Reborn With A Technology System In A Fantasy World-Chapter 298: For Shadow! (1)

Weeks passed and nothing was heard from the Council again. They kept on monitoring the approaching fleet, watching the red stain on their sensors grow larger by the day. To them, it was a slow march to the gallows for the invaders.

But what they didn’t know was that they were the ones being monitored

Deep within the lead ship of the approaching armada, in a chamber where light refused to exist, a screen projected a distorted feed of the Concordat’s region.

Standing beside a throne was a figure that looked less like a living being and more like a reanimated corpse.

"Those fools," Zero clicked his tongue. "They are really choosing to ignore us."

"It seems like they have underestimated us one more time," the Queen replied quietly, her eyes closed as she cycled energy on her throne. "We must be thankful for their hubris. It makes the path clearer."

Zero looked at the screen, then back at his her. "But are you really sure of our findings, your Majesty? It doesn’t make logical sense for the Galactic Core to switch positions from Thanad to the Heartland all of a sudden."

The Queen opened her eyes.

She couldn’t give him a direct answer because she wasn’t sure herself. Years ago, they had first sensed the calling of the Galactic Core emanating from a backwater planet called Thanad in Sector-7G. But even after Zero had acted through Julian, they were unsuccessful in finding it.

To avoid being discovered, they had decided to play the waiting game. And even after Thanad got warped to the Nexus, the Shadow Collective had scoured the small planet left behind.

It was only then that they realized the call was gone. That had led them to a terrifying possibility: The Galactic Core wasn’t just a celestial body, but was in the possession of someone.

They were left unanswered until only recently. The Core had begun to call out to them again, and this time the call was louder, more pulling, vibrating with a desperation that shook their very souls. And it was screaming from the Heartland.

"It has to be him," Zero hissed. "That one. Adrian. I’m very certain he has the Core somehow. It makes sense now."

"But doesn’t that make him a threat?" the Queen interrupted softly. "If the Core chose him... if it allows him to carry it... then he must be something special. Perhaps he is on our side. Perhaps he is a child of the Shadow who does not yet know his mother."

These questions plagued the Collective. They didn’t know if the carrier of the Core was an enemy to be destroyed or a messiah to be embraced. Heck, they didn’t even know if it was a carrier or some cosmic phenomenon that had moved the Galactic Core.

For now, they didn’t have answers. But they knew the answers lay in the Heartland.

After some time, the Queen stopped cycling her energy. The shadows around the throne room settled, becoming solid.

"Zero, it is time," she announced. Her presence filled the room. "I will engage the Concordat personally with the main fleet. You and the infiltration wing will take the Minor Fleet and go after the Core. Be careful. The signal is located near a Space Tunnel,"

"For Shadow," the Queen concluded.

Zero bowed low. He understood his assignment. The survival of their entire race depended on how long his mother could hold the attention of the galaxy’s most powerful military.

"For Shadow!" he echoed before leaving.

***

Days later, the silence of the void was broken.

After a long trek through the empty wastes of space, the massive fleet of the Shadow Collective finally trespassed into the sovereign territory of the Galactic Concordat.

At first, nothing happened. The ships drifted past the outer marker buoys, heading inexorably toward the glowing ringworld of the Celestial Palace in the distance.

It seemed as though the Concordat was going to let them fly right up to the front door.

But they weren’t left free for long.

~WUUUUUUUM.~ 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

A sudden, jarring disruption enveloped the entire fleet. Space itself seemed to harden, turning from a fluid vacuum into a gelatinous solid. The Shadow ships jerked to a halt, their engines screaming as the laws of physics were tightened around them.

They knew what it was already. Reality Anchors.

From the cloak of a nearby nebula, the trap sprung.

A massive Dreadnought, the Sovereign’s Hammer, de-cloaked. It was a city of gold and white metal, bristling with enough weaponry to crack systems. Surrounding it were thousands of interceptor drones and fighter jets, swarming like angry hornets.

Given their history, the Concordat didn’t bother hailing the visitors. There were no negotiations nor demands for surrender.

The main cannon of the Sovereign’s Hammer began to glow with the light of a captured star.

"Fire," came the cold command from the Concordat bridge.

A beam of concentrated devastation, thick enough to engulf the Shadow Queen’s flagship, tore through the void. It moved at light speed, a lance of judgment meant to end the war before it began.

It looked like the fight was over before it started.

But on the bridge of the Silence, the Queen was no longer on her throne.

She stepped out of the airlock, floating in the vacuum, her elegance visible to the universe. Her dress of woven darkness rippled as if underwater.

She raised a single, pale hand.

"Halt."

Black tendrils, massive and corporeal, manifested out of the empty space around her. They weren’t just shadows; they were tears in reality. They stretched out, miles long, and grabbed the incoming beam of energy.

The beam hit the tendrils and stopped. It didn’t explode. It was caught.

The Queen twisted her wrist.

The massive black hands hurled the contained attack back; not at the Dreadnought, but at the swarm of fighter drones surrounding it.

~BOOOOM!~

The resulting explosion was a cascade of fire and debris. Thousands of Concordat fighters were obliterated instantly, vaporized by their own flagship’s power. The shockwave rattled the Sovereign’s Hammer, cracking its forward shields.

The battlefield fell into a stunned silence.

"You’ve grown stronger," a voice echoed across the void from the Ship. "But you are still foolish to overestimate your strength against us."

Two figures teleported out of the Dreadnought, appearing in the space between the fleets.

One was a towering figure of burning red magma and plate armor; Arbiter Barius, the Red Giant.

The other was a being of sharp, refracting light; Arbiter Zek, the Crystalline.

They were not required to take part in the initial skirmish. The plan had been for the fleet to handle the "rats." But after witnessing the Queen catch a Dreadnought-class beam with her bare hands, the Arbiters realized the fleet was outmatched.

They decided to handle this themselves.

"The Queen of Silence," Barius rumbled, his aura turning the space around him into an oven. "You should have stayed in the dark."

"And you should have learned that light casts the longest shadows."

Immediately after her statement, she began to draw all the power she could from the surrounding fleet, her form expanding, the darkness behind her rising like a tsunami.

She knew this wouldn’t be an easy fight. Barius alone was a calamity; Zek added a layer of complexity she could barely calculate.

But she didn’t need to win. She just needed to hold on.

***

Meanwhile, light-years away from the titanic clash two Arbiters and a Queen.

While the eyes of the Concordat were fixed on the spectacular light show at the front lines, a small, almost invisible vessel slipped through the chaos.

Zero stood at the helm, his dead eyes fixed on the coordinates of the Space Tunnel deep within a Sector.

All the pressure was on him. He had to be successful, and quick.