Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 794: One vs All

The sky over the planet’s surface tore open in a wide streak of blue, hundreds of shapes descending through cloud cover in a formation too precise to be anything but drilled, over and over, for exactly this moment.

Sterling war-puppets came first, gold-plated bodies dropping in loose diamond clusters, each one tethered to a pilot somewhere in the fleet above, controlled through threads none of the ground below could see, moving with a coordination that read less like machinery and more like a single organism spreading its limbs wide across the terrain. Behind them, Lucas fell through open air with Valor drawn, lightning already crawling along the blade’s edge, the axe pulling ambient charge out of the atmosphere itself the way it always did.

Lucy dropped beside him, blue-plated and silent, her own lightning gathering in slow coiled arcs around both fists. Sophie descended with the King’s Gaze glowing faint at her side, its eye half-open, reading something none of the rest of them could see yet. Angel came down trailing red mist that hadn’t fully coalesced into anything, and Seraleth banked wide overhead, wings cutting long arcs through the descent, scanning the ground with sharp, restless eyes.

They hit the surface scattered across a wide perimeter, boots and metal feet alike sinking into soft, churned earth that still bore the scars of a battle fought here months ago.

"Eyes on anything," Lucy said, voice sharp over the comm, already moving.

Nothing answered for a long moment.

"Structures," Sophie said finally, scanning the horizon. Rows of low buildings stretched out ahead, salvaged plating, dark stone, the architecture of an occupation force rather than a native settlement. "No people. No movement at all."

"Same on my end," Angel said, jogging along the perimeter, blood constructs coiling loose around her forearms in case something changed that in the next second. "Whole district’s empty. Doors open. Lights running like someone left in a hurry."

"Sterling units confirm the same," came Matthias’s voice, relayed through the comm from orbit. "We’ve swept two full sectors. Nothing. No resistance, no bodies, no defenders."

"That’s wrong," Lucas said, low, turning a slow circle with Valor still crackling in his grip. "This many buildings, this much infrastructure, there’s no way it’s just empty."

Lucy’s jaw tightened. "Keep sweeping. Widen the search radius."

They pushed forward, group splitting into loose pairs, Lucas and Sophie moving through one row of structures while Angel and Seraleth covered the parallel street, Lucy taking point ahead of all of them, lightning still coiled but unused, patient.

Nothing.

House after house, empty. Not ransacked, not abandoned in panic. Just still, quiet, waiting.

---

Above the planet, in the dark quiet of open space, the Sterling fleet held formation in a wide defensive net, hundreds of vessels spread across the orbital plane, thousands of gold-plated war-puppets already deployed toward the surface below, their pilots seated deep within the fleet’s hulls, threaded into machines they’d never physically touch.

And then suddenly, a streak of blue crossed the void.

It came from nowhere anyone had flagged, no launch signature, no approach vector any sensor had picked up in time, and it struck the nearest cruiser broadside before a single alarm finished its first cycle.

The hull didn’t explode. It simply stopped being a ship. The streak punched clean through one side and out the other, and for one suspended second nothing visible happened at all, no fire, no venting atmosphere, before the whole vessel folded inward on itself floor by floor, decks collapsing in total silence, the wreckage tumbling slow and wrong through zero gravity.

The streak didn’t slow down.

It curved, impossibly tight, a turn no physical body should have survived, and found the next ship in line before the first one had finished dying.

Inside the coordination vessel, Evangeline stood frozen at her console, watching the tactical display update in real time, red markers blooming across the fleet’s formation faster than she could track them individually.

"That’s not possible," she said, mostly to herself.

The streak hit a third ship. A fourth.

Matthias appeared at her shoulder, staring at the same display, his face draining of color as another marker went dark.

"Get every pilot disengaged," he said. "Now, pull them all back into the hulls—"

It was already too late for the ones closest to the strikes. Pilots seated safely inside their vessels, threaded into puppets a hundred kilometers below, went still one after another as the connection severed at the source rather than the endpoint, their consciousness simply cut loose from bodies that had never been in physical danger at all.

"He’s not going for the puppets," Evangeline said, horror dawning slow and complete. "He’s going for us."

Matthias grabbed the comm.

"All ground teams," he said, voice shaking despite every effort to hold it level. "He’s here. He’s in the fleet."

---

On the surface, Lucy went rigid mid-step.

"What," she said.

"We’re under attack," Matthias’s voice crackled through, ragged now, urgent in a way it hadn’t been thirty seconds ago. "Multiple vessels down, he’s moving faster than tracking can even—"

The channel cut, static swallowing the rest of it.

"WHAT," Lucy said again, already turning skyward, jaw set hard.

The ground erupted around them before anyone could answer her.

Figures burst up from beneath the churned earth in every direction at once, pale-skinned, tall, moving with a speed and force that shouldn’t have belonged to a humanoid frame, weapons already firing, blaster bolts crackling with the distinct violet hum of energy core power.

Lucas turned in time to catch the first strike on Valor’s flat, the impact rattling up through his arms hard enough to numb them, and the Sek that had thrown it didn’t stagger, didn’t recoil, just reset its stance and swung again.

"They’re strong," he grunted, blocking a second blow, driving a counter into the creature’s ribs that should have folded a normal soldier in half. It barely moved back a step.

Seraleth dove into the fray with feathers already loosed, hardened blades cutting through two Sek before a third caught her across the ribs with a fist that sent her tumbling through the air, wings scrambling to stabilize before she hit the ground.

"These things fight like a three horn," she called out, righting herself mid-air, blood already running down her side. "Individually. Every single one of them."

"Confirmed," Angel said, tearing a blood whip through the chest of one attacker only to find two more closing on her flank immediately, weapons raised, expressions blank and unbothered by their own numbers thinning. "How is a species this strong just mining ore in the background this whole time."

"They survived a planet built to kill everything on it," Sophie said, King’s Gaze flaring bright as a blue line cut across her vision, marking a strike aimed at Lucas’s exposed back a half second before it arrived. "Lucas, behind you—"

He spun without needing to see it, Valor catching the blow dead center, lightning discharging into the Sek’s chest at point-blank range, and it finally, finally went down, smoke curling off its ruined torso.

More kept coming.

Lucy tore through three at once, lightning arcing between her fists in a wide sweep that scorched the ground and everything standing on it, but for every Sek that fell, two more emerged from wherever they’d been dug in, weapons hot, expressions carrying nothing that looked like fear.

A Sek closed on Angel’s flank, moving faster than the last, and she caught its wrist mid-strike, blood surging up her own arm in a thick coating that hardened into something bladed. She drove it through the creature’s chest and it took the hit standing, staggered, but reached for her throat with its remaining hand before finally collapsing.

"They don’t stop until they’re dead," she said, breathing hard. "No hesitation. None."

"Same as the Harbingers we fought in the south of this planet," Sophie said, King’s Gaze flaring again, catching another intent a half second before it arrived, this time redirecting her own strike into the gap it revealed. "Bred for this. Or made for it."

Seraleth landed hard beside Lucas, wings snapping shut, blood still running down her side. "How many of these are there."

"Doesn’t matter," Lucas said, driving Valor through another chest, lightning discharging in a wide arc that caught two more Sek at once, dropping them both. "We clear what’s in front of us."

The fight ground on, brutal and close, every kill costing something, every Sek that fell replaced almost immediately by two more rising from concealed positions across the district. Lucy moved through them like a storm given shape, lightning arcing continuous now, the ground beneath her scorched black in a widening radius, and even she was breathing hard by the time the wave finally began to thin.

Overhead, the comm crackled back to life, Matthias’s voice barely holding together.

"Ground teams," he said. "Report status."

"We’re holding," Lucy said, driving her fist through the last standing Sek in her immediate radius, the creature finally, finally going still beneath her. "Barely. What’s your status up there."

Silence stretched a beat too long.

"Six vessels lost," Matthias said finally. "Confirmed. Possibly more, we’re still cataloguing. He disengaged forty seconds ago. Just... stopped. Turned and left the system like none of it cost him anything at all."

Lucy stood in the scorched clearing, chest heaving, surrounded by the fallen bodies of an enemy that had never once shown fear, and looked up at a sky that held no answer for her at all.

"He was never even down here," she said quietly. "The whole ground assault. He never once bothered to come meet us."

Nobody had anything to say to that.

What they did not know was that a blue streak was headed towards them.