"I’m sending a probe out now."

With the press of a button Avery sent a signal to the Intrepid and the massive carrier ship launched one of the few long-range scouting probes stored onboard.

It was an expensive piece of equipment that Avery hardly had use for considering he typically stuck to more populated areas and sending a ship out on short scouting mission was normally more effective and safer.

The probe had no way to defend itself, so if it was attacked, it was as good a gone. Something that would be a loss of Krenin that most wanted to avoid.

In the current situation though, having a high-performance probe that could be rapidly deployed was a godsend.

Nearly every member of the mercenary forces Zefield had gathered were incapacitated by the domineering presence of the entity that had just been released from its multiple millennia long seal.

There were only six of them able to act, with Kasandra, Jasmine, and Liesel only being expectations because Avery was expanding his own psionic protection to them. Something that was not easy and slowly draining him.

While the goal was to still get out of the system, that was not possible at the press of a button.

Most of the remaining mercenary ships were dead in space with their pilots and entire crews unable to function at the moment.

The only two ships that had anyone onboard to control them were Avery’s Dauntless and Zefield’s destroyer.

Nali was unfortunately trapped on the Intrepid and only had visitors’ authorization, giving her no pertaining access to any control systems and leaving her essentially trapped onboard without being able to do much of anything. Not that there would be much that she could do right now by herself even if she had full access to the systems.

Naturally, there was a sense of urgency among the six people still mentally sound, but they managed toa void panicking.

Certainly, there was some unknown, massively powerful creature that had just been released, but it was not actively targeting them currently. Something that they were all thankful for.

So, while it was possible for all of them to escape right now, that would mean leaving behind over a hundred fifty vessels and a few thousand people.

Obviously, this was not a course of action that any of them wanted to pursue unless there was no other option.

That was why it was imperative that they learn at least something about what was going on at the heart of this predicament.

Last Avery had seen; cracks had been forming across the asteroid and whatever was inside was still trying to break out.

Judging from its presence having become monstrously more powerful, he imagined that it had escaped.

What the thing was doing now was anyone’s guess, but considering the asteroid had been surrounded by space monsters, Avery had a good idea.

Soon the probe arrived and transmitted what it was recording back to the Dauntless.

Several gasps echoed through the ship’s cockpit as the four of them laid eyes on what was going on.

The asteroid was still mostly intact and covering the majority of the body of the entity sealed within.

However, several fast-moving tendrils of varying sizes and shapes were shooting out and slaughtering the space monster in the area that were futilely trying to fight back.

The commander type that had been controlling the Fluem was surprisingly nowhere to be seen, while the one that held dominion over the Dorumin had backed far away as it commanded what few minions it still had to try and reseal the creature held within the asteroid.

Despite losing their leader, the Fluem were still actively fighting against the entity, though they were not as coordinated as before. Perhaps it was some instinct that had been programmed into them

Somehow, they were able to ignore the creature’s presence. Something Avery speculated was possible because they had been engineered to absorb its energy from what he had observed.

"I can’t look any longer. I feel like I’m going to be sick." Jasmine said, turning away from the viewscreen and putting a hand over her mouth as she kept herself from retching.

Kasandra and Liesel were not far behind as they could not bear to look at even just the extremities of whatever the entity fighting the native space monsters was.

Even Avery felt a visceral chill going up and down his spine and it took a great deal of his willpower not to look away from what was being displayed.

Just looking at any part of the thing gave him an unnatural feeling.

The emotions it invoked were varied, but the strongest one was certainly terror.

An instinctual fear that whatever he was looking at was not something he could hope to comprehend or combat.

Still, knowing that he was the only one that had any true resistance to the entity, Avery kept his mind as steady as possible and studied it to the best of his ability.

Its movements were strange and it almost seemed to been reality around it.

Hundreds of tendrils were shooting out of the rock at incredible speeds, but their motion was almost never linear.

Avery could focus on one of the appendages and at one moment it would be moving in a direction before suddenly shifting and appearing somewhere else.

The colors around these extremities also were in constant flux. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Each of the tendrils that Avery could see never remained the same color for long.

They were always muted, most moving between gray and dull green, but there were plenty of other spectrums as well that trying to keep track of it in any meaningful way was giving Avery a headache.

All he really learned from his observation that whatever they were up against was some incompressible being of immeasurable power. One that some part of Avery was telling him that it should not exist in this universe.

"We’ve got a little time at least while its dealing with the space monsters around it and feasting on them. Hopefully we can ge-"

As if it could somehow hear Avery’s words of positivity as he tried to motivate himself and those around him, the entity that had been sealed away finally made its move to escape its prison after feasting for several minutes.

The horror broke free and revealed its entire monstrous form. Leaving Avery staring at the Dauntless viewscreen as his blood went cold.