Chapter 265 - 266: The Ship’s Trump Card
Wukong remained perfectly merged with the vent wall above the command deck, every atom of his transformed body matching the metal around him. His awareness stayed locked on the conversation below. The Multiversal below had finally started explaining what "that" actually was.
A new voice cut in — sharper, carrying the distinct weight of an Expert-tier Multiversal. He had only recently joined the fleet.
"Wait," the newcomer said. "What exactly is this ’that’ you have been talking about? I’ve been with the crew for 3 months now and this is the first time I’m hearing about some secret method."
The first Expert glanced at him, then at the captain. The captain gave a short nod.
"Right. You’re the new one." The Expert gestured, and a detailed schematic flickered into existence beside the main holographic battlefield. Lines of energy pathways, core chambers, and warp-drive conduits lit up in cold blue light. "It’s a core-overload sequence. We force the ship’s primary energy core — the one that normally feeds the entire vessel for eons of continuous operation — into a controlled supercritical state. The total energy output is equivalent to the combined output of billions of average sectors. And we dump the entire burst into the void warp drive in a single instant. The drive can’t handle that much power under normal conditions, so it doesn’t create a standard warp corridor. It punches a temporary, ultra-dense spatial tunnel straight through whatever is in front of us."
The newcomer’s eyes widened slightly. "You’re overloading the core on purpose?"
"Controlled overload," the silver-marked Expert corrected. Her silver markings glowed faintly as she studied the schematic. "One clean corridor. Short duration. High risk of core damage afterward, but we’ve done the repairs before. It got us away from that Master near the Scarred Sectors when we were completely outmatched. We have one charge left. It’ll get us through this mess too."
The newcomer still looked unsettled. He frowned at the schematic, then at the captain.
"I’ve only ever heard of core-overload sequences on Techno-built ships. Pure Techno designs. How does a pirate fleet have one?"
The captain’s expression shifted into something between pride and old greed.
"Former commander found it," he said. "Long before most of us joined. He got lucky in a Mech-variant Techno ruin universe. The place had gone to war with the Void race years earlier. The Mech-line Technos lost territory, and the Void race moved in to scavenge and devour. Our old commander slipped in during the chaos, stripped what he could, and found this ship still in working condition — core, drive, overload sequence and all. He dragged it out and never looked back."
The silver-marked Expert added quietly, "He left just in time. A few months later the Technos came back. Not a scouting force. A proper reclamation fleet. They wiped the Void race out of that universe so cleanly that even residual Void signatures were erased. No survivors. No wreckage worth mentioning. The Technos don’t leave messes when they decide a place belongs to them again."
The newcomer let out a low breath. "Even the Void race couldn’t hold it?"
"The Void race is nightmare fuel for most of the multiverse," the first Expert said. "But against real Technos? Especially the higher lineages? They don’t stand a chance. The Technos are the second most powerful race for a reason. When they want something back, they take it. Completely."
Wukong’s interest, which had been burning hot, suddenly cooled.
A ship feature? Built into the core and the drive?
Disappointment settled over him like cold water. He had been hoping for a portable artifact, a modular device, something he could quietly steal, hide in his ear, and keep for himself. A one-time escape tool of that magnitude would have been perfect for future "unavoidable misunderstandings." Instead it was hardwired into the vessel. He couldn’t exactly walk away with an entire pirate ship’s energy core under his arm.
Typical. The one time they have something actually useful, it’s bolted to the floor. Figures. Always the way.
He kept listening anyway. Information was still information, and information had kept him alive longer than raw power ever had.
The captain leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "Technology never stops being amusing. We pour everything into one strike and the ship just... does it. If any of us tried the same thing with our own cultivation — compressed every scrap of energy into a single critical burst — we’d accelerate our entropy so hard our near-infinite lifespans would start counting down in centuries instead of eons. The ship doesn’t care. We repair the core, recharge it, and the system is ready again."
One of the Advanced officers gave a low whistle. "No wonder the Technos sit so high."
The silver-marked Expert’s expression turned serious. "Especially the Quantum-Kin variants. Those are the ones you pray you never meet."
The newcomer frowned. "Quantum-Kin? I’ve only heard the name. How bad are they really?"
The first Expert let out a short, humorless breath. "I had a Master-tier friend — trillions of years old, solid foundation, the kind of existence who doesn’t flinch at much. He ran into a Quantum-Kin that was barely twenty years old. Twenty. He barely escaped with half his principles intact and a permanent scar on his unified information particles. Said the kid treated time and probability like toys. Rewrote local causality mid-fight just to see what would happen. My friend still doesn’t talk about the details."
A brief, uneasy silence fell over the command deck.
"They’re terrifying," another officer muttered. "I just hope none of them have any interest in this ruin."
The captain shook his head. "You don’t need to worry about that. The Technos, especially the higher Quantum-Kin lineages, consider ruins like this childish. Too small, too straightforward, too much ’inheritance hunting’ for their taste. They won’t even glance in this direction. Their idea of a challenge is rewriting the foundational constants of a cluster of sectors for fun."
Wukong absorbed every word, and the weight of them settled deeper than he liked.
Twenty years old and already forcing a trillion-year-old Master to run for his life? What kind of monsters grow that fast?
His thoughts drifted to the quiet sector he had left behind and to the strange, golden-eyed young man he had sparred with not so long ago.
Runar...
Runar had been the most talented individual Wukong had met in a very long time. Pure comprehension. No flashy bloodline. No racial advantages stacked across generations. Just a mind that looked at principles and somehow understood them faster and deeper than should have been possible. Wukong had respected that.
But these Quantum-Kin...
They’re even more heaven-defying than Runar. The most talented person I knew, and it turns out the void has entire lineages that make him look slow. Twenty years old and already hunting Masters. That’s not talent anymore. That’s something else.
Still, a stubborn part of him refused to dismiss the golden-eyed young man completely.
Runar didn’t have their starting point. No bloodline. No racial power. No built-in probability engines. Just comprehension. Raw, stubborn, ridiculous comprehension. If he’s left that quiet sector to explore... if he’s out here somewhere facing the same scale of things I’m seeing now... I hope he can catch up. Someone like that deserves the chance to stand on the same stage as these monsters.
He had no way of knowing that the very ruin these pirates were about to force their way into had been triggered by Runar himself.
After I get inside, grab whatever I can, and get out... I’m going home. No wonder so many of those Multiversals back in the sector chose retirement. They weren’t weak. They were smart.
Below him, the officers finished their discussion and moved to action.
"All hands to stations," the captain ordered. "Core-overload sequence in sixty seconds. Combat teams ready for immediate deployment the moment the corridor stabilizes. We go in hard and fast."
The command deck lit up with new displays. Crew members across the ship moved with practiced speed. Wukong felt the vessel’s energy systems begin to shift on a fundamental level.
Power that had been distributed through thousands of channels started collapsing inward.
It began as a low, rolling vibration that lived in the bones of the ship. Then the vibration deepened. Energy that normally flowed like a steady river was being forced into a single point, compressed beyond any safe limit. The central core — a massive, sealed chamber of interlocking Techno design — began to glow with a light that was not meant to be seen by living eyes. The light was dense, heavy, almost physical. It pressed against the surrounding bulkheads.
Billions of sectors’ worth of stored power screamed as it was crushed into a space far too small for it. Warning runes flared across every console in harsh red. The air itself grew thick and hard to breathe. Metal groaned. The vent walls around Wukong heated rapidly. The compression continued, relentless, until the energy stopped feeling like energy and started feeling like a coiled singularity of pure, violent potential.
Then the transfer began.
The supercritical mass was dumped in a single catastrophic instant into the void warp drive. The drive howled. Reality around the ship’s forward section began to tear in a clean, artificial line. Space folded, compressed, and was forcibly rewritten into a narrow, ultra-dense corridor that punched straight through the chaotic battlefield outside.
The total energy of the ship — equivalent to millions of sectors — had been forced into pure, directional movement.
Wukong remained perfectly still inside the wall, golden awareness sharp, staff hidden within the transformation. The metal around him vibrated so hard it felt like it might shake apart.
Outside, the chaotic battlefield continued to tear itself apart.
Inside the ship, the core reached critical density and released everything it had.
The captain’s voice cut across every internal channel, calm and final.
"Activate."
The world around Wukong turned white with pure, compressed power.