Chapter 406

Seventh Quadrant, Zephyr Star Sector.

This was once a rich star system with nine habitable planets.

The three main-sequence stars in the star system radiated warm brilliance, providing energy for countless intelligent lives.

But now, this place had become hell.

The war that had lasted for thirteen standard years had completely changed the appearance of this star system.

The light of the three main-sequence stars had become dim and blood-red.

Abnormal flares constantly erupted on the surface of the stars, which were the wounds left by large-scale energy bombardment.

Countless asteroid belts circled in space like giant snakes.

Mixed within them were the wreckage of shattered warships, the skeletons of starry sky behemoths, and the fragments of planets that had been completely vaporized.

In the center of this dead battlefield, a contest determining the survival of civilization was still continuing.

At this moment, a biological warship was slowly turning its direction.

This was not a cold metal creation, but a living body in the true sense.

The hull of the warship was made of translucent cartilage material, and the surface was covered with dense neural patterns.

Inside, one could clearly see energy conduction pipes like blood vessels, pulsating rhythmically, and every contraction would push the circulation of biological fluids within the ship.

The huge compound eye at the bow of the ship rotated like a living thing.

The deep blue light flashed on and off, emitting psionic detection waves invisible to the naked eye into the surrounding space.

Whenever the detection waves swept over the wizard fleet, the pupils of the compound eye would shrink slightly, showing a certain biological instinct of vigilance.

This was the main warship of the Vital Republic—the "Symbiont"-class biological mothership.

As the recognized hegemon-level civilization in this quadrant, the Vitals had developed a unique biological technology system.

Their racial appearance was similar to an octopus, but much larger, and the tentacles of adult individuals could reach several meters when spread out.

What was even more amazing was that the nobles of the Vitals would sign a "soul contract" with a starry sky behemoth from birth, forming a symbiotic relationship.

Inside the biological warship, thousands of Vital warriors were directly connected to the ship's neural network through tentacles.

They did not need any instruments or equipment; every inch of the warship's flesh and blood became an extension of their senses, and every heartbeat resonated with the ship's body.

"Enemy reinforcement signal detected..."

The intention of a Vital commander fluctuated in the collective consciousness network:

"It's those damn wizards again... there are even more of them this time..."

In their shared perception, the distant space was distorting.

Cracks as brilliant as auroras were tearing open in the starry sky, emitting unsettling colorful halos.

That was the sign of a cross-dimensional portal, meaning that a new round of reinforcements from the wizard civilization was about to arrive.

First to surge out of the cracks were the vanguard troops of the wizard fleet.

Quite different from the biological aesthetics of the Vitals, these warships displayed another twisted and eerie technological style.

The hull was made of a liquid metal that could autonomously reconstruct, and the surface was covered with dense rune circuits like spider webs.

Whenever these runes lit up, the surrounding space would distort subtly, and the boundary of reality became blurred here.

But what was most unsettling were the hundreds of eyeballs embedded on the surface of the warship.

These eyeballs came from different creatures.

Some were the compound eyes of abyss monsters radiating chaos light;

Some were the single eyes of intelligent races from conquered civilizations;

And some even came from high-dimensional creatures, which would cause dizziness in the observer just by looking at them.

They kept rotating, providing the warship with an all-around super-perception field of vision.

"37th Fleet, space battleship formation deployment complete."

A calm mechanical voice came from the communication channel of the wizard fleet:

"Slave Legion 4th, 7th, and 12th detachments are ready. The otherworld summoning gate has been activated, and the countdown for abyss creature deployment has begun."

Immediately after, more bizarre existences surged out of the portal.

First were the slave legions composed of vassal races conquered by the wizard civilization.

Lava giants from the fire element plane, each hundreds of meters tall, with bodies made of pure magma.

They wielded burning warhammers and axes, leaving molten traces just by walking.

Ice elements from the frost plane, they had no fixed form, sometimes crystalline humanoids, sometimes turning into howling blizzards.

And shadow creatures from the dark dimension, they were like living darkness, without substance but capable of devouring light.

The most terrifying were those abyss creatures.

Huge tentacle monsters wriggled out of the portal, each tentacle thicker than a warship, with autonomously wriggling mouthparts covering the surface.

Their bodies radiated the chaos aura unique to the abyss, and just approaching them would cause the surrounding space to distort.

Flesh constructs followed closely behind; these were war machines pieced together by wizards using various biological remains.

They had dragon wings, giant arms, tentacles of deep-sea monsters, and various unrecognizable alien organs.

Each construct was unique because their creators would "upgrade and modify" them at any time according to battlefield needs.

But what truly made the Vitals fear were the phantoms of Great Wizards that began to appear.

The first phantom to appear made the entire battlefield tremble.

It was a mass of liquid metal that constantly changed shape.

Sometimes condensing into a huge humanoid outline, sometimes turning into countless metal tentacles swimming like snakes, and sometimes reconstructing into complex geometric structures.

Every time the form changed, it produced a tooth-aching sound of metal friction, a sound that could even propagate in space without a medium.

This was the phantom manifestation of the alchemy-proficient Great Wizard Melvis—"Meltdown Configuration."

Under his influence, all metal substances within a huge range began to "activate."

The metal decorations on the armor of the Vital warships suddenly detached from their original positions, turning into thousands of sharp blades and stabbing inward.

Even the meteorites floating in space, as long as they contained metal components, began to distort and deform, reshaping into various ferocious weapons.

"Damn it... it's that metal lunatic again!"

The anger of the Vital fleet commander erupted in the collective consciousness:

"Activate the anti-metalization modification of the biological armor! Quick!"

But Melvis's attack was just the beginning.

The manifestation of the second phantom was even more eerie.

It was a breathing shadow, like the shadow cast by some huge creature.

The edge of the shadow constantly wriggled, occasionally reaching out pale, corpse-like arms, grabbing at certain targets in space.

Whenever those arms "touched" something, the touched object would instantly age.

Metal would quickly rust and decay, energy would dissipate, and even starlight would become dim and lusterless.

What was most terrifying was that this aging effect could also spread.

The touched Vital warriors would find their vitality rapidly draining, their tentacles withering, and their compound eyes gradually going blind.

This was the phantom of the time-series Great Wizard Caldwin—"Time Eater."

"All units attention! Immediately cut off the neural connection with the infected area!"

The Vital fleet issued an emergency order, but it was too late.

The terror of time-series spells lay in their irreversibility; the time taken away would never return.

The appearance of the third phantom almost impacted the sanity of all observers.

It was a three-dimensional figure pieced together by countless "impossibilities."

It was both a sphere and a cube, both here and there, both existing and non-existing.

Just seeing it would cause a sharp pain in the observer's brain.

Because the cognitive system of ordinary living beings simply could not process this contradictory existence.

This was the phantom of the Great Wizard Erica, who specialized in space spells—"Paradox Geometry."

Under her influence, the space on the battlefield began to become chaotic.

Some Vital warships found that they were clearly flying forward, but appeared in the rear;

Attacks were fired to the east, but hit the target from the west;

Some spaceships even split into multiple versions, existing at different spatial coordinates simultaneously.

The joint attack of the three Great Wizard phantoms completely destroyed a Vital main ship in an instant.

But the counterattack of the Vitals was equally astonishing.

"Call the Son of God!"

The psionic roar of the Vital supreme commander Azalos penetrated the entire battlefield:

"Let these invaders see what true cosmic power is!"

A low hum came from the depths of the stars.

That sound was low and distant, as if the galaxy itself was sighing.

Immediately after, a figure as huge as a planet slowly swam out of the space turbulence.

Whale King—one of the kings among the starry sky behemoths.

Its body was made of translucent energy, and inside, one could clearly see organ structures rotating like nebulae.

Every heartbeat would produce visible energy ripples, spreading in all directions.

The Whale King opened its huge mouth and let out a silent roar.

The sound waves spread in all directions in an instant.

Wherever it went, the runes on the wizard warships began to flicker unstably.

Those eyeballs used as sensory organs exploded one after another, splashing colorful body fluids.

What was even more terrifying was that the Whale King's roar contained a strong "anti-magic" trait.

The spell structures carefully woven by the wizards began to disintegrate.

Even the phantoms of the Great Wizards were affected, becoming transparent and unstable, as if they could dissipate at any time.

"Damn primitive behemoth!"

Melvis's metal phantom emitted an angry intention fluctuation, the sound like thousands of sharp swords rubbing:

"The anti-spell ability of these beasts is much stronger than described in the intelligence! Who was responsible for the pre-war research?!"

But complaints could not solve the problem.

Around the Whale King, more starry sky creatures began to gather.

Some looked like giant jellyfish, with tentacles that could extend for thousands of miles, and the ends of each tentacle flashed with bioelectricity of different frequencies;