I Have the Cosmos

Fear was a completely foreign concept to Commander Jax.

He was a highly enhanced Vanguard enforcer. He had purged rebel camps, hunted down rogue mages, and tortured secrets out of broken men without a single drop of sweat.

His mechanical brain was literally hardwired to completely shut down panic.

But right now, his internal cooling fans were screaming, entirely unable to cool his boiling blood and overheating mind.

He was sprinting through the ruined, smog-choked streets of the dead sector, utterly abandoning all military protocol.

Behind him, the underground station was a silent, sealed tomb.

Forty-nine of the Vanguard's absolute finest killers were dead.

They hadn't just been defeated in a fair fight. They had been ruthlessly, effortlessly butchered by a ghost they couldn't even see.

Jax slammed his heavy fist into the control panel on his wrist.

"Override! Deploy extraction vehicle!" he roared, his mechanical voice cracking with heavy static.

A spatial storage ring on his thumb flashed violently with blinding white light.

A heavy, sleek Vanguard hoverbike materialized directly onto the cracked asphalt. Its twin anti-gravity engines instantly whined to life.

Jax threw his heavy leg over the leather saddle.

He didn't check his corners. He didn't dare look back up at the towering skyscraper in the far distance.

He just slammed the throttle down to the absolute maximum.

FWOOOOOOSH.

The heavy hoverbike tore through the toxic green smog, instantly accelerating to a terrifying three hundred miles per hour.

The ruined, dead city blurred into a continuous, sickening streak of gray concrete and glowing moss.

Jax flattened his upper body hard against the metal chassis, dodging rusted cars and collapsed pillars with sheer mechanical speed.

He checked the glowing digital tracker flashing on his visor.

DISTANCE FROM STATION: FIVE MILES.

"Faster, you piece of trash," Jax hissed, dumping his own raw magic directly into the bike's glowing engine.

He knew the absolute maximum range of a heavy Vanguard sniper.

Even with a legendary weapon, the thick toxic smog, the towering ruins, and the sheer distance made any shot past five miles a complete fantasy.

DISTANCE: EIGHT MILES.

He was almost entirely out of the dead zone.

He could finally see the towering, shimmering blue barrier of the massive mana-wall in the far distance, protecting the pristine Inner City.

DISTANCE: TEN MILES.

Jax let out a massive, shuddering exhale.

His artificial lungs pumped desperately, filtering out the heavy adrenaline that was burning his veins.

He had actually made it. He was officially out of the kill zone.

✦ ✦ ✦

Ten miles away, on the freezing precipice of the Zenith Tower, Kaelen Cross was perfectly still.

The bitter wind whipped his tattered leather coat violently around his legs.

He stood on the very edge of the ruined concrete roof.

He hadn't packed up his gear. He hadn't lowered his weapon.

The heavy stock of The Panopticon was braced hard against his right shoulder.

The twin magnetic rails pulsed with an aggressive, starving blue light.

[Current Viewers: 945,200]

[Total Cosmic Credits: 236,500]

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Kael, he's gone," Nyx's voice crackled softly in his earpiece.

Down in the dark subway station, the young hacker was watching the digital map fade.

"Jax crossed the ten-mile mark," Nyx reported, her voice heavy with the exhaustion of the night's slaughter.

"He is pushing three hundred miles per hour on a hover-engine. You can't see him through this thick smog, and the bullet drop at that distance is completely impossible to calculate."

"Let him run, Kael," Seraphina added over the comms, her voice calm and steady.

"We crippled their best unit. It is a massive victory. We need to regroup."

Kael didn't lower the heavy gun.

He stared out into the endless ocean of toxic green smog, his silver eyes entirely devoid of mercy.

Vespera materialized seamlessly from his shadow.

Her leathery dark wings wrapped warmly around his back, completely shielding him from the freezing wind.

She rested her chin on his left shoulder, peering down the long, pitch-black barrel of the sniper.

"Are you really going to let the little metal rat scurry back to his master?" Vespera whispered, her crimson eyes glowing with predatory curiosity.

"No," Kael rasped.

His voice sounded like grinding stone.

"He is still breathing."

Up in the corner of his vision, the cosmic streaming interface began to violently glitch and tear.

The system was physically reacting to the sheer, suffocating density of Kael's murderous intent.

The live viewer count began to climb at a terrifying, astronomical speed.

It wasn't just the combat junkies watching anymore.

The news of a mortal with absolutely no magic declaring a bloody war on an entire planet had finally spread across the galaxies.

[Current Viewers: 1,105,000]

[Current Viewers: 1,340,000]

The chat was accelerating so fast the words blurred into a solid stream of light.

[User Zark: HE IS NOT PACKING UP! LOOK AT HIS EYES! HE IS STILL HUNTING! 🚨]

[User BloodGod: YES! LEAVE NO SURVIVORS! RIP THE COWARD RIGHT OFF HIS MACHINE! 🩸🔪]

[User Weapons_Nut_44: Wait... Kael, do not do it. The target is moving at three hundred miles per hour, ten miles away, through a dense city of ruins. You cannot bend a bullet that far! The dark-matter cell will completely overload! 📉💀]

[User DragonBoredom: Let the man cook. He is rewriting the absolute rules of this pathetic planet. 👑🍷]

DING.

A sound exactly like a shattering star echoed directly through Kael's very soul.

The glowing platinum border of the cosmic stream flared with a blinding, prismatic light.

[SYSTEM ALERT: HISTORIC MILESTONE REACHED!]

[Current Viewers: 1,500,200 (UNIVERSAL TRENDING)]

[You have unlocked a Galactic-Tier Active Skill!]

Kael didn't even blink as the heavy blue text materialized perfectly over the glowing digital crosshairs of his scope.

[Skill Acquired: Event Horizon Snipe]

[Tier: Galactic (S+)]

[Description: Channels the sheer, crushing gravitational weight of one and a half million observing cosmic entities. For a single shot, the projectile entirely ignores the curvature of the planet, the drag of the air, and wind resistance. It does not fly. It simply connects two points in space through localized extinction.]

[Cost: 99% of Remaining Mana. Extreme physical recoil.]

Kael's lips curled into a cold, terrifying smile.

"Nyx," Kael whispered into the comms.

"Give me Jax's exact numbers. Speed, direction, and where he is going."

"Kael, you are not listening to me," Nyx argued, her fingers flying desperately over her glowing keyboard.

"He is fifteen miles out now! Even a heavy railgun slug takes too much time to travel that far. He is moving too fast. You cannot lead a target moving at those speeds over that massive distance without a military satellite!"

"I don't need a satellite," Kael replied.

His silver eyes flashed with raw, crackling blue energy.

"I have the cosmos."

The line went dead silent for a heavy second.

"...Heading is North-Northeast," Nyx finally sighed, reading the fleeing man's data.

"Speed is exactly three hundred and twelve miles per hour. He is making a dead sprint in a straight line for the Inner City gates. He is thirty-five miles from the wall."

"Understood."

Kael didn't aim the heavy barrel at the distant horizon.

He didn't aim it down at the ruined streets.

He locked the heavy bipod firmly into the concrete and violently cranked the massive weapon upward.

He aimed the heavy sniper directly up into the toxic, smog-choked clouds.

[User Star_Dust_69: WHY IS HE AIMING AT THE SKY?! 😱☁️]

[User Weapons_Nut_44: MOTHER OF GEARS. HE IS SHOOTING INTO SPACE! 📉🤯]

The dwarven weapon-smith in the chat completely lost his mind, spamming a frantic wall of impossible mathematics.

[User Weapons_Nut_44: He is not shooting AT Jax! He is using the new skill to bypass the sky entirely, sending the heavy bullet out of the world just to drop it back down on the target's head like a falling star! THE MATH REQUIRED TO PREDICT THAT BLIND DROP IS COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE FOR A HUMAN BRAIN! 💀🚀]

Kael slowly closed his silver eyes.

He reached deep into his own chest, grabbing hold of the tiny, violently unstable puddle of blue magic that Seraphina had so painstakingly stitched back together.

He didn't just siphon a little bit of power.

He violently ripped the entire puddle out by its roots.

A blinding, agonizing spike of pure pain shot straight through his shattered core.

Hot, dark blood instantly began to pour from his nose and weep heavily from his tear ducts.

He didn't care.

He channeled every single remaining drop of his life force directly down his right arm, forcing it all straight into the heavy iron grip of his weapon.

WHRRRRRRR-VMMMMMMM.

The heavy sniper didn't just hum. It screamed.

The twin magnetic rails burned so bright they turned the pitch-black night into a blinding, daylight-blue noon across the entire rooftop.

The dark-matter core buried inside the heavy stock shook with a terrifying, apocalyptic fury.

It vibrated so violently it felt like the thick iron weapon was going to completely shatter in his hands.

"System," Kael grunted.

Hot, thick blood dripped heavily from his chin, splattering onto the cracked concrete.

"Activate Event Horizon."

[Target Locked. Trajectory Calculated.]

[Warning: Recoil will exceed mortal structural limits.]

Vespera squeezed him even tighter.

Her freezing demonic body acted as a living, indestructible brace. She wrapped her heavy, leathery wings completely over his back, digging her pale claws deep into the stone to anchor her king to the earth.

"Do it, my king," Vespera whispered.

Her glowing red eyes were wide with absolute, obsessive adoration.

"Tear the sky wide open."

Kael slowly opened his eyes.

They weren't just silver anymore. They were burning with pure, blinding cosmic light.

He squeezed the heavy trigger.