Chapter 46: The Exodus Protocol
The sky of the Middle World was bleeding.
The Planetary Purge had begun.
High above the floating continent of Aurelia, the clouds had turned a sickly, bruised purple. Through the tear in reality, massive Null-Qi Meteors descended in slow motion. They were silent, colossal shapes of black stone, each one radiating enough anti-magic energy to erase a city.
The countdown: 23 Hours, 45 Minutes.
Panic had consumed the Golden City.
Nobles fought over the few remaining star-ships capable of interplanetary travel. Commoners prayed in the streets. The Aethelgard Army, leaderless after the King's erasure, had dissolved into looting mobs.
But in District 9, there was no panic. There was only industry.
I stood in the Command Center of Fortress Eternity.
"Ria," I asked, looking at the holographic map of the island. "Can this rock fly?"
Ria—the Machine Goddess—was interfaced with the mainframe. Her golden eyes streamed data.
"The Fortress is built on a granite foundation. Mass: 50 million tons. Propulsion required: Planetary Class Engines."
She paused.
"The World Heart of the 6th Era can generate the thrust. However, structural integrity will be compromised at Mach 1."
"Reinforce it with the Ghost Corps," I ordered. "Have General Ironwood use their spectral bodies to hold the stones together. We aren't just taking the castle. We're taking the island."
I turned to the window.
"We need a ship to invade the High World. Why build one when I already live in one?"
The Beggar Prince.
Outside the blast doors of Fortress Eternity, a lone figure was banging on the metal.
It was Prince Aethelred.
He looked pathetic. His Divine Platinum Armor was dented and scorched. His cape was torn. He had lost his army, his father, and his dignity.
"Open up!" Aethelred screamed, his voice cracking. "Rudra! I know you are in there! You have a Void Shield! Let me in! I command you!"
I walked out to the balcony overlooking the gate. Seraphina leaned on the railing beside me, sipping a glass of wine she had saved from the cellar.
"Look at him," Seraphina laughed cruelly. "The future King of the Middle World, begging a 'peasant' for salvation."
"Rudra!" Aethelred saw me. He fell to his knees. "Please! The meteors are coming! My ships are destroyed! You have room! I can pay you! I will give you the Title deed to the Kingdom! I will make you a Duke!"
"I don't want to be a Duke of a graveyard, Pinky," I said, my voice amplified over the speakers.
"Then what do you want?!" Aethelred wept. "I am a Demigod (suppressed)! I am useful! I can scrub floors! I can carry bags!"
I looked at him.
I remembered him mocking Valerian. I remembered him putting a bounty on my arm. I remembered him hiring an assassin to kill me in the dungeon.
"You are useful," I admitted.
Aethelred's face lit up with hope. "Yes! Yes, I am!"
"You serve as a warning," I said cold.
I pointed to the sky.
"The Arbiters decided this world was a failure because of your family's incompetence. If I save you, I bring the failure with me."
I turned my back.
"Ria. Engage thrusters. Leave him."
"No! NO!" Aethelred screamed, clawing at the door. "You can't leave me! I am the protagonist of this world! I am the Prince!"
RUMBLE.
The ground shook.
Deep beneath District 9, the World Heart roared to life. Blue fire erupted from the base of the island.
The gravity anchors were severed.
Fortress Eternity—and the entire island it sat on—began to rise.
Aethelred fell back as the ground lifted away from him. He was left standing on the edge of the void, watching his salvation float into the sky.
"RUDRAAAAA!"
His scream faded into the distance.
I didn't look back. The Middle World was dead to me.
The Ascent.
The sensation of lifting an island is indescribable.
The entire fortress vibrated. The tea on the table rippled.
We rose past the Golden City.
We saw the looters stop and stare. They saw a black castle rising on a pillar of blue fire, ascending toward the doom that was coming for them.
"Altitude: 30,000 feet," Ria announced. "Approaching the Arbiter's Tear."
The Tear was the hole in the sky where the meteors were coming from. It was a swirling vortex of white light, guarded by mechanical angels.
"Arbiters' Enforcers," Old Mo identified them, looking at the screen. "Constructs made of Light and Law. They guard the boundary between the Middle and High Worlds. They destroy anything that tries to ascend without a permit."
There were hundreds of them. Winged humanoids made of white metal, holding spears of lightning.
They saw our floating island approaching.
[UNAUTHORIZED ASCENSION DETECTED.]
[TARGET: ANOMALY FORTRESS.]
[PROTOCOL: INTERCEPT.]
The Angel-Constructs dove toward us.
"Valerian," I called out.
Prince Valerian stood at the weapons console. He was shaking, but his new robotic arm (healed by the nano-paste but reinforced with 6th Era tech) was steady.
"I'm ready, Rudra."
"Those Angels are worth 10,000 points each," I grinned. "Test the main guns."
"Aye, Captain!"
Valerian slammed his hand on the trigger.
The four God-Killer Railguns on the roof swiveled.
HUMMMM.
The magnetic coils charged.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
Four tungsten rods launched at Mach 20.
They tore through the sky.
The lead Angel didn't even have time to raise its shield. The rod vaporized it instantly, shattering its core. The shockwave turned ten other Angels into scrap metal.
"Direct hit!" Valerian cheered. "Eat tungsten, you feathered toasters!"
"General Ironwood," I commanded. "Flak screen."
The Ghost Corps manning the smaller turrets opened fire.
A wall of spirit-bullets and lasers erupted from the fortress walls. The descending Angels were shredded before they could get within spear range.
We punched a hole through the blockade.
The Fortress rose higher.
We entered the Tear.
The Threshold.
Passing through the Tear was like swimming upstream in a waterfall.
The pressure was immense. The Laws of Physics tried to crush us.
In the Low World, gravity is 1x.
In the Middle World, it is 3x.
In the High World, the base gravity is 50x.
"Structural integrity dropping," Ria warned. "The island is cracking under the pressure."
"Chronos!" I shouted.
Inside the Ouroboros Ring, my clone opened his golden eyes.
'Ability: Time Stasis Field.'
Chronos projected a field around the fortress.
He froze the condition of the island. He locked its structural integrity in time. Even though the gravity tried to crush it, the stones couldn't break because their state was fixed.
"Stabilized," I breathed a sigh of relief.
We broke through the other side.
The white light faded.
The High World: Terra Nova.
The view cleared.
We weren't in space. We weren't on a floating island.
We were in a Jungle.
But it was a jungle of giants.
The trees were ten miles high, their trunks as wide as cities. The leaves were the size of lakes. The "Sun" above was actually a Sentient Star that blinked.
This was the High World. A place where everything—beasts, plants, gravity—was elevated to the realm of Divinity.
Here, a Demigod was a common soldier. A True God was a local lord.
Our floating island—Fortress Eternity—drifted into this new world like a speck of dust.
"We made it," Lyra whispered, looking at the massive trees. "The Qi density... it's suffocating."
"Adapt," I said. "Cycle your cultivation. If you don't acclimatize, your lungs will collapse."
We landed the island on the branch of a colossal tree. The branch was wide enough to hold our entire fortress comfortably.
"Ria, scan the area," I ordered.
"Scanning..." Ria's eyes spun. "Life forms detected. Massive. Everything here is Rank 7 (True God) or higher."
She zoomed in on the ground far below.
"And... civilization detected."
I looked at the screen.
In the distance, nestled among the roots of the world-trees, was a city made of crystal and light. Ships flew around it—not airships, but Void-Skiffs that moved by folding space.
"The City of Polaris," Seraphina recognized it. Her face was grim. "It is a border town of the Pantheon of Order. It is ruled by a False God."
"False God?" I asked.
"A cultivator who reached the God Realm but bent the knee to the Arbiters," she spat. "They are the jailers of this world. They hunt Ascenders."
I walked to the edge of the balcony.
I breathed in the air. It tasted like ozone and ancient blood.
The Planetary Purge was happening below us, in the Middle World. We had escaped.
But we had jumped from the frying pan into the nuclear reactor.
"We need a disguise," I said. "If they detect a floating fortress from a purged world, they will send an Armada."
"Ria," I commanded. "Activate Camouflage Mode. Make the fortress look like a rock."
"Affirmative. Engaging Holo-Field."
The fortress shimmered. To the outside observer, it now looked like a natural mossy outgrowth on the tree branch.
"Now," I turned to my team. "We are illegal immigrants in the land of Gods. We have no money, no status, and our cultivation is suppressed by the world laws."
I smiled, drawing Antakala.
"It feels just like the first day of school."
"What is the plan?" Valerian asked, adjusting to the gravity.
"Simple," I said. "We go down to that city. We find the biggest, baddest organization there."
"And?"
"And we eat them."