The Almighty Ring

Just as Jiang Fei’s body mysteriously disappeared, Braveheart’s cannons finished charging up their attack.

“FIRE!” Akatziris screamed.

“Yes, captain!”

0543 immediately fired all cannons at the metal box drifting in space not too far from the ship that was the ship’s holding cell.

BOOM! BOOM BOOM!…

Multiple beams of death rays instantly shot out toward the defenceless holding cell. And after the last shot finally made it through its target, not even a speck of wreckage debris remained.

“Report! Are they dead yet?” Akatziris anxiously asked the ship’s virtual assistant.

“Yes, captain! Due to the target being too close to us, our shields are down by 65%. 37% of the ship’s hull has been damaged and 15% of the ship’s frame has been damaged by the blast. The ship is now in critical condition, captain!” 0543 reported.

“That’s not what I asked you, moron! Didn’t you hear me? I want you to tell me about the holding cell and Jiang Fei! Is he still alive?” Akatziris snapped at the AI. It did not matter to her if the ship suffered a heavy beating from the bombardment, for as long as Jiang Fei was dead, she could have all the time in the world for repairs. But if he was still alive, then the retribution later would be much worse than Braveheart being in critical condition.

“Scanner sweeps are not picking up any signs of life from the area, it is highly probable that the target has been eliminated,” 0543 then replied. Braveheart’s concentrated cannon fire was powerful enough to obliterate a small planet, let alone one tiny containment cell, so not picking up any life signatures on the scanners after such an attack was an expected result.

“Is he really dead? Then why am I getting a bad feeling about this?” Akatziris frowned with her biomechanical brows.

“Rest assured, captain. Nothing can survive concentrated cannon fire from Braveheart, especially when they have been incapacitated by the holding cell’s power suppression system.” 0543 assured her captain.

With over ten thousand of the Namekian ship’s main cannons all firing at once, even a Level 5 Metahuman would be reduced to nothing but dust particles. The only way to avoid such a fate would be to instantly teleport away from the line of fire, but Jiang Fei and the girls all had their powers suppressed by the prison cell so teleporting under those conditions would be impossible. Thus, 0543 calculated the possibility of them dying from the attack to be 99.99%.

“No, I don’t think he would just go out so easily like this!” The android’s anxiety was steadily growing, spreading throughout her electrical circuits.

“0543, set a course and prepare the ship for intergalactic warp immediately!”

Akatziris did not feel safe remaining there. The thoughts of Jiang Fei suddenly showing up again were haunting her, tormenting her operating system. She decided to leave the milky way and head toward another galaxy immediately.

“But captain, the ship is still heavily damaged. Warping in this condition is not advisable.” 0543 cautioned her.

“Don’t bother me with that nonsense and stop telling me what I can or cannot do! Warp us to the X75 star cluster now!” Akatziris shouted angrily. Warping the heavily damaged Braveheart would only do more harm than good to the ship, but she could not shake off the feeling of imminent doom from her logic processor, and every wire in her metal body was telling her to leave this galaxy for another one immediately.

“Right away, captain!” Having received such a forceful order from her captain, 0543 could do nothing else but comply with it. So after adjusting the ship’s direction and inputting the warp coordinates into the ship’s navigation system, Braveheart then sped up and prepared to enter subspace.

WRRR!

Not long after the ship had started its journey, an intense white ball of light appeared some hundreds of kilometers in front of them. While such a distance would be considered lengthy on Earth, it was nothing compared to the infinite expanse of outer-space.

“What the h*ll is that?” The bright ball of light did not evade Akatziris’ lenses and was spotted immediately after it appeared.

0543 quickly zoomed in on the unidentified object and projected a live visual on a nearby wall. But neither the virtual assistant nor was her captain prepared in any way for what they saw.

“T-t-th-that’s impossible!”

What they saw was so shocking to them that the AI developed the ability to stutter in her speech while Akatziris’ operating system almost crashed and blue-screened. Appearing on the screen was an undamaged holding cell that they had supposedly deleted from existence a mere few minutes ago!

“What the f*ck is this? 0543! Where the f*ck did that come from?” The feeling of imminent doom intensified inside the android’s central processing unit. The holding cell’s sudden reappearance could not have been from teleportation, for if that was the case then Braveheart’s preemptive detection radars would have picked up signs of spatial distortions and warned them about it.

“Warning! Warning! Spatial distortion detected around ship!”

Before they could begin to give the mysterious sudden reemergence of the holding cell any thought, Braveheart’s radar’s alarm started going off.

“Damn it! Initiate spatial stabilizers!” Akatziris promptly reacted to the alarm and ordered 0543. Based on the radar’s warning, it was clear that someone was attempting to forcefully teleport the entire ship away to a location where an ambush might be awaiting. But such an attempt was mere child’s play to the Namekian captain. As a deep-space faring species, the Namekians were no stranger to teleportation technology and were in fact, very advanced on the matter. A plan for a forced teleportation on them like this could be foiled easily.

“Spatial stabilizers initiated, captain!” 0543 was being very efficient this time and instantly carried out the captain’s orders without a hitch. The space around Braveheart was immediately fortified and any attempts to pull the spaceship into subspace was instantly thwarted.

“Warning! Warning! Spatial distortion detected around ship!”

But despite having their spatial stabilizers deployed and running, the radar’s warning did not stop.

“What’s going on? Why is it not working?” Akatziris was startled. Her non-existent gut was telling her that the radar’s warning was right, and that the ship’s spatial stabilizers were not doing what they were supposed to do.

WHOOSH!

But before 0543 could answer the captain’s distressed questions, reality disappeared from their surroundings and the entire Braveheart vanished from sight. And by the time Akatziris emerged back into reality, the Braveheart was gone and 0543 was unreachable. She looked around her and saw all of her minions, the other superior androids that had defected from the Unknowns, along with her, drifting in space alongside herself.

“Where are we? My body…” The first thing that caught Akatziris’ attention was they were all drifting around in a strange space filled with blurry lights of all colors coming from every direction. Her mechanical body was not responding to any of her commands, making any form of action, speech, or wireless communication impossible for her. And judging by the way the other androids were not moving or speaking as well, she assumed the same for the rest of them. The only thing working right now was her operating system, keeping them all conscious and aware of all that was happening around them.

“Where the h*ll is this place? What the f*ck happened to the ship?” Akatziris was discombobulated. Although as a Namekian she was trained and well-learned on many different topics and situations, all that education and knowledge did not prepare them for this new experience.

“Hey! Akatziris! We meet again!”

A voice resounded through the emptiness as if coming from every direction as a bright light flashed right in front of them, bringing Jiang Fei into view.

“…”

Akatziris was silent even though her former master had just appeared out of thin air. It was not because she was at a loss for words or she was silent by choice, but rather it was due to her android vocal chords not functioning.

“Oh, I know that look! You must be wondering where we are. Where the f*ck is this place?” Jiang Fei said in a calm and casual manner. “Well, we are about 50 million kilometers away from the sun, somewhere near Mercury’s orbit.”

Although the disabled mechanical muscles on her face meant that she was incapable of showing any form of emotion, Jiang Fei could empathize with her confusion simply because he too was confused when he first came here.

“Confusing, isn’t it? Well, this is the exact same place where Braveheart is, but don’t you agree that the view here is strange?” Jiang Fei smirked. Where they were right now was indeed the very same location as where they were when on Braveheart. Thus, fortifying the space around them with the ship’s spatial stabilizers was pointless as they were not being displaced from their positions.

“Well, let me explain. Although our physical location did not change… Surprise! Our dimensions have! Ladies and gents, welcome to the tenth dimension! Welcome to my world!” Jiang Fei’s voice boomed across the entire plane. He had never been as confident as he was now, and all this confidence came from him acquiring absolute power!