them was no less capable than Colfax, whom he had barely managed to defeat with all his might.

When he had previously clashed with Colfax using psychic powers, he vaguely sensed a peculiar advantage: when Colfax's vast psychic power impacted his will, it was always weakened and distorted by some quality that he himself could not understand.

But so what?
One person might be able to barely fight against another.

But now, thirteen of them have arrived.

No, there were twelve, and one of them was crippled.

At the same time, an unprecedented sense of powerlessness surged up, eroding his will that was exhausted from working overtime.

He could even sense that one of the consciousnesses—the consciousness belonging to 'Secretary' Isriel—had noticed him.

The consciousness did not attack him, but merely gently 'touched' his mental barrier, like a biologist observing a butterfly pinned to a specimen board.

Then, Isriel's will resounded calmly in the hearts of all intelligent beings on the entire battlefield.

"Project Fireseed, huh?"

"That's a really nostalgic design."

"According to the Root Network, this is the 69771st time that a civilization has appeared before us, attempting to activate this contingency plan."

"None of them succeeded."

Amber's pupils contracted sharply.

Plan B, the "spark" they thought was top secret and their last hope, was casually revealed by the enemy at the very beginning of the war.

A sense of humiliation and fear, like standing naked before an enemy, gripped his heart.

"Now, I announce your fate."

Isriel's voice remained devoid of emotion.

"We will eliminate all your armed forces in thirty minutes."

"Then, over three standard days, locate and eliminate all your life-bearing planets."

"Finally, we will capture all remaining individuals in this universe who carry information about your civilization and eradicate them at their source."

"Resistance is pointless."

"Your history ends here."

These words are not a threat or intimidation.

It was like a pre-printed autopsy report, calmly read out before the victim died.

At this moment, even Amber, who had been holding on to her beliefs, felt a wave of dizziness.

"Now, let's begin cleaning."

As Isriel's voice rang out again, the boundless steel sky lit up the next moment.

Hundreds of thousands of white spears of light ceased their precise targeting and instead transformed into a devastating rain of death that covered the entire battlefield without leaving any blind spots.

The 'ghost walk' tactic, which had secured the Combined Fleet's victory in previous battles, was completely rendered ineffective in the face of this saturated and insane attack.

Because no matter where you jump to, there will be hundreds or thousands of light spears waiting for you there.

The newly built warships had just completed a short-range tactical jump and were not yet stable when they were pierced by hundreds of light spears at the same time.

Its thick armor and multi-layered shields couldn't even withstand it for a moment before turning into a ball of violently expanding energy, which was then completely evaporated by more light spears.

The outer destroyer squadrons attempted to break through in a dense formation, but they crashed into the wall of light spears and vanished without a trace.

The Elven warships, under the personal command of the Phoenix King, wove magnificent psionic shields, but under the endless bombardment of energy, they only lasted a few more seconds before following in the footsteps of the others.

Casualty reports are no longer just data streams.

Instead, it's the friendly force icons on the tactical star map that turn gray instantly and then disappear completely.

Amber struggled to sit up, but was pressed firmly onto the medical platform by an invisible force.

He watched helplessly as the fleet he had built with his own hands was slaughtered and wiped out in droves.

Anger, resentment, and a sense of powerlessness he had never experienced before injected into his heart like venom.

He even started praying to anything that might exist in the universe.

But the cold universe offered no response.

There is no god here.
But there are other things...
(End of this chapter)