Thragg blurred forward. I barely had time to bring my arm up before his fist collided with my forearm.
The impact was like getting hit by a small moon. The shockwave of the strike violently rippled through the vacuum of space, scattering the nearby debris. Before I could even stabilize my footing, he was on me again.
He was impossibly fast—and I mean fast—and he hit harder than anyone I had ever faced. Every punch, every feint, and every grapple was executed with a terrifyingly perfect blend of feral instinct and extreme calculation.
He's not giving me any room to think or breathe, I thought, parrying a fast backfist combo. And I can tell that he isn't fully giving his all. It's like he's trying to dissect me to see just how long this fight will take.
And if that wasn't bad enough, there were zero openings in his guard. When I attempted to feint a straight punch into a roundhouse, he created just enough distance for my reach to fall short, allowing him to seamlessly counter. I parried his attack, but as we continued to trade strikes, I realized I was becoming purely reactionary to his movements rather than dictating the pace of the fight myself.
Something I can't afford to happen at a moment like this, I thought briefly, weaving out of an uppercut. This bastard truly is the result of successful selective breeding and training from birth in the Empire. He's so much better than everyone else that it's insane. He still hasn't even made a mistake yet either.
I blocked a kick with my hand and immediately tapped into my reserves. But that's just what I've been training for, I thought, pushing my body into Overdrive Mode.
My body flared with a violent, blinding gold, and I met his charge head-on. We clashed in the center of the battlefield, a blur of fists and shockwaves moving at speeds that made the surrounding dogfights look like they were standing still. I matched him blow-for-blow, relying heavily on my suit to absorb the impacts he was creating from his lethal, bone-shattering strikes just to keep myself from being ripped apart.
Judging by his expression, I was actively proving that I was, in fact, the strongest being he had ever crossed paths with too. But I couldn't enjoy that little tidbit because my mind was completely divided.
While parrying a devastating hook, my eyes drifted past Thragg's shoulder, desperately scanning the exosphere for the Coalition drop-ships.
"The ships!" I roared telepathically, throwing a heavy straight punch that Thragg deflected. "You have to stop them! The bomb is—"
Thragg retaliated with a brutal strike to my ribs, pushing me back.
"You face the Grand Regent!" his voice boomed in my mind, vibrating with offended pride. "Do not look away from me! Focus your eyes on your opponent!"
Frustrated and running out of time, I channeled my solar energy into my hands. If he's not going to listen, then I'm going to have to force him out of my way, I thought, unleashing a rapid volley of energy blasts at him.
They landed and he recoiled, his eyes widening in pure shock. "What trickery is this?!" he snarled, initially disgusted by the attack.
But as he observed the blasts closely, seeing them actually scorched his uniform and sear parts of his durable skin, that disgust vanished and he adapted instantly. He began weaving through the barrage of light with terrifying, surgical precision, dodging the beams by mere millimeters. I found myself surprised when a twisted, exhilarated smile crept onto his face.
Uh-oh, that can't be good, I thought, firing a volley of more energy blasts.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nolan grappling with Thaedus. They seemed to be discussing something just before Thaedus brought both of his hands up and executed a flawless, brutal double-palm strike directly over Nolan's ears.
The immense, concentrated pressure ruptured Nolan's eardrums instantly, causing him to clutch his head in agony. Without missing a beat, Thaedus shoved him away into the vastness of space and blasted past him, soaring freely toward the planet.
No! I yelled internally, tracking Thaedus's flight path and immediately seeing what he was aiming for.
Just above Viltrum's deep atmosphere, one of the descending Coalition drop-ships had been violently clipped by the flaming wreckage of a destroyed Viltrumite cruiser. Its engines were sputtering as it stalled out in the dense outer debris field.
As Thaedus sped desperately towards it, I quickly connected the dots. That's the ship with the bomb, I realized with widening eyes.
I had to get to it before he did. But Thragg had weaved his way past my blasts and was now aggressively pressing the offensive, throwing a lethal barrage of strikes that kept me completely pinned down.
This needs to end now! I thought, letting my guard drop for a fraction of a second, baiting him to lunge forward. As he did, I unleashed a massive, point-blank beam of heat vision directly into his exposed chest.
The sheer force of the plasma beam blasted him backward. Thragg was completely stunned as his momentum halted. He floated there for a split second, looking down at his glowing, scorched flesh and ruined uniform. His expression was one of pure, bewildered awe—staring at an impossible, god-like power radiating from someone of his own bloodline.
I didn't stick around to admire my work.
I used the massive kinetic recoil to propel myself backward, and rocketed after Thaedus.
As I tore through the vacuum, watching the stalled drop-ship grow closer, a thought occurred to me.
Thaedus probably has the bomb already. If he engages it, then I might have to burn the virus as it detonates. But my current reserves won't be enough to stop a spread of that magnitude.
I reached out with my senses, locking onto any radiant energy source. I found an unlimited one a few light-minutes away in the form of Viltrum's nearest sun.
That'll help, I thought, siphoning every ounce of ambient radiation I could from across the void. Pure, raw solar energy began to slowly pull into my cells as I prepared for what could possibly be the end of my life.
The siphoned solar energy cascaded through my veins like liquid fire, empowering my cells as I closed the distance to see Thaedus already at the drop-ship.
He had landed on the hull, dug his fingers into the heavy armored doors, and pulled out the massive, glowing cylindrical device—the reverse-engineered drill-bomb. It was a terrifying piece of machinery, roughly the size of a small vehicle. The outer chassis was constructed from heavily bolted, dark-grey Coalition plating meant to survive atmospheric reentry. But it was the core that drew my eye—a thick, transparent containment chamber churning with violently swirling, golden-orange solar plasma. Suspended directly in the center of that miniature sun was a reinforced canister radiating a sickening, neon-green hue: the perfected Scourge Virus.
Even from a distance, I could see his fingers flying across the keypad, manually arming the detonation sequence.
With the bomb primed, Thaedus clutched the apocalyptic weapon to his chest and dove directly toward the planet's surface himself.
"Oh no you don't!" I roared, pushing my speed to the absolute limit.
I caught up to him just as we breached Viltrum's upper thermosphere, the friction of entry igniting around us like a meteor shower. Sensing my approach, Thaedus hurled the armed bomb downward, sending it rocketing toward the surface like a falling star, and positioned himself squarely in my path.
"You cannot stop it, Mark!" Thaedus yelled, his voice echoing telepathically, filled with fanatical certainty. "For the universe to live, Viltrum must—"
I didn't let him finish.
My patience for his genocidal crusade had reached its limit. My body glowed red-hot as I extended my fingers outward into a rigid spear-hand and launched myself straight at him. I tore clean through his midsection with the force of a meteor.
The Founder of the Coalition of Planets didn't even have time to scream. His blood sprayed into the atmosphere as the searing heat of my passage instantly cauterized the wound, leaving the two severed halves of his corpse to burn up as they descended into the planet's gravity.
The bomb was falling fast, its timer glowing a sinister, flashing red.
Faster! I pushed myself, tapping into more newly siphoned solar radiation.
My fingers brushed the weapon's casing just as the digital timer hit zero. The casing blew outward in a devastating dual-wave. First came a searing, golden-orange blast of reverse-engineered solar plasma—the planetary drill designed to crack the crust. A fraction of a second later, a sickly, neon-green gaseous shockwave erupted from the core.
"No!" I exclaimed, watching the perfected Scourge Virus begin to spread fast, ready to disperse into the atmosphere and ride the cosmic winds.
"Not on my watch!" I bellowed, pushing my Overdrive past its breaking point, and detonating my own body like a dying star.
A blinding, golden Supernova Flare expanded across the horizon. The incredible heat incinerated the neon-green cloud instantly, purging it on a molecular level before a single spore could escape.
But the sheer magnitude of my supernova had a terrifying secondary effect. Combined with the bomb's initial drill-plasma, my omnidirectional blast acted as a cosmic hammer of unimaginable proportions.
The combined kinetic and thermal shockwave crashed directly into Viltrum.
It instantly annihilated the outer crust, sending a catastrophic ripple of kinetic force straight into the planet's core. From my vantage point, I watched a network of glowing, apocalyptic fissures aggressively race across the entire surface of the world. The ground shattered. The oceans boiled into steam instantly.
Viltrum violently detonated. Continents of rock and molten magma blasted upward, tearing the planet apart from the inside out in a deafening, system-shaking explosion.
As the world shattered around me, the golden light finally faded from my body.
My nanite suit went completely dark. The rushing sound of the atmosphere vanished into the silence of space. My eyes rolled back as the last embers of my energy were completely drained.
I felt no pain. Only a vast, heavy emptiness.
My lifeless body went limp as I drifted helplessly into the expanding, apocalyptic debris field of the shattered Viltrumite homeworld.
My eyelids grew unimaginably heavy, as I struggled to keep them open. The last thing I heard before the void claimed me was the echoing, devastated bellow of a single word from Thragg: "NO!"
**************
I slowly drifted back to consciousness, the heavy, suffocating darkness giving way to the low, rhythmic hum of starship engines.
My body felt impossibly heavy. Every muscle fiber, every cell in my body ached with a dull, hollow throb. I tried to shift my weight, realizing I was lying on something incredibly soft—a massive, luxurious bed wrapped in heavy, silk-like sheets.
What the fuck?!, I thought groggily, my vision swimming as I slowly blinked my eyes open. Where am I?
The room was vast and immaculate. It was adorned in stark grey and blood-red, with the imposing Viltrumite insignia emblazoned on the walls.
No way! I gasped, looking around frantically.
Before I could fully process anything else, I felt a hand gently, almost reverently, caress my cheek.
I forced my heavy eyes to focus. Sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over me, was Anissa.
Her fingers traced the line of my jaw, her touch feather-light—a little too light, which made me wary. But it was her eyes that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
She was looking at me with absolute, predatory reverence. It was the look a lioness in heat gives to her chosen mate.
What the hell is going on? I thought, my throat entirely too dry to speak.
She noticed my eyes tracking her. Her lips parted into a slow, breathless smile as she leaned in close, her face mere inches from mine. Her scent, a mix of blood and sterile air, filled my senses.
"You broke our world," she whispered, her voice trembling with a dark, fanatical awe. "You shattered Viltrum to ash... but in doing so, you proved you are its true god."
Her fingers trailed down my neck, coming to rest lightly over my chest, right above my beating heart.
Her hand… it's incredibly heavy. Why? my mind raced, watching her every movement. Now that I think of it, I feel incredibly weaker, too. What's going on?!
"I have never seen such glorious strength," she continued, her striking blue eyes burning into mine. "You belong to the Empire now, Mark. You belong to me."