CHAPTER 494: MOBILIZATION.

The rage that coursed through him was a cold, cosmic fire, far hotter than any mere emotion. It was the fury of a man who had stared into the abyss and found a part of himself staring back, a being who had just been reminded of his own insignificance and had decided, defiantly, to become significant once more.

The safety of this world, the rules of engagement, the delicate balance of cause and effect... they were all meaningless abstractions against the visceral reality of Lilla’s injuries and the audacity of the pirates who had caused them.

And as it turned out, the entity commanding his hidden fleet felt exactly the same way.

The air above the crystallized plain did not tear; it screamed. Reality itself was forced apart, not with a gentle folding of space, but with a violent, arrogant rip. A wormhole of impossible scale erupted into being, its event horizon a maelstrom of silver and violet energy that dwarfed the pirate armada.

The gravitational backlash was immediate; the ground beneath their feet trembled, not from an impact, but from the planet’s very fabric being stressed to its breaking point. The pirate ships, caught in the sudden tidal forces, veered wildly, their formations scattering like leaves in a hurricane.

Then, it came through.

First was the prow, a mountain of polished, alien alloy carved with runes that drank the light. Then the rest of its impossible bulk followed, not entering the atmosphere so much as displacing it.

The Cleopatra Fortress, a mobile stronghold designed for void warfare, was now parked squarely in the planet’s sky. Its shadow fell over the entire battlefield, a perpetual eclipse that extinguished the hope of every pirate who looked up.

It was an act of such profound, terrifying power that it rendered the orbital bombardment that had come before it as insignificant as a firecracker.

But the display was not finished. Outside the atmosphere, where the pirate fleet had felt moments ago like masters of the void, space itself began to bleed silver light.

A second later, an even larger wormhole stabilized in the high orbit, and from its heart emerged a fleet. Not a ragtag collection of ships, but a coordinated armada of nearly five hundred vessels... destroyers with hulls like sharpened blades, frigates moving in predatory swarms, and carriers that disgorged clouds of fighters that blotted out the stars.

In an instant, the pirates numerical advantage was not just negated; it was laughably, hopelessly inverted. They were no longer the besiegers. They were the prey, trapped between a god in the sky and a titan on the ground.

"Cleo... leave no one alive."

The command left Rex’s lips not as a shout of rage, but as a glacial decree. It was a coldness that felt alien to him, a sliver of the cosmic indifference he had witnessed in the void, now channeled into a very personal vengeance.

The fortress’s AI, registered the shift in his tone and responded with machinic perfection. The Cleopatra’s colossal weapon arrays hummed to life, their targeting systems painting the pirate vessels still foolish enough to be within the atmosphere.

Lances of pure energy and volleys of hypersonic shells streaked out, turning the invaders into expanding balls of fire and shrapnel. High above, the Kaelzar fleet moved with chilling synchronization, their long-range batteries carving through the pirate formation while swarms of fighters and bombers descended like locusts to finish the work.

On the bridge of his faltering command ship, the pirate overlord heard the panicked report crackle over his communicator. "Captain, it’s not good! A new hostile fleet has joined the siege! We’re being pushed back!"

"Shit!" the overlord snarled, his eyes darting from the monstrous fortress in the sky to the carnage unfolding on his tactical displays. "Quickly! Use the warp to get some distance! Don’t let them encircle us!"

A moment of terrified silence was followed by the officer’s despairing reply. "S-sir! We can’t use the warp! We are being jammed!"

It was then the overlord noticed it... a subtle, rhythmic pulse of golden light emanating from the Cleopatra, a wave of energy that washed over his ship with each pass.

"They have a device to block the warp!" he whispered, his mind reeling. "How is that even possible?" His grand escape, his final card to play, had been torn from the deck before he could even reach for it.

As chaos consumed the pirate fleet, a figure materialized beside Rex. It was Cleo that In her hands, she carried an advanced medical kit. Without a word, she began to work on Lilla’s injuries; the nanobots swarmed to create synthetic skin and knit shattered bone.

Rex’s gaze lingered on Lilla’s face for a heart-wrenching second before he gently transferred her into Cleo’s care. "I know you have a lot of questions," he said, his voice low. "But right now, please take care of Lilla. I still have some prey I have to hunt."

The hunt was swift and merciless. Pushing off from the ground, Rex became a silver blur, using instant movement to cross the battlefield in the space of a single breath.

He reached the first pirate king before the man could even register the movement. There was no exchange of words, no final boast... only the swift, clean arc of a blade and a head tumbling from its shoulders. The second pirate king met the same fate, his life extinguished before his mind could process the threat.

Only the overlord remained. Being a Tier 5 himself, he put up more of a fight, managing to flee to the upper edges of the atmosphere. But his hope was short-lived.

A silver hand clamped onto his face with the force of a meteor strike. Rex did not merely stop him; he reversed his momentum, hurling him back down toward the planet with unimaginable force.

The overlord became a human cannonball, smashing through the hull of his own frigate with a deafening crash of tearing metal.

In a matter of seconds, Rex followed like a vengeful comet. He slammed into the other side of the frigate, tearing through its structure and emerging with the overlord still gripped by the face. He drove the pirate down, finally cratering the crystallized plain with the impact, pinning the man beneath him.

Rex stood, his boot planted firmly on the overlord’s chest, his wings beating slowly to clear the dust. The pirate struggled, his hands clawing at the immovable weight, but it was useless. He felt as if an entire mountain had been placed upon him, and he was but an ant trying to shift it.

"Speak," Rex commanded, his voice devoid of all warmth. "Who sent you to attack a planet that is under my control?"

The overlord, despite his terror, let out a ragged, defiant laugh. "Hahah! I’m a pirate! I have no one else that could tell me what I can or can’t do!" His tone was brazen, like a final, foolish attempt to cling to his pride, a performance of freedom that rang utterly hollow in the face of his imminent end.

"I know your kind..." Rex’s voice was a low, disdainful rumble. He shifted his weight, pressing his boot down harder onto the pirate’s chest.

The crunch of stressed armor and a strained rib cage was followed by a sharp, agonized scream from the overlord. "You’re all a pack of cowards. You only attack easy targets, soft places with no teeth. Not a commercial hub with a strong military presence... unless..."

He leaned in, the silver light in his eyes intensifying. "Someone paid you. A huge sum, one so obscene it could make up for the losses you knew you’d take." Rex pressed down again, a slow, deliberate application of crushing force. "So be a good dog and do tell me who it was. And I promise I won’t kill you. I am a man of my word."

"F-Fine! I’ll tell you!" the overlord gasped, his defiance finally cracking under the twin pressures of pain and terror. "I don’t know who it was that requested it! They used intermediaries, ghosts! But they paid us with gold marked with the Free Colonies seal! That’s all I know! I’ve told you everything! Now let me go!"

A small, cold smile touched Rex’s lips. It was a smile devoid of warmth, a predator’s expression upon cornering its prey. "Good."

He lifted his foot.

For a single, fleeting moment, relief flooded the pirate overlord’s face. That relief turned to pure, unadulterated horror as an invisible, colossal force slammed down upon him.

It was not Rex’s foot this time, but a localized gravitational field so powerful it pinned him to the cratered earth, flattening his armor and making the very air too thick to breathe. His eyes, wide with panic, shot up to the sky.

High above, the underbelly of the Cleopatra Fortress began to glow. A terrifying, sun-bright luminescence gathered at the mouth of its primary cannon, a weapon designed not for ship-to-ship combat but for cracking worlds.

"W-wait!" the overlord shrieked, his voice a strained squeal against the immense pressure. "You said you weren’t going to kill me!"

Rex’s wings gave a single, powerful flap, lifting him gracefully into the air. He looked down, his expression remaining serene. "Of course, I won’t kill you," he stated, his voice carrying perfectly over the gathering whine of the cannon.

The pirate overlord’s mind, in its final second, connected the monstrous dots. The promise had been a technicality, a cruel jest. Rex would not be the one to kill him. The Cleopatra would.

"AHHHHHHHH! CURSE YOUUU!" The scream was a raw, final expulsion of hatred and despair, torn from his soul.

It was the last sound he ever made.

A pillar of pure, annihilating energy descended from the heavens. It was so brilliant it bleached the color from the world, a lance of divine judgment that struck the one, precise point where the overlord lay.

There was no explosion, no fire.... only instantaneous, absolute disintegration. The pirate overlord, his armor, and the ground immediately beneath him were vaporized into their constituent atoms, reduced to a wisp of expanding, superheated ash.