Book 9, Chapter 32
Infiltrating The Enemy
Back in Faelor, Richard’s messenger flew at a blistering 700 kilometres an hour for a little over two hours before tiring out, needing to rest for an entire day. He jumped off its back as it floated down with exhaustion, his silhouette blinking a few kilometres away. Opening portal after portal forward, he flew nearly 2,000 kilometres before arriving at another messenger that was lying in wait.
Stepping onto this new mount, he sat down and drank a mana potion to return to optimal condition. This messenger flew about 1,500 kilometres before flagging as well, at which point he went through the teleporting process once more. It took a few cycles of this process, but in a little under seven hours he was already at the northern coast, just shy of the region controlled by the reapers.
Having the messenger that took him through the last leg recuperate, Richard turned invisible and flew forwards. However, he suddenly felt strange energy waves in the area, and even as they focused on him he crashed straight to the ground to blow away the snow and reveal a black object of some sort. The machine was tiny, only a finger’s width, but it one of the four rods sticking out of it seemed to be sending information into the sky. It was that same rod that sent the pulses detecting him.
He bent down and picked the machine up, watching as it switched to battle form even while restricted by Kingsteel. It pointed its gun barrel at his forehead, but he crushed it between his fingers and set it aflame. The metal melted until some microscopic silver specks were left behind, but noticing that they seemed special he took out an empty potion vial and directed them within. His figure then flashed a dozen kilometres away where he found another similar detector.
He quickly moved from detector to detector, finding one every ten kilometres on average. They had formed an enormous net that could catch living beings, and they also seemed able to send this information back to the reapers somehow.
It was around his twentieth detector that a much stronger pulse focused on him, prompting him to look towards a patch of black in the distance. Dozens of the tiny warplanes and some of the larger ones were currently headed his way, but the truly stunning part was that there was a small transport ship only a few metres long behind them. The ship itself was empty with a few beetles within; it seemed like the reapers valued resources so much that they wouldn’t even let his flesh go to waste.
He blinked right into the midst of the war machines, but unlike most humans they seemed to know no fear or surprise. They adjusted their beam weapons towards him and fired with lightning-quick reactions, so much so that he only managed to blink out of the way after suffering a few moments of attack. A dozen small holes were left on his robes.
As he opened up some distance, Richard looked down and found that his skin was barely charred beneath most of the holes. It seemed like only the larger machines could do any damage to him if they struck, but he also discovered that even the tiny ones would be able to do damage if their attacks focused on him long enough. The beam attacks were too fast for even him to dodge effectively, which made them a huge threat.
With a cursory understanding of their ability, he blinked back into their midst. This time he caught one of the larger machines and twisted apart, but feeling a sudden warning he immediately threw the remains and blinked away. The broken machine quickly exploded, burning everything within ten metres with power almost comparable to a grade 9 spell!
Suppressing his shock, Richard defended himself from the next wave and caught another machine. This time he crushed it into a metal ball, managing to keep it from exploding, but that also meant he had mangled it beyond analysis.
Tossing the ball into his ring, he pulled the flaming sword out of his case and cut a few of the planes around him into two clean halves. As he pounced towards his next targets, however, he suddenly felt a tinge of pain in his back and turned around to realise that the planes were still floating in mid-air with their guns aimed directly at him. Two of them had even drawn close to each other, various components connecting together like they were performing repairs.
Richard frowned at the realisation, but he ignored the tiny machines and flew towards the last of the larger ones and pierced it with his sword. The blade started vibrating as he activated Disintegrator, ripping the machine apart into hundreds of pieces that were swept into his spatial ring. He then returned to the rest of the machines and did the same.
Once it saw that the situation was unfavourable, the transported that had been dispatched to handle Richard’s corpse flew away. However, it was even smaller than the warplanes and much less defended. Moments later, it and the beetles within had been turned to parts and stored within his bracelet.
The squad of reapers was thus annihilated, but Richard didn’t feel happy at all. These machines were obviously the lowest level of the reapers’ battle system, and he had seen hundreds of different machines far more powerful than them during his analysis of the Doomsday Imprint. If even the weakest machines could injure him, the stronger ones would be difficult to deal with. The metal these things were made of was quite tough as well, no weaker than the armour of a rune knight. Normal saints would need effort to get through this defence, but those were a very limited commodity. The planes also had great attack power and speed, their energy beams too fast for even him to avoid. A focused attack could fatally wound even a legendary warrior in the same way that his rune knights used their javelins.
The more he saw of these reapers, the more Richard felt like their fighting style was similar to his own. The only difference was that they were far more thorough, using even greater numbers and precision. Just how was one to overcome such an enemy?
As he cleared the battlefield and melted down all the remnants, Richard gathered about a fingertip’s worth of the silver metal. Storing it in the vial, he continued walking towards the coast.
The detectors started serving as road signs. Richard headed towards the densest concentration of their pulses, fighting off two more small squads before coming across what looked like a base. The place was quite strange, surrounded by rectangular slabs of metal that were connected by what seemed like muscles. There was a tower in the middle surrounded by half a dozen other buildings, including a factory that processed flesh. One of the buildings resembled the structure of a beehive, with five large sections containing thousands upon thousands of pods each. It seemed eerily similar to the hive of life, but these seemed to store the flesh warriors with metallic skeletons.
Most of the five hives were completely full!
He tried to move closer to take a look, but he immediately felt a number of pulses focus on him. The reaper base seemed to come to life in the blink of an eye, the flesh warriors jumping out of their hives and rushing straight towards him. Both types of warplanes rose into the sky in an endless hive, flying straight towards him!