Chapter 566: Attacking Tartarus Sector

The swirling blue vortex of the warp tunnel reflected off Kylus's opalescent skin. He stood perfectly still at the navigation console, his hands gripping the edges so tightly that the metal groaned under his strength. The Strider was minutes away from dropping into the Tartarus Sector, but Kylus wasn't looking at the coordinates.

His silver-haloed eyes stared blankly at a small, bloodstained data-chip resting on the dashboard, which the only thing he had managed to recover from Vea after the Jupiter infiltration.

'They tore her apart,' Kylus thought, his jaw clenching until his teeth ached. 'They didn't even leave enough for a proper burial.'

Viola walked onto the bridge and checked the tactical displays. "We are approaching the quarantine zone. I am prepping the stealth drives so we can slip past the Vanguard Fleet's outer perimeter."

"Cancel the stealth drives," Kylus ordered.

He reached over and violently punched a series of override codes into the main terminal. Red warning lights flooded the bridge.

"Kylus, what the hell are you doing?" Viola asked, her hand instantly dropping to the collapsible staff at her hip. "You just wiped the deceleration protocols."

"We are not sneaking in," Kylus growled. He shoved the throttle all the way forward. "Brace for impact."

The Strider violently ripped itself out of hyperspace. Instead of dropping smoothly at the edge of the Tartarus Sector, Kylus weaponized their exit velocity. The ship materialized physically inside the Demonic Society's massive orbital staging ring.

The Strider's reinforced hull smashed right through the outer hyper-titanium plating of the enemy station. A catastrophic shockwave of dark matter and shattered metal rippled across the structure. Alarms shrieked through the vacuum as the ship tore through three separate bulkheads before brutally crash-landing into the center of the main Vanguard hangar.

Sparks rained down over the smoking viewport.

Xavier strolled onto the bridge, casually brushing dust off his shoulder. He glanced at the carnage outside the window and then looked at Kylus. "I take it we are skipping the tactical approach?"

"They are already dead," Kylus said. He grabbed his heavy thermal cutter from the weapon rack and stomped toward the airlock without waiting for orders.

Xalvoria stood near the captain's chair, completely unbothered by the crash. She crossed her arms, her crimson eyes scanning the chaotic hangar outside. "The station's energy output is surprisingly low. My senses detect only a fraction of their fleet. Perhaps thirty percent of their total force."

"The main Vanguard must be out on a conquest campaign," Rin noted as he drew his twin dark steel swords. "They left a skeleton crew to hold the staging ground."

Xavier cracked his neck. "A skeleton crew is still a thousand demons. Empress, stay on the ship and make sure nobody scratches the paint. The rest of you, keep Kylus from getting himself killed."

The airlock doors blew open with a hiss of pressurized gas.

Kylus didn't hesitate. He launched himself off the loading ramp and crashed directly into a squad of heavily armored Vanguard demons rushing to secure the breached hangar. He ignited his thermal cutter, the massive blade glowing with a blinding, superheated fury.

He swung the weapon in a wide arc, shearing cleanly through the thick scaled torso of a demonic captain. Black blood boiled and vaporized against the intense heat of the blade.

Kylus didn't even watch the body hit the floor. He charged headlong into the absolute center of the enemy formation, abandoning all defense as he hacked limbs and split skulls with momentum.

'This is for Vea,' Kylus roared in his mind, driving his blazing cutter through the chest of a massive, four-armed brute.

A dozen demons swarmed him from the flanks, raising jagged plasma-rifles to gun him down.

Before they could fire, Rin dropped from the top of the Strider. His silver-light aura flared brilliantly in the dim hangar. He landed in a crouch and blurred into a cyclone of precision strikes, his twin swords severing the demons' hands and weapons in a single, fluid motion.

Requiem hit the deck a second later. The heavy-combat veteran swung his mechanical greatsword like a baseball bat, crushing three demons against a reinforced pillar and turning their armor into a mangled mess of scrap and bone.

"Don't push too far ahead, Aurelian!" Requiem shouted over the blaring sirens. "You are leaving your blind spots wide open!"

Kylus ignored him, kicking a dying demon in the face to free his thermal cutter before plunging deeper into the enemy ranks.

Reva and Lyra sprinted down the ramp side-by-side. The sheer density of targets temporarily paused their rivalry. Reva activated her Crimson Spiral Circulation, her movements becoming an animalistic shadows as her talons ripped through throats and armor joints.

Lyra covered the upper levels, firing concentrated blasts of demonic fire from her hands to melt the snipers perched on the hangar's catwalks.

Xavier stepped out of the airlock last. He walked down the ramp with his hands tucked loosely into his pockets. Two massive Vanguard elites charged at him from the side, roaring as they raised executioner axes.

Xavier didn't even look at them. He simply released a fraction of his Emperor's aura.

The sheer gravitational pressure crushed both demons into the metal floor plating, flattening their bodies into unrecognizable stains before they could take another step. Xavier stepped over the pooling black blood and watched Kylus tear through the remaining blockade.

Xavier had benefited a lot by having intercourse with Xalvoria. She possessed eight fragments and her body had the power of the eight fragments. And although Xavier had fourteen fragments, he had only obtained the power of two of them.

Sure, Xalvoria didn't possess full power of the eight fragments, but it was precisely because of Xavier's body constitution that allowed him to absorb the data from her body and made him a lot stronger than he was before.

"Let him vent," Xavier said calmly through the open comms. "Once he is done paving the floor with their guts, we find their command center and figure out exactly where the rest of this Society went."