Even without Hye’s guiding hand, the presence of the Wyverns and insects in the middle of a densely packed ocean of enemies was a death sentence for the Torank pickets.
They would be occupied for hours trying to contain the breach. Even if the enemy eventually managed to exterminate the swarm, Hye would have squeezed every drop of utility out of them. They were a distraction that cost him nothing.
The chaos erupting in his wake, combined with the fact that he had swapped his recognisable flagship for a small, high-velocity enemy small ship, made the strategic sacrifice of his monsters entirely worth it.
To be honest, he had grown tired of feeding those bottomless pits his precious bone reserves without seeing a proportional return on investnt. This was a much better use of their lives.
As he piloted his new vessel forward, the enemy lines appeared to be in a state of total, stuttering panic. News of the infestation was spreading like wildfire through the comms channels, and massive detachnts of enemy forces were being diverted from the front to contain the sudden, localised threat.
Neither the insects nor the Wyverns were easy to handle, especially when the targets were as densely packed as they were there. Hye knew he could have inflicted even more damage if he had stayed to oversee the slaughter, but his priorities had shifted. He had spent enough ti amassing warriors; now, it was ti for real results.
He hadn’t stopped to count the exact tally of his subverted legion, but he was certain the gains were monuntal. A significant portion of the newly added forces were high-level elites, far surpassing his initial expectations. He already had plans for after the dust settled; he would organise them into his first true Elite Army, a force capable of standing against the universe’s titans.
But for now, the Grand Elder was the only objective that mattered. The distance that would have taken his grand fleet five hours was being devoured by his new fast-attack ship; he had shrunk the travel ti to less than ninety minutes.
However, as he reached the inner sanctum of the siege, his Trojan Horse approach finally hit a wall. Advancing while masquerading as a friendly unit beca an impossibility.
"They surely safeguarded against this possibility by laying down such an intense, multi-layered siege..." Hye noted, his eyes scanning the tactical display.
In front of him, the void was literally choked with tal. Massive dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers had ford a physical barrier, closing off every vector of approach to the Grand Elder’s location.
Below, on the planetary surface, the ground forces had established a nightmare of barricades and reinforced fortifications, creating a kill zone that stopped any movent dead.
It was a brilliant, paranoid arrangent. Even with millions of troops at their disposal, the Toranks high command had only entrusted the actual kill to a small, elite group at the centre. The rest of the army was there simply to act as a wall. Yet, seeing this didn’t dampen Hye’s spirits; instead, it pulled a wide, predatory smile across his face.
"Co out then," he whispered to the dark sphere at his side. "Fight to your heart’s content!"
His first move was to use his technique. He selected one of the densest clusters of enemy ships in the inner ring and reactivated his technique. In the middle of the ongoing chaos, and with the ships packed hull-to-hull, their sensors couldn’t detect a single, small scout ship emitting a localised black sphere.
Within thirty minutes, Hye had successfully claid the minds of the entire force in that spot. But this ti, he didn’t try to add them to his personal fleet. He didn’t care about their survival or their loyalty. He considered this newly controlled force a sacrificial Trojan Horse, designed for one purpose: to instigate total, internal collapse.
He gave them a single, brutal order: Open fire blindly. Attack anything and everything in your vicinity.
Hye didn’t deploy a single warrior or ship from his own inventory to assist them. He watched with cold detachnt as his puppets turned their weapons on their unsuspecting allies.
The situation escalated instantly. The Toranks and traitor forces, already on edge from his presence and the insect swarm back in the rear, suddenly found themselves being fired upon by their own secure inner circle.
What Hye had deduced earlier proved to be the enemy’s undoing. This grand army was not a unified entity; it was a fragile coalition of different factions, rcenary groups, and traitorous houses, all held together by the promise of victory and the fear of the Toranks. They didn’t trust each other to begin with.
All it took was a single spark, the sudden, inexplicable betrayal by one of their own forces, to ignite a wildfire of suspicion. As Hye’s subverted puppets continued their relentless assault, the commanders of this grand army found it impossible to contain the haemorrhaging morale. Panic is a contagion, and in a force this size, it spread faster than any order could travel.
In less than ten minutes, the battlefield was turned upside down. What had been a disciplined siege beca a chaotic free-for-all. More forces, driven by fear and the instinct for self-preservation, began to open fire on anyone who wasn’t flying their specific faction’s colours.
Even the chosen ones, the ultra-elites specifically handpicked to deliver the final blow to the Grand Elder, found themselves sucked into the fray. They could no longer separate themselves from the madness; they began to kill everyone on the spot just to clear a path.
This was the mont Hye had been waiting for.
He redeployed his grand fleet from his inventory, the ships shimring into existence amidst the explosion of colours and fire. He didn’t just bring his fleet; he unleashed his Soulers and Reapers.
In the heart of such a fractured, disorganised battle, the stage was perfectly set for his deadly warriors. They moved through the chaos like scythes through wheat, harvesting high-level souls without the slightest resistance from an enemy too busy killing itself to notice the shadow at its throat.
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