Chapter 994: Preparations
PSSSSSS! Seconds after Aron entered the cylindrical tank, it locked, and two shields, powered from the outside, activated to their maximum capacity. It was clear that they were preparing for the situation to go beyond their expectations. After all, the Emperor himself didn’t know the possible outcome; he was trusting that the system still had his safety and improvement as one of its paramount objectives.
{Please create a distance of at least ten kilometers,} Nova said in a serious tone, making it clear that the "please" in her sentence was not a request but just a formality. She gave everyone the coordinates she wanted them to move to, sending the Empress the farthest from the main location.
“I’m not going to argue with you about it, but I didn’t like that,” Rina said when she saw the coordinates she was supposed to go to and her location in relation to all of the rest of the reinforcements called here.
She clearly knew Nova’s reasoning for placing her the farthest. She was both the Emperor’s wife and four months pregnant, and if something were to happen to her, then the havoc the Emperor was going to wreak would be of historical proportions. Although her strength placed her in the top one hundred, the reason she was brought here was not to fight the Emperor, but for the emotional side of things, to be used if the situation called for it. To match that reason, Nova had no reason to place her the closest.
Despite knowing and understanding it, it didn’t make the feeling of being sent the furthest from someone she loved who was in a very dire situation any less painful. But knowing that fighting her decision was not really on the table due to something more important at hand, she vented everything through her words before she left.
{Thank you for your understanding,} Nova said, bowing to Rina, who was floating away, before her present avatar walked closer to the cylindrical tank. She placed her hand on it, accessing all of the data of what was happening inside and broadcasting it to all of the individuals called as reinforcements as they moved to their designated locations. This was to have them be as informed about the situation as possible, to increase their chances of holding the Emperor off for a few seconds. For that, situational awareness was needed to avoid being blindsided, but also to increase the possibility of someone finding something they could target. It was a long shot, but it might also be the only shot they would have if things got out of control.
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“Why is she placing me here?” Seraphina complained as she floated to her location, upon realizing that she was placed the closest to the Emperor after Nova, who was literally next to the tank.
As someone who had gone hand-to-hand with the Emperor in a fight where she gave her everything only to get stomped, she was as much afraid of Aron as she was of the Grand Xor’Vak, which said something, as he was deemed the strongest individual when it came to individual fighting abilities. But despite that, she sometimes wondered if the two of them fought, who would win, because she was sure the Emperor hadn’t gone all out when he fought her. And despite it being her weakest since she joined the Emperor, and due to the Emperor heavily investing in her, nearly quadrupling her strength, she still didn’t try to call for a fight, as she didn’t feel confident enough to be able to hold her ground.
“Well, looks like you also had this as a possibility when you strengthened me,” she said as wings sprouted from her back and fully spread wide, creating a very hypnotic look as light interacted with them, revealing different colors as if they had gone through a prismatic cube.
“As your people say, pray for the best but prepare for the worst,” she said, having quite absorbed a large amount of information regarding humans. Immediately after she said that, the ground shook as a hundred-meter-thick circular wall rose from the ground, with the Emperor in the middle of it.
The speed at which it was rising didn’t really do its size justice, as within just three seconds, the Emperor was now enclosed inside a dome.
But she didn’t stop there, as a similar wall rose a kilometer from the previous dome, completing it at the same speed. She placed her hand on the outer wall, whose exterior was just a few meters from her, and immediately absorbed the air inside the space between the two domes, turning it into a kilometer-wide vacuum buffer.
Following that, she moved a kilometer back from the outer wall and created a third dome before releasing all of the air she had just absorbed, together with her mana, filling this new area. But not stopping there, she also created hundreds of millions of metallic objects and filled the same area, leaving them on the ground as one of her weapons.
“That should deal enough of a blow and slow him for a few seconds at least. But it is not enough,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment. Soon her body started enlarging as the scales that had miniaturized to fit into her humanoid form started expanding to return to their actual size. She was canceling the transmorph and was returning to her actual body, as she would need everything in her arsenal if she was to buy enough time.
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“Shit, is it that serious?” Lee, who had arrived at his location, found himself asking when he saw the breakdown of what Seraphina was doing. It could only be interpreted as her preparing millions of bullets to pepper the Emperor down to the point it would overwhelm him for a few seconds. Only then did he realize that although these people were called as backups, they were making all of the preparations as if fighting the Emperor was something written in stone.
“Time to get to work then,” he said as he too closed his eyes, focusing on the space around him, spreading his senses twenty kilometers wide, feeling every bit of gravity that was in the surroundings. Although his ability could create a gravity field in a way that fit his style, his range when he was going against physics was completely different to when he used the environment along with it.
Three seconds later, Seraphina finally sensed something. The opening inside her domes, where she had filled it with air and metallic objects, started undergoing weird transformations before she immediately clocked what it was and turned to where Lee was located. The millions of metallic objects started floating due to the gravity within it being lowered all the way to zero, causing them to spread all over the dome and increasing the ways she could use them.
Upon understanding what was going on, she didn’t complain but rather was happy that everyone else had started pulling their weight.
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While those near the Emperor were making their preparations, Nova was already getting things in position in space. She activated one of the hexagonal pieces of the planetary shield and just kept increasing its thickness in the direction of Mars until it reached the ground, covering a hundred-kilometer radius with the shield.
However, due to it being in its passive mode, nothing happened, but anyone who was inside it felt no different than being placed inside a room filled with lasers ready to be activated at any moment, despite them not being the targets of the shield. It was meant as one of the few additional things that could slow down the Emperor by trying to apply the same principle they applied to hold ships, by turning it to active mode, which in turn would hold everything inside it exactly where it was, without being able to move. To make sure of that, Nova had the redundant power systems, meant to power the shield at its planet-covering scale, ready to dump all of that energy on only a section of the shield.
Their preparations were now ready. Only then did all of the people present finally start watching the live feed of what was happening to the Emperor through the eyes of Nova’s instance, and nothing about it made them feel any ease.