Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 671: Snatch War, Reaction

The chamber held its silence for a long moment.

Ronaisan El Topov hovered at the upper edge of it, surrounded by his elite, the blueprint rotating slowly in the suspended water between everyone present. Below him, the two expedition forces that had descended together stood frozen in the wreckage of a partnership that had lasted exactly until it became inconvenient.

It was Ronaisan who broke the silence.

”I will be clear, so that no one wastes effort on misunderstanding,” he said. His voice carried evenly through the depth’s pressure. ”That blueprint is a chaos-aligned harnessing system. It is, by every reasonable measure, the property of the kingdom whose depth this is. Oblivion Tyrant Sovereignty and the Velkarion Dominion have a legitimate claim to it. My alliance is here to ensure that claim is honored.”

Almond’s expression did not change. ”And in exchange for honoring it, you receive what.”

”Goodwill,” Ronaisan said. ”And a continued understanding that the Thalmyr-Ronethis Alliance prefers to resolve matters through arrangement rather than destruction. Whenever the option is available.”

Beside Ronaisan, the Oblivion Tyrant battle priestess shifted forward. Her name, according to the intelligence the Suryax-Ananta team had gathered before the descent, was Drashka, and she was the same resurrector whose network Maya and Lily had dismantled during the naval engagement two months earlier. She did not appear to have forgotten this. Her crimson-streaked gaze moved across the Suryax-Ananta line with open hostility.

”The space around here is not just sealed,” she said. Her voice carried a low, grinding resonance. ”It is shredded. We made sure of it before we arrived. Whatever escape any of you were counting on, it will not function. So I will say what my courteous colleague will not.” She smiled, and the smile had teeth in it. ”It would not be fun to leave without spilling any blood, would it?”

The chamber’s pressure tightened.

The Velkarion war-construct behind her unfolded another layer of its armament. The Thalmyr aerial units adjusted their spacing by precise increments. On the Virexion-Kezryx side, Marshal Veylara’s storm-armor cycled into its combat configuration, and Jaskrit’s personal aura began, very slowly, to fill the chamber.

Five forces. One blueprint. No allies.

Almond did not look concerned.

This was, in fact, the part that the Suryax-Ananta leadership had spent the most time preparing for. They had known before they descended that a joint expedition with Virexion-Kezryx might turn into a betrayal. They had not predicted Thalmyr-Ronethis would arrive with Oblivion-Velkarion in tow, but they had built their contingency around a simpler and more durable principle than prediction. The principle was this: never enter a place you cannot leave.

And Almond could now leave anywhere.

His third deck had completed during the ten days of Operation Illusion. He had not announced it. He had not demonstrated it. He had simply finished it, and then waited for a situation that would justify revealing it.

[Vault of the Sovereign Keymaker]

The deck’s governing concept was access. Doors that should not open. Spaces that should not connect. Locks that existed at the level of reality itself. And among its cards was one whose function was simple to describe and difficult to counter.

The Master Key: Absolute Override. The key could access the assets he places and generates from this deck. The one that could help in situation was Vault Room card.

Using the key to access the Vault Room, which he had designated to be the tower’s top in Suryax Regalon Island.

This key did not navigate space. It ignored space. He could select a set of fixed targets, and moved them there regardless of what lay between, regardless of seals, regardless of the kind of shredding Drashka had so carefully arranged. A torn space was still a space. The Master Key did not care about the condition of the medium it was overriding.

Almond could take the entire Suryax-Ananta expedition out of this chamber whenever he chose.

But not yet.

Because the blueprint was still rotating in the water between them, and every peak powerhouse in the chamber had their attention fixed on it.

He had no intention of leaving it behind.

So he waited, and around him, the contest for the blueprint began without a single body moving.

---

It started as intent.

The peak powerhouses in the chamber did not lunge for the blueprint. They could not. The moment any one of them committed to seizing it, the other four would converge, and converging in a sealed chamber against four rivals was a death sentence regardless of how strong any individual was. So instead, they pressed.

Ronaisan’s awareness extended toward the blueprint like a slow, cold current, attempting to claim it through sheer authority of presence. Jaskrit’s storm-pressure pushed back against that current from the opposite side. Drashka’s chaos-resonance reached for it from below. Marshal Veylara’s interference field tried to disrupt every other claim simultaneously. And Almond’s three Grimblades, hovering in slow orbit, each radiated a thread of Grim Severam toward the blueprint’s position, severing every other claimant’s connection the instant it formed.

The water around the blueprint distorted from the competing pressures. The blueprint itself trembled in place, held suspended by the sheer balance of opposing forces, claimed by everyone and therefore by no one.

”Nobody can take it,” Marcus murmured, low enough that only the Suryax-Ananta line heard. ”The second anyone grabs it, everyone else hits them.”

”Which means,” Lily said quietly, ”the first person to try is doing us a favor.”

Jaskrit tried.

It was a calculated risk on his part. He committed his full speed in a single motion, faster than anyone in the chamber had moved, his hand closing around the blueprint before the competing pressures could redirect.

He held it for less than half a second.

Four reactions arrived at once. A Thalmyr precision lance, a Velkarion crimson burst, a thread of Drashka’s chaos, and a slicing arc of Marshal Veylara’s own interference, because Veylara had no more loyalty to Jaskrit’s grab than anyone else did. The combined impact struck Jaskrit’s forearm, and his hand was blasted open. The blueprint tore free and spun across the chamber.

And then the chamber erupted.

Because the blueprint was moving, and a moving blueprint could be intercepted, and every powerhouse present committed to the interception at the same instant.

It became a blur. The blueprint ricocheted across the chamber as power after power swatted it away from the others, none of them able to hold it for more than a fraction of a moment before another strike sent it elsewhere. Marshal Veylara caught it and lost it to a Thalmyr lance. Drashka snatched it and had it knocked away by Ronaisan’s elite. A Velkarion commander seized it and was driven back by Hiroshi, who had not been trying to claim the blueprint at all and was simply removing the commander as a matter of efficiency. The blueprint spun through the high-speed exchange like a coin tossed into a storm, and the chamber filled with the noise and light of a battle that no one had formally started and everyone was now fully committed to.

Almond watched the blueprint’s trajectory.

He did not chase it. Chasing it was what everyone else was doing, and everyone else was very strong and very fast, and a chase would put him in the center of four converging attacks.

Instead, he waited for the trajectory to come to him.

It took four seconds. The blueprint, batted away from a clash between Drashka and Marshal Veylara, spun toward the lower edge of the chamber on a curve that passed within two meters of Almond’s position.

He moved once.

His hand closed around the blueprint.

And in the same motion, before a single one of the converging powerhouses could redirect toward him, before Ronaisan’s awareness could even register the change, Almond activated the Master Key.

”Absolute Override.”

The Suryax-Ananta expedition vanished.

Not in a flash. Not in a tear of light. They were simply removed from the chamber, all twelve of them, lifted out of the shredded, sealed, contested space as though the seals and the shredding were notes someone had written on a door that the Master Key did not bother to read. One instant they were there, locked in the heart of a five-way battle. The next instant the chamber held only four forces, all of them still mid-strike, all of them suddenly converging on a point in the water where there was no longer anything to converge on.

The blueprint was gone.

The Suryax-Ananta Alliance was gone.

The chamber went silent for the second time.

---

The silence held longer this time.

Ronaisan El Topov lowered slowly until he hovered at the center of the chamber, exactly where the blueprint had been. His expression had not changed. It rarely did. But the elite of three alliances watched him, and the elite of three alliances understood that something had just happened that none of them had accounted for.

Jaskrit Kezinos, his forearm regenerating slowly, broke the silence first.

”They had an exit,” he said flatly. ”The whole time. Drashka shredded the space and they had an exit anyway.”

”They had a deck we have never seen,” Ronaisan corrected. ”Which means they have been hiding it. Which means they have been hiding more than this.”

Drashka’s resonance flared with anger. ”Then we destroy them. Now. Before they extract anything from that blueprint.”

”With what coordination?” Marshal Veylara asked coolly. ”Half the people in this chamber were trying to kill the other half thirty seconds ago.”

”That was thirty seconds ago,” Ronaisan said.

He turned slowly, taking in the leaders of the three alliances present. Jaskrit for Virexion-Kezryx. Drashka, who spoke for Oblivion-Velkarion in the absence of their own ranked leadership. And his own forces, speaking for Thalmyr-Ronethis.

”The situation has simplified,” Ronaisan continued. ”An hour ago we were five powers contesting one ocean. Now one just walked away with a Tier-100 weapon system blueprint. If the Suryax-Ananta Alliance develops that blueprint into a functional weapon, they will hold a strategic asset that none of us possess. That outcome is unacceptable to every party present. On that single point, all three of our alliances are aligned.”

He let that settle.

”I propose a temporary arrangement. The three of us, against the one of them. We recover the blueprint, and we destroy them before they can use it. After that is done, we return to being rivals.”

Jaskrit considered it for a moment and nodded.

”Temporary,” he said.

”Temporary.”

Drashka’s smile returned. ”Temporary is enough.”

The three alliances did not shake hands. They did not sign anything. But by the time they began the ascent out of the depth, the arrangement was understood by every one of them, and the Suryax-Ananta Alliance had, in the space of a single afternoon, acquired three simultaneous enemies.

And they had decided to waste no time to wage war, and get back the blueprint....with the bonus being the elimination of Suryax Regalon allied force.