Chapter 11: The Sky-Breaker's Ascent
The sky above Aegis Prime didn't just turn dark; it turned hollow.
High in the thermosphere, the four orbital satellites—the "Sol-Series" crown jewels of the High Senate's **Oblivion Protocol**—had locked their thermal sights on Sector 12 with cold, mechanical finality. These weren't weapons designed for war; they were weapons of absolute erasure, intended to prune a timeline that had grown a "Glitch."
Down in the molten ruins of the plaza, the air began to hum with a low-frequency vibration that bypassed the ears and rattled the very DNA of every survivor for ten miles. The faint red dot in the clouds had expanded into a pulsing, angry eye of crimson energy, ionizing the atmosphere until the air tasted like scorched copper.
**[Warning: Orbital Strike Imminent.]**
**[Time to Impact: 60 Seconds.]**
**[Target Area: Sector 12 (Population 400,000).]**
**[Calculated Survival Rate for User: 0.0003%.]**
Kaelen stood over the crumpled, sobbing form of General Marcus. He didn't look at the man he had just broken, nor did he look at the screaming news drones. He looked up, the wind whipping his hair into a frenzy, his golden eyes reflecting the encroaching red doom like two dying stars.
"Zero point zero zero zero three," Kaelen repeated, a cold, jagged laugh escaping his throat. It was a sound of pure liberation. "System, those are the best odds I've had since I was born in the Iron Ranks."
**[Alert: You have 15 unassigned Stat Points from the 'Diamond-Slayer' Level Up.]**
**[Current MP: 1,200/1,200. Physical integrity: 72%.]**
"Put every single point into **Agility**," Kaelen commanded, his voice vibrating with a new, terrifying frequency. "If I'm going to fight the stars, I need to be faster than the light they're throwing at me."
**[Stat Distribution Confirmed.]**
**[Agility: 35 -> 50]**
**[Stat Threshold Reached: 'Transcendental Speed' Unlocked.]**
**[Passive: Your movements now leave 'After-Images' that carry 10% of your physical weight and can trigger on-hit effects.]**
The world didn't just slow down; it ceased to be a fluid reality. To Kaelen's perception, the individual molecules of nitrogen in the air began to vibrate with visible, sluggish waves. He could see the heat haze rising from the molten glass in slow-motion curls, frozen like a painting. His heart beat once every ten seconds, a heavy, deliberate drum in a silent world.
*THUMP.*
"Let's go," he whispered.
He didn't run. He *exploded*.
Kaelen launched himself off the ground with such violence that the plaza beneath him didn't just crack; it vanished into a ten-meter crater of dust and vacuum. He became a violet streak of light, a human meteor moving in reverse. He wasn't flying in any traditional sense—he was jumping off the very air itself, his **50 Agility** allowing him to find purchase on the pressurized mana-waves of the city's defense grid and the very resistance of the atmosphere.
Five thousand feet. Ten thousand.
The skyscrapers of Aegis Prime became tiny, glowing needles below him. The air grew thin, then vanished, the blue sky fading into the velvet blackness of the void. Kaelen's **Vitality** screamed as his lungs were starved of oxygen, but the System compensated, shunting raw MP into his bloodstream to keep his muscles firing and preventing his blood from boiling in the low pressure.
**[T-Minus 5 Seconds.]**
The four satellites reached peak charge. Below Kaelen, the clouds vanished as the atmospheric pressure was pushed aside by the sheer weight of the incoming energy. Then, the world went white.
The **Oblivion Beam**—a pillar of pure, solar-converted plasma—roared downward. It was meant to hit the plaza and vaporize everything within a five-kilometer radius. Instead, it hit a boy with a violet glaive.
"**MONARCH'S DOMAIN!**" Kaelen roared, his voice carrying through the vacuum of space via the System's direct neural interface.
He met the beam head-on at the edge of the atmosphere. He didn't try to dodge. He raised *The King's Remorse*, the S-Rank violet blade screaming as it attempted to process the heat of a thousand suns. The glaive began to glow a blinding, incandescent white, its **Sovereign's Tithe** ability working at a million percent capacity. It was no longer just a weapon; it was a siphon, funneling the orbital energy of the High Senate directly into Kaelen's marrow.
**[Warning: MP Overflow! 400% Capacity reached!]**
**[Warning: Physical Vessel Sustaining Critical Damage!]**
**[Conversion Active: Converting 'Oblivion Energy' into 'Evolution Points'...]**
Kaelen's skin began to crack like parched earth, gold light leaking from his pores and his eyes. He was a small, dark speck being pushed back toward the earth by a literal god-strike, his boots screaming as they friction-burned against the energy. But he didn't break. He gripped the obsidian shaft of the glaive with both hands, his muscles tearing and knitting back together in milliseconds.
"IS THIS ALL THE SENATE HAS?" Kaelen's mental scream echoed across every satellite frequency. "YOU SACRIFICE AN ENTIRE SECTOR TO KILL ONE BOY? THEN WATCH AS I GIVE YOUR SACRIFICE BACK!"
He twisted in the center of the beam, the sheer heat melting his clothes until he was clad only in shadows and light. Using the kinetic energy of the falling strike, he performed a full-body rotation. He wasn't fighting the beam anymore; he was *redirecting* the flow of the universe.
**[Skill Triggered: 'Shatter the Crown' – Evolution Variant!]**
Kaelen swung *The King's Remorse* in a vertical crescent. The violet blade sliced through the white plasma, cleaving the orbital strike in two like a silk ribbon. The energy didn't dissipate; it followed the path of his blade.
Using the recoil, Kaelen launched himself forward, riding the wake of the split beam. He reached the first satellite, **Sol-1**—a massive, gold-plated fortress of sensors and lenses the size of a cathedral.
"First."
He drove the glaive into the primary focusing lens. The weapon, gorged on the satellite's own energy, detonated with the force of a tactical nuke. The 'Sol-1' station vanished in a blossom of fire and titanium shrapnel.
He didn't stop to admire the fireworks. He flickered through the vacuum, his **Transcendental Speed** leaving three solid after-images behind, each one striking a different structural weakness of the remaining fleet. Within ten seconds, **Sol-2** and **Sol-3** were nothing but expanding clouds of debris, their golden hulls shredded by the very energy they had fired.
He landed on the final satellite, **Sol-4**. Instead of destroying it immediately, he walked across its solar panels toward the central communication array. He knew the High Senate was watching the feed in their bunker deep beneath the capital. He leaned into the main optical sensor, his face scorched, his eyes bleeding liquid gold, a terrifyingly calm smile on his face.
"I can see you now," Kaelen whispered to the billionaires and generals on the other side of the lens. "The sky is mine. The ground is mine. The shadows are mine. Where exactly are you going to hide?"
He slammed his fist into the array, his **Strength** now boosted by the surge of stolen Aether.
**[Quest Complete: 'The Sky-Breaker's Ascent'.]**
**[Reward: Rank-D Evolution Complete.]**
**[Title: 'Heaven's Terror' Unlocked (Rank-S).]**
**[New Passive: 'Orbital Insight' – You can now see through any surveillance camera on the planet.]**
Kaelen stood on the wreckage of the last satellite as its internal stabilizers failed and its orbit began to decay. He looked down at the planet. From this height, Aegis Prime was no longer a cage of Ranks and laws. It was a hunting ground, and the lights of the capital city looked like a target.
"System," Kaelen said, watching the city lights blink far below as he began his freefall back to the surface. "Find me the Senate's bunker. I'm done playing with their toys. I want the architects."
**[Target Found: The 'Adamant' Bunker. Depth: 2km. Location: Directly beneath the High Senate Plaza.]**
Kaelen angled his body, his violet glaive leading the way as he turned himself into a second orbital strike.