Chapter 606 - 586: Comet!
Chapter 606: Chapter 586: Comet!
Cracks spread backward from the edges of the shattered skull, passing through the cervical vertebrae and reaching the spine. Every house-sized vertebra exploded the instant the cracks passed through, sending bone fragments flying in all directions at supersonic speeds.
The 320-meter-long ancient Bone Dragon Lord crumbled from its skull all the way down to its tailbone.
Millions of bone fragments formed a cloud of shattered bone stretching for kilometers.
No. 18 gifted the enemy a spectacular opening fireworks display the moment she appeared, but she didn’t pause. This was merely a prelude.
Her striking speed had already exceeded the response limit of the Undead Bone Dragons.
In the perceptive vision of these Giant Beasts, she was nothing more than a high-speed streak—untrackable, unpredictable, and bringing destruction every time she manifested.
While shattering the skull of the first Bone Dragon, she had already used the recoil from the impact to alter her trajectory, locking onto a second Bone Dragon thirteen kilometers away.
That Bone Dragon couldn’t even turn its head in time. Its sensory system was still processing the message that its "leader’s signal had vanished" when No. 18 arrived.
The second strike from her Spiritual Remains Steel Fist accurately hit the joint between its third and fourth vertebrae—the most stress-concentrated point of its entire skeletal structure.
The delicate fist landed.
The two vertebrae were instantly reduced to powder.
The 300-meter-long skeleton snapped in half, its front and rear sections spinning off in opposite directions.
No. 18 used the recoil to change direction once more.
In the blink of an eye, she was already right in front of the third Bone Dragon.
No. 18’s right foot slammed into the root of the third Bone Dragon’s right wing. The joint connection of the bone wing violently exploded into fragments under the kick.
Losing one wing, the Bone Dragon immediately lost its balance, its massive body tumbling uncontrollably through space.
Its ribcage was exposed in the tumble.
Deep within the cage-like structure of its ribs lay the Necromancy Core—a fist-sized, eerie green crystal condensing all the Necromancy Power infused by the Skeleton Duke.
It was the source of all the Undead Bone Dragon’s energy.
No. 18 shifted her fist into a palm, aiming directly at it.
The Magic Compression Cannon activated.
Powered by the Magic Power output of the Hephaestus Type-III Engine, high-density Magic Power was compressed to a critical point before being fired with linear acceleration. Its range was short, with an effective distance of no more than eight hundred meters.
But at this moment, No. 18 was less than twenty meters from the exposed Necromancy Core.
A highly compressed beam of Magic Power shot straight into the Necromancy Core. The eerie green crystal that had burned for a century shattered instantly under the high-energy impact, like a lightbulb smashed by a hammer.
Eerie green shards and residual Necromancy Power scattered in all directions like a cold firework.
Three Bone Dragons. Four seconds.
Inside the bridge of the White Bone Throne, the Skeleton Duke’s two clusters of Soul Fire throbbed violently.
The frequency of the throbbing could no longer be explained by normal emotional fluctuations; it was the trauma response of an Undead Wizard’s soul suffering a massive shock.
He shared a deep connection with those seventeen Bone Dragons. He could feel the destruction of each one.
Three severed connections in the span of four seconds subjected him to a feeling he had forgotten for over a century and a half: anger, and even a sliver of... fear.
"What... what the hell is this thing!"
During the brief interval as No. 18 gathered her strength again, the remaining fourteen Bone Dragons finally recovered from their initial chaos and fear. They instinctively contracted their formation, forming a defensive ring with the four largest dragons at the core.
"Kill it!" the Skeleton Duke’s roar exploded across the fleet channel.
All fourteen Bone Dragons simultaneously opened their massive maws. Necromancer’s Fire madly accumulated within their skeletal cavities before they unleashed an indiscriminate volley toward the last known location of No. 18!
Fourteen eerie green Necromancy Fire Curtains, each over a hundred meters in diameter, intertwined in deep space to form a deadly curtain of fire covering an area of over twenty square kilometers.
Aboard the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine, Jarvis faithfully recorded the energy peak of this volley—it was roughly equivalent to a full-powered area-of-effect Magic attack from a Morning Star Wizard.
However, by the time the fire curtain reached her previous position, she was already gone.
Fifty times the speed of sound!
Before the Necromancy Fire Curtains could completely converge, No. 18 had turned into a streak of silver, escaping the joint attack.
The Anti-Gravity Rune Array and the Storm Airflow acceleration system worked in tandem, allowing her trajectory to draw a nearly counterintuitive spiral curve in three-dimensional space.
She passed directly beneath the curtain of fire, like a silver needle piercing through a storm.
Then, she began to clear the field!
With one punch, the entire lower jaw of the fourth Bone Dragon was sent flying.
With one kick, a massive hole was smashed through the chest cavity of the fifth Bone Dragon.
Each time a Bone Dragon shattered, it was like a movement composed for death. By the time the sixth Bone Dragon’s spine was snapped, half of her bionic skin had cracked apart from the friction of repeated supersonic maneuvers, revealing the Spiritual Remains Steel skeleton beneath, shimmering with an eerie green glow.
The tenth. The eleventh. The twelfth.
She was too fast. Simply too fast.
"Scatter!" The Skeleton Duke’s command carried an uncontrollable urgency. "Scatter quickly!"
But his orders arrived too late.
Just as the surviving five Bone Dragons began to flee in all directions under his command, No. 18 was already upon them.
Ten seconds later, four of the Bone Dragons had been turned into cosmic dust.
The last Bone Dragon was the smallest of the group, a mere 270 meters long. It was fleeing with all its might toward the White Bone Throne Flagship. Perhaps its surviving instincts told it that its master’s side was the safest place.
No. 18’s figure appeared directly above it, descending like divine punishment.
She poured all her engine’s output into her right fist. At that moment, her Spiritual Remains Steel Fist lit up with a blinding radiance.
With a single punch, she smashed through its skull, pierced its spine, tore apart its sternum, and crushed its pelvis... finally bursting out from the very end of its tailbone!
The 270-meter-long skeleton was pulverized from head to tail by this single punch, turned into a straight line of countless shattered bones!
No. 18 slowly flew out from the smoke cloud of shattered bones and hovered in deep space. Such a level of outburst had put tremendous strain on her engine, and she now needed a moment to recover.
At this moment, the bionic skin on her body had almost completely peeled off, thoroughly exposing her eerie green and dark-gold Spiritual Remains Steel skeleton to the void. The alloy surface flowed with a cold luster under the faint light of the Sea of Magical Power, making her look like a metal statue stripped of its flesh.
Behind her lay the shattered remains of seventeen Undead Bone Dragons. Tens of millions of bone fragments formed a slowly drifting white "graveyard" stretching for dozens of kilometers.
Against the dim purple backdrop of the Sea of Magical Power, this cloud of shattered bone looked like a shattered galaxy.
Aboard the bridge of the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine, Jarvis’s voice rang out.
"Combat report.
"Annihilation battle of No. 18 Type-II against the Skeleton Duke’s Bone Dragon formation. Total time elapsed: fifty-one seconds.
"Battle damage assessment: Bionic skin loss rate at ninety-three percent. Spiritual Remains Steel skeletal structure: zero damage. Engine operating condition: normal."