The Almighty Ring

A mass of glowing particles, large as it encompassed an area that was as big as a football field, materialized on the planet surface. Lieutenant Domingo led every available soldier to the surface of the unnamed planet. It was a rescue movement to extract Jiang Fei from the grasp of the swarm’s Queen.

“Formation Alpha! Weapons hot on my command!” Domingo roared, ordering all his soldiers to take aim at the subsurface hole where Jiang Fei’s signal was detected.

In no time, the Queen, with Jiang Fei riding on her back, emerged, accompanied with a large number of bugs.

“Surrender the hostage or you shall be exterminated with extreme prejudice!” Domingo cried, utilizing a loudspeaker.

“Hostage? What hostage?! I am the hostage!” the Queen thought. She had no idea that Domingo and the rest of the soldiers had misunderstood the situation.

“I will repeat once more. Surrender Jiang Fei right this instant or this planet shall not survive to see the light of the next day!” Domingo repeated his threat.

“Lieutenant! It’s me! I’m right here!” Jiang Fei cried, waving his hands as hard as he could.

“Calm down! You will be alright! I will save you!”

Due to the slight distance between the two of them, Domingo had failed to notice the sword in Jiang Fei’s hands pressed against the Queen’s back. Furthermore, Domingo was under the impression that Jiang Fei was held hostage because he was just too weak. It was only sensible to misunderstand that he was being held hostage instead of the other way round.

“Lieutenant? Save me? What for?” Jiang Fei barked. He had joined the confusion. Right now, he thought Domingo was only “posing” to save him, ignoring the captive Queen of the Swarm, to gain military credit for himself.

It took some time but one of the operatives, who was accessing the situation, informed Domingo the oddity of the situation, about how he noticed the Queen was not moving and Jiang Fei was pressing his sword on the Queen’s back.

“Binocs, now!” Domingo roared, asking to be handed a pair of long-ranged binoculars.

“What the hell is going on…”

“Sir, I think that Terran has captured the Queen,” the operator added.

“How is that even possible?”

Domingo could not believe his eyes. So many of his soldiers had lost their lives on the unnamed planet and he could not complete his mission. They were even forced to evacuate the place! How was it that a lowly Terran, measured at only 65,000…

It was then did Domingo do something he should have a long time ago; to check Jiang Fei’s combat level. At that moment, the thought of calling the Terran that was standing on the Queen’s back an imposter rushed to his mind. Jiang Fei, who’s supposed to only have 65,000 combat level, was now a powerful fighter of 1,500,000 combat level!

Bloodrage had been inactive for some time now. Due to the fact that Jiang Fei’s own natural strength had increased, the side effect of using the skill was not as impairing as before. With Omnisurge only, Jiang Fei was still able to maintain a 1,500,000 combat level.

There were many things that were going through Domingo’s mind and the thought that stood out the most was Ottogackt. Even so, he was now more relaxed then ever after seeing Jiang Fei was all well and unharmed.

“Sir! I’ve captured the Queen of the Swarm!” said Jiang Fei with a certain domineering tone because he was under the impression that Domingo was only trying to snatch credit.

“I don’t care about that! As long as you’re fine!” Domingo replied immediately. Hearing his reply had only cemented the misunderstanding Jiang Fei had about Domingo!

“Please take over from here. I’m tired and I need some rest,” Jiang Fei added. Even though he was not happy about it, Jiang Fei did not bother to rectify the situation with Domingo. After being through so much nonsense, scurrying with Domingo and his own troops would do no good for him.

“Go ahead. We’ll take care of things from here,” Domingo said. He could not understand the reason behind Jiang Fei’s disgruntled attitude. He thought Jiang Fei was merely unhappy about them leaving him behind. He could not be further from the thought that Jiang Fei had, that he was there to steal his thunder.

Domingo was only treating Jiang Fei well because of Ottogackt and perhaps even someone of higher authority. Stealing his thunder would be the last thing he would dare to do. He did not wish to face “thunderous” punishments from someone above!

While Jiang Fei returned to the ship to recuperate, the rest of Domingo’s soldiers began a mass genocide. Whenever they were met with a large resistance, Domingo would only need to threaten the Queen and the entire resistance died down, literally.

The Queen, mentally controlled and commanded all the bugs that were under her psychic influence to lay down all their weapons and attacks. As such, the Valsalrian soldiers had the time of their lives in finishing the mission. Taking hostages and killing everyone of them was second nature to them. They would do the same to any other highly intelligent lifeforms, so doing it to these non-intelligent lifeforms meant nothing to them.

The entire mop-up operation was completed quickly. What they mostly did was force the Queen to gather every bug under her control and destroy them with a single blast from the Corvette class ship’s Mega Particle Beam Cannon.

Instead of resisting the culling of her entire race, the Queen obeyed and cooperated obediently. The cries and wails of her dying race were only ignored as the Queen only cared for herself and not others.

A few hours later, besides the Valsalrian Army and the Queen, there were no other living being on the unnamed planet. All surviving eggs were collected, larvae burned and destroyed, and the culling of an entire race ended. Once everything was done, everyone packed up and left. The planet was now like a deserted island with nothing but vegetation and unintelligent lifeforms. The Queen was captured and tamed, and then prepared for transport to Redstone for an auction.

“Lieutenant, we are ready to leave,” said the captain of the Corvette.

“Take off then,” Domingo replied. He had just finished writing the mission report and had made sure to fill it with Jiang Fei’s endeavors. To make sure he could butter up to whomever was supporting Jiang Fei, Domingo had pushed 90% of all the work done on the unnamed planet to Jiang Fei. To be fair, although Jiang Fei did contribute to the capturing of the Queen, he had only done so much, and that did not deserve 90% of the credit. Then again, Domingo did not care too much since he was going all out to butter up Jiang Fei with his support.

All ships took off from the planet and after a few hours, the fleet arrived safely at Ipsilon’s orbit.

“Finally home!” Domingo breathed a sigh of relief. Even though the final outcome of this mission was positive, he had lost a ship, one third of his men, and had to deal with the fact that Jiang Fei was almost killed. To be fair, Domingo would rather lose all of his men than have Jiang Fei killed.

When the ship docked on the ground station, Jiang Fei stopped Domingo when everyone was leaving the ship.

“Sir, do you have word about Sir Ottogackt’s arrival?” Jiang Fei asked.

“What’s that now? Are you not satisfied being under my wing? Do you wish to leave?” Domingo replied, laughing weakly.

“No. I only want to receive my next training lesson,” Jiang Fei replied coldly. Due to the previous misunderstanding, he was not really comfortable answering to Domingo.