Chapter 332– Sub-Light-Speed Zone! Quintessa, Surrender Now!
> [You have fled the battlefield no fewer than 26 times, 13 of which involved betraying your employers in connection with your desertion.]
> [This indicates that whenever you fail to complete a task assigned by your employer, you tend to betray them in order to preserve your own reputation score.]
> [With that in mind, I believe it's only a matter of time before you surrender to the Megacorp. So quit pretending to be tough and give up. Don't waste our time.]
Red Queen, the AI, had automatically compiled a full psychological profile of Lockdown using the ship's data, exposing his past with ruthless precision.
The instant his true intentions were laid bare, Lockdown flew into a rage. Glaring at the irritating AI, all he could think about was blasting it to pieces.
"You—shut up and die!"
He snarled through gritted teeth, firing his wrist-mounted cannon with a thunderous boom, blowing a savage hole through the holoscreen.
The entire projection system went dark, and the Red Queen's avatar vanished—but her voice still echoed through the control room.
> [Lockdown, cease your futile resistance.]
> [Your forces have been completely annihilated. If you surrender now, you may still receive leniency. Resist, and you'll face a much harsher judgment.]
Lockdown ignored her taunts. Burning with rage, he rushed to the control room's sealed hatch, hoping to pry it open and make a break for it.
Unfortunately, the Red Queen had seized full control of the ship's systems—he couldn't so much as budge the door. Worse yet, it had been deliberately locked down against him!
> [Lockdown, cease resistance immediately, or you will face disciplinary enforcement measures from Megacorp operatives.]
The Red Queen issued another warning.
But Lockdown didn't care. Infuriated beyond reason, his thoughts of surrender had long vanished. Now, all he wanted was to escape and hijack one of the assault shuttles outside.
Flexing the frame that Quintessa had personally enhanced, he charged forward and smashed through the heavy control room door in one powerful burst.
But just as he did, the Astartes warriors tasked with capturing him arrived right on cue.
…
Five minutes later.
Lockdown lay barely conscious, slumped over the cold metal floor of the ship. Over a dozen Astartes had boots planted across his limbs, keeping him firmly pinned.
Despite his apparent strength, Lockdown had been quickly subdued—overwhelmed by the explosive rounds of their boltguns and a remote AI virus injection.
Hammered by kinetic barrages and crippled by a weakening protocol, Lockdown—despite standing over ten meters tall—collapsed in moments, completely powerless.
"Who the hell are you people?!"
He looked up at the short, stocky ironclad figures pinning him down, unable to tell whether they were humans or AI-built metal machines.
He'd visited Earth before on bounty missions—but never had he seen human forces field warriors like these.
These Astartes soldiers were entirely unfamiliar.
"We're the 23rd Cohort of Iron Hand Legionnaires from the Megacorp. Lockdown, you are under arrest!"
The squad leader spoke coldly, stomping Lockdown again before slapping reinforced electronic restraints on him.
At that moment, Lockdown didn't even try to resist.
Not because he had a sudden change of heart—but because he physically couldn't.
Ever since the Megacorp had subdued both Autobots and Decepticons, they had been developing custom AI-virus programs specifically designed to neutralize, disrupt, and restrain Cybertronians.
The virus unleashed earlier by the Red Queen was precisely one of those: it effectively paralyzed Lockdown, stripping him of his usual agility and rendering his frame sluggish and rigid.
To make matters worse, the few explosive rounds he took from the Astartes had destroyed numerous sensors on his body, eliminating what was left of his combat ability.
Now, Lockdown just lay there obediently, letting the Megacorp's enforcement squad drag him away like a discarded husk.
The Astartes wasted no time. Once they secured him, they hoisted the half-kneeling Lockdown to his feet and began hauling him away.
Thankfully for Lockdown, most of the bounty hunters were already dead. Otherwise, his pride would never have allowed himself to be seen in such a pathetic state.
But all of this had been under Quintessa's watch the entire time.
From the one-sided slaughter to Lockdown's capture, she had observed everything through her surveillance system.
In fact, long before she deployed Lockdown and the bounty hunter corps to the Solar System, Quintessa had installed covert monitoring hardware into his enhanced frame—under the guise of "upgrading" him.
Through this, she was able to tap into his first-person feed and witness the annihilation of the entire bounty fleet.
When Lockdown was left reeling from the molecular fission effect triggered by "Little Doctor," Quintessa had observed the massive sensor fluctuations herself.
At that moment, she could practically feel the shock and terror welling up inside Lockdown.
Far away, on a desolate star system at the other end of the Solar Sector, Quintessa paced restlessly aboard her ship.
"How could humanity possibly possess such terrifying weapons? Don't tell me… it really was those old bastards who gave it to them?!"
She was deeply disturbed.
Quintessa had once visited Earth during the age of the dinosaurs—long before humans even existed. Now, in what felt like the blink of an eye, those tree-dwelling primates had developed world-ending technology?
She knew she'd slacked off over the years—neglecting her duties of seeding and monitoring galactic civilizations after falling out with the Creator civilization's leadership.
But even so, to think a native species could evolve from primitive apes to a race wielding law-breaking weaponry… that bordered on absurdity!
She simply didn't believe humans were capable of such a leap on their own.
Like Lockdown, she concluded that the MD-500 weapon must have been gifted to humanity by the upper echelon of the Creator civilization.
"Those damn old fossils… to stop me from reviving the Supreme Primus, they actually propped up humanity against me!"
Furious, she tried to calm herself and began analyzing the mysterious glowing particles again.
"When they came into contact with matter, everything around them disintegrated, like they were being swallowed by something invisible… Could they be nanobots?"
She couldn't make sense of it.
Despite her extensive experience as a high-ranking member of the Creator civilization, even she had never seen or heard of such a bizarre weapon.
And she refused to believe that, in the short time since her departure, those geezers had invented something so terrifying on their own.
After pondering for a while, Quintessa made a decision: she would go to the battlefield in person and examine the debris field for clues.
It was a dangerous idea—but she believed that, given her divine status as a "God of Life" within the Creator hierarchy, even if she were discovered, they wouldn't dare do much to her.
With luck, she might even reverse-engineer those mysterious "particles" and make them her own.
Acting quickly, she issued a transformation protocol, morphing her ship into a nondescript asteroid, then began drifting toward the battlefield.
The interstellar battleground was littered with warship wreckage, shattered planets, and fragments scattered across space.
Even with Megacorp clean-up units scouring the zone, it would be extremely difficult to detect an asteroid among the debris.
Once in position, Quintessa raised her wrist and made a small motion—radiant light shimmered around her, and she was instantly engulfed in a glowing aura.
The next moment, her figure vanished—teleported outside the ship.
Like Megatronus, Quintessa possessed single-body jump technology: a short-range teleportation skill resembling magic that allowed her to flit across open space.
It wasn't quite on the same level as the Primus 's "Step Between Worlds," but it was still a rare ability among high-tier entities.
Comparable to a Dou King's "Battle Qi Wings," such spatial mobility techniques were nearly extinct in the depleted, post-decline Transformers universe.
Only a handful of ancient monsters like Megatronus and Quintessa could still perform this ability.
That was why Quintessa dared approach the battlefield. Even if the humans detected her, she could instantly blink back to her ship and retreat to safety.
Having resolved her plan, she began sneaking through the debris field, slowly approaching the still-lingering molecular fission zone.
…
At that moment, inside the Myriad Worlds Base Headquarters, Command Center—
"You still haven't found Quintessa's location?!"
Jack Wells, the field commander in charge of this operation, showed no signs of excitement despite the lopsided victory.
Their true objective this time was to apprehend Quintessa. Taking down the bounty fleet was only a secondary goal.
In fact, the battle was so easy it barely counted—they simply deployed a few "glow particles," and the enemy's massive fleet was wiped out.
Their specially trained vanguard didn't even get the chance to execute proper battle formations—the whole thing ended before they could truly participate.
Perhaps only the crew that fired the "Little Doctor" felt any real excitement. The rest of the troops remained stoic and unmoved.
"This needs to be taken seriously. Comb through every inch of that sector—don't miss a single crack or corner!"
Jack couldn't care less about Lockdown or the other bounty hunter prisoners. Those interstellar pirates were utterly worthless in his eyes—Quintessa was the real big fish they were trying to reel in.
That's why Jack had specifically ordered the FTL Inhibitor to be brought along—to trap her and prevent any chance of escape.
If they couldn't make use of it this time, they'd have to wait until the device's construction was fully completed before submitting another special-use request.
Such exceptional authorization wasn't something they could just get approved at will!
> [Reporting to headquarters. Our AI scouts are combing through the bounty fleet's wreckage. Red Queen is also scanning the internal databases of the destroyed ships.]
> [But so far, we've found no trace of Quintessa.]
David Martinez stood before the holographic display, reporting with a stern expression. He was clearly anxious about the lack of progress.
Still, no matter how worried he was, all they could do now was wait for Lockdown to be brought in and interrogated. Hopefully, he'd cough up some intel on Quintessa's whereabouts.
Upon hearing the front-line update, Li Ang frowned slightly. If even this couldn't force out Quintessa's location, then capturing her would be far trickier than expected.
At this point in the Transformers universe, their unification mission was nearly complete.
But unless they located Quintessa and established contact with the civilization of the Creators behind her, there could be no true unification.
Whether it led to cooperation or open conflict, someone had to make a move. A clear stance was necessary: would the leadership of this universe belong to Megacorp—or to the Creators? That question had to be answered.
Li Ang already controlled Earth, Cybertron, and the corpses of two Prime-level deities.
If Quintessa and the Creators insisted on playing dumb and staying hidden, then he'd have no choice but to haul out the Quantum Sling Megastructure.
He'd deploy expeditionary forces, build forward bases across the stars, and force them to the negotiating table.
> [Report! Quintessa has been spotted!]
Suddenly, David's excited voice echoed across headquarters. Everyone's attention snapped to the main screen.
Before Li Ang could speak, Jack, nearly unable to contain himself, shouted back:
"Lock in her position! Activate the FTL Inhibitor! Don't let her get away!"
> [Understood—!]
Meanwhile, in the battlefield strewn with wrecked starships, Quintessa had arrived at the edge of the molecular fission zone.
She tossed a metal fragment into the field and watched it disintegrate in seconds. Her ocular sensors zoomed in to capture the material's changes at the microscopic level.
"It's forcibly breaking down molecular structures?!"
A look of stunned disbelief flashed across her face. She hadn't expected those "glow particles" to function by disassembling matter at the molecular level.
This sort of weapon technology didn't feel like something those old fossils in the Creator civilization were capable of developing.
"They're engineers at best—clumsy children trying to mimic the Primus . There's no way they could invent such a beautifully destructive weapon."
Quintessa knew the upper echelons of the Creators far too well. Those crusty old fools lacked imagination and innovation—they'd never come up with something this refined.
In the realm of the microscopic, Quintessa—Mother of Life—had unmatched natural talent.
She was a master of gene coding, biological creation, and cellular remapping. So naturally, she understood how insanely difficult it was to manipulate matter at this scale.
But her expertise was limited to living systems. She couldn't translate that knowledge into weaponization.
She could grasp the theory behind the MD-500—but couldn't recreate it herself. It simply wasn't her area of specialization.
Even as the divine being known as the God of Life, she felt powerless in the face of this foreign field.
Still, the fact that human civilization had managed to develop such a weapon spoke volumes about their mastery over the microscopic world.
A civilization that could casually toss molecular-fission warheads like regular bombs… almost certainly had even more terrifying, law-breaking weapons in reserve.
"Humans… actually pulled this off?"
Staring at the field of cascading fission particles, Quintessa stood there, momentarily dazed.
She simply couldn't understand how a species had evolved this far in under a few tens of millions of years.
No wonder the Primus had once ordered her to closely monitor the development of all intelligent life.
Now she finally understood: even a brief lapse in oversight could cause cosmic power balances to shift dramatically.
As guilt and regret flooded her heart, a Scorpiolion-class AI drone suddenly appeared in front of her and deployed a holographic projection.
The next second, a live feed from the Myriad Worlds Base HQ shimmered into view before her.
> [Quintessa, we finally meet.]
The speaker was Li Ang .
The moment her presence was confirmed, he'd immediately decided to delay her escape—using the drone's projection to draw her into conversation, giving David time to deploy the FTL Inhibitor and lock her in.
Quintessa instinctively began backing away. But when she heard the man identify himself as a Megacorp Executive, she stopped and steadied herself.
"Those glow particles… your doing? Megacorp… are you really native to Earth?"
She went straight to the heart of the matter. Deep down, she didn't believe humanity's technological progress could be so absurdly rapid.
In the universe, whether for an individual or an entire civilization, rising to power typically required immense luck and miraculous opportunities.
Perhaps it was an ancient relic salvaged from a black hole, or a divine transmission intercepted from gravity waves.
But true success through self-made effort? Those cases were practically nonexistent—rare enough to be statistically irrelevant.
Quintessa had always stood at the apex of the Transformers universe. She'd seen and participated in countless galactic events. To her, the idea that effort alone could change a civilization's destiny was laughable.
Especially in this "End of Dharma" age, where nearly all technological progress in the universe was under the Creator civilization's control.
Even if she herself had slacked off out of spite, she was sure the other Creator elders wouldn't have sat idly by and let humanity reach this level on their own.
There had to be some hidden hand behind all this.
"What are you people really? What's your true objective?"
This time, Quintessa no longer considered Li Ang human. Her voice rose in a scolding tone as she demanded answers.
But Li Ang remained unmoved.
He didn't speak until Jack gave a hand signal indicating the FTL Inhibitor was fully deployed. Only then did Li Ang offer a faint smile and say:
> [Quintessa, if you want to know the truth… then you'll have to come speak with me in person.]
Quintessa froze.
A sense of dread crept over her.
Sensing danger, she immediately attempted to activate her personal warp ability.
But the next second, to her utter shock—she was still standing in the same place. Her space-jumping ability had completely failed!
"Damn it! What have you done to me?!"
Only now did she realize the peril she was in. Without her warp ability, there was no way to return to her ship. No escape.
What irked her even more was how stupid she'd been—to stay here chatting with some stranger instead of leaving immediately.
Since sound couldn't travel in the vacuum of space, their entire exchange had been carried out through text translation via the AI drone's holographic display.
Watching Quintessa flail in fury, Li Ang didn't need to hear her to know she was screaming.
Meanwhile, more and more Megacorp assault shuttles, drones, and recon units were closing in from all sides.
Quintessa had clearly fallen into a trap.
Her escape technique, once her ace in the hole, no longer worked in this environment.
She knew full well now—Megacorp had deployed some strange spatial field to disrupt her teleportation ability.
Unless she could find a way to break the restriction, capture was inevitable.
> [Quintessa, give up this pointless resistance. Let's not waste each other's time.]
Li Ang 's negotiation style resembled that of an AI—clean, efficient, and direct. But unlike an AI, Li Ang 's thinking wasn't bound by present optimization. His strategic foresight ran deeper than any corporate algorithm.
As his words fell, Li Ang and the rest of Megacorp's leadership finally exhaled in silent relief.
Thank god the FTL Inhibitor had worked. Otherwise, capturing Quintessa would've been impossible.
The moment it activates, the FTL Inhibitor generates a field where light-speed is drastically reduced.
Abilities like Quintessa's warp jump—anything relying on superluminal movement—are rendered useless in such a field.
That's why she couldn't escape.
If she were to leave the boundary at sublight speed, she could regain her teleportation ability—but she didn't know that. Right now, she was simply overwhelmed, helplessly watching the AI drones slowly closing in from all sides.
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