Harem Assassins : King Sekton's Harem Planet, Book 2: A Space Opera Harem Adventure by Baron Sord (mobi ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Thankfully, I used POSITION vectors to rejoin the severed muscle bellies, and a quick COPY and PASTE of my opposite shoulder’s muscles to fuse the severed ones. I effected similar clone-stamp repairs to my damaged scapula bone. It went quickly, but I grit my teeth and hissed agony the entire time. The pain subsided only slowly after I completed repairs.

Only then did I realize the Death Sphere had been sneakily shrinking around me, its deadly walls closing in for another bite while I had burned ring fuel tending to my wounds.

“Back!” I growled and sent out a powerful MASS extraction.

The Death Sphere retreated.

What had exploded earlier?

The answer was obvious.

When you turned a solid into a gas, the gas went shooting off in every direction at high speed. That was the basic principle of any explosive. A solid suddenly expands into a gas. Ka-BOOM! The chemical reaction was more complex than that, but that was the basic principle.

As far as I could tell, I hadn’t been hit by any shrapnel. Just the shock wave that slammed me into the nearest meat grinder. That especially made sense if the explosive force detonated by my PATTERN transformation occurred at the surface of the Death Sphere’s walls. The portions of the metal walls not transformed into helium would deflect the rapidly expanding gases in my direction, like a shaped charge. Had this space not been a vacuum, the explosive shockwave would have been much worse.

Lucky me.

But luck didn’t matter now.

I had figured out a way to permanently eliminate mass from the Death Sphere. Possibly. Unless the Death Sphere could reclaim its recently lost mass — now helium atoms — and transform them back into metal? It couldn’t do that, right? Because I could. But not it.

Right?

Right?

One way to find out.

I spent some ring fuel to create MASS and make a shrapnel shield cocoon for myself. Solid steel alloy, 5 cm thick and slightly larger than myself. I created a view slit that I filled with 5cm of solid transparent acrylic.

Then I propelled myself forward with a massive POSITION vector to build up momentum and stretch the Death Sphere to its limits. Its walls flickered angrily outside my steel cocoon as I rocketed forward.

Once I was up to ludicrous speed, I again used my ring’s PATTERN function to turn Death Sphere walls into helium.

Kra-Ka-Ka-Ka-Ka-KOOM!

That didn’t do it justice because it was a continuous explosion shaking my cocoon and my teeth with it. They practically rattled out of my jaw until I clamped it shut.

I had no idea how long the explosive process went on. At some point, I became numb to it. After 30 minutes of constant concussion and forward acceleration of me and my cocoon, the explosion was still going. It wasn’t long before my total elapsed time trapped inside this deadly cage was approaching 90 minutes.

How much mass did this damn Death Sphere have?

Because my ring fuel was steadily running dry. I was burning through it alarmingly fast. The gauge had circled from 12 o’clock down to 8 o’clock on the dial. Once it hit 6 o’clock… I was done. If this continued long enough, my steel cocoon would become my coffin.

My only option was to press forward faster and faster.

I started sweating bullets as the booming continued around me. My eyes flicked constantly between my ring fuel and my thin view slit. The Death Sphere’s electrical storm continued flashing as I hurtled forward. All I could do was keep my foot on the proverbial gas. I was reminded of those videos of people caught in forest fires in their cars. Sure, they had gas to spare and could drive however far they needed to go, and the road ahead was usually open — for the most part — but their world was roaring orange around them, an endless expanse of blazing destruction. As long as the road didn’t get blocked by a falling flaming tree, and as long as they didn’t run out of gas or their tires didn’t explode from the heat… you knew they might escape.

Might.

My situation felt similar, except I didn’t have to do much steering or navigating. Just keep speeding ahead. Eventually, I stopped accelerating. It was using too much fuel. I needed to conserve what I had remaining and apply it to PATTERNING the walls into helium, which it turned out burned as much or more ring fuel as accelerating me and my steel cocoon.

The only thing left to do now was keep at it, and keep an eye on my ring fuel and hope.

Hope that this Death Sphere did have limits, and wasn’t an endless Death Dimension.

While I did that, I started to wonder if coming to Zalaxia with the Bombshells had been the biggest mistake of my life.

What little of it remained.

—: Chapter 88 :—

When my ring fuel hit 7 o’clock on the dial, I knew I wasn’t going to make it.

My mind drifted back to meeting the Bombshells, to falling into bed with Oia in her cabin on the Artemis, to Venus climbing naked into my Fold Bed before we folded to Zalaxia, to Violet taking me captive in the jungle before taking me inside her under the jungle leaves; to saving Cygna from space pirates, to saving Sirius’ after she got stomped by the former King Sekton and keeping her alive with a ring-powered heart massage, to saving Captain Theia from the demonic hordes of the CyberKnights.

I told myself those things made this journey worth it.

When the only thing you had left to treasure were memories, you knew your life was coming to an end. Life was supposed to be about living new moments, not reliving old memories.

What was that old saying?

Live fast, die young.

I had lived damn fast since meeting the Bombshells.

But I wanted to live!

Not die in a damn Death Sphere space maze!

I clamped my eyes shut in pained frustration, waiting for the…

Silence.

The constant sound