World Keeper

Chapter 1119: Avenger

“All personnel, prepare for weapons test.” A voice spoke up over the intercom, the ship’s atmosphere growing tense. Because this was a test run for a new weapon, they were operating on a skeleton crew, just enough to ensure that they would be able to get to their destination, launch the weapon, and then report back.

At the bridge of the ship, a halfling sat in the captain’s chair, folding his hands in his lap. There was a solemn expression on his face that formed a stark contrast with how halflings were normally perceived. This was Captain Mason Haymes, of the battleship Black Star.

“Sir, we are ready to launch.” A nervous, human woman said from the weapons console, with short red hair and blue eyes. As the one who understood the most about this new weapon that they were testing, she had every reason to be concerned.

In recent decades, there had been an increase in demand for powerful weapons, capable of wiping out entire planets, stars, even solar systems in the blink of an eye. This demand came from none other than the Greater Pantheon itself, leading to most research departments being unable to refuse the requests.

When questioned about why such weapons were necessary, they were given a startling revelation. A vision of a future that the gods had foreseen, an invasion from beyond the Keeper’s realm like no other. Monsters that possessed a size that defied logic, able to move at speeds surpassing that of light itself. Being able to annihilate entire planets in an instant was just the bare minimum necessary to be able to hurt them.

However, even more concerning than their size and durability was the speed at which they moved. Most weapons were limited in their speed, unable to catch up with something moving faster than light. Even if they created a weapon capable of destroying a solar system, what good would it do if they missed their target?

This question led to a number of weapons being created over recent years. The most famous was the Void Cannon, which shattered a targeted region of space from a distance. This weapon could also be deployed as a mine, causing it to detonate whenever a monster passed by it. However, its fame was not for its effectiveness, but the damage it caused to the universe when used.

Whenever the Void Cannon fired, it would cause noticeable damage to the outer shell of the universe within the void. Fallen Gods, or even Leowynn herself, would have to be dispatched in an emergency bid to mend the damage before it could spread.

This weapon that they were testing now, however, possessed even more horrific possibilities. “Has everyone made their peace?” Mason asked solemnly, fully understanding what could happen if this weapon failed. To test it, they had asked the Another World Research Group to make an entire universe just for them, a copy of Deckan where none of their people resided.

“...Yes, sir.” The weapons officer nodded, as did the navigation officer. They were both ready for this test, whatever happened.

“Understood. Launch the drone at the targeted region, and teleport it back after twenty seconds.” He commanded, the navigation officer sending a command to one of the only two drones waiting in the Black Star’s hangar.

It flew out of the ship, wrapped in blue light, and vanished. The officer counted down in her head, pressing the button to teleport it back after twenty seconds. The unmanned drone appeared in front of the ship in a flash of blue light, simply hovering there.

The ship was currently positioned outside of a solar system, the yellow orb a dim light in the distance. Mason’s body tensed as he gave his next command. “Activate Avenger. Set the time limit to twenty-four hours. Fire when ready.”

“Understood, sir.” The weapons officer nodded her head, speaking into the mic. “Attention, all crew, the Avenger is being charged.” The warning wouldn’t do any good if there was a malfunction, but she had to warn them, just in case.

“Charging at ten percent, twenty…” She spoke up, staring at the screen. “Time limit locked. Forty percent.”

Eventually, the charging bar climbed all the way. “One hundred percent. Activating Avenger.” She pressed the button with a shaking finger, and a ball of black and green energy shot out from the main cannon of the ship. This ball of energy continued to accelerate as it traveled, turning into a blurred beam that sped towards the heart of the solar system.

From their position, it would normally take ten hours for the light of the sun to reach them. That meant that, for normal weapons, without the aid of long-distance scanners, they would have no information about the result of the test for at least ten hours. However, that didn’t happen here. After five minutes, when the ball of energy had reached its target coordinates, everything went dark.

The sun, the planets, the asteroids, they were all simply gone. Even the drone positioned just a few hundred meters in front of the ship had vanished without a trace. Mason’s body tensed, and he looked around, glad to see that the light of other stars were still reaching them, as long as that light came from either side of the ship, and not ahead of it. “...Dispatch the second drone to investigate.”

“Yes, sir.” The navigation officer spoke up, more relaxed now that the weapon had already been fired.

As the second drone was launched, the weapons officer spoke into the intercom again. “Attention, the Avenger has been successfully launched.”

Mason closed his eyes, sending out a silent prayer. Goddess Leowynn, is there any damage to the void barrier? One of the preparations needed to test this weapon was to have multiple members of the Greater Pantheon on standby. Leowynn and Terra were among these, both positioned outside of the universe where they were testing the weapon.

Negative. Terra and I aren’t seeing any damage to the barrier. Mason let out a sigh of relief, slumping back in his chair when he heard that.

“Sir, the drone has completed its return trip. There is no trace of any debris in the target zone.” The navigation officer spoke up, the second drone now returning to the hangar.

“Understood. Let it be known that the first live test of the Avenger has concluded as a success. Take us home, please.” As he said that, he marveled over the power over the weapon he had just released, and the horror that it represented.

This weapon could only be created with the cooperation of Terra from the Greater Pantheon. Its alternative name was the Causality Cannon, or Fate Erasure. According to the briefing that he had received, it operated by selecting a targeted region of space, as well as a time period.

From there, the weapon erupted into a blast of pure, destructive energy. However, what it destroyed was the Fate system itself on a localized scale. Any energy, any matter that passed through the target region between the selected time period and the time when the weapon was launched would be erased. Even if something had left the affected blast zone, it would be erased by the virtue of fate itself.

This was why the name was ultimately settled as the ‘Avenger’. This weapon was not designed to protect anything. It was designed to come in after a monster had swept through an area, and avenge those that had already fallen.

There had been experiments to displace the selected region to a different timeline instead of destroying them, which would have ultimately produced the same result. However, these tests had ended in failure, simply preventing that region of history from being observed by those capable of seeing the past.

The result of twenty years of research, and the full cooperation of the Greater Pantheon, was a weapon capable of annihilating not only space, but a selected region of time.

Terra laid on her stomach on her bed in the Admin Room, humming to herself as she observed things from above as usual. Everyone else typically focused on their incarnations, but she wasn’t able to descend as fully into them, so she watched. When she saw the results of the weapons test, she blinked. “Huh… I actually didn’t think that was going to work.”

“Really?” Chelsea’s voice spoke up, causing Terra to turn to face the doorway, where the kitsune engineer was standing, leaning against the frame. “You took a personal interest in this project, and didn’t think it would work?”

Terra shook her head, rolling over to sit up on the bed. “It was Leowynn’s idea. She wanted to know if it was possible, and I mean… theoretically, it was. However, it would need the cooperation of someone with a domain related to time, and deep knowledge about timelines. Even then, the odds of success were pretty low.”

“So, what did you expect to happen?” Chelsea asked, smirking knowingly as she looked at Terra. As a former System Companion herself, she understood more than others.

“I expected a total timeline collapse, every possibility in existence disappearing from that universe. Every star, every speck of light and dust disappears, having never existed at all.” Terra shook her head as she spoke. “Personally, I still think it’s possible. I won’t really believe that the weapon is safe for use without at least a dozen more tests.”

“You’re worried that it’s causing lasting damage to the fate of the universe?” Chelsea questioned, and Terra nodded her head. “Can’t you check that to confirm?”

“Not really. The system doesn’t directly monitor other fate branches. We can still observe the true events of history here from the Admin Room, as if the bomb hadn’t gone off until just now. However, since the timeline itself isn’t monitored the same way, I can only observe the damage with my domain. Right now, I can’t sense anything, but that could just mean that the damage is too minor for the moment.”

Chelsea nodded her understanding. Other timelines, other universes, they were only monitored in the system when they ‘existed’. And they only existed when being actively observed by someone of the mortal world. That was why planar travel could open up new worlds that had previously not existed, yet already possessed sentient life and civilization.

They were there, but they did not exist in the eyes of the system, because they were inconsequential. Because nobody perceived them, they did not even appear within the void. Back in her original world with James, there had been those that eventually realized this and sought to take advantage of it, using these other universes as blind spots to avoid her gaze.

Some would hide in the other universes, others would manipulate those within it remotely to prepare dangerous weapons. However, both methods had rather obvious flaws. For the first group, remaining within the universe caused it to no longer be a blind spot. While they were there, it existed in the eyes of the system, and within the void.

Similarly, the constant contact and monitoring of the latter group led to a maintained perception of the universe, which caused that universe to appear both in the void and the system’s monitoring. Theoretically, timelines would work the same way. If someone had a method to consistently view a single timeline, that timeline could possibly appear under the system’s watch. But, as there was no way to do so reliably yet, only one timeline was ever perceived, and that was the ‘true’ timeline.

“Well, hopefully there won’t be any permanent damage.” Chelsea said as she pushed off from the doorframe. “Personally, I like the concept of the Avenger, and I wish we had something like that back in my world. I’ll start arranging for the next test to determine the upper limit of its destructive power. We need to know whether or not it can destroy divine-level threats, too.”

Of course, they wouldn’t be using actual gods as target practice, but rather powerful divine cores created as artifacts to represent gods of varying strengths.