Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 803: A second sun

’This man. There’s a strange aura around him. I can feel it. Why does he give me this feeling.’

One stared across the dark at Hiro Shima, floating motionless against the backdrop of scattered wreckage, the remnants of the Sterling fleet drifting silent and unguarded around them both, most of the actual soldiers already committed to the ground war far below.

’His power. It appears he is invincible. Everything I’ve tossed at him, he’s taken it. Can I hurt him?’

The thought sat wrong in his chest, unfamiliar, a shape his mind hadn’t been built to accommodate.

’No. I can’t let doubt creep in now. I am One. The only one who was a success out of many failures. I am destined to be a god. He is just a mortal. And mortals are flesh and bones.’

’BONES BREAK.’

He shot forward.

Across from him, the General waited, still, hands loose at his sides, watching the streak of blue closing the distance between them.

’A boy this powerful, and somehow on the wrong side of humanity,’ the General thought. ’The war against the Harbingers needs people like him. People with extraordinary gifts. Like the Grey boy. Like Kelvin Pithon. Like Diana Frost. So many others who never asked for what they were given and chose to carry it anyway.’

’Why. Why would you make me do this. Why would you make me mourn a tomorrow I have yet to see but have already come to know is possible.’

’Tell me. Is there any chance I could still convince you. Or do I have to force you to recognize it.’

The General moved to meet him.

They collided in the dark between two pieces of drifting wreckage, and the impact this time carried none of the earlier testing quality, both of them committing fully, One’s fists trailing shadow and heat in alternating bursts, the General’s guard absorbing each strike with plating that flared brighter every time.

To understand what happened next required understanding scale.

A force sufficient to launch an object clear of a planet’s gravity well typically required velocities measured in kilometers per second, the kind of number that made escape possible only through engineering built across generations, fuel burned in careful calculated amounts to overcome a world’s own pull. What passed between One and the General in the next several seconds exceeded that threshold by orders of magnitude, not through engineering, but through two bodies converting stored force into motion faster than the human eye, or any sensor built to track human combat, could properly resolve.

BOOM!

One’s fist connected with the General’s forearm, and the shockwave that followed didn’t simply displace air, because there was no air here to displace. It displaced mass directly, the nearest section of drifting Sterling wreckage catching the edge of the pressure wave and accelerating instantly, hull plating that had been drifting at a lazy orbital pace suddenly hurled toward Vel’kai’s atmosphere at a velocity that would arrive as a meteor strike rather than a controlled reentry.

Neither of them noticed.

They were already moving again, the General catching One’s follow-up strike and redirecting it with a grip that closed like a vice, using One’s own forward momentum to swing him bodily into a second cluster of derelict hulls. One tore through three of them in succession, the metal shredding around him, and came out the far side already twisting to bring both fists around in a spinning strike aimed at the General’s head.

The General caught it on his forearm.

The plating along his arm lit white, absorbing the impact, and this time instead of simply holding, he pulled, using the contact point to drag One’s whole body forward and drive a knee up into his exposed stomach.

One folded around the impact, and the General followed immediately, both fists together in a downward strike that sent One hurtling toward the nearest large piece of wreckage, a half-intact cruiser hull the size of a small building, still tumbling slow through the debris field.

One hit it.

The hull didn’t simply crack. It came apart entirely, the force of the impact converting the whole structure into a spray of expanding fragments, and the shockwave from that detonation rippled outward through the debris field in a visible pulse, catching two more derelict ships in its path and hurling them toward the planet below with the same terrible, indifferent velocity as the first.

On the ground, chaos was already answering.

Angel stood in a defensive line alongside a mixed force of Sterling and Grey soldiers, watching the sky fill with streaking points of light that had nothing to do with stars.

"INCOMING," she shouted, blood already coiling around both arms. "Multiple objects, atmospheric entry, all across the northern hemisphere—"

Sophie was already moving, King’s Gaze retrieved and glowing at her side, her eyes tracking the falling wreckage with the particular clarity the weapon gave her when death was already written into a trajectory.

"Everyone needs to fall back," she called, voice cutting through the noise. "This isn’t the fight anymore. This is collateral. Their punches are throwing entire ships into the atmosphere."

Seraleth was already airborne, wings beating hard as she climbed toward the nearest falling fragment, feathers loosed in a wide defensive arc, hardened blades cutting into the leading edge of the debris and fracturing it into smaller, less lethal pieces before it could complete its fall.

The Sterling and Grey soldiers opened fire in coordinated volleys, targeting the largest incoming pieces, energy weapons and beast-core rounds converging on falling hull sections and breaking them apart high enough that the fragments burned to nothing before reaching the surface.

Two pieces got through anyway.

The first struck an unoccupied stretch of scorched terrain near the southern edge of the old battlefield, the impact throwing a column of dust and displaced earth a mile into the sky, the crater it left behind wide enough to swallow a small settlement.

The second struck closer, tearing through the outer wall of a ruined settlement structure, the wreckage of it plowing a burning trench through ground that had already been fought over twice today.

"They can’t hear us," Sophie said, staring up at the two distant points of light still locked in combat far above, oblivious to everything happening beneath them. "They don’t even know."

Above, the fight continued without pause.

One had recovered from the shattered hull and come back around, faster this time, both hands trailing the burning red glow now, heat radiating off him in visible distortion even through vacuum, and he struck at the General with both fists in rapid succession, aiming for the same point on his chest twice in a row, trying to compound damage before the armor could fully recover between hits.

The General took the first.

The second, he caught.

His hand closed around One’s wrist mid-strike, and he yanked, hard, pulling One completely off balance, and used the opening to drive his own fist into One’s exposed ribs with everything his frame could produce.

The crack of bone was audible even in vacuum, transmitted through contact rather than sound, and One’s whole body convulsed around the impact.

He didn’t fall.

He twisted, using the General’s own grip as an anchor point, and drove a knee up into the General’s jaw, and this time the General’s head actually moved, snapping back a fraction before he corrected.

’There,’ One thought, feeling something close to relief. ’That landed. He can be hurt.’

’GOOD.’

He pressed the advantage, throwing a rapid combination that forced the General to actually give ground for the first time in the fight, retreating half a step, then another, and One’s confidence surged with every retreated inch.

Then the General caught his final strike bare-handed.

Held it.

’You wanted proof I could bleed,’ the General thought, looking at One across the closed distance between their fists. ’I’ve given you that. Now let me show you what I’ve been saving.’

The light along his armor, which had been climbing steadily brighter with every absorbed hit across the entire fight, suddenly surged, plating flaring from white to something closer to gold, and the General released everything at once.

The discharge hit One point-blank.

It wasn’t a punch. It was closer to an explosion given a fist-shaped point of origin, force radiating outward in every direction simultaneously, and One was thrown clear across the debris field, tumbling end over end, trailing smoke and blood in a widening spiral.

The wreckage caught in the blast radius didn’t just get displaced this time.

It disintegrated.

Every derelict hull within a hundred meters of the discharge point came apart into fine debris, and the shockwave that followed rolled outward through the remaining wreckage field with enough force that entire sections of the Sterling fleet’s graveyard began falling toward Vel’kai’s atmosphere at once, dozens of pieces streaking down in a widening cone.

"MORE INCOMING," Angel screamed, and the defensive line scrambled to widen their coverage, weapons fire lighting up the sky in overlapping arcs as they tried to intercept a debris storm that had grown far past what any ground force was built to handle.

Seraleth caught three fragments in quick succession, wings straining, feathers reforming as fast as she spent them, and even she couldn’t keep pace with the scale of what was now falling.

A third impact struck the planet.

This one landed close enough to the defensive line that the shockwave knocked half the assembled soldiers off their feet, dust and debris raining down across the battlefield in a choking cloud.

"We need them to stop," Sophie said, coughing, forcing herself back up. "We need someone to make them stop."

Nobody had a way to reach them.

Above, One recovered from the discharge slowly, drifting, blood floating off him in a widening cloud of dark red droplets, his breathing ragged even in the absence of air to breathe.

’That,’ he thought, staring at the General across the distance between them, something raw and unfamiliar twisting through his chest. ’That actually hurt.’

’I have never actually been hurt this badly. Who is this man?’

The General watched him recover, armor still glowing gold along every seam, the light pulsing now in a steady rhythm that hadn’t been there before, climbing with each passing second toward something even the armor itself seemed to be building toward rather than simply holding.

’I gave you every chance to stop this on your own terms,’ the General thought. ’You’ve made your choice. So now I’ll make mine.’

He raised both hands.

The light along his armor surged again, brighter, and this time it didn’t stop climbing, plating shifting and reconfiguring across his shoulders and chest, panels sliding into a wider, more open formation that Noah would have recognized instantly from a mountainside days ago.

One straightened, watching the light build, and for the first time since the fight began, something that looked almost like uncertainty crossed his face.

Far below, on Vel’kai’s scorched surface, Sophie looked up.

A second sun was rising where no sun belonged, small at first, then swelling, the light of it bleeding through smoke and dust and the last lingering haze of the ground battle, throwing every shadow across the battlefield in stark, sudden relief.

"Everyone," she said, voice barely a whisper before it found its full strength. "EVERYONE GET DOWN. NOW."