Intergalactic conquest with an AI-Chapter 376: Xylos struggle. {8}

And he'd watched entire fleets get frozen in place, their warp drives scrambled, their reality-bending tech rendered useless. Ships had drifted helplessly while the enemy fleet's weapons tore through them like paper.

That golden wave wasn't just light... it was a cage. A prison made of pure dimensional disruption. Once you were inside it, you couldn't run. You couldn't hide. You couldn't even warp.

It shut down escape itself.

"All ships!" the general screamed into the emergency broadcast channel. "This is a death zone! If you stay in that golden light, you won't be able to jump! Don't fight! just RUN!"

But the golden waves kept spreading, widening in rings like ripples across water... beautiful, glowing, and utterly deadly. The Cleopatra kept descending, slowly and steadily, like a divine hammer falling from heaven.

"Hurry! Take us out of here, now!" the musician general shouted out, his voice echoing with desperation across the command bridge.

But before anyone could respond, one of the bridge officers turned pale, his eyes widened with fear as he looked at his console. "S-Sir… we can't!" he shouted. "The engines! someone has taken over the engine room! All propulsion systems are down! We're not moving!"

The general froze for a second, then gritted his teeth. "Tsk! Dammit all!" he growled, while stumbling back into his command chair and grabbing his hair with both hands. "It's already too late…"

While the golden waves from the descending Cleopatra fortress could block warp jumps and stop dimensional travel, they didn't disable physical engines.

But Cleo did. While she was standing on the musician general bridge earlier, speaking with cold confidence, she had secretly used the moment to launch a full-scale hack, not just of his flagship but of his entire fleet.

Her control had spread like a digital virus, invisible and unstoppable. Inside Cleopatra's AI chamber, the young Kaelzar artificial intelligence turned to Cleo. Her digital form shimmered, her piercing holographic eyes glowing icy blue.

[Creator, we now control all enemy ships engines. Shall I shut them down completely?] she asked calmly, her voice smooth but emotionless.

Cleo gently smiled, her golden eyes reflecting the lights of distant explosions in orbit.

"There's no need. If we can make them surrender willingly… we'll gain an entire fleet without firing a single shot." She raised her hand and snapped her fingers.

All across space, the fleet of the musician general shuddered as systems lit up and weapon systems roared to life. But this time, they weren't aiming at Cleo or her allies. They were turning on each other.

The turrets rotated. The cannons aligned. Targeting systems blinked red.

"General!" the same officer shouted again, his face now bathed in the flickering red glow of internal alerts. "Our ships… they're locking weapons on each other! Even our own vessel's guns are moving… Look!"

The general rushed to the reinforced viewing window. His heart sank as he watched the main plasma cannon of his flagship slowly turn… and point directly at one of his own cruisers.

The general went still. His chest rose and fell with a long breath.

Then, suddenly, he began to laugh.

Not a laugh of madness but a tired, bitter laugh of a man who had gambled, lost, and still appreciated a good play.

"Miss hologram really got us good…" he muttered, chuckling. "Hahaha… ah, screw it. Stop resisting. It's over. We've been defeated." His voice was low but carried across the quiet bridge.

Far below, on the surface of Xylos, the old governor stood in silence, watching the entire space battle unfold through his wide observation window. freēwēbηovel.c૦m

The sky above was filled with massive warships and glowing pulses. He had watched it all... from the initial clash to the fall of the musician general's fleet.

He closed his eyes and let out a long, tired sigh. "Secretary…" he said quietly.

The young assistant turned quickly. "Yes, Governor?"

"Send my orders to all defense forces. Everyone is to remain inside the barrier and await further instructions. No exceptions."

The secretary hesitated. "But, Governor… what about the reinforcements still outside the barrier? They're still fighting to reach us! If we don't open the shields, they might—"

The old man raised his hand, stopping him. His voice was calm but heavy with weight.

"If we lower the barrier now, we risk letting death in with them. We cannot save everyone… not this time."

He turned back to the window, eyes fixed on the golden lights falling from the sky.

"Let's not add more names to the list of the lost."

The governor stayed standing still in the heavy silence of his office while touching his old swords with his hand as if he was getting ready to do something big.

[Northern Battlefield — Forest Zone]

In the thick shadows of the night forest, the Nexum soldiers fought with grit and desperation.

The once-silent woods were now a blazing war zone with laser bolts streaking through the trees, explosions rocking the earth, and distant screams echoing across the chaos.

The darkness was no longer natural; it pulsed with flashes of red andblue as gunfire and drone lights danced like twisted fireflies.

"Sir! We're getting overrun! These damn drones are everywhere!" shouted the Nexum legion's second-in-command.

He ducked behind a shattered tree trunk, narrowly avoiding a stream of glowing laser from a drone zipping past. "If we don't take out that giant-ass machine, it's only a matter of time before we're wiped out!"

The captain of the northern Nexum legion stood on a ridge while overlooking the inferno below.

His visor glowed as data fed into his helmet... casualty reports, drone swarm patterns, and tactical readings.

But one image burned brighter than the rest, a massive drone carrier hovering like a mechanical god of death. Its core blazed with energy as it unleashed constant beams of focused light, carving through Nexum squads with terrifying precision.

Above and below it, swarms of smaller drones rained laser fire and cluster bombs, tearing apart anything that moved.

The captain clenched his jaw and shouted into his comms. "Transmit those coordinates to our armor units! All tank divisions, focus fire on the drone carrier! Bring that monster down! Once it's destroyed, we'll advance toward the fortress city and regroup with allied forces!"

Within minutes, the thunder of tank cannons rolled across the battlefield. Explosive shells streaked into the sky, crashing into the drone carrier's shimmering energy shield. Each impact weakened the barrier bit by bit... small victories carved through steel and fire.

The Nexum soldiers rallied behind the sound of their artillery, pressing forward through the hellish forest with renewed determination.

[Southern Flank — Outside the Fortress Walls]

On the southern side of the fortress city, things looked very different.

Here, the Kaelzar Legion, commanded by the young AI, had made strong gains at first, but now they were starting to falter.

The Nexum soldiers, hardened by countless campaigns, had launched a brutal rear ambush, breaking through the AI's outer defenses like a hammer through glass.

While the young Kaelzar AI possessed superior intelligence, strategic calculation, and digital coordination, she had one critical weakness: inexperience. Faced with the chaotic pressure of a battlefield that didn't follow logic or order, her mind buckled.

Instead of focusing on one decisive response, she began to generate dozens... hundreds! of defensive strategies, all optimized by probability and simulations. But when she tried to implement them all at once, she overwhelmed her own forces.

Conflicting commands poured through the Kaelzar chain of command. One squad was ordered to fall back, another to advance, and a third to flank... all at the same time. Units collided with one another, movements were delayed, and cohesion broke down.

The Nexum soldiers, sensing hesitation, pushed even harder, unleashing firepower and aggression with terrifying efficiency. The Kaelzar line began to buckle under the pressure.

The young AI's voice echoed over internal comms, slightly shaky now."Initiate fallback protocol... no, switch to formation delta... wait—converge to point 37-B... cancel last—no, execute counter-pattern..."

It became painfully clear that the southern Nexum Legion was moments away from achieving total dominance.

With the young AI of the Kaelzar forces faltering under pressure and confusion spreading through her ranks, it was only a matter of time before the Nexum soldiers reclaimed the conquered southern fortress.

[Eastern Front – Nexum Drop Zone]

Far from the coordinated chaos of the major fronts, the Eastern battlefield had become a graveyard of scorched steel and broken dreams. This was the drop zone of the Nexum Legion that was now silent, charred, and soaked in the blood of its soldiers.

One Nexum trooper with his armor scuffed and smeared with soot, cowered inside the hollowed remains of a tank, its once-mighty hull now sliced clean in half. Flames flickered around him, casting dancing shadows across his terrified face.

He gripped his comms unit with trembling fingers. "Nexum soldier 345th… please… anyone, respond!" His voice was hoarse, cracking with desperation and total horror.

"I repeat—Nexu—"

He froze mid-sentence when he heard a sound.

Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed across the ruined landscape. Each step was slow, unhurried… and yet each one pounded like thunder in his chest. He held his breath, his pulse raced like a drum, as the footsteps grew louder and closer. The air felt colder. Thicker.

He whimpered quietly while his eyes widened in fear. "Please… just go away… please… hiiiii—"

The soldier slowly raised his sidearm toward his own head. His hand trembled violently, sweat mixing with grime on his skin. For a veteran of a megacorporation's elite forces to even consider ending his own life, whatever was out there had to be far worse than death itself.

But he didn't get the chance.

With a sickening crunch, a jagged black tentacle burst through the tank's hull and through the soldier's chest. Blood sprayed against the inside of the ruined metal, and the tank groaned as more tentacles wrapped around it like serpents.