Chapter 155: Space Bombardment

One, one, two, one, boom, done, one, two, dead, you.

From space, the orbital attacker/defender of the attacking force was doing her job by killing a bunch of people–honestly, mostly robots–and providing the assistance. Even if someone could deflect, block, etc, a powerful Light arrow, sometimes it required that little bit too much effort, which could be bad when in combat with other people trying to stab them in the face.

There are still plenty of people underground… How should I go about bringing the worms out of the ground?

From the little I could see, there was still a large underground facility with plenty of people inside. People that should be above ground, dying like good little worms.

Despite my combat ability not being utilised to the fullest, being in the role was an effective use of abilities, [Star Mapping] to see everything and the mental capacity to process all the information, and the firepower to shoot long-distance arrows at whoever I wanted.

It was kind of relaxing and certainly not a role I have played before, but I was biding my time for my main target to show himself, Thomas. Colour me surprised by the fact he hadn’t appeared yet, but maybe my big threat and announcement of his name made him a little wee scared.

Haha, that would be a funny sight.

I continued to shoot down the robots and observe the battlefields, trying to find the places that required my attention the most.

The mech fights I choose to leave alone; it appeared the assault fleet’s own mechs were doing a fun job with them. We were slightly outnumbered thanks to all the robotic drone mechs, so I kept my eye on the situation in case something happened. I wasn’t in a position to use some of the Stellaruges I created; I only had a small few and couldn’t bring them out of my domain without consequences.

There was a large force on Asta attempting to break into the main facility. Nina was done there doing healing, barriers, and directing people. I was surprised by how fast she decided to jump into action, figuring she would be tired after what she did earlier. Those cannons were powerful, and stopping them was no easy feat.

The attack that Nina was a part of the fighting I paid extra attention to because of the importance and people involved. It appeared they used some sensors to acquire an understanding of where to attack, and from what I could see, they chose the correct location.

Blood, robot bits, and everything in between were very slowly beginning to fall on the battlefield. The assault fleet’s ground forces had lost too many people, but some had died. Dominous Hood's plan from the beginning seemed to have been to whittle down the fleet’s forces incrementally since the start. The endless robot reinforcements were an example of this; none of them was too deadly on their own. In a group, sure, they were now dangerous, but the fact that their numbers never seemed to end made them a constant problem for everyone.

…If I could only find the source… Everything underground was blocked off from [Star Mapping]; everything was sealed tight to the point that not even light broke through. Every time a door or entrance was opened, I used [Star Mapping] to learn as much as feasibly possible about the layout. A Spiritual Being’s brain was so much better at processing all this information than my human one, genuinely one of the best changes. I learned being positive about my new changes was for the best after all.

I debated various methods while providing support to boost our chances. Blowing up the planets… that would be difficult since the mana within made them so stupidly sturdy. It was why most mining operations for rare materials happened off the main worlds.

I could do some good damage with a long charge-up, since I was receiving mana–admittedly slowly when my horns weren’t out of my domain. Honestly, the only reason I kept my horns away again was because I could feel the special disruption around me when they were activated, which made my location more obvious. As the weakest Spiritual Being ever, according to Espr, I had to take some precautions.

While the ground results were mixed, the same was also true for those who fought above.

Sigh, are they still not done?

Above the planets, there was still a large fight among the fleet and hostile interceptors. Drone-like ships had also appeared now that the fleet had reached the space around the planets. The fleet itself was further spread apart now, focused on assisting the ground forces on the differing planets with their weapons. I held some minor regret over not assisting earlier, as the hostile ships' numbers did not decrease, no matter how many were shot down. It was severely impacting the assault, as it was harder for ships to provide covering fire and destroy key infrastructure, and hampering the rescue attempts for the prisoners, as the vessels that were meant to pick up people were also being shot at.

…Maybe I should assist. Now there was a bit of difficulty with that thought. It was much easier to fire arrows at people since they moved a hell of a lot slower than bloody fighter ships.

Once again, I made the decision to ignore the assault fleet's ships and focus on ground combat. It would be too difficult to try to counter the massive fleet, too many ships, too fast, in too many locations…

I would need to fly back up and find a way to slow… Then I had an idea and flew up from my position to be much closer to the ships.

I was still far away from everything due to how space worked, but I felt I was close enough to at least experiment.

Starlight, let’s see how disruptive you can be.

I had experimented with my new empowered [Disruptive Starlight] before; well, it was my regular Starlight but I could amplify and reduce the disruptive effects it had on mana and machines. Since these ships used a lot of mana and the drones were just machines, perhaps I could cause a few crashes to happen?

I decided to test my theory, which was a bit expensive. I used my [Disruptive Starlight] and created a large wave of energy whose whole purpose was to be the biggest bitch to mana-related technology. While the mana-damaging properties were still far weaker than the sand, it was much easier for light to get into places it shouldn’t. Another downside was that, unlike the sand which once it was stuck, continued to do damage, the disruption effect of the Starlight was less enduring, less lasting, less, etc–it didn’t stick around for too long. This meant for people it was far from as effective as the sand was, but on machines, it was at least decent when I spent the extra energy to pump those disruption effects to the max.

A few ships flew through my nets and went by mostly unaffected; maybe some bad turning for a few seconds, but that was still decent. However, some of the drone-controlled ships flew through, and that led to a much funnier result.

Flying through the drone ship lost complete control of itself and smashed right into the moon. Another one must’ve had some sort of automated system in place activated, and the ship turned off and came to her halt, which left it a sitting duck.

A little fun, but my time is likely better spent below. Based entirely on personal opinion, I felt that I was having more of an impact on combat with my space bombardment tactic than my space netting tactic. I was still firing a few arrows, very few arrows in fact, as the extra distance and spending a chunk of energy on the net made that a little hard.

I still chose to be of assistance for a little while longer, taking down mostly the drone ships now that I knew where my effectiveness lay. The more breathing room the fleet had, the better they could support the ground forces as well, after all.

Once I was done taking care of some drones, I flew back down, doubling my efforts on shooting a lot of people from space. The murderous urge in me to jump down and tear things up was growing, but I did use the time to refresh my energy reserves–domains were such a great hack–it felt like I was cheating the system.

However, during my support efforts, my coworkers, allies, and friends were doing their best. Eventually something interesting caught my vision.

“Oh, is that who I think it is?” A wide smile appeared on my face as I saw my little target leave from a different side of the base. Stretching his arms in the air with his gun in hand, the same stupid by his side–which was how I recognised the bastard–and a few more friends. “You have made me wait, Thomas.”