Xyrin Empire
Chapter 413 - Chapter 413 Chapter 413 Remarkable Effects

Chapter 413: Chapter 413: Remarkable Effects Chapter 413: Chapter 413: Remarkable Effects “Who’s leading these Ravens now?”

As I surveyed the slow hundred in front of me, I couldn’t spot anyone who looked like a commander. They were like uniformed clones, even their coats were the same style, with no clear identity marks.

“They… are controlled by Silvia.”

Taville hesitated for a moment before giving me an answer that greatly surprised me.

“That slowpoke?” I blurted out in shock, revealing a rather disrespectful term, “I mean, Silvia, that girl controlling a hundred Ravens? She’s not Bellavilla! She even forgets to add the seasoning packet when she makes instant noodles, damn it!”

Did I just mix some very messed-up stuff there?

Regardless, the news that Silvia was the commander of these Ravens was just too explosive! That dull natural could hardly grasp anything about us, and I bet she could miraculously overlook the Imperial Fleet rising right in front of her eyes. To say she’s now commanding this Raven corps… damn it, at least give me some less bizarre news right now!

Taville, observing the rapid changes in my facial expression, could guess what the Emperor was thinking. Everyone knew about a certain silver-haired slowpoke’s dense nature. Her face also looked conflicled, “It’s true. We’re not quite sure of the exact principle, but it’s likely related to Soul Studies. These Ravens are mass-produced using Silvia’s soul, with a very strong mental connection between them. This connection seems to employ an encrypted algorithm previously used by the Imperial Guard of Emperor Bellavilla. We can’t decrypt it at all, so these recruits are still nominally controlled by Silvia deep in her soul. Interestingly, Silvia herself is unaware of this. It’s happening subconsciously in the deeper plane of her soul. It’s because of these subconscious activities that the mass-produced Ravens are capable of actions — theoretically.”

When Taville finished with “theoretically,” I knew the barrage of technical terms was finally over.

Sandora’s brow furrowed with Taville’s description, “Can these Ravens fight? Under Silvia’s control, will these soldiers obey commands from others?”

Taville nodded, “Certainly. We were worried about this at first, but everything went smoothly. The deep trust Chen Jun commands in Silvia’s soul played a decisive role, allowing the Raven corps under her name to execute all orders beneficial to Emperor Chen Jun without hindrance–as long as we issue instructions in the name of Emperor Chen Jun, the Ravens will carry them out unconditionally.”

Hey! You zero EQ person, don’t talk like that in front of Sandora and Qianqian! Hey, hey! Sandora, don’t bite, don’t bite! This is a misunderstanding! And Qianqian! That’s a major artery you dummy!

After being attacked due to Taville’s ambiguous description, I eventually inspected the new recruits while bearing bite marks…

As Taville said, these new recruits, sharing Silvia’s deep soul, showed great trust and loyalty towards me and also obeyed Sandora and Qianqian’s commands well. I initially thought these soldiers lacked their own thinking ability, but after letting slip this disrespectful comment, one Raven immediately showed a face full of grievance, subtly indicating she had a brain and, impliedly, more brains than their mother. That left me embarrassed for quite a while…

So, even with a fully-formed personal will, are they also under the absolute control of another higher being’s soul? Xyrin Apostles indeed are incomprehensible beings.

“Is the number of these Ravens a bit low?”

I turned my head and asked Taville; a hundred experimental soldiers, this might already be the maximum number Shadow City could muster without an established production line, but above our heads there’s a billion insects!

Taville also looked up at the sky, now dimmed by the overwhelming swarm of insects, where flashes indicated that the outer space battle was still raging. After a while, she nodded, “Indeed, the number seems quite exaggerated… However, the Ravens are extremely skilled at mass destruction warfare, and naturally, they are Middle Rank Apostles like the Armored Scorpion. They can engage in nearly unlimited sustained combat. The combat capabilities of these soldiers are indeed something to look forward to.”

Following that, I detailedly inquired about a series of combat data regarding the Raven, mainly focusing on their defense capabilities and combat styles. Typically, mages have frail constitutions, their excessive use of magic power and constant meditation making their bodies even more fragile than ordinary people, turning most mages into arthritic fatties due to lack of exercise…

However, it seemed I had underestimated the extraordinary extent of the Xyrin people, these clones from Silvia didn’t have any of the usual issues human mages did. Not only were they proficient in spells, but they also mastered at least twenty effective fighting skills. They could take down a Terminator with just a single punch without breaking a sweat. Although their defense wasn’t as freakishly strong as the Scorpion Soldiers, they were hardly weaker than mass-produced Armored Scorpions when an Arcane Shield was deployed. It was as if even a cold-weapon enthusiast scorpion would have a Photon Cannon mounted on its tail for surprise attacks. These Great Mages who could cast a Forbidden Curse in an instant were almost like half a Bashen An in close combat… What kind of bizarre description is this?

After confirming the Ravens’ combat style, I decided to dispatch them to the most densely insect-infested Fourth Day Zone, the first place where the battle had erupted. There were at least ten million Flying Dragons and thousands of large and small Xyrin Warships engaged in fierce combat there. Despite the absolute technological superiority, Sicaro’s spitting tactic hadn’t been able to breach the atmosphere of Black Egg Star yet, but he had expressed his immense pressure more than once while facing the relentless spitting assault from the skies above.

He had never backed down even when chased by city management across half a city, but now he was actually asking for support, signalling that the problem in the Fourth Day Zone was indeed severe.

Before the Ravens took off, Big Sister, who had been suffering from lack of appetite and had stayed in her room for two whole days, suddenly appeared before us, startling me, Qianqian, and even Sandora.

“Big Sister…are you okay?”

I timidly looked at Big Sister, her whole body enveloped by solid-like black resentment aura, feeling like the sky darkened by the insect swarm wasn’t as gloomy as the ten-meter radius around me. Big Sister, who usually carried a sunny, gentle healing smile, now slightly bowed her head with her black hair scattered all over, and given the strange atmosphere emanating around her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she just crawled into a TV and pretended to be Zhenzi.

“Ah Jun, give this to them!”

Big Sister suddenly raised her head, her eyes filled with an unprecedented somber light, and then handed a shuttle-shaped Crystal Prism to me.

Looking at the palm-sized Crystal Prism in my hands, it was a Ghost Energy Crystal used for storing energy, equivalent to a super-capacity battery. But, why was a dangerously ominous aura constantly emanating from this crystal? Why did I feel like just wearing this thing would bring me misfortune, making me choke to death by water for the next seventy to eighty generations?

“Big Sister, what is this?”

Carefully holding the clearly cursed item that Big Sister had produced after cooping up for two days in her room, I thought it best to ask for clarity.

Big Sister lifted her head slightly, glanced at the dim “dark clouds” above for a moment, seemed to recall something, immediately made a gagging gesture, and took a while to calm down before muttering, “Just jam this thing into any insect’s stomach, doesn’t matter which… and then don’t worry about it anymore… To think they’ve disgusted me to this point… Unforgivable…”

“Will do!”

Not daring to ask any further, I immediately handed the crystal to the nearest Raven. As she took the crystal, her body shivered, and her face immediately displayed an “Why am I so unlucky?” expression.

Seems like you rookies have keenly sensed what kind of people your superiors are.

Because they had to transport an unclear but apparently extremely dangerous item into outer space, the Ravens took off even faster than I had expected, almost vanishing in the blink of an eye, these Xyrin Empire’s Magic Masters were flying into the… well, they just took off.

“Sis, shouldn’t we be going too?”

After some thought, I turned and asked Sandora.

The latter shook his head, his face bearing a calm smile, “The current situation is merely that the enemy numbers are vast. This is a good opportunity to gather data on routine military battles against the insect race. After all, the real protagonists of the war should be the soldiers–the Leader-level Apostles can turn the tide at critical moments.”

Just as Sandora finished speaking, she heard the roaring sound of the curve engines flashing past beside her, and Pandora and her sister once again led the troops into the sky…

“Those two madcaps are exceptions…”

You’ve had your fair share of charging into battle yourself! Strictly speaking, the entire Xyrin Empire consists of such hot-blooded individuals!

Despite Sandora saying that this kind of stalemate between regular armies didn’t require Leader-level Apostles, I still arrived at an orbital platform close to the battlefield. Firstly, I was curious about how capable these so-called Xyrin Magicians known as Ravens were in a fight, and secondly–I was really curious about what kind of contraption Big Sister had come up with.

The one responsible for guarding this closest front-line orbital platform was a commander I was not very familiar with, but I somewhat remembered him; after thinking hard for a while, I suddenly realized: This guy used to sell mutton skewers at the entrance to our community!

Can you imagine the hidden dragons and crouching tigers in our community?

“Your Majesty!”

The mutton skewer uncle snapped to attention and saluted me, showing no surprise at my arrival, but stood ready in true military fashion.

Just ten meters above us was the planet shield, the pale blue energy barrier seemingly dividing the world in two. The shadowy insect swarm across the barrier was frantically launching suicidal charges, with insect limbs and broken parts scattered everywhere. The various anti-aircraft guns and a laser gun nearly the size of the Eiffel Tower on the platform were continually sweeping across the sky, refreshing the insect swarm above us over and over again–I must use the word “refresh” because basically every time we shot the insects down, they could fill the gap within a second.

Watching from here indeed… was a lot more disgusting than on the ground.

“Where are the Ravens?”

After looking around for a long time without spotting the slow-reacting, mass-produced figures, I turned my head to the mutton skewer uncle and asked, wondering if those poor new recruits had already been blasted to smithereens. With the sky filled with insects, a hundred Ravens thrown in wouldn’t even make a splash!

Just as the mutton skewer uncle opened his mouth to answer, an extremely intense flash suddenly lit up the entire dim platform. Followed by that, numerous insect corpses fell on the planet shield, turning to ash while emitting a deep, sizzling sound–since we were near the edge of the atmosphere, the lack of air turned what should have been a sharp noise into such a faint dull sound.

I immediately looked up, just in time to see a Raven landing on the planet shield. She stood on the formidable Ghost Energy Barrier, slightly crouched, and then pulled her hands apart, directly yanking out an over one-meter-long dazzling electric arc in front of her.

“Shila–”

A hissing roar of lightning release, the electric arc released from the Raven’s hands strangely split into hundreds of fork-shaped lightning bolts, shaping into a conical form and rushing toward the insect race already charging this way. The insects hit by this fork-shaped lightning didn’t even have time to twitch before they exploded into fragments, and the lightning split into two after hitting its target, rushing toward even more enemies.

How fast is the speed of lightning?

In the blink of an eye, my vision was completely engulfed by this unprecedentedly powerful Lightning Net. Countless lightning forks used their targets as stepping stones, spreading through the massive armies of the Insect Race. It blanketed nearly the entire Sky Zone like a nebula. Within my range of vision, apart from those mutated giant flying dragons, no member of the Insect Race could withstand the Lightning Net for even a millisecond!

Even the giant flying dragons that survived the direct lightning strike were merely gasping their last breaths. The saliva they spat out at the Ravens, just before they died, would evaporate due to the energy field emitted by the latter before it even came close. The Ravens, who had just cleared the entire Sky Zone, casually stood on the Ghost Energy Barrier, leisurely pinpointing these ugly flying toads with giant instantaneous fireballs.

The corpses of the killed Insect Race fell onto the Ghost Energy Barrier below due to gravity, and in an instant, they would turn into blue smoke. Having witnessed how the Insect Race used the corpses of their own kind as nourishment to produce new soldiers, we adopted a strategy that, even if it reduced the efficiency of killing enemies, would turn the enemy to ashes. Therefore, these Ravens dared to lure the Insect Race near the Planet Shield to annihilate them, as there was nothing better than this unprecedentedly powerful Ghost Energy Barrier to effectively dispose of the remains.

Damn! Did that guy just wipe out hundreds of thousands of the Insect Race in one move? That level of combat power is almost equivalent to Pandora’s average DPS! Weren’t the Ravens supposed to be just Heroic Combat Soldiers? Could they all be Leader-level? This is inconsistent with the data; I demand the truth!

A storm surged in my heart, and I suddenly noticed that during the period when the Ravens were frenziedly casting Forbidden Curses, our Ghost Energy Shield above seemed to have dimmed a bit–perhaps it was an illusion? The degree of dimming was so slight that I wasn’t even sure if my eyes were deceiving me.

“Sandora, did our Planet Shield just suffer a super-intense attack?”

Although uncertain, I still cautiously contacted the ground and relayed my observations to Sandora.

After hearing my description, Sandora immediately asked with a tone of surprise, “Did you really not look at the detailed information about the Ravens? I shared it with you!”

…Are you talking about that pile of data that’s over two hundred megabytes just in the directory? You might as well kill me.

“That’s where the true strength of the Ravens lies!” Sandora explained impatiently, “The Ravens have a Talent Ability called Energy Guiding, which allows them to use any energy they come in contact with as a source for casting spells. The phenomenon you mentioned is the result of the Ravens drawing the strong Ghost Energy from standing on the Planet Shield, then continuously casting spells. Did you think they could instantly kill hundreds of thousands of enemies just with the innate conditions of a Mid-level Apostle?”

So that’s it, they conducted such powerful attacks by borrowing energy from the entire Planet Shield. Without the Planet Shield, their combat power should be about the same as that of the Scorpion Soldiers, but… I still feel their combat strength is abnormally high.

Even with an endless supply of Ghost Energy as a backup energy source, the power of the Lightning Net shouldn’t be able to instantly turn dragons, with physical strength comparable to fighter jets, into ashes with even the last electric arcs, could it? Is the amount of energy they can guide truly unlimited?

However, doubts aside, it was still gratifying that these Ravens were so effective against the Insect Race. In front of their incessant fork-shaped lightning and Ghost Energy Storms, the number of insects in this Sky Zone visibly declined. The rate of enemy losses finally far exceeded their rate of reinforcement!

“What about the crystal?”

I teleported next to the nearest Raven, initiated a Void Explosion, turning hundreds of kilometers’ worth of Insects into organic clouds, and then took a moment to ask.

I couldn’t remember which Raven I had given the crystal to… They all look the same!

The Raven I questioned released thousands of Shadow Spears at once, pinning the remaining giant flying dragons to the Planet Shield, and then answered, “Emperor, the crystal was implanted into the body of a flying dragon by Raven 017, but the battlefield is quite chaotic. After we deliberately let that dragon escape, we lost track of its location.”

“So… What happened after that thing was deployed?”

(So, continuing to ask for votes–how many days can we stay in this category this month?) (To be continued. For more chapters, please visit www.NovelFire.net; support the author, support genuine reading!)