Rise Of The Infinite Sovereign-Chapter 367: Bad Wish

"Hmm? You’re the mercenary here to guard?" the head officer questioned as he perused Ezra’s figure.

’I can’t feel the energy of a Transcendent from him-did he fake his rank?’

As Ezra made wild gestures to communicate, the head officer realized he didn’t have an interpreter on.

"Hey!" he gestured to his subordinates. "Someone get this guy an interpreter"

Soon after, Ezra catches a black metal object thrown towards him and placed it on his neck.

He knew how it functioned thanks to the information from the library.

Coughing to clear his throat, Ezra replied concisely.

"Yes, I am"

"It says here you’re a transcendent, so why can’t I feel any energy from you?"

"Oh that?"

Ezra turned off and his energy signals flared, causing the head officer to furrow his brows-Ezra was a level stronger than him.

As such, his tone instantly became more respectful.

"I see. So which stargate would you like to guard?"

Ezra shrugged. "It’s my first time here so I don’t have any preferences-which would you recommend?"

"I would recommend the foremost stargate over there" said the head officer pointing toward the stargate farthest from the hub planet.

Unlike Ezra, most transcendents were haughty, arrogant and overbearing towards those less powerful than themselves. Therefore, his attitude made the head officer very pleased, which was why he decided to sincerely advise him.

"Others shun such positions because it’s closest to danger in the case of an Astral beast were to attack-but such things rarely ever happen here"

"And if you choose to guard that stargate, I’ll have an excuse to increase your pay"

Ezra nodded immediately. "Let’s do that then"

In the first place, his reason for coming here was to earn money, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to earn more.

With the details ironed out, Ezra was soon floating beside the stargate, watching out for any approaching spaceships or debris.

Just as it was said, nothing out of the ordinary happened and he just kept watch over the gate like a statue.

Although happy that he could earn money while basically just standing, the lack of an ounce of activity was driving him to new realms of boredom.

’I wish something would happen...’ he thought, changing his posture to the lotus position so he’d at least be more comfortable.

Exactly five minutes passed when Ezra noticed some movement far in the horizon, the moving object was so far away that all Ezra could make out was a gray dot.

He stared at it for two minutes before withdrawing his attention as spaceships came through the stargate in quick succession.

Only after another odd nine minutes did the succession of spaceships cease, allowing Ezra to raise his head in the direction of the horizon.

On cue, he spotted the fast moving object, and this time, it had gotten close enough for Ezra to make out its figure.

The moment he did, Ezra’s eyes widened as his body stiffened.

’I-Is that...what I think it is?’

[Wow] Zydrax exclaimed. [Talk about bad luck. Well, at least you got your wish]

’Ah...that was a bad idea’

Ezra was already regretting making that wish.

Quickly, he snapped out of his reverie and slammed his hand hard on a button embedded into the stargate, deactivating it.

The other officers were embroiled in their gist through their communication devices, so didn’t notice the act immediately.

However, the head officer did, and wondered what had happened.

Talking out a short distance communication device, his voice arrived at Ezra’s end.

"What are you doing?! Why did you deactivate the stargate?!" the head officer questioned.

Taking up his communication device, Ezra’s words rang loud and clear.

"Look. Up"

In the next instant, Skyfall appeared in Ezra’s hands as he prepared for battle.

The moving object had neared, and unfortunately, it was heading straight for the Hub.

Then again, there weren’t any other planets nearby-the choice was only so obvious.

On the other hand, the puzzled head officer couldn’t help but look up as per Ezra’s words, and his eyes widened even more than Ezra, before shouting into his communicator.

"Code Zero!"

The officers on the other end stiffened at those words and the lively gist died out instantly.

No one said anything as they all held their breaths, hoping they’d heard it wrong.

Unfortunately, their hopes were mercilessly crushed as the head officer repeated. "Code Zero! Officers, this is code zero!"

The officers who were deathly silent suddenly broke into uncontrolled panic.

In an instant, all hell broke loose.

"Code zero?! What do you mean code zero?!"

"How is that even possible?!"

"We’re all going to die!"

"Men!"

The head officer’s shout brought them back to their senses.

"Isn’t this what we trained for?! How can you all be acting like newbies?!"

"B-But sir" one stuttered. "I-It’s an astral beast!"

"And so?" the head officer retorted. "We move as per procedure. Now, deactivate all the stargates, request for reinforcements, relay the situation to the hub and have them start evacuating! The rest you, gear up! Move! Move! Move!"

Swallowing their saliva, the officers moved quickly to execute the orders.

While the appearance of an astral beast scared them out of their wits-their training helped them pull through their fear.

Ezra on the other hand paid no heed to the commotion occurring behind him, his attention was focused on the approaching object-the astral beast!

Now much closer, Ezra could see it much better.

Light grey in colour, it looked like one of those creatures from the Oranian Sea Ezra had seen during the apocalypse in his past life.

’What was it called again...a whale was it?

But unlike the creature from his memories, this one was two times bigger with small sharp contusions arrayed across the entirety of its outer shell alongside a raw of jagged teeth right at the front of his narrow head, and two large black beady eyes spotted with specks of white added on top of that.

It was therefore not insulting to conclude that this thing was ugly.

But that was the least of their problems as it was almost upon the hub.

Covering dozens of yards with every flap of its large metal-like tail, its two arms lay like that of a turtle-slightly curved backwards.

But unlike a turtle, those of an astral beast were harder than diamond and sharper than mithril, and because of that, they were given the name ’Planet dividers’

It was as implied, those fins were used to slice planets into pieces like a cake in the past.

It takes multiple Transcendents to take down such a single astral beast due to the jarring abilities they possessed and the fact that they utilized astral energy.

On a normal day, Ezra would’ve just popped right into his universe and waited till everything was done.

But he couldn’t do that because the astral beast would most likely destroy the hub. And if it did that, how was he supposed to get paid?

He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving empty-handed after guarding for almost ten hours.

That didn’t mean he was willing to throw his life away for money though.

He’d already accessed the situation and predicted that while he’d couldn’t hope to defeat the beast, he could definitely stall it long enough for reinforcements to arrive-and that was exactly what he was going to do.

Having read through an encyclopedia on astral beasts, he was able to distinguish the power level of the one before him with its looks.

Yes, its looks.

Apparently, this was the easiest way to determine power levels among astral beasts.

Placed in categories of Fledgling, Juvenile, and Elder.

Fledglings were the smallest in size, weakest and ugliest, though still powerful enough to take down multiple transcendents at a time, they stood no chance against a nascent.

With the ugly ass face, jagged teeth like that of a piranha and a size just twice that of a whale’s, Ezra deduced that the beast in front of him was a fledgling.

Juvenile astral beasts were at least the size of a commander grade battleship, and Elder beasts were so big they ate stars.

In such a situation, Ezra was more than willing to fight.

[Good] Zydrax commended him. [Someone who wants to enact my revenge needs to have this much resolve at least]

As the astral beast closed upon the hub, it began to ooze a purplish-grey gas like substance from the small pores all over its body, obscuring itself in a layer of gas to look like a moving cloud.

Taking a deep breath, Ezra channelled energy into Skyfall. The battle would begin once it came close enough.

As he stared at it, he made a mental note to take a trip to Orion’s oceans after this was over.

In that moment of thought, the astral beast came close enough.

Ezra attacked instantly, sending a slash of blue light that turned to ice upon contact with the cloud, freezing a good portion of it.

After entering Transcendent rank, Ezra had first thought he’d lost his elemental affinities, but that wasn’t it.

Instead, his affinities were strengthened and he could now utilize all elements without needing to draw energy from different cores.

He just had to will it and his origin energy would change accordingly.

As for the blood element, while he couldn’t create blood out of energy, he could send an attack that would cause the opponents blood to misbehave in whatever way he deemed fit.

In return, all the runes etched on his body had been erased when he breakthrough to transcendent rank, having lost their usefulness.

Ezra didn’t mind. The runes lasted longer than he thought they would-so he had no complaints.

The attack caught the beast’s attention because it paused for a bit, receded the cloud till its face was exposed and in turn broke off the frozen part before staring at the being that attacked it.

Staring right back, Zydrax’s voice resounded in Ezra’s head.

[Well, you’ve definitely caught its attention. But you’re going to need to do more than that]

Nodding, Ezra let five more ice slashes in quick succession.

ROAR!

The beast cried out in anger.

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Meanwhile, the head officer was very surprised.

He expected the mercenary to immediately flee as most mercenaries would never put themselves at risk, especially when it was a situation they hadn’t been commissioned for.

While he found it incredulous, he didn’t dare tell Ezra to stop and was even joyous.

Those ice attacks were clearly more powerful than your average attack judging from the beast’s roar.

’We have a chance!’

Hope bloomed within him, quickly sending orders to the rest of the officers.

"The mercenary is keeping it at bay. We’ll assist in and stop that beast from reaching the hub before reinforcements arrive"

Without waiting for their answers, the head officer launched himself forward.

---------

Ezra was unrelenting, throwing out slash after slash toward the beast’s exposed head.

ROAR!

The beast cried out in anger with its face covered in ice, fuming out large swathes of the purple-grey gas to fully cover the nearby surroundings.

[Don’t let it touch you]

"I know" Ezra replied, avoiding the gaseous substance.

This was the first reason why astral beasts are hard to deal with-their attacks are imbued with astral energy.

Astral energy itself was a corrosive energy that corrupted any foreign entity that came in contact with it long enough.

Which was why higher beings that transverse the astral sea with their bodies had energy barriers active at all times.

Astral beasts took the lethality a step further with their attacks.

An astral beast’s attack-depending on which corrupted attribute it held-would have astral energy aggressively invade and destroy a person from the inside out by corrupting the person’s energy.

Which in turn meant attacking the person’s cultivation.

If the person’s energy was strong enough to wade away the corruption, things would end with the person losing one or multiple cultivation levels.

But if the person’s energy is eclipsed by the astral energy, the person either dies or becomes a servant of the astral beast, and do note that this is in the case of just one attack.

Which was why in battles against astral beasts, the first rule was to have an energy barrier active at all times.

[This one seems to be of the poison attribute] Zydrax commented. [All those fumes are poison]

"This is not going to be easy" Ezra remarked. Letting off another ice slash.

His attacks had only served to enrage the creature-none had gone through its thick skin.

The beast raised its head upwards to face Ezra.

Giving the annoyance its proper respect, the beast opened its mouth, prompting Ezra to raise his guard.

’What’s it trying to-

Before he could finish his train of thought, the beast fired a purple beam right out of its mouth that bee-lined towards Ezra.

’I can’t dodge this!’

Decisively creating a thick layer of ice to guard him, the beam arrived in front of him an instant later.

*Bam!*

The collision saw Ezra pushed far back as the beam sought to destroy the wall of ice.

Ezra grit his teeth. ’This is tough!’

The power of the attack surpassed his expectations.

[Who was it that wished something would happen again?] Zydrax jabbed.

Ezra grunted but had no retort.

That was one exemplary bad wish.