Chapter 147: The Interstellar Hunter Picked the Wrong Person to Mess With

Ryan became a missile of blazing purple-gold flames and tore straight through the atmosphere.

The Abyss assault ship had already been holding position in low Earth orbit.

Boom——!

With a deep, thunderous crash, Ryan landed on the thickest meteorite iron armor plate at the ship's bow.

The sheer kinetic force stamped two footprints nearly an inch deep into the impact plating. The surrounding metal rippled dark red from the instant heat.

The decompression hatch on top snapped open and shut, hissing as air bled out.

Ryan strode into the main cockpit, still radiating a savage, untamed aura.

Osiris was at the main console, his hands flying across the control interface in a blur.

"Commander, the way you land — our ship's special armor can't take many more hits like that." Osiris said without looking up, yanking hard on the throttle.

Ryan brushed some dust off his coat. "Less talk. Where are we?"

"Cutting into lunar orbit shortly. But Commander, we've got a serious problem up ahead." Osiris slammed the enter key and pulled up the holographic display.

On the screen, the blue Earth was rapidly shrinking. The moon, once clean and bright, now radiated something deeply unsettling.

On the lunar far side, the cratered surface had been completely swallowed by an enormous black energy shield.

Across the shield's surface, countless intricate dark-red higher-dimensional runes crawled and twisted like living things.

"The energy level on this shell is completely off the charts." Osiris stared at the sensor readings all screaming in the red. "Our conventional weapons would barely scratch it. If we try to force through, the Abyss will tear apart instantly."

The comm channel lit up. Nicholas's voice came through over the frantic sound of hammering keys.

"Commander! I cracked the base logic of that red rock in Manhattan!" Nicholas spoke at a machine-gun pace, background filled with blaring alarms and crackling static. "These alien bastards encrypted everything in higher-dimensional math — nearly fried my brain getting through it! I've packaged the decompiler and pushed it to the Abyss's main system!"

Ryan crossed to the holographic star map and pointed at the black shield on the lunar far side. "Skip the recap. Can we crack this shell or not?"

"Give me three minutes!" Nicholas pounded away on his end. "I'm running a reverse scan on its energy circuit with the new code. Once I find the right energy node, one shot from the main cannon should punch a hole in it!"

Right at that critical moment, the Abyss's radar array erupted in a piercing shriek.

The entire cockpit flooded with blinding red light.

On the holographic star map, the stretch of space ahead — dead and empty a second ago — suddenly lit up with tens of thousands of crimson dots.

"Stealth space mines!" Osiris bellowed, veins standing out on his forehead. "They've got built-in gravitational wave sensors — they've locked onto our mass field! They're closing in from all sides!"

Through the viewport, the mines that had been lurking inside dark matter shed their camouflage and revealed themselves.

Black polyhedrons about six feet across, their surfaces bristling with sharp sensor antennae, they came swarming in along the Abyss's gravitational wake.

Worse, the mines were connecting to each other with thick blue electromagnetic chains, weaving a massive death net across the dark void that sealed off every route forward.

"Full port rudder! Cut main drive output! Switch to silent glide!" Osiris yanked the stick hard.

The Abyss's massive hull rolled hard in the vacuum, forcing a combat evasion maneuver that had no business working under normal physics.

Dozens of mines scraped past the ship's belly and slammed into each other.

Boom!

There was no sound in space, but searing blasts of higher-dimensional energy erupted in chain reactions through the black void, and the violent electromagnetic pulse raked across the ship's armor.

There were simply too many mines. Every navigable path was completely sealed.

Bang!

The hull shuddered violently. A shower of sparks exploded inside the cockpit.

"Warning! Starboard armor damaged! Engine three output reduced by twenty percent!" The system's synthetic voice reported in its flat, mechanical tone.

Ryan steadied himself and watched the minefield closing in on the screen. The purple-gold fire in his eyes surged.

"They're stalling on purpose." Ryan clenched his fist. His knuckles cracked.

Every second Ella spent on Earth brought her gene chain one step closer to collapse. Time was the one thing he couldn't afford to lose.

Osiris drew the high-frequency vibration blade from his hip and turned to face Ryan. "Commander. Let me clear the path."

Ryan looked at him and gave a firm nod. "Take the soldiers in the second-gen powered armor. Move fast."

"Yes sir!"

Osiris turned and sprinted toward the equipment bay without another word.

Two hundred soldiers were already fully armed and assembled.

The airlock blasted open.

Two hundred figures in deep violet armor launched into the dead silence of space on their suit's micro-thrusters.

"All units — no energy weapons!" Osiris's order cut through the squad channel like a knife. "Energy discharge will set the mines off early! Switch to melee. Use physical cutting to take out their sensor antennae!"

The formation scattered instantly. All two hundred dove headfirst into the dense minefield without hesitation.

Osiris led from the front. His high-frequency vibration blade traced a clean pale-blue arc through the vacuum and sheared off half the casing of a mine. The intricate gravitational coil inside was exposed to the void and shorted out in a burst of sparks.

"Watch the nets — they're weaving between mines!" Osiris warned over the channel.

The words were barely out before one soldier was caught off guard. Two mines suddenly shot out an electromagnetic chain that wrapped around his leg.

The powered armor's alarm screamed. The high-voltage current scorched straight through the outer coating.

Osiris's eyes sharpened. He triggered his spatial jump module.

He vanished from his position and reappeared beside the soldier an instant later, brought the blade down and cut through the chain, then dragged the man clear of the mine cluster in one motion.

"Don't get tied up in a fight! Take out the main nodes and move on!"

Two hundred Abyss soldiers threaded through the packed mines at high speed. Their high-frequency cutters left trails of deadly pale-blue light.

One by one, the sensor antennae were severed with precision. The gravitational lock systems inside failed instantly, and the mines became nothing more than drifting hunks of dead metal.

The two hundred soldiers worked in seamless coordination and cut a clear passage through the death field with nothing but blades.

The Abyss followed behind the squad, pushing forward slow and steady.

But just as Ryan thought they might be through the worst of it, the Abyss's long-range sensors screamed again.

At the edge of the lunar shield, space twisted violently. Over a dozen strangely shaped Hunter-class patrol ships snapped into existence out of a jump.

"Contacts! Right front!" Osiris roared over the comm.

But the patrol ships' energy cannons had already finished charging the moment the jump completed.

A dense web of red high-energy beams interlocked into an airtight kill zone, blanketing the entire area where Osiris's squad was operating.

On top of the beams, the patrol ships' belly bays swung open, and hundreds of suicide drones came flooding out through the gaps in the beam fire, swarming straight at the Abyss soldiers.

"Spatial jump — evade!" Osiris shouted.

The thrusters on the soldiers' backs lit up with pale-blue streaks and their forms flickered repeatedly through the void.

But the enemy's fire coverage was overwhelming, and the drones' relentless kamikaze charges shattered the formation almost immediately.

Several soldiers had just finished a jump, still fighting to stabilize themselves, when thick red beams caught them dead on.

The second-gen powered armor's gravity shields absorbed the lethal heat, but the raw physical force launched them through space like rounds from a cannon.

They spun out of control and tumbled straight into a cluster of mines that hadn't been cleared yet.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Chain explosions lit up the void. Blinding fire swallowed those soldiers in an instant.

"Six! Seven!" Osiris screamed over the channel, his voice cracking.

"Cough, cough... still alive! New armor held!" Labored, pain-soaked breathing came back over the line. "Just got blown pretty damn far out. Shit, my thruster's fried — I can't move!"

Inside the Abyss's cockpit.

Ryan watched the flashing vital sign warnings on the holographic screen. He watched his people fighting for their lives outside.

The True Dragon Tyrant Blood inside him went completely berserk.

Uncontrolled torrents of violent purple-gold energy erupted from every pore.

The solid metal floor of the cockpit buckled and caved inward under the crushing pressure, leaving a deep depression in the deck.

Ryan walked toward the standalone ejection pod at the back of the cockpit, his body wrapped in tangible purple-gold flames.

"Cut the pressure cycle between the ejection pod and the main hull immediately! Lock down the inner blast door!" Ryan ordered without breaking stride.

The operator blinked, then snapped into action and slapped the override with both hands.

Clang! The three-foot-thick inner blast door dropped with a boom, sealing the ejection pod off from the main cockpit entirely and locking the ship's interior safe.

"Commander! Inner door is sealed! But standard depressurization on the outer hatch still takes thirty seconds!" The operator's voice came through the comm, urgent and tight.

"Too slow."

Inside the narrow ejection pod, Ryan faced the special alloy outer hatch. The purple-gold fire in his eyes burned out of control.

He stepped forward without hesitation. His hands closed on the hatch like a pair of indestructible iron vises. He ignored every depressurization protocol and drove all ten fingers into the seam of the indestructible alloy door by sheer force.

The True Dragon Tyrant Blood thundered inside him like a detonation. Savage purple-gold light swallowed him whole.

"You dare touch my people...then die——!!!"