The Devil Sovereign had fled. It had abandoned its pride, its hunger, and its dignity to burrow into the earth like a frightened mole, leaving behind a silence heavier than the battle itself.
General Valerius hovered in the air, his Fortress Body still active, his skin gleaming like gunmetal against the blinding white-gold sky. He watched the breach in the Golden Wall.
Through the ragged hole in reality, the Alien Ship descended.
It didn't look like the ships of Aethalgard. It wasn't made of wood, bone, or enchanted metal. It was a needle of absolute, reflective chrome. It moved without a sound—no hum of mana, no roar of engines. It simply defied gravity, a glitch in the world's physics.
It touched down on the snow. Silent Landing.
"General," Lack’s voice crackled in Valerius's earpiece, distorted by the static of the anomaly. "Do not engage with Mana. My sensors... they're reading 'Zero'. That ship has no magical signature."
"No signature?" Valerius narrowed his eyes. "Everything has mana. Even a rock has trace amounts."
"That ship doesn't," Lack whispered. "It’s a void in the data. It’s like it doesn't exist."
A ramp extended from the chrome needle. Three figures walked out.
They were tall, thin humanoids encased in sleek, white environmental suits that reflected the snow. Their helmets were opaque black glass. They didn't carry staffs or swords. They carried rifles that looked like tuning forks.
One of the figures raised a device. It planted a black spike into the snowy ground.
THUMP.
A wave of distortion rippled out from the spike. Wherever the wave touched, the snow didn't melt. It lost its glow. The trace mana in the environment vanished instantly. The air became dead, sterile, and grey.
"They are killing the atmosphere," Terra gasped from the bunker. "The nature spirits are screaming... and then they are just gone."
"Intruders!" Valerius roared, descending like a thunderbolt. "You stand on the soil of the God Faction! Identify yourselves or be removed!"
The Aliens didn't look up. They ignored him. To them, he was just local fauna making noise.
Valerius scowled. He raised his hand.
"Original Skill: Multi-Cast Fabrication."
He summoned a barrage of fifty hard-light cubes, spinning with kinetic force.
"Zone Enforcement: Crushing Weight."
He launched the cubes at the Aliens.
The Aliens didn't dodge. One of them simply pointed its "Tuning Fork" rifle at the incoming magic. It didn't fire a laser. It fired a beam of darkness. Not Shadow Magic—but the absence of light.
ZZZT.
The beam hit Valerius's cubes. There was no explosion. No crash. The cubes simply... deleted. One second, they were solid constructs of hard light; the next, they were gone. Erased from existence without even a puff of smoke.
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"What?" Valerius froze. "My mana... it didn't shatter. It vanished."
The Alien turned its rifle toward Valerius. It fired.
"Shields!" Valerius crossed his arms.
"God Ability 1: Fortress Body (Astral Defence)."
He poured his massive mana reserves into his skin, reinforcing the metallic structure with divine energy.
The dark beam hit him.
HISSSSSS.
It didn't punch a hole. It started to eat him. Absolute horror descended as his metallic skin rusted, flaked, and dissolved into grey dust. The beam was actively deleting the Divine Mana holding his atoms together.
"It burns!" Valerius grunted, pouring more mana into the wound to regenerate the armour faster than it could be erased.
It was a battle of attrition. Erasure Rate vs. Regeneration Rate.
"General!" Volt shouted from the bunker. "Get out of there! It's eating through your God Ability!"
"I cannot retreat!" Valerius roared, sweat pouring down his face as he held the beam back by sheer force of will. "If I move, they plant more spikes!"
Inside the bunker, Lack stared at the screen. His eyes darted across the data readouts from the Atlas Frame, processing the impossible.
[Analysing...] [Mana Shield: Ineffective.] [Divine Structure: Corroding.] [Attack Type: Antimatter / Entropy.]
"They are deleting the magic." The impossible mathematics clicked into focus. "They are using Science to cancel out the Fantasy."
It’s Rock, Paper, Scissors, the Light Devil whispered, sounding terrified. Magic beats Physics. Physics beats... wait, no. Antimatter beats Magic. But Matter? Regular, boring Matter?
"Matter explodes when it touches Antimatter," Lack said. "It creates a reaction."
He tapped his comms. "General! Stop using Mana! You're feeding the fire!"
"What do I use then?!" Valerius shouted, dropping to one knee as the beam pressed him down.
"Physics!" Lack screamed. "They are deleting the energy. But they can't delete mass without an explosion! Don't hit them with a spell! Hit them with the planet!"
"The planet?"
"Grab a rock!" Lack ordered. "A real, physical rock! Do not enchant it! Just throw it!"
Valerius didn't question the logic. He trusted the Misfit. He dropped his Fortress Body on his right arm, reverting it to normal flesh.
He plunged his hand into the frozen earth. He ripped out a massive chunk of granite bedrock, weighing easily ten tonnes. He didn't infuse it with mana. He didn't make it lighter. He used his raw, physical Saurian-level strength.
"Eat this!" Valerius hurled the boulder.
The Alien shifted its aim. It fired the Antimatter beam at the rock.
BOOM.
The beam hit the rock. Matter met Antimatter. The result wasn't erasure. It was a Nuclear Reaction.
The boulder exploded violently in mid-air, creating a massive shockwave of pure thermal energy and shrapnel. The blast knocked the Aliens off their feet. Their white suits cracked. One of them was thrown into the side of their ship, blue blood spraying on the snow.
"The beam only grazed the rock! If it fully connected, we'd all be ash!" Lack screamed.
"It worked!" Torin cheered.
"It's not magic," Lack smiled, watching the Aliens scramble to recover. "It's a chemical reaction. They can cancel spells, but they can't cancel a bomb made of rocks."
Valerius stood up, his arm smoking but intact. He looked at his fist. "Physics," Valerius rumbled. "Primitive. But effective."
He turned to the bunker. "Lieutenant Flameheart. You speak their language."
"I speak Vibration, sir," Lack replied. "And right now, they are vibrating with confusion. They expected Wizards. They got a Caveman throwing stones."
The Aliens retreated to their ship. They weren't defeated, but they were wary. The data updated. The "natives" possessed the capacity to strike back.
The ship's engines hummed—a low, throbbing sound that Lack felt in his teeth.
"They're leaving," Rian noted. "Retreating?"
"No," Lack said darkly. "Regrouping. They realised the 'Radiation' here fights back. Next time, they won't bring rifles. They'll bring the heavy cleaners."
The chrome ship lifted off, vanishing into the clouds as silently as it had arrived.
The Devil Sovereign, sensing the predator was gone, uncurled from its hole and scurried back through the breach into the Void, terrified.
Silence fell over Sector 2355.
Valerius walked to the bunker window. His armour was pitted and scarred. "We held," Valerius said. "But the Cage is leaking. And now we know who is waiting outside."
Lack looked at the Ancient Map. A new marker had appeared on the edge of the world.
[Warning: External Breach Detected.] [Countdown to Sanitation: Unknown.]
? ? ?
[System Record: Character Progression]
- New Faction Intel: The Nullity (Aliens) use Antimatter.
- Weakness: Physical Matter/Physics.
- Valerius Status: Damaged but operational. He has learned that "Pure Mana" isn't the only way to fight.