Building Interstellar Empire With Universal Synthesis

Chapter 192: The Ancient One

Chapter 192: Chapter 192: The Ancient One

"FIREEEEEEEEEE!"

World King Ode roared in voice full of wrath as he watched the tactical monitors from his command ship.

His eyes were wide with a manic, cornered desperation. He would not surrender his crown to an outlander. He would rather burn the entire sector to ash.

"FIRE FIRE FIRE."

"Do not let them advance! Fire everything we have!"

Following his frantic command, the remaining military core of the Freedom Alliance finally snapped out of their paralyzing terror.

Driven by sheer survival instinct, the captains of hundreds of thousands of battle-scarred dreadnoughts and hundreds of colossal Titan-class command ships simultaneously slammed their hands onto their firing consoles.

Buzz! Buzz! Buzzz!

The synchronized, deafening hum of millions of overclocked plasma reactors vibrating in unison seemed to shake the very fabric of the space.

The absolute, suffocating darkness of space was instantly illuminated like a supernova.

And then, torrential ocean of crimson, azure, and emerald plasma beams erupted from the rebel blockade. It was the greatest concentration of firepower the Eximious Domain had ever produced in its centuries of existence.

The raw volume of the combined assault melted stray asteroids into slag and completely vaporized the floating debris of their own fallen ships as the apocalyptic wave crashed directly toward the Zenith Vanguard.

And then, from the surface of the planet below, the sky lit up with a beautiful, terrifying aurora, making it seem as though the stars themselves were bleeding.

For a brief, fleeting second, a fragile spark of hope ignited within the hearts of the rebel commanders. Surely, nothing in the known cosmos could possibly survive a direct barrage of that magnitude.

The titanic plasma wave violently swallowed the three Zenith LORD-class dreadnoughts, drowning them in a blinding inferno of destructive cosmic energy.

However, as the continuous barrage finally began to taper off and the blinding light faded back into the cold vacuum, that fragile spark of hope was instantly and brutally extinguished.

Humm! Hummm! Hummmm!

Around the massive Zenith warships, three hexagonal energy shields erupted from those three LORD class warships.

They created three distinct indestructible golden hexagons.

The Result?

The combined, desperate might of the Freedom Alliance’s finest military technology had not even caused the shield to ripple, let alone break.

The apocalyptic plasma beams had simply splashed against the barrier, instantly dissipating into harmless cosmic sparks upon contact.

The LORD shield was absolutely unbreakable. It was a flawless testament to Emperor Neo’s Universal Synthesis, turning raw cosmic force into an impenetrable defense.

Up on the command deck, Neo did not even blink at the dazzling light show outside his viewport. He just brushed a speck of imaginary dust from his sleeve.

Ahead, inside the command ship King Ode collapsed into his chair.

The manic wrath entirely disappeared from his face.

He looked at other World Kings faces.

In a grave, hollow voice, Ode finally spoke: "My dear friends... I think we have absolutely no choice left but to unseal the Ancient One."

At his suggestion, the entire room turned completely silent. The holographic monitors illuminating their terrified faces seemed to suddenly dim.

The World Kings trembled. Because they all knew exactly what those words meant.

King Velzad stood up in disbelief.

"Are you entirely out of your mind Ode?! The Ancient One? We swore a generational blood oath never to speak of it again! The White Dragon hates that abomination to its very core! If he finds out we unsealed it by breaking the Treaty of the Astral Peaks, he will hunt us down and kill us all himself!"

"Velzard is right," Queen Seraphina agreed. " "The White Dragon only spared our ancestors because we agreed to keep that primordial dragonil locked deep inside your Planet. To break the Treaty is to invite the absolute wrath of a celestial guardian."

"I do not care. Let the White Dragon come! Let him burn us! Do you not see the monitors, Seraphina? Look at the sky! We are already dead! Emperor Neo is not a man we can negotiate with. He is a cosmic Tyrant that completely ignores the natural laws of reality! The White Dragon’s wrath is a problem for tomorrow. The Zenith Empire is our apocalypse today!"

"But the Ancient One cannot be reasoned with, nor controlled. It feeds entirely on planetary life force, Ode! If we open the abyssal gates, it will devour Eximious-33 from the inside out before it even looks at the Zenith Vanguard. We will be unleashing a mindless plague that could consume the entire Outer Eximious!"

Ode scoffed, his eyes turning ominous red as if possessed.

"Hmph, a mindless plague is exactly what we need since conventional weapons are absolutely useless. We need a true monster to fight a Tyrant."

Saying that, Ode stepped toward the center of the room, looking around at the terrified rulers with a chilling glare.

"I’m sure if the Ancient One wakes, it will instantly sense the overwhelming cosmic energy radiating from the Zenith flagship. It will hunger for Neo’s absolute power. It will throw itself at the Vanguard to feed."

"And what happens to us?" Velzad demanded, his hands shaking.

Ode’s tone was completely ruthless while saying:

"I would rather see this entire star system consumed by a primordial beast than hand my crown over to a Zenith dog. Prepare the blood sacrifices. We are breaking the seal. Now."

Eximious-33.

The Royal Overseers descended deep underground, where they activated the sacrificial arrays.

The Seal holding the Ancient One was strong, but a flaw exists in everything that has ever been created.

"Get moving! The king demands your sacrifice!"

Thousands of Royal Priests were forcefully dragged into the formation.

"Ahhhh! Ahhh! Noooo!"

To their horror, their very lifeforce and soul force were violently drained, fed directly into the Seal-Breaking Arrays.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

With every activation of the arrays, another fragment of the Seal shattered. Soon, an ominous, crimson aura began to bleed through the deep planetary crust.

"Hieuuuuuuu..."

Alongside the shattering of the White Dragon’s Sea, a painful, resonant howl echoed from the World Core.

It knew its end was coming, and the end of its billions of inhabitants as well.

RUUUUUUUMBLEEEEEEEE!

The collapse of Eximious-33 wasn’t just witnessed by the Freedom Alliance; it was witnessed by the Zenith Army, too.

And everyone’s face turned pale after seeing this.

Even Neo narrowed his eyes, becoming serious for the first time.

The energy signature radiating from the ominous entity triggered Neo’s danger instinct.

Soon, the creature’s true form revealed itself before everyone.

It was a Colossal Black Dragon, almost equal to half of the LORD class. In simpler words, it was the size of a minor world itself.

Its skin was dark beyond the conventional sense, its twin eyes were like two abysses, its horns were curvy like the branches of the World Tree itself, and its wings spanned thousands of miles.

Both sides were horrified after seeing this creature.

"What in the seven hells is that thing?" a Zenith archer screamed, dropping his bow. "Are we actually supposed to fight a god?"

"Retreat! Get the fleet out of here now!" a commander roared over the open frequency.

"But we cannot move! The spatial pressure just fried our navigation arrays!"

Across the shattered terrain, a grizzled Freedom Alliance veteran spat a mouthful of blood onto the metallic ground.

"Those scummy bastards! Which fucking lunatic dared to break the planetary seal?"

"Curse the Royal Overseers! Those sick sons of bitches sacrificed billions of innocent lives just to summon this walking apocalypse! They doomed every single one of us!"

"May their rotten souls burn in the deepest pit of the abyss!" a medic shrieked, clutching his head.

"We are dead! We are completely screwed!"

Discipline shattered entirely.

The elite Zenith Army and the rugged Freedom Alliance forgot their bitter war in an instant.

Even veterans and fresh recruits alike threw down their weapons, weeping and screaming a unified chorus of venomous curses at the arrogant kings who had unleashed this nightmare.

"Please! Someone kill the World Kings! Someone rip their damn hearts out to see if they are black!"

But the screaming meant nothing under the suffocating shadow of the Black Dragon.

---

[POV Change]

I dropped my longbow. I didn’t want to fight.

It did not matter anymore. Above us, the sky was entirely gone, replaced by the midnight scales of the Colossal Black Dragon.

Then, the beast opened its jaws. I braced for a wall of apocalyptic fire, but what came was infinitely worse.

Black Hole.

That creature unleashed singularity at the center of its throat, exerting a gravitational pull of unimaginable magnitude.

Suddenly, my stomach lurched. The gravity stabilizer in my ship wailed a critical warning before violently tearing offline.

The very deadnought I was on, groaned and fractured under a gravitational pull of impossible magnitude.

"Hold on!" I screamed, desperately digging my armored gauntlets deep into metal frame..

But there was nothing left to hold onto.

We were slowly dragged into the maw of the Abyssal Beast.

Beside me, Sergeant Darren shrieked as his grip failed. He shot upward into the sky, joining thousands of screaming soldiers, broken rocks, and shattered fighter jets swirling helplessly into the absolute dark of the dragon’s throat.

My fingers also slipped soon after. The metal framed crumbled to dust beneath me.

In an instant, I was airborne, tumbling violently into the endless, suffocating abyss. The beast did not even bother to chew. It just swallowed an entire cluster of starships whole.

Building Interstellar Empire With Universal Synthesis

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