Chapter 161: Sophia Opens Fire!

Chapter 161: Sophia Opens Fire!

Ryan plunged straight into the heart of the gravitational storm.

The black spatial rift was tearing itself wider like the maw of some bottomless abyss, its edges warping light and dragging everything around it into its pull.

Ryan forced himself to a dead stop directly in front of the rift.

He threw his arms wide and tilted his head back. The dark violet energy inside him erupted like a volcano waking from a ten-thousand-year sleep, holding nothing back.

The raw power didn't scatter wildly outward. His iron will compressed it in the absolute vacuum, condensing it into dozens of dark violet chains as thick as giant pythons.

"Get back!"

Ryan's muscles surged as he hurled both arms forward.

Dozens of violet-gold chains screamed out, shrieking through the vacuum, driving themselves with perfect precision into the raging spatial nodes on both sides of the rift.

He seized the chains at their source, threw his weight from his core, and planted his feet in empty space hard enough to send rings of dense white force rippling outward like solid waves.

"Close!!"

A roar tore out of Ryan's throat, something ancient and savage.

The chains snapped taut. The rift, which had been racing toward Earth at terrifying speed, shuddered to a halt — stopped by nothing but raw physical force.

But the price of fighting the laws of the universe was brutal.

The spatial shear force tore back along the chains and hit Ryan's body directly, slicing clean through the layer of dark violet dragon scales that were supposed to be indestructible.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

His chest, his arms, his thighs — over a dozen wounds split open in an instant, deep enough to show bone.

Violet-gold blood poured out like a broken fountain. In the weightless vacuum, it scattered into floating droplets of scalding liquid before the black hole's gravity swallowed them without mercy.

Ryan's muscle fibers writhed and knitted themselves back together, driven by the extreme True Dragon energy coursing through him — only to be torn open again by the next wave of spatial force.

Torn. Healed.

Torn again. Healed again.

This was a slow death that went far beyond anything a carbon-based nervous system was built to endure. But those dark violet slit-pupils never wavered. No retreat. Only endless, burning will.

His mind held one image: Ella, lying in that hospital bed, her small face flushed with fever.

You want to hurt my daughter? You'll have to go through my corpse first.

---

On the bridge of the Abyss, red alarms screamed through every corner.

Osiris stared at the main screen — at the man soaked in his own blood — his eyes so red they looked ready to bleed.

He drove his fist into the console. The high-grade metal panel caved in with a sickening dent, sparks flying.

"He's plugging that rift with his life!" Osiris spun toward Nicholas, voice cracking. "Have you found a way or not? No matter how strong his bloodline power is, he can't survive a micro black hole grinding him apart. He won't last much longer!"

Nicholas was nearly lying across his station, his hands moving so fast across the keyboard they blurred.

The screens were flooded with alien code, lines of green scrolling at a frantic pace.

"Stop rushing me! Don't you dare rush me!" Nicholas was drenched in sweat. "I'm parsing the residual base logic from that broken console!"

Then his fingers stopped.

"Got it!"

He slammed his palm down on the Enter key.

The code vanished. A complex geometric polyhedron pulsed onto the screen, glowing with a deep blue light.

"It's a high-dimensional energy crystal!" Nicholas jabbed at the model, his voice shaking with urgency. "The black hole is a secondary disaster triggered by portal overload. The anchor keeping it stable is this polyhedron crystal!"

"If we feed the crystal a reverse-frequency wave at the right resonance, it'll force-neutralize the black hole's gravitational field and let the rift seal itself!"

Osiris grabbed the comm without hesitation. "Then do it now! Tell me what you need. I'll handle it!"

"Energy." Nicholas's voice broke on the word. "The reverse wave needs a massive energy source to carry the pulse and strike the crystal. The Abyss's fusion reactor burned itself out fighting the gravitational pull. There's nothing left."

Osiris went still, then grabbed Nicholas by the collar. "What about backup power? Life support? Strip it all and reroute it. Is that still not enough?!"

Nicholas gave a hollow laugh, tears running down with the sweat. "It's not enough. Osiris — it's a micro black hole. We need a star-level energy burst, instant output, to trigger the crystal's reversal sequence. We... there's nothing we can do."

The bridge fell silent except for the screaming alarms.

War Ghost had just sprinted up from the lower deck. He caught the last words and stumbled like he'd been hit.

"So what are we supposed to do, huh?! Just stand here and watch the Commander get ripped apart?!" He was stamping his feet, eyes red, already swinging his war hammer toward the hatch. "I'll go out there and take a turn!"

"You'd be pulled into paste before you lasted one second!" Osiris grabbed him and held on.

Out in space, Ryan was getting worse.

The micro black hole seemed enraged that something as insignificant as a man had dared to challenge it. The rift's counter-force was multiplying exponentially.

The violet-gold chains in Ryan's grip were beginning to crack.

The flesh of his left arm had been stripped away entirely. Pale bone jutted out, exposed to the frozen vacuum.

Nicholas's voice came through the comm, hollow with despair. "Commander... fall back. We don't have the energy to run the reversal sequence. Spatial collapse is irreversible. Please — I'm begging you. There'll be other chances if you survive..."

"Shut up."

Ryan didn't let go. He stared at the dark rift pointing straight at Earth and screamed back, "Find an energy source! I can hold!"

Osiris shouted into the mic. "Commander, you're going to be torn apart! The high-dimensional radiation is already reaching your organs!"

"I said find an energy source!!!"

Ryan's roar shook the comms. His right arm surged with one more violent push of force and hauled the rift two feet closer together.

Dark, thick blood dripped from his jaw and fell into the void.

---

Earth. The Starlight Alliance's underground supreme command center.

The atmosphere in the main control hall felt like it was about to solidify under the weight of it.

The massive holographic display was feeding live footage from quantum satellites fighting through gravitational interference to transmit the signal. The image was full of static, but the figure in that footage — drenched in blood in the dark of space, refusing to retreat — was burned into every person's retinas with perfect clarity.

Sophia stood at the main console, both hands pressed flat on the surface. Her heart felt like an invisible fist had closed around it and wouldn't let go.

The man who fumbled around her kitchen making scrambled eggs for her and Ella was out there, using what was left of his broken body to stand between Earth and everything bearing down on it.

"Ma'am."

The head of intelligence stepped up beside her, voice low. "The rift's expansion has only been slowed by seventy percent. According to the supercomputer's projections, the gravitational tide will reach Earth's atmosphere in five minutes at most."

Sophia drew a slow breath.

When she raised her head again, the grief was gone from her eyes. What replaced it was absolute resolve.

She was Ryan's wife. She was also the woman who ran the Shadow Syndicate.

She straightened, turned to the head of the weapons division. "The Starlight Defense planetary energy cannon — what's its current status?"

He blinked, pulled up the data fast. "The main structure just finished construction. The energy conduits are fully laid. But... we haven't run a single live-fire test yet."

Sophia cut him off before he could say anything else. "One question. Can it fire?"

"It can, but this cannon was designed for defending against alien motherships in low Earth orbit!" He was wiping his forehead with both hands now. "Firing it to the far side of the Moon — three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers away — and hitting the Abyss's receiver array with that kind of precision requires an enormous energy load. Our entire military reserve isn't enough to even power the base platform!"

Sophia didn't hesitate. She walked straight to the master control console, and her fingers moved quickly across the virtual keyboard, entering the supreme authorization code that only she possessed.

"Cut all power from the global industrial grid. Every last watt. Reroute it to Starlight Defense."

The command center erupted.

A senior general, medals across his shoulders, went pale. He stepped forward urgently. "Ma'am, please think carefully! That's more than half the planet's total power reserve!"

"The moment it's drawn down, every industrial zone in North Novaria, Eldoria, and across Asia goes dark instantly. Life support systems, underground fortress defense grids — all of it goes offline. The global economy gets knocked back twenty years. This will trigger mass civil unrest!"

Sophia stopped. She turned her head slowly.

The force in those eyes hit the battle-hardened general like a physical blow. His legs nearly gave.

"If that black hole on the Moon connects to Earth, the atmosphere, the oceans, and every one of your bodies will be torn down to basic particles in three seconds. What exactly do you need those industrial zones for after that? Somewhere to bury you?"

The general opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

Sophia looked away and pressed down hard on the red master confirmation key.

"Execute the order. Lock the firing coordinates on the far side of the Moon — on the Abyss's receiver array. Don't let them drift a millimeter."

"But—" The chief technician stared at the values spiking across his screen, still hesitating. "The cannon's output will be too high. The Abyss's receiver could blow from instant overload. If it detonates, the Commander and the crew—"

"Ryan is up there spending his life. We can't be back here too afraid to pull the trigger." Sophia's voice was ice. "Whatever happens — I, Sophia, take full responsibility. Every last consequence."