Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!-Chapter 622: Aftermath

Alex stood in stunned silence in the metal corridors of his ship, with the dim emergency lights faintly flickering to life around him.

For a long, still moment, he didn’t move an inch.

He stared through the nearest window, unable to take his eyes away.

Where once there was a coclossal, swirling mass of gases forming a planet, there was now nothing but the cold void of space.

There wasn’t even any sign of its existence whatsoever. One would think that if the planet were destroyed, there would at least be some debris? But no, there was nothing in sight.

Just what had happened while he was away in Mikhail’s pocket dimension?

Even though for Alex, it felt like he was gone for a while, in reality it really hadn’t been that long. If he remembered clearly, the war against the Lux had ended up with Brontes’ awakening and subsequently becoming Alex’s tame, but as far as he knew, the New Dawn system should now be under the Federation’s control.

Especially since Brontes had wiped out whatever remained of the Lux Dominion’s leftover fleet in the system...

’This is weird... The Primordial Expanse should always return you back to your relative position in space. So if you entered it in orbit of a planet, even if that planet ends up on the other side of the system when you return, you should still be in orbit.’

This was the main reason for Alex’s concern.

Unless the lack of a gas giant for him to orbit had something to do with him no longer being shackled down by the system, something extremely serious must have happened during the time he was away.

His face scrunched when he considered what kind of power it would take to cause a gas giant bigger than Jupiter to disappear...

It at least required something on par with Brontes right after his awakening.

"I need to investigate, and fast."

Alex ignored all of the emergency lights and warnings his ship was sending him – oxygen alerts, gravitational drift notifications – none of them mattered at the moment. Not compared to the nothingness outside of his window.

He moved almost on instinct, sliding back into his pilot’s chair that had been vacant for too long, and activated the long range communications.

"Broadcast an emergency ping." He ordered his ship’s AI.

The ship complied.

A pulse of energy rippled outward from his ship in all directions, carryin his ship’s unique identification signature, and one that only Federation ships would be able to understand.

He sent another.

Then another.

Silence.

He kept on sending more and more, hoping that there was someone out there to answer him.

Alex leaned forward in his seat, with tension quickly building up in his shoulders.

"Come on... Someone answer!"

By now, his first broadcast had already covered the entire New Dawn system, or at least what he thought was the star system.

He had no idea of his current location, and with the lack of any markers or indicators around him, he had no way of finding that out either.

His ship was damaged in some way, and and attempt at finding out his location failed.

Alex waited impatiently.

Seconds stretched into minutes.

A cold knot twisted in his gut.

’No ships... no gas giant... no signals... Am I even in the same place anymore?’

Then—

Ping!

A faint audio tone cut through the silence on deck.

Alex’s eyes lit up.

"Pull it up!" he barked at the ship’s AI.

Static filled a screen in front of him, and warped pixellation flickered in and out, like someone was desperately trying to force a signal through intense interference.

Then the static cleared.

A man’s sweated, pale, and panicked face appeared on screen.

But there was one thing Alex could see for sure. He was human, and wearing Federation uniform.

Alex sat up straighter when he saw the state of the guy, and the man leaned forward into his camera, eyes widening in disbelief.

"Is... is this real?" the man whispered, voice clearly trembling.

"Identify yourself!"

The man froze.

He still thought that he might be dreaming, but hearing Alex speak only made it all the more real.

Then he staggered back from his console as if punched.

"By the stars... it is you!" He swallowed hard.

"Sir... Commander Alex! Y-you’re alive! After what happened, we – everyone assumed—"

"Calm down." Alex cut in.

"Report your situation. What happened here?"

The man straightened with great effort, voice still shaky.

"I– I’m Captain Darius Venn. Ordinary class A rank." He grimaced, as if ashamed that even with his seemingly high rank, he was in the state he was. "My vessel is a Federation Vanguard ship. Though at this rate, I doubt it’ll remain one for much longer..."

Captain Venn sucked in a shaky breath and steadied himself as a violent tremor shook his ship.

"It’s the Lux, sir... The Lux came back."

Alex’s jaw tightened.

He knew this was the most likely possibility, but he refused to accept it until he found definitive proof of what happened. Hearing the truth from Captain Venn’s mouth only made him grit his teeth in anger.

’If I didn’t leave for the Primordial Expanse... If I didn’t—’

’NO! I can’t think like this. We knew what we were getting into upon first facing the Lux, and my time in the Primordial Expanse was arguably the best decision I’ve ever made thanks to my meeting with Mikhail and learning the truth.’

’If I stayed to fight, so what? I would have just been another B tier, only having A tier power. Brontes would have been my entire fighting force. But now... I can hold my own, with no limits from the System at that.’

"They came back stronger."

While Alex debated himself in his own thoughts, Venn continued speaking.

"Before sir’s disappearance, the Vanguard fleet consisting of Olgierd, Farnes, Isla, Althea and all of the other Generals, had departed to continue their charge into the Andromeda Galaxy."

He took a deep breath, with regret written all over his face.

"We thought that this system was in the bag, and even had several fleets stationed around the borders, with an S tier holding the ground. But the Lux came back, and had anticipated everything we had prepared. They led the charge into the system with an S tier general of their own... one much stronger than the S tier we had stationed on our side..."

"We held up our own, and even started to gain the upper hand. But when their S tier general killed our S tier... Everything changed."

"In the end they went scorched earth, and seeing that they were on the losing side, their general poured all of his remaining energy into a single, horrifying attack, and sent it towards the sun..."

Alex’s face grimaced at that.

It was clear where this story ended. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Their general could see that they weren’t going to win, and seeing that even he wouldn’t be able to escape the remaining Federation fleets, he caused the sun to go supernova in a last suicidal attack.

That explained everything for Alex.

No wonder he couldn’t see anything outside of his window.

There was nothing left to see.

His ship had been sent flying out of the system along the shockwave caused by the supernova, and thanks to it being as strong as it was and how far it was from the epicentre of the supernova, it survived.

That was one good thing, at least...

Alex would have ended up returning to the void of space, otherwise...