Reinhart sat in his seat without moving a muscle for the next hour, constantly observing the map and 'that' black dot.

The only words he repeated several times out loud were "The flow doesn't make sense."

Maybe he himself didn't know what he was talking about yet.

***

Back in the gravity-less battlefield, Team Leader of the first team chased that hive guardian for a little more than 10 minutes when the Squad Leader (Saint Lord) arrived.

"My Lord," the squad leader lowered his head.

"Go back, I've got this. Don't report anything until I say so," the emaciated man ordered without even looking in his direction before shooting off towards the hive guardian that had already left the confines of the battle and entered the void between planets.

The solar system they were in had a total of 12 planets. The only inhabited one was the ninth one from the sun where Hao Xuan currently was.

The emaciated man quickly caught up to the gargantuan hive guardian but he did not intervene, only observing from afar.

He squinted his eyes as the scenes in front of him quickly changed. His vision kept zooming in in front of the beast until he saw the reason for the chase.

It was an asteroid, or something that resembled one. There were hundreds of small holes all over it, making it look more like a broken piece of a much larger beehive.

It was surrounded by a dim energy field that seemed to be the source of power that was propelling this ordinary-looking asteroid at such high speeds that even a hive guardian was unable to catch up to it.

"An internal power struggle?" the Squad leader quickly deduced.

It was obvious that the asteroid had broken off from the main hive and was now being chased. Maybe it was a prisoner escaping, or another queen was born...or any other of a million things.

Even now, very little was known about these creatures as most of them were hostile towards humans to an unprecedented degree, which is why most of the knowledge came from observing their distant relatives and from those that were able to gaze into the abyss and discover lost knowledge.

But one thing was for certain, there could usually only be one queen within a hive so whenever a new one was born, it would be assimilated by the current ruler.

Although the probability of such a thing was very low, it could not be ignored either way.

"Squad Leader Charlie to base," he spoke out loud as his spirit band lit up. The light on it pulsed for a few seconds before becoming dim.

He was too far to connect to it.

"Personal Log," he mumbled with a sigh seeing as there was no other option, "Discovered the reason for the hive's strange behavior. Engaging with the hive guardian. Battle strength gauged to be around Class AA, Swarm Lord class."

The personal logs were the blackboxes for those that fought in deep space. They contained information that could not be uploaded to the virtual network so was stored locally on the spirit band.

It could be retrieved from the deceased's body and accessed later, if there was still left intact that is.

Having made the preparations, he got ready to attack.

He extended his right arm as a bone scythe appeared in his grasp. It was covered in several runic symbols from top to bottom, with each one having a slightly different feel to it.

The scythe itself had a curved snath that seemed old and worn out, yet gave a feeling of sturdiness. The blade looked more like a serrated tooth that had been polished numerous times.

Various silhouetes surrounded by thick spiritual energy appeared above his head one by one. Each one was only a few inches in size, 8 in total.

These were the avatars of his Mind Palaces. The actual Mind Palaces could be of any size, from a few feet to hundreds or even thousands of meters so under normal circumstances only the avatars were called out during fights.

They reinforced the user while proving them with copious amounts of energy.

The spiritual energy that was in the form of a semi-liquid blue substance poured straight into his body. The runes on the scythes lit up one by one.

But as soon as they did, the hive guardian detected him.

Without turning around it swung its massive body, shooting hundreds of smaller creatures that were on its back towards his direction.

The Squad leader smiled seeing the incoming barrage of canon fodder. He didn't even bother with them and instead bent his body.

With a soundless push against darkness beneath his feet, he disappeared in a cloud of black energy.

The cloud moved at incomprehensible speeds and appeared below the body of the hive guardian within seconds.

The serrated white blade appeared out of the cloud before the hive guardian could react, followed by the words "The Shimmering Death".

*Slaash*

It cut through layers of chitin-like armor in one fell swoop and opened up a 200-meter wide gaping wound along its belly.

The hive guardian's body convulsed as it rotated 180 degrees and slammed its back into the cloud.

The battle had begun and from the first strike, it made both the parties focus all their attention on the opponents.. So much so that neither of them realized that the asteroid had quietly changed its direction and was now headed straight towards the nearest inhabited planet.

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