Reborn With A Technology System In A Fantasy World-Chapter 288: Against The Concordat (2)
When Arbiter Valdis arrived, Sector XA-6 didn’t just open; it shattered.
Adrian’s instincts and senses screamed a split second before reality tore apart. It wasn’t the clean, mathematical precision of a standard FTL jump. This was a brute-force intrusion, a violent laceration of the space-time continuum that sent shockwaves rippling through the asteroid field.
One moment, Adrian was alone in the cockpit, staring into the abyss.
The next, the stars were gone.
Three colossal shadows emerged from the tears, blotting out the nebula’s purple light. They were monoliths of black metal, each one the size of a metropolitan city. Dreadnoughts.
Their hulls bristled with thousands of turbo-laser batteries, and their prows glowed with the terrifying, charged energy of planet-cracker cannons.
Surrounding them like a swarm of angry hornets were hundreds of cruisers, frigates, and thousands of unmanned fighter drones. The sheer scale of the fleet was enough to induce despair in a lesser being. This wasn’t a patrol. This was a war hammer dropped on a single nail.
But they didn’t fire immediately.
From the bellies of the cruisers, massive tungsten spikes, each half a kilometer long, were launched into the void.
They didn’t hit asteroids; they hit space. They slammed into the fabric of the dimension, embedding themselves in the vacuum with a resonant sound that vibrated through the hull of Adrian’s ship.
Invisible waves of blue energy pulsed from the spikes, connecting in a geometric web that enclosed the entire sector and beyond, hundreds of light years away!
[WARNING: SPATIAL LOCK DETECTED.]
[WARNING: DIMENSIONAL ANCHORS ACTIVE.]
[SYSTEM ALERT: Teleportation Vectors Blocked. Reality has been hardened.]
Adrian’s eyes narrowed when he saw the messages he was receiving. He didn’t need any explanation as he clearly comprehended what had just occurred.
"A cage," Adrian whispered.
He attempted to activate [Translocation], but as expected it wasn’t possible. His only other option was for Tech Core to be stronger than whatever anchor they had imposed, but when Adrian tried visiting the Factory. He was unsuccessful too.
The space around him was as solid as concrete. He was clearly trapped.
On the main comms channel of the Ship, a voice cut through the static. It was deep, melodic, and terrifyingly calm.
"This is Arbiter Valdis of the 7th Erasure Fleet. Negotiation is not an option. Surrender now, Project_Prometheus."
The voice paused, letting the weight of the sentence settle like a tombstone.
"Commencing Capture."
"Capture?" Adrian repeated, his hands gripping the haptic controls of the Silver Phantom until the metal groaned.
A cold, sharp smile spread across his face, the blue light of the Void swirling deep within his pupils. "You can try."
He didn’t wait for the first shot. He slammed the throttle past the red line.
The Silver Phantom, now fully integrated with Adrian’s consciousness, screamed as its experimental engine was pushed beyond 100% capacity.
It didn’t accelerate; it vanished from its standing position, a streak of white light diving straight into the densest cluster of the asteroid field.
A millisecond later, the space where the ship had been was vaporized by thousands of turbo-laser beams converging on a single point.
The chase was on.
Adrian flew like a madman. He weaved through the debris field at speeds that defied inertia. He skimmed the surface of massive asteroids, using them as shields against the barrage of laser fire raining down from the Dreadnoughts above.
The heavier Concordat ships tried to follow, but they were too bulky. They smashed into the floating rocks, their shields flaring, debris scattering into the void.
But something was wrong.
Adrian drifted the ship behind a massive, lead-lined asteroid, cutting the engines to mask its heat signature. He held his breath, waiting for the fleet to pass.
~VZZZT!~
A warning alarm blared. A salvo of torpedoes curved around the asteroid. They didn’t track heat. They didn’t track motion. They phased right through the edge of the rock and locked onto the Silver Phantom with unerring accuracy.
Adrian engaged the thrusters, barely rolling the ship out of the way as the torpedoes detonated, shearing off the ship’s left stabilizer wing.
"How?" Adrian gritted his teeth, his mind racing. "I masked the thermal output. I dampened the signature completely." The upgrades Adrian had implemented should guarantee the Ship invisibility in such a case, but it failed on him.
Adrian proceeded differently. He banked hard, diving into a cloud of radioactive gas. It should have blinded their sensors. Yet, the turrets of the distant Dreadnoughts tracked him perfectly.
The fire was concentrated, predicting his movements before he even made them.
Then, he looked at his hand. He looked at his own soul with his inner sight.
He was glowing.
To the naked eye, he was normal. But on the energetic spectrum; the spectrum the Star-Eaters monitored; he was a lighthouse in a dark ocean.
The Void energy coursing through his veins... they were screaming his location to the fleet.
"They aren’t tracking the ship," Adrian realized, a grim acceptance washing over him. "They’re tracking me."
The Silver Phantom was no longer a vessel; it was a coffin. Its shields were failing, its hull was fracturing, and its speed meant nothing if he couldn’t hide.
"Sorry," Adrian whispered, patting the console of the ship he had just claimed. "You were a good ride."
He accessed the ship’s reactor core. He disabled the safety limiters. He set the overdrive to critical mass.
[Core Overload Initiated. Detonation in T-minus 10 seconds.]
Adrian didn’t stop there, he unleashed tens of prepared Void bombs from his [Inventory] onto the Ship. Although he couldn’t escape the cage, he was capable of bringing things into it with him.
’If the ship is going down, I’ll have to make the most use of it.’
Adrian locked the autopilot onto a collision course with a group of Concordat Cruisers close to him. The sleek vehicles had been hounding him for the last minute.
[5... 4... 3...]
The Silver Phantom roared, its engines turning a blinding white.
[2... 1...]
Adrian didn’t use the escape pod. He blew the canopy bolts.
The vacuum sucked him out instantly. As he tumbled into the cold silence of space, the Silver Phantom slammed into the Cruiser’s bridge.
~BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM!~
