Free Web Novel"If the door is locked, we don't blow it up," Alvian said. "We just change the locks. Valeria, Seraphina. Keep the fleet alive for twenty minutes. I'm going back to the Genesis Forge."
"What are you making?" Valeria asked, a spark of the old Vanguard excitement returning to her eyes.
"We can't shoot the storm," Alvian said, his violet eyes glowing with the raw, chaotic light of the[Super Upgrade System]. "So, I'm going to build a bomb that freezes the concept of wind."
—-
The main command deck of Azureus was a symphony of perfectly orchestrated chaos. The flying dreadnought shuddered violently every few seconds as another massive, gaseous tentacle from the Jovian Leviathan slammed against the outer [Void Shell] shields. The sky above was a terrifying canvas of deep space punctuated by the explosive, blinding lights of human fighter jets and Sea Faction artillery desperately trying to hold the line.
Alvian stepped out from the heavy coral doors of the palace interior and onto the open deck, his dark coat whipping frantically in the artificial breeze generated by the city's atmospheric regulators. He didn't look like a distant, untouchable god right now. He looked like a man who had a very specific, very annoying chore to do, and the entire universe was in his way.
"Boss!" Kincaid's voice crackled over the open comms, accompanied by the deafening roar of a plasma cannon firing in the background. "I really hope whatever you went downstairs to get is big, shiny, and goes boom! These space-squid arms are getting uncomfortably affectionate with my cruisers!"
"Hold your fire on the main mass, Kincaid," Alvian instructed, tapping the side of his earpiece. "I didn't go downstairs to get a weapon. I went to get my tools. Have your logistics team bring up the largest terrestrial nuclear warhead you have in storage. Bring it directly to the central courtyard."
There was a brief pause on the line, followed by the sound of Kincaid gleefully barking orders at his subordinates. "You heard the man! Get the fat boy out of the basement! We're doing DIY on the front porch!"
Valeria, who had been actively managing the Vanguard's shield distribution from a holographic terminal near the railing, turned to look at Alvian. Her golden armor was covered in fresh scorch marks, but her eyes were sharp.
"Alvian, you can't be serious," Valeria said, walking over to him. "You want to bring a live nuclear warhead up here? To the middle of a warzone? If one of those tentacles breaches the shield and taps that thing, we won't need the Outer Gods to delete us. We'll do it ourselves."
"The shields will hold," Alvian said, his tone carrying that familiar, quiet absolute certainty. He offered her a faint, reassuring smile that didn't quite reach his tired eyes. "And I don't plan on letting it sit around for long. But I cannot work in the basement. The Genesis Forge requires a closed, sterile environment, yes, but for this specific upgrade, I need access to local materials. I need the storm."
Before Valeria could fully process the absurdity of his statement, Alvian raised his hands. He didn't summon a weapon. He tapped into the very administrative code of Azureus itself.
The pristine white marble of the courtyard groaned. The intricate, glowing blue ley lines that powered the city suddenly shifted, tearing themselves from their usual routes to converge directly in the center of the open deck. The air grew impossibly heavy, carrying the distinct, spiritual heat of raw creation magic.
With a blinding flash of white light, the central anvil of the [Genesis Forge] materialized right in the middle of the courtyard. It was a massive block of captured starlight, humming with a frequency that made the teeth of every soldier nearby vibrate.
"Okay, so we brought the mystical blacksmith shop to the front lines," Seraphina's voice echoed from a nearby speaker, her physical form currently digitized somewhere inside the dreadnought's targeting arrays. "I'm not an expert in crafting, Alvian, but last I checked, you need materials to make a bomb. We blew all our shiny magic rocks on the city shields. What exactly are you going to use to freeze a planet?"
"The planet itself," Alvian answered calmly.
He walked past the starlight anvil and right up to the edge of the balcony, standing mere feet away from the shimmering purple barrier that separated the city's breathable air from the cold vacuum of space. Beyond the barrier, the massive, corrupted gas giant of Jupiter loomed, a swirling nightmare of fleshy grey clouds and bruised purple storms.
"Physics lesson, Seraphina," Alvian said, his violet eyes locking onto the churning atmosphere of the Outer God's incubator. "Jupiter is a gas giant. It is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. The Outer Gods have corrupted the mana, yes, but the base physical elements remain. They are just moving at incredibly violent, high-pressure speeds."
"So?" Seraphina asked, her voice tinged with skeptical curiosity.
"So, if you want to create a localized effect of absolute zero," Alvian explained, raising his left hand toward the sky, "you don't just need cold magic. You need a medium that can absorb and halt kinetic energy on a massive scale. I need liquid hydrogen. A lot of it. And I am not going to pay market price."
Alvian's eyes flared, the swirling galaxies within them spinning rapidly as he engaged the deepest reserves of his [Chaos Body]. He didn't use a spell from his standard repertoire. He used the raw, gravitational manipulation he had perfected while tearing apart the Void Reef.
"System," Alvian commanded, his voice dropping into the dual-toned, metallic resonance of the Void Sovereign. "Maximize [Void Vortex]. Invert event horizon protocols. Target: The Jovian Atmosphere."
He thrust his hand forward.
Just beyond the protective shields of Azureus, the vacuum of space tore open. A localized singularity materialized, but unlike the destructive black holes he usually summoned, this one didn't crush matter into nothingness. It acted as a cosmic siphon.
A terrifying, high-pitched screech echoed through the void as the sheer gravitational pull of Alvian's vortex latched onto the outer layers of the gas giant. The fleshy, corrupted clouds of Jupiter visibly stretched, pulled out of their planetary orbit in a massive, swirling funnel of grey and purple gas.
"Holy mother of..." Kincaid breathed over the comms, watching from his cruiser as a literal tornado of planetary atmosphere was sucked through space toward the lone figure on the balcony.
"Valeria, brace me!" Alvian gritted his teeth, the muscles in his arm bulging as the sheer mass of the incoming gas threatened to snap his bones, even with his 900 Strength stat.
Valeria didn't ask questions. She stepped up behind him, wrapping her arms securely around his waist and planting her heavy golden boots into the marble deck. She activated her [Stellar Aegis] passive, anchoring both of them to the physical reality of the dreadnought. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
"Got you," she grunted, her cheek pressed against his back. "Pull!"
The funnel of corrupted hydrogen and helium slammed into the [Void Vortex] hovering just outside the shield. Alvian didn't let it pass through. He used the singularity as a hyper-pressurized funnel, forcing millions of cubic tons of gas into a space no larger than a beach ball. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
The sheer friction of the compression caused the gas to ignite, turning the vortex into a blindingly bright miniature sun. But Alvian immediately countered it, dumping raw, absolute zero mana from his [Tear of the Infinite] directly into the swirling mass.
"Compress," Alvian roared, blood beginning to trickle from his left nostril. The mental strain of actively fighting the gravitational pull of a planet while simultaneously managing a thermodynamic nightmare was staggering.
The bright, burning ball of gas began to darken. The violent kinetic movement of the atoms was forcibly halted by the sheer pressure and the freezing mana. The gas turned to liquid, and then, under the impossible weight of Alvian's administrative command, the liquid froze into a solid.
With a sharp, cracking sound that echoed like a gunshot, the vortex collapsed.
Hovering in the air, just outside the city's shield, was a perfectly smooth, completely opaque sphere of solid, metallic hydrogen. It was the size of a bowling ball, but it weighed as much as an entire city block. It radiated a cold so profound that the ambient moisture in the vacuum of space instantly turned into a trail of glittering diamond dust around it.
Alvian dropped his hand, gasping for breath. He leaned back against Valeria for a brief second, allowing her solid presence to keep him from collapsing onto the deck.
"Target acquired," Alvian wheezed, wiping the blood from his lip.
He waved his hand, allowing the shield to open just enough for the sphere of solid hydrogen to drift inside. It fell to the deck with a heavy, thudding impact that cracked the marble, rolling slowly until it bumped against the base of the starlight anvil.
At that exact moment, the heavy freight elevator doors at the back of the courtyard hissed open. Six massive, heavily augmented human soldiers, sweating profusely inside their power armor, rolled out a heavy grav-cart. Resting on the cart was a sleek, utterly terrifying olive-green cylinder.
