Other than the Compass Relic, Michael was given a device with an overcharged teleportation array. It was a consumable array that was attached to the Nest. Michael could teleport straight back to the Nest once he finished his business in the Tritan Alliance.
Fortunately, the Compass Relic wasn’t a consumable item. It was a Relic, which the Nest Leader had charged with a mountain of highly compressed origin energy. The Compass Relic had to be utilized with a spatial attributed Soultrait to access the complex, overlapping miniature arrays, but that wasn’t an issue for Michael. Cosmic Stride was quite powerful, allowing him to jump farther with the Compass Relic than most others could.
He immediately used the overlapping miniature arrays of the Compass Relic and started jumping through the galaxy.
**
Michael had no idea how much time passed before he appeared in the Lumina Stellar System’s space, but he could immediately tell that the situation was bad. A massive spaceship, several hundred meters long and more than one hundred meters wide, entered his field of vision.
Under normal circumstances, Michael would have ignored the spaceship, but the plasma turrets and other artillery pointing at the Warlock Centaurs and Berserkers’ home planet wasn’t something he could ignore just like that. Michael scowled deeply and repeatedly applied Enhancement on Cosmic Stride to appear before the spaceship. He accessed Qi and conjured hundreds of vibrant, glowing blades around him.
Michael applied a thin Extraction layer around the Qi Blades before shaping them, pulling the blades on both sides to flatten them. The Qi Blades transformed into paper-thin blades, which Michael released with a burst of energy.
The thin blades shot forward, targeting the plasma turrets’ barrels and the other artillery. They impacted silently and cut neatly through the tempered alloy, rendering the charged attacks useless. Several explosions resounded as the charged energy and missiles detonated, but the spaceship’s emergency shield protected the remaining parts of the ship from detonating alongside the artillery.
A moment after Michael’s attacks impacted, a thin protection membrane engulfed the spaceship, protecting it from further attacks.
‘You are a little bit too late for that. Y’all didn’t expect a guy like me to appear out of nowhere, did you?’ The corner of Michael’s lips twitched. He teleported above the spaceship and unleashed the Extraction Aura to weaken the protection barrier until it collapsed. However, the process was too slow, and Michael was just about to unleash his Cursed Seals to accelerate the process when several projectiles came flying his way with shocking velocity.
Spirit Eyes found the culprits instantaneously. He used Cosmic Stride to teleport behind several humans, who’d emerged in the open space with a tight, yet effective, space suit. They pushed through the protection barrier to remove Michael before anything worse could happen.
They were prepared for Michael’s teleportation Soultrait but not for a golden beam crashing heavily into each of them. They fainted for a quarter of a second when they stared into Michael’s golden eyes, rendering their effective combat prowess useless. The next thing they remembered was a golden beam impacting hard. Extraction traces spread through their bodies while the golden beam drained their lifeforce and energy.
The two human powerhouses were still not dead, but Michael didn’t care. Since Spiritual Domination worked on them, their mental defense had to be very low. Their Tier suggested they were already Higher Lifeforms, but Michael couldn’t help but feel like their Tier was a joke. It was hard to believe that they were Tier-5 powerhouses.
‘It looks like they’re not the Blaze Patriarch’s trusted allies. They didn’t receive any special techniques.’
Michael didn’t obtain any ordinary high-ranked techniques from the Nest Leader, but he studied under Eren and Selena for a while. He learned Curse Fusion, one of the Nest’s most potent Cursed Arts. The time he spent in the Nest helped him grow stronger, especially after getting beaten up by the Nest Leader for several weeks, all day.
Michael stared deep into his enemies’ eyes and frowned deeply. He could kill them now, but something felt wrong. A curse escaped his lips as the World Serpent and Wolf Curse pulled his emotions, suggesting to rip them apart.
But instead of doing that, Michael continued draining their lifeforce and energy. He used Foundation Break and Heavenly Beast Physique to gain the upper hand in terms of physical prowess and entered close combat. He activated the Cursed Seals to augment the Extraction Aura, draining the human powerhouses even faster.
Michael used Spiritual Domination once more before releasing a burst of darkness in all directions, engulfing him and the two human powerhouses. Michael and the others disappeared from the spaceship’s radar for a moment. He used that moment to unleash the Swallow Domain, devouring a portion of the protective membrane surrounding the spaceship.
The protective membrane would regenerate quickly, but Michael didn’t mind that. He used Cosmic Stride to invade the spaceship while bringing the two human powerhouses along.
The human powerhouses weren’t unconscious just yet, but it was obvious that they couldn’t fight him at full power anymore. Their energy and lifeforce was drained and Michael felt that they had never been powerful combatants in the first place. In the first place, it wasn’t like every Awakened had to focus on combat. Many had Soultraits more suitable for other things.
But that didn’t matter right now. Michael utilized the powerhouses’ confusion to infiltrate their minds via Mind Reader. A myriad of thoughts and memory fragments entered Michael’s brain. The human Awakened stirred and tried to push Michael away, but he forced his mind deeper into theirs.
“Shit,” He cursed, releasing the two men.
‘To think Dark Heavens started hijacking spaceships again. That’s annoying.’ Michael thought, shaking his head.
From the looks of it, Dark Heavens hijacked this spaceship to attack the mother planet of the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs, instigating an all-out war between the races of the Tritan Alliance. The crews’ families were on board and had been taken hostage by Dark Heavens, forcing the crew to follow their orders because their families would be killed otherwise.
Michael frowned at the new influx of information. He didn’t quite accept the crews’ willingness to instigate an all-out war against the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs, but thinking about it for a second or two was enough to accept that he would have done the same thing if he was in their situation. Michael would prioritize his family and beloved above all. Except his parents, of course.
“Luckily, I didn’t kill you guys,” Michael said, patting the two men before turning to the right, where another Higher Lifeform appeared. However, the new arrival was only a Tier-4 High Awakened. 𝒻𝘦𝓌𝑜𝓋𝘦.𝘰
The new arrival looked like the crew members, but Michael recalled him from the others’ memories. That man was a Dark Heavens member.
He was about to shout something when Michael utilized Cosmic Stride to appear behind him. Michael clutched the man’s neck and used Mind Reader to make sure that he wasn’t mistaken. More memory fragments and thoughts flashed through his mind. A deep frown appeared on Michael’s face.
The members of Dark Heavens, responsible for hijacking the spaceship, possessed been integrated into his mind, and the information was that Dark Heavens was now under the Blaze Patriach’s order.
“This is getting better and better,” Michael sighed deeply.
A moment later, he snapped the High Awakened’s neck.