GoldFinger
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Ch. 225 - Through the dragon gate.
🕑 Added 2022-05-09 10:19:17 +0000 UTCI watched the space whales get closer and closer while the A.I. ran the calculations for the battle predictions.
A notification popped up on my contacts.
"Targets entering effective range. Suggestion. Initiate deployment." The A.I. informed.
"Yup. Deploy the Sudarshan Chakra. Apply closed timelike curvature at the edges. Trap the bitches in an inescapable mini time loop." I said, taking control of the auxiliary armaments.
"As you wish sir."
A stream of baryonic particles shot out from my ship at FTL speeds, curving across the void in a ring of death, whipping out across the void as it tore through hundreds pf worms at a time.
Meanwhile, I flexed my fingers as I gripped the metaphorical trigger of the entirety of the ships guns, and grinned.
"Reach for heaven boys, cuz you're going straight to hell!"
Lasers, rays and beams, mussiles and projectiles of all shapes and sizes shot out from my ship, creating a field of explosions in the distance as the numbers of the worms fell further.
148990 left now.
But of course, this was just a field test for them.
Checking out the strength of my weaponry, gauging my defenses. Gatbering valuable data.
Within seconds they began to deploy countermeasures. Portals appeared before the projectiles, sending them astray or sometimes even back at the ship.
Forcefields and energy shields sprung up around their massive shifting serpentine forms, dissipating the impacts of the rays and beams and their casualties began to drop, their wounds shallow and slight.
They began to advance further with each passing moment, and their lines soread out, covering my vision entirely.
Their faces split, shards shifting like quicksand and gravitational waves began to coalesce at their maws as I gulped heavily.
That's going to hit hard.
If it hits at all
Immediately, I portaled over hundreds of spare dimension anchors in their midst, adjusting the settings to scramble the gravitational force in the area.
The worms twisted and thrashed as they lost control over thei offensive, theiry gravity beams collapsing in on their own bodies, destroying the entire vanguard.
117231 left.
I smiled not for long.
I adj6sted the settings on the dimension anchors again as the middke lines if worms made a mad dash for them, intending to destroy the devices.
Right into my trap!
"Computer, target them all with the godslayer bolts."
"All of them?" The A.I. confirmed, acting in accordance with the strategic security protocols I had coded into it.
It was programmed to always keep some munitions in reserve. But today was not the day for that.
"All of them. Empty the clips. Get as many as you can." I ordered.
I had godslayer bolts in excess of 300k and even with a conservative estimate of three to five bolts per worm, that was sure to gut at least 70k of them.
The ship lit up with a brilliant flash of neon green as the godslayer bolts shot out, just as the bulk of the worms reached the anchors.
But when they were about to attack, suddenly they all turned and fled the scene, scattering in all directions, spread out across the void, as if in a coordinated bollywood musical number and the bolts flew past them harmlessly, catching only the ocassional slowpoke or stray.
Their Path To Victory had known it was coming!
This was a trap!
A counter trap!
They were trying to waste my ammo to leave me vulnerable.
Cunning bastards!
How did they figure out my secret weapon?
I purposely kept it back to catch them off guard!
"Fuck! Fuck. Stop firing immediately! Adjust the paths of the fired bolts to as many worms as you can." I cried out, concentrating on teleporting the dimension anchors back.
A bit too late.
Beams of hard light struck out from behind the enemy lines, carving a path through their own units at times, and slammed into the low gravity field created by the dimension anchors.
One by one, I could only watch as they were blown up, with me only being able to salvage a quarter of them.
"Shit!" I cursed, taking account of the battlefield.
The middle bulk of their forces had spread out across the void, and hunting them down one by one would give them the opportunity to attack the ship. Can't let that happen.
My mind ran a lightyear a minute as I came up with a solution.
Suddnely, another volley of hardlight beams shot out like a heavenly net of shimmering pearlescent white acroos the pitch black nothingness of the void, with a single target in mind. Me.
No.
Can't get caught up in this!
So long as the rearguard keeps peppering me like mosquitos I won't be able to mount a reasonable offensive.
And that will give the rest of them the chance to take the ship and encircle me.
"Distract the bulk. Disintegration beams, matter annihilation charges and freeze rays only. Don't waste the lasers. They'll dissipate at their shields. And deploy backup mech-knights."
The petals of the lotus that formed the ship unfurled and detached, falling off like autumn leaves as they transformed into giant kaiju sized mechs. The same ones I had built into the ship back in Star Wars for bigger battles.
Truth be told, the whole ship was a giant moon sized mech suit, but using that would leave the kids vulnerable so I chose not to use it.
"Alright. Let's do this the hard way then."
I said, clapping my hands, and grew in size to my full celestial might, towering over the worms like a giant.
These worms were far too coordinated and well planned to counter effectively. Not this fast anyways.
I could wipe them out sure, but it would take weeks of fighting and slog.
I didn't have that much time.
The ship's shield wouldn't hold on for that long.
So I decided to try a simpler method.
How do you fight a well coordinated and overly convoluted plan?
One of two ways.
First, the Rick way.
With complete randomness, thwarting the order of their plans.
But I'm not Rick, the worms aren't Heistotron and I don't have the time for all that bullshit.
So plan B. My way. Or the Jerry way, as much as I hate to say it.
The same way stupid people win arguments against their betters, the mentally well equipped.
By dragging them dowm to their own level of stupidity and beating them with experience!
And so would I.
I unfurled my godly domain of quantum possibilities, and slread it out across the void, enforcing my will upon them all.
The worms were a simple collectivist species with zero creativity.
I'll bet that most of them subscribe to a deterministic view of the world, especially given how well they embrace their Path To Victory shards.
And deterministic viewpoints are as much a weakness of the PTV shards as they are a strength, especially against someone like me, with a domain of probability manipulation.
I burst out with a unforessen dovine glory, and pumped out as much power as I could, making one clear statement.
"I hereby decree." I said, isolating a quantum possibility from the thousands available to both me and the PTV shards in common, "This battle shall last three weeks. I will lose a limb and suffer grevious injuries to my stomach. Your race of worms will inevitably be exterminated completely by the end. It is the truth. The inevitable future.
THERE. IS. NO. ESCAPE."
As I finished my sentence, my power spread throughout my domain and the possible future my words had decreed crystallized into reality, set in stone.
At least from the point of view of the shards.
And in the end that's what matters.
Instantly, almost all the worms froze up, and one by one a wave of suicides soread out through their ranks, as hopelessness and inevitability set in for them.
As deterministic creatures, they didn't understand the concept of there being another future. They were so used to their PTV shards doing the thinking fpr them that they forgot to think for themselves.
So when their PTV shards said, there is no escape, under my influence, they chose to kill themselves en masse.
Nearly a third of the wlrms killed themselves while nearly all of the rest became paralyzed in a fit, their flight or fight instincts clashing with each other while their PTV shards ran their hamster wheels of rationalization tonkeep their hosts alive for as long as possible.
Of course, in the meantime, I seized the opportunity, and shot out, streaking across the void straight into the fray, the mech-knights following close behind like a royal guard, as I dove into the melee.
With my bare hands, I began to rip and tear through their ranks, breaking them apart like cheap toilet paper, while they lay helpless and paralyzed, right into the rearguard still peppering me.
They had been out of my range and had survived the mindfuck.
Not for long though.
I grinned.
Get rid of them first, then I'll focus on the rest.
"Computer. Godslayer bolts. Target the paralyzed worms while you can. Use ten percent of the ammo. And support me with cover fire."
I entered their close range radius just as my forcefield shattered, and their gravity and hardlight beams slammed into me, sending me staggering back into one of the paralyzed one.
I could feel my skin crack at the impacts as a surge of pain racked my body.
"Tsss!" I hissed, and looked around.
I spotted something.
Yup.
This would do.
Time to go primitive.
I laid my palm into one the massive beasts, my fingers digging into it's oily, gooey guts as I ripped them out, wrapping them across it's body like a butcher's string on meat, just as they all switched from hardlight and gravity beams to their signature anti-unit power.
The one they used to battle their own kind.
The one that melted me to near death in the fight against Scion.
The Stilling.
Multicoloured blasts of a strange aura shot towards me, and I heaved the carcass of their comrade, guts hanging in the path like a literal meat shield.
"How's that for jihad bitches?!" I laughed, ramming straight into them, even as the worm's body began to be shaved away by the blasts of Stilling.
As a final fuck you, I threw the body at them before slamming my hands through it's shredded corpse, blasting the lot away.
The rest reeled back, their bodies buzzing like bees, with what I can only assume was fear.
They began to retreat, shooting cursory blasts at me, so weak I could slap them away.
"Where do you think you're going? I cackled, when my spidey sense tingled at the strange pattern they were retreating in.
Oh no!
I sprayed out a volley of energy blasts at them as I turned around to see the the rest of the bulk beginning to move, their bodies writhing and reshaping themselves.
"Oh fuck me sideways!" I cried, sending the mech knights at them as I turned back and began to finish off the rearguard.
They were changing...no, evolving.
They grew claws and skin, eyes upon eyes fliating out of their oily, slippery exteriors amd mouths eroding into place, needled teeth in the likness of a sadist's wet dream portruding from them.
And their conceptual nature itself began to change.
They were evolving into...
Into a free will based viewpoint of the world.
And their forms changed to reflect their new ideology, accomodate it's new directives.
Now? After millions of years of stagnation?
Why? Why couldn't they just die in peace?!
"Who died and gave you free will, you vermin?!"
I focused all my attention on the rearguard.
I need to finish them as fast as I ca-
Aaand they're circling the ship.
Damnit!
"Knights! Ship!" I ordered, concentrating all my power on my hands.
My shard power exploded out, coloring the void in a kaleidoscopic shimmer, as I enchanted my hands with Destruction and Invulnerable.
My hands began to thrum with a vast, unstable power, combining with my celestial energy, and I rushed out from the rear.
Just as expected, the rearguard chased after me, just as I expected.
Instantly, I pivoted around, and let loose the blow with my full power.
The energy coalesced at the tip of my knuckles, forming a condensed ball of power and I punched out towards the suckers, hitting them straight with a homerun.
The energy exploded out, blooming into a cascade of annihilation, erasing the entire rearguard from existence, atomized.
"Hah! Suck it!" I gloated before turning around.
I shot out, flying through the rear at blinding speed, heading for the ship.
I could see the swarm of worms attacking it now.
The mech-knights fought hard but they were severely outnumbered.
The space whales around me, who at first were spread out now began to converge on my location.
Shit!
I flew faster and faster, teleporting short distances warding off attacks from the worms, slicing them open with portals.
But no matter how much I tried, every time I made a portal yo teleport back, they would swarm around and throw me away with a suicidal fervor, their newly evolved claws, conceptual weapons mimicking my shard for some fucking reason, battering me to the limits of my patience.
Then, the outermost forcefield flickered and a chill ran down my spine.
I fought like a beast cornered, to no avail.
The barrage of black holes was pushing it to the limit.
As if sensing my worry, the formation around me tightened, fencing me into an unending flow of battle.
And then it shattered like glass, my heart sank as did I into a fleshy pit of shards.
"Noooo!"
