I Only Wanted A Class In The Apocalypse

Chapter 1957: Locating the Grand Elder

Even when the Toranks attempted to exert their dominance by locking down local space, the step crumbled against Hyeʼs advance. There was nothing, literally nothing, that could halt his momentum at this stage of the game.

The Toranks leading this grand expedition were acutely, painfully aware of that reality. They watched their feeds in a state of grim realisation; their blockade was being treated like nothing rather than a barrier.

Yet, even as Hye proved himself an unstoppable force, carving through their divisions without meeting any meaningful resistance, the enemy high command refused to pull back.

They couldnʼt afford to stop the assault. There was a trophy far greater than a few lost legions awaiting them at the end of this slaughter. Their ultimate gambit, the God Weapon, was drawing closer to this world with every passing hour.

Their objective remained singular and cold: decapitate the Hescosʼ leadership. By killing the Grand Elder, they would leave the defenders leaderless and drowning in a sea of confusion. In that moment of chaos, they would seize the planetary defence hubs and orbital protection centres before their executioner arrived.

To the Toranks, the game would end the moment that terrifying weapon appeared in the sky. Once the God Weapon was deployed and its primary systems were primed, there would be no hope of survival for anyone, Hye included.

They possessed the arrogance of those who own the bigger gun, yet they fundamentally underestimated Hyeʼs qualitative impact on the weave of this war.

As Hye continued to immerse himself in the systematic subversion of the enemy ranks, his personal collection grew to staggering proportions. He finally reached a threshold where he could form an entire fleet composed solely of his newly acquired warriors.

However, he didnʼt use them as a simple blunt instrument. Instead, his first move was to dispatch hundreds of small, fast-attack ships, vessels he had liberated from the enemy, and fill them with a mixture of his freshly contracted leaders and legions of his Soulers and Reapers.

He scattered these ships across the vast expanse of the grand battlefield with two primary objectives. First, he needed to draw a comprehensive, real-time map of the enemyʼs troop density and defensive layout. Second, he needed to pinpoint the exact location of the Grand Elder amidst the chaos of millions.

Because these ships were technically enemy hulls piloted by former enemy troops, they passed through the Toranksʼ outer and inner pickets almost entirely unhindered. They were silently mapping the battlefield for ten gruelling hours. Finally, a priority signal flickered on Hyeʼs command console.

”So, thatʼs where youʼre hiding,” Hye murmured, his eyes locking onto a direct visual feed from one of the scout ships.

He leaned forward, the blue light of the monitors reflecting in his eyes. Back when he had clashed with the Toranks during the takeover of the Hot Zones, he had utilised a similar broadcast mechanism to broadcast at his channel. Now, he was repurposing that same method for deep-cover espionage, and it had finally paid off. He had found the eye of the storm.

The Grand Elder, for his part, appeared entirely unfazed by the magnitude of the trap that had snapped shut around him. The old warrior knew the mathematics of a siege better than anyone; he understood that every minute he stalled was a minute closer to his own forces realising the deception. If he could hold out long enough, a rescue would be inevitable, and the traitorsʼ grand plot would be shot through the heart.

However, even the Grand Elderʼs legendary foresight hadnʼt predicted Hye. He hadnʼt expected a wild card of this magnitude to sniff out the conspiracy so early and fight a path through a sealed sector to reach him.

When Hyeʼs feed finally cleared, he wasnʼt surprised to see the old Hescos leader entrenched within a massive, shimmering perimeter of high-output shields. Surrounding the Grand Elder were batteries of deadly weapons that had been singing a chorus of destruction for hours, claiming the lives of tens of thousands who dared to approach.

The weapons roared with a sound that even Hye, a veteran of a hundred battlefields, found unfamiliar. They looked like massive, oversized cannons stripped from the decks of big spaceships, yet they had been ingeniously modified onto portable platforms, easily manoeuvred by the elite guard the Grand Elder had brought with him.

”Theyʼre fighting a war of attrition against the old man,” Hye observed. He didnʼt need to ask for a status report to see through the enemyʼs strategy. The Toranks knew they couldnʼt crack those localised shields from a distance. They needed to get close enough to plant specialised demolition charges to collapse the shielding and kill everyone inside.

But to plant those bombs, they needed a foothold first. So, they continued to hurl waves of disposable troops into the meat grinder, forcing the Grand Elderʼs weapons to fire every single second without a moment of pause. It didnʼt take a genius to realise that weapons of that calibre had a monstrous energy consumption rate.

Hye was certain, just as the enemies were, that the Grand Elder didnʼt have the infinite power cells required to maintain this level of defence until a conventional rescue arrived.

Realising the precariousness of the Grand Elderʼs situation galvanised Hye. He didnʼt waste a second in deliberation; he simply set a direct, unwavering course for the Grand Elderʼs coordinates and ordered his entire fleet to move at flank speed.

His technique never ceased its magic, his cannons never stopped their thundering chorus, and he never paused in the harvest of bones and inventory spoils. He was performing at the absolute peak of his capabilities, matching the enemiesʼ desperate focus with a cold, terrifying determination of his own.

For the first hour, his transit was a blitzkrieg of shadow and steel. But as the distance closed, the battlefield began to shift.

”At last, youʼre taking me seriously,” Hye murmured, rolling his eyes within the dimly lit sanctum of his flagship.