The Xenocides and Malkor's endless obsidian sea of soldiers remained locked in a brutal war of attrition, every foot of blood-soaked soil contested by thousands of blade strikes and plasma detonations.
Amidst the swirling storm of dust and violence, Zainab Virel, Captain of the 5th Division, locked her eyes onto the distant, untouchable silhouette of Malkor. The sight of his detached, cold composure acting as the architect for this planetary execution burned away her restraint.
"You piece of shit! I'm gonna end you!" Zainab roared, With an explosive burst of speed, she launched herself across the battlefield.
As she sprinted, the moisture in the air rapidly condensed around her right forearm, swirling into a pressurized, hyper densed water blade.
She leaped, aiming a devastating downward slash directly at the tyrant king.
She didn't reach him.
BEAM!
A blinding, pencil-thin streak of crimson energy violently pierced the smoke screen from the side, striking the ground directly beneath Zainab's boots. The sheer explosive displacement of the superheated air blasted her sideways, shattering her water blade and forcing her to tumble harshly across the fractured metallic terrain.
"Captain!" Temi Nova shouted, her eyes wide with panic as she sliced her own liquid-whip through an oncoming soldier and sprinted hard toward the impact crater. She skittered to a halt, interposing herself between her fallen commander and the rising dust cloud.
"I'm fine, Temi," Zainab spat, coughing up a mouthful of dark dust as she pushed herself up onto one knee. Her eyes never left the clearing smoke.
A figure stepped through the haze. It was one of Malkor's high-ranking , His name was Gunz.
He calmly raised his right hand, curling his fingers into a distinct, sharp gun-like gesture, the tip of his index finger crackling with a terrifyingly dense accumulation of concentrated plasma.
"How foolish of you to think you can touch Lord Malkor," Gunz said, his voice dripping with an elegant, condescending malice. "You aren't even on his level."
Zainab slowly rose to her feet, her expression hardening into a dark, unyielding frown.
"You bitch," Zainab snarled, her aura expanding into a freezing, heavy mist. "I'm gonna kill you, then Malkor. Let's see if you can stop me."
Gunz lips curved into a cold, wicked smile. He adjusted his stance, pointing his fingers cleanly at Zainab's chest. "Alright. Let's begin."
The confrontation exploded instantly.
gunz snapped her wrist, unleashing a rapid-fire volley of high-velocity energy beams that hissed through the air like crimson needles.
"Temi, split!" Zainab commanded.
Zainab didn't just dodge; she dissolved. As the first three lasers targeted her torso, her physical body shifted into a highly pressurized, completely liquid state. The beams passed cleanly through the fluid mass, merely superheating the water and causing it to violently expand.
Instantly, the liquid mass reformed into Zainab's solid shape behind Gunz.
Zainab channeled the absolute extreme of her heat control, unleashing a massive, blinding torrent of scalding, pressurized steam directly at the Elite's back.
Gunz sensed the sudden atmospheric spike. Without turning, he executed a blind leap upward, using a single-point energy blast from his fingers to rocket herself thirty feet into the air, escaping the boiling cloud.
"Now, Captain!" Temi yelled.
Temi had already positioned herself on a ruined artillery platform. Drawing from the ambient moisture reserves of the starships, she unleashed two massive, twisting torrents of high-density water that wrapped around Gunz's ankles mid-air, pinning her in place.
Gunz clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Annoying flies."
From her elevated position, Gunz pointed both hands downward, executing a rapid-fire, Gatling-style sequence of laser bursts. The sharp, piercing beams shredded through Temi's liquid binds and rained down upon the platform. Zainab materialized directly in front of Temi, her hands extended outward.
"Freeze!" Zainab roared.
The incoming water instantly turned into ice.
The crimson energy beams slammed into the frozen barrier with a deafening sequence of CRACKS, drilling deep into the structure but failing to pierce through before Zainab continuously reinforced the ice.
Meanwhile.....
Jaxen, Rook, and Kealen found themselves entirely cut off from the main fight, backed against the crumpled hull of a fallen dreadnought. Standing before them was a trio that felt like an impassable wall: a towering Elite named drag,.on, flanked by two monstrously built soldiers whose power rivaled the elites themselves. Their names were
Raze and blaze
Drag..on let out a low, vibrating growl that sounded like grinding tectonic plates. His skin began to harden, dark, obsidian scales erupting along his arms and neck as his spine elongated. Within seconds, his physical frame expanded, his jaw protruding into a reptilian snout lined with razor-sharp teeth as massive, leather-like wings burst from his shoulder blades. He had transformed into a towering, dragon
"Oh shit a dragon!" Jaxen yelled, blue arcs of high-frequency electricity actively dancing across his eyes and knuckles. "I told you dragons where aliens!", "Jaxen focus , this is not the time" kealen roared, Jaxen exploded forward, transforming into a literal streak of lightning. He materialized directly above the dragon-, locking his hands together to drive a massive, million-volt thunderbolt strike straight into the Dragons skull.
But before the lightning could connect, the massive soldier, raze, stepped into the path of the storm.
He didn't raise a shield; he simply opened his bare palms. The moment Jaxen's lightning struck his flesh, the electricity didn't shock him—it was violently pulled into his skin, his veins glowing with a bright blue hue as his muscular frame expanded even further. He had completely absorbed the entire kinetic and elemental output of the attack.
"What?!" Jaxen gasped mid-air.
"My turn," the second soldier, Malakor-Reza, bellowed. He lunged forward, grabbing the glowing, electricity-charged hand of his partner. With a fluid, martial pivot, he pointed his free palm directly at Rook, releasing the exact same million-volt lightning blast back out with double the velocity.
"Get down!" Rook shouted.
Rook slammed both palms onto the metallic deck. Instantly, the iron plating tore itself free from the ship's framework, rushing upward to form a massive, ten-foot-thick solid steel shield in front of him. The redirected lightning strike slammed into the metal wall. The sheer voltage caused the steel to turn red-hot and melt into liquid slag within seconds, the concussive force blasting Rook backward.
Kealen caught Rook by the shoulder, stabilization achieved, "shit this is bad ," Kealen grinned savagely, his hands erupting into flames. "Now it's my turn"
Kealen launched a continuous, long-range barrage of explosive fireballs toward raze.
At the same time, Rook manipulated the melted liquid steel on the floor, forming hundreds of floating, razor-sharp iron spikes and launching them like a railgun barrage toward the dragon .
The dragon unleashed a terrifying, concussive sonic roar from his reptilian maw, the sheer atmospheric pressure shattering Rook's incoming metal spikes into harmless dust.
Meanwhile, raze stood his ground, his massive arms crossed as he continuously absorbed Kealen's fireballs. His skin was turning an intense, glowing orange as his body reached its absolute limits.
"Blaze Take it!" Raze roared, his voice strained from the massive accumulation of energy.
Malakor-Reza stepped forward, slapping his hand onto Voss's shoulder to draw the heat out, aiming his palm cleanly at Jaxen to discharge a devastating wave of combined fire and lightning.
But Jaxen was already a step ahead "I don't think so!"
Utilizing his lightning-step velocity, Jaxen bypassed the trajectory entirely, appearing directly at blaze flank and delivered a brutal, high-speed roundhouse kick to Raze's jaw.
CRACK!
The redirector was lifted off his feet, his concentration breaking, causing the stored energy to detonate prematurely inside his own palm.
The resulting explosion blasted both blaze and raze backward into the dirt, their perfect loop temporarily shattered.
Back to Zainab virel
Gunz had realized that firing direct, beam at Zainab was useless due to her ability to turn into water. Changing his strategy, Gunz began firing his energy beams into the metallic environment around them, ricocheting the sharp lasers off the surrounding wreckage to create an inescapable, multi-directional grid of light that locked Zainab and Temi within a narrow perimeter.
"You can't dissolve if there is nowhere to flow!" Gunz mocked, his hand-gun sign flashing rapidly as the laser grid tightened.
"Temi, give me everything you've got!" Zainab commanded, her eyes flashing with absolute focus.
Temi didn't hesitate. She drew every ounce of liquid from her reserves, throwing a massive wave of water directly into the center of the laser grid. The moment the water entered the area , Zainab synchronized her consciousness with it. She didn't just manipulate it—she became the entire body of water.
As Gunz lasers cut into the massive liquid sphere, Zainab rapidly manipulated the internal temperature. The water didn't just vaporize; it instantly converted into a massive, highly pressurized explosion of superheated steam that expanded outward with the force of a bomb.
The sheer force of the steam explosion shattered Gunz ricochet grid, the blinding, scalding pressure slamming directly into the Elite's and sending him crashing heavily onto the deck, his skin blistered by the intense heat.