Chapter 331: The Anthem of Courage, Silenced by Death! Boarding and Arrest!
One by one, the remaining "Little Doctors" locked into position, replicating the effects of the first light point strike. With devastating efficiency, they reduced one warship after another to nothing, vanishing them into the void of space as if they had never existed.
Zzz-BOOM—!!
The panicked bounty hunters, unable to respond effectively, began firing wildly in all directions, hoping to use brute force to disrupt the "Little Doctor" molecules' disintegration effect.
But such desperate actions were useless. Once the molecular disintegration process began, it wouldn't stop until the programmed sequence ended—until the reaping scythe of death had done its work.
"No... How is this happening?!"
Watching the apocalyptic spectacle unfold before him, Lockdown—stationed at the center of the fleet—was frozen in disbelief. On the holographic display, he could see his fleet being annihilated at a pace visible to the naked eye. Those light particles were like invisible zones of death—anything that entered was instantly torn apart at the molecular level.
At that moment, Lockdown felt his central processor buzzing and glitching.
Before this war began, he had considered the possibility of failure. But what he hadn't expected was that the battle would be over before it even properly began.
He had ordered his entire fleet to open fire and barely managed to shoot down a single missile—while the nine light points fired by Universal Megacorp had already destroyed seventy to eighty percent of his forces.
All that was left were cowardly stragglers clinging to life.
[What the hell is this thing?! Huge warships turned to dust in a blink!]
[Run! It has to be a new weapon from the Creator civilization. If we wait any longer, we're done for!]
[Damn that Quintessa! She lured us into the Solar System just to go up against the Creator civilization's main fleet?! I'll kill that treacherous bitch one day!]
[My dreadnought...! Screw it—I'm going down fighting—]
[…]
The chaotic voices on the internal comms finally snapped Lockdown back to his senses. He let out a hoarse, furious roar and bellowed a single command across the fleet:
"Run! Get as far away as you can!"
Only now did Lockdown understand why Quintessa had promised them so many lucrative rewards.
It was blood money.
This mission was doomed from the start. Now, as commander of the fleet, the only thing he could do was disband the army and let everyone try to escape on their own.
Whether they lived or died—was now up to fate.
But even this belated order came too late. Far fewer voices responded than before. The overwhelming majority of bounty hunters had already been disintegrated into dust.
In the face of a weapon governed by physical law, even their reinforced metal bodies crumbled into sand under molecular breakdown.
The internal channel grew quieter and quieter—until it fell into complete silence.
Roughly 70% of the bounty hunters perished in the "Little Doctor's" molecular disintegration field. Another 20% died in a frenzied attempt to flee, crashing into one another in chaos and mutual destruction.
Only a small minority survived—those who had hesitated, cowardly, clinging to life and staying out of the fray.
For Universal Megacorp, this long-prepared interstellar battle didn't even qualify as a real war. There had been no coordinated assault. It ended before it even began.
The strength of the bounty hunter army had been far below expectations.
They had no countermeasures whatsoever against the light point strikes. Even ships equipped with energy shields saw their defenses collapse instantly upon molecular impact.
Universal Megacorp hadn't even needed to use its fallback [Neutron Annihilation] shipborne weapons to secure near-total victory, almost completely wiping out the enemy fleet.
This left many of David's commanding officers deeply disappointed. They had prepared for this war with the expectation of dying in it.
They'd run joint drills more than ten times. Even contingency plans for suicidal retreats into anti-matter clouds had been rehearsed.
And yet… this?
The bounty hunters were obliterated before any of their carefully designed tactics could be deployed.
To the generals, it felt like they'd been played. What was expected to be an intense, high-level match had turned into a Bronze-rank massacre.
They had trained, written farewell letters to their families, prepared to die for Megacorp—only for it to all feel like a colossal waste of time.
[Goddammit! These useless mutts are even worse than the rookies in the Freeman Corps!]
[All the HQ's planning, gone to waste. Letting trash like this near the Solar System would've been a disgrace to Megacorp!]
[I've fought in three universes. This is the first time I've seen an enemy this pathetic. Even the Reaper civilization at least traded a few shots with us!]
[We didn't even fire a proper shot before it ended. People might think we defected if they didn't know better. What a joke!]
[…]
Under the crushing power of the nine light points, the bounty hunter fleet disintegrated at once. In this moment, the anthem of courage was drowned out by the song of death.
The cold, brutal vacuum of space has no belief in blind bravery or hot-blooded resolve. It only acknowledges the top-tier civilizations whose "little tricks" bring savage, unstoppable destruction.
Those who fear death may live to sneer at the sacrifices of the brave.
At this point, Lockdown—commander of the fleet, now piloting the best warship they had—narrowly escaped the web of death woven by the "Little Doctors."
Countless shipwrecks formed a corridor of escape. Lockdown, in his dark matter engine ship, slipped away.
He now sat silent and bewildered in the central control chair, listening to more and more bounty hunters drop off the channel as they fled the battlefield. He knew—it was over.
This infamous crew of interstellar pirates, once feared throughout the Transformers universe, had journeyed all the way from Centauri—only to serve as live test targets for someone's new weapon?!
Lockdown couldn't understand it. Had humanity really been backed by the Creator civilization? Had they suddenly leaped into the interstellar age and been handed such terrifying weapons?
Just a few "shells," barely the size of his palm, had utterly destroyed their once-feared fleet.
This bounty hunter legion wasn't weak. At their peak, they could even go toe-to-toe with the Creator civilization—and some of their leaders had made the Creators suffer serious losses.
Yes, they often bickered internally, and their warships were bizarrely mismatched—but every one of their members was a renowned solo hunter or elite mercenary.
Any one of them could single-handedly destroy a human civilization. Gathered together, even the mighty Cybertronian race would think twice.
And yet… they had all died. Truly and utterly. In less than ten minutes.
Bang—!
"Damn it! Why would the Creator civilization help these human vermin—and give them weapons like that?!"
Lockdown slammed his fist against the control console in fury, shattering several sensor modules. The display in front of him flickered uncontrollably.
He simply couldn't comprehend how the Creators would side with the humans—why those ancient beings would act in unison to help such garbage.
At this point, Lockdown had activated autopilot and was drifting aimlessly. He knew there was no escaping the pursuing fleets.
Rather than get shot down mid-flight, he might as well let them come.
After all, at their core, the bounty hunters never had any real grudge against humanity. They were just here to do a job.
If humans were willing to talk—he was willing to listen.
Meanwhile, in the Universal Megacorp flagship, David had already issued the arrest order.
Given the short distance remaining, it only took a few assault craft to close in, led by the Astartes warriors for a hard landing operation.
"Have the Iron Hands begin boarding."
"Capture their leader first. Then send AI drones to scan every wrecked ship for signs of Quintessa."
[…]
Following David's chain of commands, countless AI drones and assault craft were launched.
Universal Megacorp had already mapped out the spread of the molecular disintegration zones. All they had to do was steer clear of the marked zones to safely reach the battlefield.
Before long, the assault crafts successfully navigated through the death fields and closed in on Lockdown's ship.
At this point, Lockdown had already given up. But his ship's automated systems were still following the last fire commands.
As the crafts approached, auto-turrets sprang to life and opened fire. Luckily, the Megacorp vessels' shields easily absorbed the blasts.
After disabling the turrets, the boarding teams docked. Dozens of fully armored Astartes warriors stormed the ship's hatch.
Boom! Boom—!
With heavy thuds, the Astartes completed their boarding maneuver and secured entry.
The first thing they did was hack into the ship's control system using the Red Queen AI.
Now refined over multiple iterations, the Red Queen had become Megacorp's go-to invasive AI for field units—beloved for its destructive power and control capability.
Its counterpart, the White Queen, was used strictly for network defense across Megacorp's departments.
Upon release, the Red Queen unleashed a tidal wave of data into the ship's core processor, initiating a full-on AI domination battle.
It took only three seconds.
Red Queen successfully seized control of the entire ship, shutting down all automated weapons.
"Got the map. Move out!"
She immediately transmitted the full internal schematic of Lockdown's ship to the Astartes team, and charted a direct path to the bounty hunter commander's location.
Following the route mapped by the Red Queen AI, the Astartes warriors navigated through a series of bulkheads and corridors, eventually arriving at the heart of the ship.
As they reached a particular hatch, the moment the exterior camera scanned their figures, the thick armored door slid open automatically.
Clearly, the Red Queen now had full control over the ship's systems. For the Astartes, walking into this enemy vessel felt no different than stepping into their own headquarters.
These Transformers—silicon-based lifeforms—had always placed tremendous confidence in their own computational capabilities.
As a result, they hadn't implemented any physical override valves to protect against AI intrusion.
Unfortunately for them, Universal Megacorp's AI intrusion tech had long since reached a near-perfected level. Cracking wide-open systems like this was almost too easy.
With the Red Queen able to respond in real time and provide constant support, it truly felt like the Astartes were the rightful owners of this ship.
At that moment, far away at the Myriad realm Base Headquarters, Li Ang was watching everything unfold through the Astartes' first-person feed.
Before this war began, both the intel division's analysis and Li Ang's personal judgment had pegged the bounty hunter army as a serious threat—possibly even in possession of some unknown law-level weapon.
But after this one-sided battle, Li Ang not only gained a full understanding of their capabilities, he also inferred the general power ceiling of the Creator Civilization itself.
"At most, they're just a little stronger than the Covenant," he concluded.
Based on intelligence gathered from Megatronus and other Transformers, the bounty hunters had interacted with Quintessa and the Creator Civilization on many occasions.
Given the apparent collaboration and competitive dynamics between the two sides, their power levels couldn't have been vastly different—otherwise, cooperation would have been impossible.
And if the bounty hunters were crushed in a single strike by Megacorp, then it was likely that the Creator Civilization could be defeated in a single combo.
"David fought this battle well. He didn't just shake Quintessa—he shook me awake too."
Li Ang chuckled, thinking back to all the contingency plans he had painstakingly laid out in preparation for this campaign.
He had deployed three full super-legions at the rear as backup—just in case the situation went south.
In the end, he had been scaring himself.
"Boss, it was a close call—but without solid intel, we couldn't afford to underestimate an unknown adversary," said Alt Cunningham, head of R&D, breathing a deep sigh of relief.
She had been especially nervous upon learning that David's advance forces would be using the FTL Suppressor. The device had yet to undergo full testing, and she couldn't guarantee its efficacy.
But actual effectiveness wasn't her main concern—what she feared most was a catastrophic malfunction.
The FTL Suppressor, if destabilized, could generate a spacetime barrier field—a pocket of reality with radically different time-flow compared to the outside universe.
From the outside, the interior would appear frozen in time. From inside, the external world would zip past in a blur of afterimages.
The twisted spacetime would block all communication between the inside and outside. Anyone trapped inside might be stuck forever.
Thankfully, given how easily this battle was won, the advance forces wouldn't need to activate the suppressor after all—which meant that nightmare scenario was averted.
"Heh! If those lackeys fighting for Quintessa are this pathetic, I doubt the Creator Civilization is anything special," grunted Jack Wells.
There had been some risk in Jack's decision to proceed with this battle, but his gamble had paid off. Just a few MD-500s had popped the bounty hunters' oversized bubble.
Li Ang nodded. Jack certainly deserved credit for this win. He had taken on the risk of demotion and disgrace to push forward—an act that showed real guts.
And thanks to this battle, Li Ang now had a clearer picture of the Creator Civilization's capabilities.
Unless something unexpected surfaced, it was likely that the Creators didn't possess truly top-tier destructive weapons.
Their strengths probably lay in construction, life sciences, and engineering. When it came to destructive power, they were likely underwhelming.
Li Ang's reasoning wasn't without basis. Ever since the Unicron and the Primus perished together, true extinction-level wars had virtually vanished from the universe.
Conflict drives innovation. After the retirement of the "old boss," Primus , the six Successor Supremes forced a 6v1 against Megatronus, and ever since then, the Transformers universe had essentially become a single-superpower world—with the Creator Civilization reigning supreme by default.
Even if the Creators wanted to wage war, they had no worthy opponents left.
So naturally, there was little incentive to develop extinction-tier law weapons.
After all, who experiments with nukes in their own mansion?
Universes where law-level weapons are common tend to be those on the brink of collapse—like the Three-Body Problem universe.
That universe originally had a high-dimensional environment, and lifeforms born in it were practically gods.
But over time, those arrogant ancient beings began squabbling. Their petty rivalries tore the high-dimensional paradise apart. Laws disintegrated.
The universe's dimensions began collapsing, imploding upon themselves—until everything had to be wiped and rebooted.
Compared to that kind of chaos, the Transformers universe is actually quite peaceful.
Its two most destructive creator-gods—one became Earth, the other became Cybertron.
No dimensional reduction weapons. No ruined multiverse. Just... a long nap.
By cosmic standards, they were well-behaved old men. They didn't destroy the future. They left space for their descendants.
Even the Unicron, capable of crossing multiverses at will, didn't leave behind any portals for extradimensional demons to exploit.
Of course, that didn't stop Li Ang from using the Star Gate to manifest in the Transformers universe as a high-dimensional demon.
In this universe, the real destroyer of worlds wasn't the Creators—it was Megatronus, who had already been captured by Universal Megacorp at the very beginning.
"Seems like once we take down Quintessa, unifying the Transformers universe is within reach."
With that thought, Li Ang looked up at the hardlight screen and shifted his focus back to the Astartes' first-person feeds.
---
[Lockdown, cease your futile resistance and submit to Universal Megacorp authority immediately.]
On the central holoscreen, the Red Queen AI's avatar appeared, calmly urging Lockdown to surrender and save everyone's time.
But to Lockdown—a proud commander of the bounty hunters and one of the galaxy's most notorious lone wolves—being told to surrender by a random AI felt like an insult.
"Who the hell are you supposed to be? You think you're qualified to talk to me? Get your boss over here!"
He snorted disdainfully, completely dismissing the Red Queen's words.
[I just finished scanning your database,] the Red Queen replied evenly.
[You've recorded more than 19 incidents of ambushing fellow mercenaries, and 13 betrayals of past employers.]
[And… 26 counts of desertion during combat.]
[By our standards, your actual reputation and competence are significantly below public perception.]
Her voice remained perfectly composed, as if reciting an ordinary report.
[Judging by your history and moral conduct, you are neither qualified nor worthy to negotiate with our commanding officer. Please surrender now.]
[Stop wasting everyone's time.]
Hearing his darkest secrets laid bare, Lockdown's entire system overheated with rage.
Those "black marks" had been necessary evils—cutthroat moves made during his rise to the top. No one was ever supposed to know.
Now that the Red Queen had aired them like dirty laundry, Lockdown burned with shame and fury.
"Shut your damn mouth!"
He jumped to his feet, raised his arm-mounted cannon, and cursed at the holographic screen:
"So I've got a few skeletons in the closet. Big deal! You think this universe runs on tea parties and honor badges? It's kill or be killed out here!"
Sure, Lockdown knew he wasn't the only one with blood on his hands. In his world, no one made it to the top without a trail of bodies behind them.
But having it all thrown in his face—by a machine—stung more than he'd ever admit.
---
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