“Fuck, Demon King Satan, you will pay for this!” The ship’s commander roared, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and fury as chaos consumed the bridge. Battleship Mizuki was separated from the Sepulchral Fleet after a gncing encounter with a Demon King. Any confrontation with such a foe in Hyperspace was a death sentence. Though the Sepulchral Fleet barely survived, it came at the cost of 80% of its strength.

  Unfortunately, Battleship Mizuki is calcuted as the casualties.

  “Demon King Satan’s st attack scattered us across Hyperspace. Our Astro-pathfinders could no longer sense the Light of Shakuras. Rendezvous the main fleet is no longer possible. Most of our astro-pathfinders are also critically wounded. My Lord, I propose re-entry to realspace with haste.” The commander pleaded as the warning beeps flooded the bridge.

  Hyperspace is a realm where the fabric of reality unravels, a pce where the familiar construct of space, time, and natural ws dissolve into a chaotic sea of entropy. It is a domain of infinite flux and primal chaos. Within this yer of existence, chaos beings might spontaneously coalesce into fleeting forms, only to be consumed by the same chaotic energies that birthed them. It is truly a exotic realm where strange phenomena that defy comprehension occur naturally.

  Demon King Satan was a prime example of the primal chaos demons that inhabited the realm.

  Despite its danger, however, hyperspace is the Human Imperium’s most essential frontier, a conduit for Faster-Than-Light travel, enabling vessels to cross unimaginable distances by skimming the boundaries of existence itself.

  “A sound argument.” ‘Mizuki’, the person cd in 2.5-meter tall power armor who sat behind the Commander, replied. “Initiating realspace re-entry procedure…”

  The colossal 4-kilometer-long battleship drifted through the roiling seas of pink-purple primal chaos energies, its immense form barely protected by a shimmering prismatic shield. The ever-shifting energies of the chaotic void pressed against the barrier, testing its limits with relentless intensity. The ship's silhouette wavered, flickering between reality and illusion—an indication that the immaterial is about to be integrated into the material

  As the shield's glow began to fade, its colpse came not as a gradual failure but a cataclysmic event. In a spectacur burst of light, the prismatic barrier shattered outward in a directed explosion, tearing a gaping hole into the very fabric of the dimension. Waves of reality surged through the breach, distorting space and time as Battleship Mizuki forced its way into realspace.

  Boom! Though sound does not travel in the vacuum of space, nor the hyperspace, the overwhelming rupture reverberated through the very fabric of reality. Battleship Mizuki was pushed back by a torrential stream of flesh and blood that corroded even time and space, indescribable lightning arcs bounces upon the flesh and the barrier as the maelstrom rages. However, the prismatic rainbow shield flickered just in time, protecting the ship from an astral beast’s flesh and blood deluge.

  “Ack! What just happened…” The Commander inquired as she massages her temple, trying to suppress the head-splitting headache. Despite the highly specialized training she received as a Space Marine of the Astrales Militar, the military of the Human Imperium, any interaction with hyperspace was never a pleasant feeling.

  “We almost fused with the flesh of an astral beast as we reintegrate with realspace. Warning, hostile creatures are approaching the ship!” Mizuki prompted telepathic commands to fire up the main guns, shooting the approaching creatures without requesting authorization from the commander to open fire.

  Arcs of lightning turned swathes of parasitic insect-like beasts each reaching 20-meter in size into ash, whereas railgun projectiles bst them to oblivion. In addition, antimatter weaponry causes a chain-explosion amongst the insect beasts, but there were never enough gun barrels to st for long.

  “Commander…” Mizuki performed hand seals, activating a Soul Art that contains cleansing energy which immediately woke the commander and the crew in the bridge from their stupor, “The Astral Beast is giving off rank 6 fluctuation. The creature is in the same league as Demon King Satan, while its countless parasites are equivalent to rank 4 lifeforms. We must escape with haste!”

  The commander quickly skimmed the data that Mizuki provided, the readings were off the charts. “My Lord, can you get us out of here?!”

  “Unable to comply, the presence of rank 6 Astral Beast of this size clouds my computations with interference. Space and time is being distorted and compressed by its sheer radiation. I suggest we fire up the Death Spiral Missile and prepare for pnetfall.”

  The commander put a grim expression on her face.

  The Death Spiral Missile is an anti-life weapon that could sterilize a world out of its lifeform. In essence, it is a missile that contains a self-replicating spectral-nanomachine. Once activated, the spectral nanomachine will consume soul-matter to replicate endlessly, spreading the spectral pathogen to other creatures.

  The weapon itself is immaterial, it is the product of the Imperium’s most advanced undead machinery that renders conventional defenses irrelevant. This was a strategic weapon of mass destruction prepared by one of the top brass of the Human Imperium for cleansing Demon King Satan’s worlds.

  Unfortunately, only Shakuras, the fgship of the Sepulchral Fleet, has the necessary computational power to synthesize the killing solution to differentiate between human and non-human soul signatures in this situation. If it were Mizuki, he would need to have at least weeks to formute the killing solution in a normal situation, otherwise, it’ll be a death sentence to everyone in the sor system, whether they make pnetfall or stay in orbit is irrelevant.

  “You’re going to condemn trillions of innocent souls down there to oblivion?” The Commander pointed towards the world whose crystalline Dimensional Walls are creaking. They could somewhat see blurred figures of literal gods waging war against the parasites that fell off from the Astral Beast. “The Human Imperium does not condone senseless sughter even if they are on the brink of destruction, I will not bear the sins of killing a World!!!”

  “The Astral Beast’s radiation distorts space and time. I suspect we are being slowed down while the world outside is being accelerated. By this, I am suggesting that we make pnetfall. We might be able to muster resources necessary to find an escape solution in a few hundred years. In the meantime, the Death Spiral Missile will buy us some time while we’re down there, as I refuse to believe our world-killing weapon could fulfill its role here. Keep in mind that the only reason my AT-Field is still going strong is because the enemy is unaware of how I can constantly replenish my energy, but that is about to change soon!” Mizuki retorted with urgency.

  The countless numbers of astral beast parasites are held back by Battleship Mizuki’s prismatic energy shield, but it is already showing signs of flickering every time the astral beast’s tentacle-like ‘fine hair’ starts attacking the ship. The number of assaulting tentacles is increasing by the second and the commander has to make a decision as soon as possible.

  Crack! Since they are under the effect of the Astral Beast’s temporal influence, a second to everyone within Battleship Mizuki’s prismatic shield meant significantly more time to the outside world. Battleship Mizuki’s shield could not endure the thousands of tentacles attacking its body, the prismatic shield eventually broke under the damage.

  “ARGH!” Mizuki… nay, the entire battleship connected to his system was screaming in pain as the prismatic shield was broken and the tentacles pierced the hull. “My AT-Field has shattered, I can no longer normalize timeflow. You and the remaining crew need to make pnetfall, NOW!”

  As Mizuki’s sensors have gone haywire after its AT-Field shattered, there was a brief moment where his sight upon the bridge was lost. However, that single instance of time was fatal, as when his sensors restarted, all he detected was the remains of a metallic skeleton, encased in machines and rusty power armor. It was devoid of flesh and moisture, as if thousands of years had passed.

  Fortunately, Mizuki himself was immune to the effect of sudden temporal influence, but the same couldn’t be said for the commander.

  "Damn it!" Mizuki cursed, his voice trembling with frustration and urgency. The commander had been struck by an erratic temporal pulse, a phenomenon so relentless that not even the Imperium’s most advanced space marine augmentations could shield her from the inexorable passage of time. Throughout the ship, the flow of time had spiraled into chaos.

  Parasites that had breached the ship’s hull moved at unnaturally accelerated speeds, while flickering mirages of past and future events materialized unpredictably in the air, warping perception. Some of the crew seemed inexplicably younger than they should have been, their features altered by the temporal disturbances. The ship itself felt like it was unraveling, caught in a battle not just for survival, but against time itself.

  Mizuki could no longer save any of the crew. Their bodies had already been exposed to the Astral Beast’s radiation, they would eventually mutate or have their genes colpsing. Even if they could somewhat resist the radiation, Mizuki couldn’t be sure of the mental pollution the crew suffered from being exposed to such strange radiation.

  Since all the crew has been determined to be a loss cause, he needed to escape with his mortal shell intact, otherwise there won’t be any chance to survive. Mizuki disconnected almost all his internal systems with the ship, which kills all unnecessary life-support functions or defensive measures. What is left is his connection with three core mechanisms deep within the ship’s interior.

  The first is the self-destruct sequence. Every battleship of the Human Imperium is equipped with a nanite-base self-destruction system, a meticulously engineered failsafe designed to ensure total obliteration. Upon activation, the ship's structure is consumed in a cascade of nanite reactions, reducing its vast corpse to nothingness. This measure leaves no trace for scavengers or adversaries to exploit, effectively denying any attempt at salvage or reverse-engineering its advanced technologies.

  The second is the Death Spiral Missile. The activation sequence of this world-killing weapon is lengthy and complex, but as the highest acting officer of the ship has been killed, he was immediately promoted into the acting commander. He forgoes all unnecessary computations and bypasses all the tedious procedures in a split second. Naturally, he did not create the killing solutions. This meant he had activated an unshackled gray goo-type weapon upon the Astral Beast.

  The st one is the escape pod that was designed to ‘flush’ the cockpit. Unfortunately, none of the officers in the cockpit survived, so it only carried Mizuki’s mortal shell, with the barest necessities for him to survive and rebuild in the future. These includes; a battleship css mainframe, a small armory, and a couple of redundant Mortal Shells.

  Boom! What’s left of the ship’s air allowed the explosion to occur. Mizuki has had enough of his bad luck. He must now jump from the frying pan into the fire.

  ‘I might have lost my battleship body and have zero chance of killing you…’ Mizuki has already disconnected with the rest of the vessel, his attention is completely focused on the pod. The prismatic AT-Field that used to protect the whole ship is now concentrated to protect the small vessel.

  Swoosh! The spherical prismatic shield cks the ability to pierce through the cloud of astral beast parasites, so Mizuki maniputes the shield into a drill. ‘But as our ancestor Grimsong Specter had once said; until true death, all defeat is purely psychological.’

  Mizuki’s "eyes" burned with ghastly purple fmes, seething with fury and hatred as he watched the rest of his former body consumed by the silvery nanite fmes, a dispy of the ship’s final, unyielding act of defiance.