Chapter 151: The Sun Has Returned!

The moment Ryan climbed onto the Watcher's shoulder, that massive hand came crashing down again.

This time he didn't dodge.

He pushed off from the Watcher's shoulder with his left foot, launching himself up and over the swinging palm just as it swept through empty air.

The Watcher's single eye was right in front of him.

That pale gray eye was spinning rapidly, energy gathering in its depths again, ready to fire another petrification beam.

"Staring at me?" Ryan gripped the broken sword with both hands. "Good. Saves me the trouble of looking for you."

True Dragon Tyrant Blood detonated inside him.

Violet-gold energy surged down his arms and into the blade. The meteoric iron sword let out a sharp ring as a dense energy cone condensed at its tip.

Using the momentum of his fall, Ryan drove the sword down with both hands, tip aimed dead center at the Watcher's single eye.

He thrust it in hard.

Thud.

The broken sword sank into the eye.

The Watcher's compound-armor eyeball — the one said to withstand meteoric impacts — was pierced clean through the instant the tip touched it.

Ryan didn't stop.

He threw his full strength into both arms and drove the entire blade, along with half his forearm, deep into the Watcher's skull.

"Burn."

The Extreme Dao Flame he had compressed to its limit poured through the sword and into the wound.

The Watcher's massive body seized up.

Violet-gold fire erupted wildly from the punctured eye, spreading through its head along the energy circuits and branching out across its body.

Creak... creak...

Violet-gold cracks began splitting open across the pale stone body.

More cracks. Brighter cracks.

The ancient energy circuits were being force-ignited by the Extreme Dao Flame, collapsing from the inside out.

"Its core is catching fire!" Nicholas shouted over the comm. "This thing isn't going to hold much longer!"

The Watcher thrashed violently.

It raised its only remaining arm — the right one — and slammed it toward its own head over and over, trying to knock Ryan off.

Ryan answered with a backhand slash.

"Get off."

A wave of violet-gold energy swept out and sheared the Watcher's right arm clean off at the elbow.

The severed limb, hundreds of tons of it, crashed into the lunar surface and sent a storm of metal shards flying in every direction.

The Watcher had nothing left to fight back with.

Its body shook violently. Violet-gold cracks had crawled across every inch of it, and flames roared from every fissure.

Ryan yanked the broken sword free from the eye socket.

He stood on top of the Watcher's head and raised his right foot.

"Break."

He brought it down with the full force of True Dragon Tyrant Blood.

BOOM.

The Watcher's skull — the massive head that took up half its face — was crushed to powder on the spot.

Gray stone chunks mixed with dark-red fragments of high-dimensional metal sprayed out in every direction.

The enormous headless body swayed twice, then toppled toward the center of the fortress with a ground-shaking crash.

The impact sent tremors rippling through the surface. The iron colossus slammed into the metal ground and flattened a dozen towers around it, throwing up a cloud of dust that blotted out the sky.

The Watcher stopped moving.

Scattered violet-gold flames still burned across what remained of its body, eating through the last of its energy circuits one by one.

"Holy hell..." War Ghost crawled out of the rubble, spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, and looked up at the wreckage. "The Commander just stomped the enemy's prized guardian into gravel."

Osiris had already led the Abyss Iron Cavalry through the gap while the Watcher was falling, pushing deep into the fortress interior.

With their most powerful defensive weapon gone, the mechanical legion instantly fell into chaos.

The command logic of the mechanical soldiers glitched out, their movements turning sluggish.

"This is our opening!" Osiris drove his blade through the energy core in a mechanical soldier's chest and roared. "Anti-gravity matrix at full power — push forward!"

The ten thousand Abyss Iron Cavalry surged with renewed fighting spirit.

The spatial-jump modules on their Generation-2 power armor flickered in rapid bursts as the cavalry pressed into the mechanical legion's face and unloaded everything they had. High-frequency cutters traced arcs of deep blue light through the air.

Mechanical soldiers dropped in waves.

The outer defense line of the fortress was torn wide open.

Ryan landed on the Watcher's remains and looked toward the ring-shaped structure in the distance.

The deep blue vortex of the portal was spinning faster than before.

The high-dimensional radiation pulsing from its depths had grown stronger since earlier, warping the surrounding space into thin black hairline cracks.

"Nicholas." Ryan pressed his armor's comm unit. "Where's the light-suppressor's control node?"

"Found it!" Nicholas's voice was buzzing with excitement. "Northeast corner of the fortress, tallest tower there. I pulled its energy frequency signature out of the Watcher's wreckage code. The whole fortress's light-suppressor runs from that one point."

"What's the situation on Earth?"

"Holding on, but close to the limit." Nicholas paused, and his voice dropped. "Surface temperature has already fallen nearly fifty degrees. If the sunlight stays cut off much longer, the life-support systems in the coastal cities will all fail. And... Miss Garcia's temperature is still rising."

Ryan tightened his grip on the broken sword.

"Go destroy the control node." His voice went quiet. "I'll keep the portal occupied."

"Copy that. Osiris, cover me!"

Nicholas grabbed the silver briefcase and sprinted toward the northeast tower, half-running, half-stumbling.

Osiris pulled twenty cavalry riders and followed, clearing every mechanical soldier in their path.

The control tower stood a thousand feet tall, its surface covered in pipes running with flowing deep blue energy fluid.

The tower's automated gun turrets detected the intruders and swiveled immediately, firing black spheres of warped space toward them.

"Anti-gravity matrix, hold the line!" Nicholas slammed the briefcase down onto the ground.

The energy launcher deployed, and pale blue waves neutralized the gravity orbs.

Osiris led the riders up along the tower's outer wall. Twenty high-frequency vibro-blades swung in unison, shredding the load-bearing structure to pieces.

"It's at the top!" Nicholas wheezed as he climbed to the tower's summit.

At the center of the roof, a dark-red high-dimensional crystal the size of a basketball floated in place, steadily channeling energy to the lunar surface.

This was the core of the light-suppressor.

"No time to talk — smash it!" Osiris blocked an incoming mechanical guard with his blade.

Nicholas didn't move.

He leaned in and examined the crystal for a moment, then shook his head quickly. "We can't just smash it. This thing is wired into the whole fortress's energy grid. Hit it directly and we trigger a chain explosion — takes all of us with it."

"Then what?"

"Overload it in reverse with high-dimensional energy!" Nicholas pulled a specialized energy needle from the briefcase, wrapped end-to-end in circuitry. "Let it burn itself out from the inside."

He formed a hand seal and channeled a thread of violet-gold Extreme Dao residual energy — extracted from the Watcher's remains — into the needle.

He drove the needle into the crystal's energy node.

Szzzt.

The energy circuits inside the crystal overloaded instantly. The dark-red light flickered wildly for a few seconds.

"Done! Everyone fall back — now!"

Nicholas grabbed Osiris and they jumped off the tower.

They had barely hit the ground when the crystal at the top burned through completely, releasing a deep, muffled boom.

The entire control tower's power supply went dead.

The black energy shield blanketing the Sea of Tranquility began collapsing from the center outward.

Countless dark-red high-dimensional runes went still. The shield split open down the middle like a popped bubble.

Sunlight that had been blocked for so long finally broke through again to the far side of the moon.

And 238,000 miles away, on Earth —

The massive shadow cast between the sun and the planet began to dissolve.

---

Abyss Fortress. Earth Command Center.

Sophia stood in front of the massive holographic display, watching the live feed from the moon.

Isabella ran in, her voice unsteady. "Ma'am! The light-suppressor is gone! Satellites worldwide are all picking it up — sunlight is coming back!"

Sophia shot to her feet.

On the screen, the Earth that had been swallowed in shadow was slowly brightening again.

Light spread from the horizon — Eldoria first, then across Asia. Entire continents were being lit up again.

The falling temperature curve on the screen bent sharply and started to climb.

"Open the global emergency channel." Sophia steadied herself and straightened her collar.

Isabella moved quickly.

"All channels open, ma'am."

Sophia looked into the camera and spoke.

"This is Sophia, Supreme Commander of the Starlight Defensive Line." Her voice carried through the quantum network to every underground city on the planet. "The threat blocking our sun has been eliminated. The enemy installation on the moon is being dismantled by the Demon-Hunter Corps."

"Phase one. We won."

Four words.

A beat of silence fell across underground cities around the world.

Then came the roar.

The civilians who had been huddled underground trembling for dozens of hours watched the green lights flicker back on across their life-support systems, watched sunlight reappear on their screens, and broke down crying in each other's arms.

The ruins of Imperial City. The emergency shelters of Sovereign City. The underground industrial zones across Asia. Cheers everywhere.

People poured into the streets, tilting their heads back to look at a sun they hadn't seen in what felt like forever.

"We're okay! The sun is back!"

Sophia watched the celebrations playing out across her screens and pressed her fingers against her tired eyes.

She turned toward the corner of the room.

The medical team Nicholas had left behind was keeping watch over the sleeping Ella.

The True Dragon marking on the little girl's palm was dimmer now than it had been before. Her temperature had stabilized.

"Hold on, Nian." Sophia walked over and took her daughter's burning little hand in hers. "Your dad is almost done."

---

Far side of the moon. Sea of Tranquility Fortress.

Ryan stood on the Watcher's remains and felt the sunlight returning.

Osiris and the Abyss Iron Cavalry had seized control of most of the fortress. The remaining mechanical soldiers were being mopped up fast.

Nicholas's voice came through the comm. "Commander — light-suppressor is down, sunlight is back on Earth. The Commander-in-Chief just announced Phase One complete!"

Ryan said nothing.

He looked up toward the portal at the center of the ring structure.

The deep blue vortex was spinning faster than ever.

The crimson crystals embedded along the edges of the ring had climbed to maximum brightness.

Inside the fortress, red warning lights flashed in a frenzy. The piercing alarm drowned out the sounds of battle across the field.

Ryan fixed his eyes on the floating energy readout panel beside the portal.

It was a Hunter civilization device showing portal activation progress — Nicholas had cracked its display logic when he tapped into the fortress mainframe earlier.

The numbers were climbing fast.

Eighty-three percent.

Eighty-four.

Eighty-five.

...