Chapter 52 — I Do Not Believe in Fate

Inside the main control cabin of the Grand Canyon, the red warning lights had turned into a rapid, violent flashing.

The entire hard volcanic rock ground was vibrating slightly with low tremors; that was the spatial resonance generated by the gravitational anchoring of the Aries vanguard army's main battleships half an astronomical unit away. The air was permeated with the smell of highly compressed ionizing ozone, so oppressive that it made even breathing feel exceptionally heavy.

Around the stone table, a holographic projection displayed a dense array of golden lines of light. Those lines of light were like a massive beast trap, slowly closing in from all directions, completely locking down this small wasteland star sector of the blind spot at the core.

"This is the trajectory of their battleship's main cannons." Lyra's voice was hoarse. Her hands, covered in silver powder, leaned on the rough stone table, her knuckles slightly white from excessive force. "The final pre-battle astrological and amplitude data simulations have been completed. The Aries vanguard army's flagship, the 'Silver Ram's Horn', will hover directly above the Grand Canyon's pass, releasing a thousand-fold gravity suppression through an orbital projection. Moreover..."

She glanced at Orion standing nearby, her voice trembling slightly:

"The 'Saturn-Pluto opposition' on Orion's fate-track has already completed higher-dimensional synchronization with their main cannons' fire control system. In the calculation model of the LinBoo Astrolabe, they have a ninety-nine point nine percent probability of completely annihilating Orion in the first second of firing. And after that, the Grand Canyon's gravitational well will collapse, and the vanguard army's defensive line has a one hundred percent probability of being reduced to ash by an energy sweep. This is a dead end written by the astrolabe; every gravitational line and algorithmic formula has forced us onto a path of death."

A suffocating, deathly silence fell over the main control cabin.

Jonas and several mortal soldiers tightly gripped the handles of their guns, their faces looking pale and desperate under the red light. Facing the high-and-mighty main fleet of the Divine Court, facing that calculation model representing the absolute laws of the universe, the struggles of mortals appeared so pale and powerless before cold data.

"Bang!"

A muffled and violent crash suddenly exploded, startling the parts on the stone table so much that they jumped.

Elias had slammed his palm heavily onto the rough stone table. There was not a trace of fear on his handsome face; within his lake-green eyes, two extremely bright, even slightly mad wildfires were burning.

"I do not believe in fate, Lyra!"

Elias abruptly raised his head, his voice clear and resolute, instantly piercing the dull, deathly air in the cabin: "The astrolabe's calculation model? That's just a code program used by the Divine Court's cabinet to corral mortals like livestock! If we only look at probabilities and formulas, I shouldn't have survived the ruins of Tartarus at all! Since there is no space for mortals to survive in their formulas, then this formula is wrong, and this astrolabe is also garbage!"

He pointed his finger, aiming dead at the dense golden light tracks on the holographic projection:

"The Aries Lord's fleet boasts of being the enforcers of the law, but they could never dream that mortals would use the crudest heavy radiation metals and physical superconducting gears to smash their shields. If the star-tracks in the sky insist on decreeing Orion's fall, then right here in this mud, we'll use our Orbit-breaking Meteor Shells to shoot the stars in the sky down!"

The boy's chest heaved violently, that blonde hair stained dirty with red sand dancing like a flame in the red light. The off-track wildness of an 'Anomaly' on him transformed in this instant into an unshakeable firmness, completely igniting the suppressed fury in the chests of all the mortal soldiers in the cabin.

"Well said! Fuck their algorithmic formulas!" Caleb gave a fierce sneer, roughly racking the bolt of his dark matter sniper rifle, his prosthetic eye flashing with an amber, vicious light. "Gods bleed, and battleships are also made of iron. As long as we drag them into the insulating domain, my bullets can still pierce right through their divine cores!"

"I've long been sick of looking at those high-and-mighty Aries bastards. If we don't smash a few of their ships this time, I'd have installed this mechanical prosthetic arm for nothing!" Nova followed up with a shout, her mechanical right arm slamming onto the stone table with a clatter.

The mortal soldiers in the cabin successively gritted their teeth, a vicious wolf-like glint rising in their eyes.

Amidst this clamor, Orion had maintained his silence throughout.

The tall and imposing demigod stood on the other side of the stone table, his bronze face resembling a weathered ancient stone sculpture in the dim red light. He looked at this mortal boy who had slapped the stone table and roared at the gods filling the sky, his eyes as profound as a bottomless abyss.

He seemed to see a shadow of his own youth in Elias—that arrogant hunter who was similarly unwilling to bow to destiny, who dared to question the laws of the astrolabe from the edge of the observation tower.

However, he knew more clearly than Elias how heavy the gravity of this golden starry sky was. He also understood better than anyone else exactly what a tragic price his confidante Astra had paid to buy that one thousandth of a second of microscopic deflection for him within the death-omen.

The divine core within his body was cracking inch by inch due to the gravitational pull of the Saturn-Pluto opposition; intense pain struck in waves like a tide, but he didn't even blink an eye.

Silence lasted for a long time.

Orion slowly stepped forward. Each of his steps was extremely heavy, his metal combat boots stamping out clear echoes on the rock floor. He reached out that right hand covered in scars and thick calluses, pressing it on the handle of the heavy broken knife at his waist, which had long lost its pale golden divine light and was covered in scorched patterns.

"Clang——!"

A desolate, dry sound of metallic friction rang out as Orion drew the broken knife. Without the reinforcement of higher-dimensional laws, without the dazzling golden divine light, it was merely a piece of blunt iron condensed from scrap metal and dried divine blood.

Then, exerting force with his wrist, the bronze muscles on his arm bulging high, accompanied by a muffled, dull thud, he ruthlessly plunged that broken knife into a hard fissure in the volcanic rock at the bottom of the cabin.

The blade vibrated slightly in the rock, emitting a tragic and stirring metallic stench of iron.

"Then let it come."

Orion raised his head, a trace of an extremely wild and also extremely warm smile emerging on his weather-beaten cheeks. His messy dark brown hair danced in the cold wind, the star-beast claw marks above his left eye looking exceptionally ferocious in the red light, but his spine was perfectly straight, like an unyielding iron spear plunged into the wasteland's blind spot.

"Since this sky insists on pressing down, then I will stay right here in the bottom-most mire and poke a hole in this sky together with you mortal boys."

He looked at Elias, his eyes filled with a comrade's trust and heroism:

"Elias, you are right. In the astrolabe's ledger, I am already a dead man. But as long as this broken knife is still plunged into this dirt, as long as these bones of mine haven't been crushed, I will absolutely not take a single step back."

Inside the main control cabin, for a time, only the sound of wind and rain crashing and the roar of the gravity generator units remained. That heavy broken knife plunged into the volcanic rock floor, bathed in the red warning halo, was like the hardest reef, tightly anchoring everyone's violent fighting spirit.

And in the deepest shadows, Vespera (Umbra) silently looked at that blunt, broken iron knife plunged into the rock fissure.

In her profound and cold violet eyes, countless complex curves of laws were frantically weaving and calculating at this moment. In her logic, this action of Orion's held no defensive value whatsoever; it was merely an irrational, dying roar of a lower-dimensional mortal bone and a fallen god.

But for some reason, looking at that broken knife devoid of any divine light, looking at that group of mortals gritting their teeth with wildfire burning in their eyes amidst the red light, an extremely faint tremor came from deep within her divine core once again.

Can blunt iron without divine light... also nail the gears of destiny dead?

Her fingertips hidden in her cuffs twitched slightly, and a wisp of secretive, dark annihilation energy quietly slipped out. Like a solid anchor cable, it silently locked that broken knife tightly to the depths of the leylines beneath the main control cabin, making it completely motionless amidst the violent gravitational tremors.

"Rumble——!!"

Before the crowd in the cabin could recover their wits, an earth-shattering explosion suddenly roared from the sky above the canyon.

The entire volcanic rock wall violently shook in an instant, dust and gravel raining down from the ceiling. On the monitoring screen, the ink-black cloud layer outside the blind spot was mercilessly torn apart in this moment by an intrusive, holy, and dazzling golden divine light.

A heavy battleship of the Aries vanguard army, stretching for thousands of meters, forged entirely from silver titanium-chromium alloy and radiating a blinding golden divine radiance, slid slowly out of the forcibly torn gravitational corridor like a massive, sacred leviathan, hovering directly above the Grand Canyon.

The golden beams of the law purification field poured down like a torrential rain, illuminating the originally dark blind spot canyon into a ghastly white.

"They're here." Elias reached out his right hand, pulling the heavy cutting knife off the stone table with one motion. In his lake-green eyes, a cold and violent murderous intent completely erupted in an instant. "Vanguard army, everyone... follow me to the defensive line, prepare for battle!"

"We will follow the Commander-in-Chief to the death——!"

In the cabin, the mortal soldiers' roars of fury shot up into the sky amidst the roar of gravity. Accompanied by the heavy sound of running, everyone charged toward that iron pass woven entirely of scrap metal and physical laws, braving the sky full of intense golden light.