The Relentless had lost not a single bit of the fire he had had since the moment Grey disappeared. Grey had ruined not just one, but two of his disciples, and then just escaped right out from under his nose.
It was impossible for the man who had had the world in the palms of his hands for so very long to not be furious.
The problem was that deciphering the coordinates Grey had used took far more time than he expected. Grey had hidden them well, and The Relentless didn’t have any talent in these matters, so he had left it up to the mech techs that he had picked out.
Unfortunately, his temper got the best of him, and because they were too slow, he ended up killing the first two in a furious rage. By the time he realized this wasn’t helping him, the third one was half crippled and barely managed to crawl to the finish line and give him the coordinates he was looking for.
"... How about you fuck off instead?"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
The Relentless’ head snapped to one side, but the voice he thought was speaking into his ear wasn’t there.
His head snapped to the other, but there was no one there either.
And that voice... why did he recognize it?
Chi.
The One Line Vessel suddenly crossed over a barrier and The Relentless’ eyes sharpened. He suddenly lost access to his inventory. What happened?
His senses seemed far sharper than Grey’s had been just a day ago, and he immediately felt that something was wrong...
But that didn’t mean that it would matter in the slightest when it came to finding a chance to stop it.
"Bye bye, have a nice time."
The voice changed into an odd high-pitched one with a hint of an accent to it. Was that the same person? Or somebody else?
BANG.
The One Line Vessel suddenly shook. Then it went from a slight slowdown to a sudden acceleration. It curved upward and in the blink of an eye, The Relentless was already over the horizon.
His eyes widened as he passed over the city he was supposed to land in. That city should have been the one that Grey was in. Though, he had no idea that Grey had ended up crash landing a lot earlier than that.
But one moment he could see it, and in the next it was so far behind it was little more than a dot on the horizon. Then, in another blink, he couldn’t even remember exactly where on the horizon it had been.
"GREY TEMOLT!"
The answer came to The Relentless like a speeding train against his chest. It crashed into him and he instantly realized what was happening.
A One Line Vessel wasn’t even meant to accelerate this fast, it ruined its accuracy and it could cause it to fail. But clearly, Grey neither cared about where The Relentless would land, nor did he care about the man’s safety.
The Relentless realized he needed to break free. If he allowed the One Line Vessel to break apart on its own, his body would end up scattered across space. His head might land a thousand kilometers away from his ankle and there would be no one to even realize that the two pieces of his corpse were connected.
He roared, slamming out two fists at the same time. Every microsecond that passed felt like he was another 100 kilometers away from his destination, and rather than slowing down, he felt like he was only speeding up.
The One Line Vessel was only just shy of a true void. There was no friction. Until it was closing in on its destination, it wouldn’t slow down by much.
Except this time...
There was no destination.
The golden walls cracked and The Relentless realized he wasn’t strong enough to break the walls in a single bound. If he had some understanding of spatial glyphs or mech crafting, maybe he could have targeted the weaknesses, but he didn’t.
Gritting his teeth, he realized that he was going to have to truly go all out. Or else, he’d die because of a worthless brat.
Fury bubbled through his veins and he roared again. His aura became infinitely close to the peak beyond the Dominion Class. He clenched his fists, pulling his elbows close to his body and then jetting them out with all the force he could muster once again.
BOOM.
A mountain was leveled.
From the skies, it looked as though the moon had bitten a crescent out of it, the smooth surface of destruction only space could possibly wreak left in its wake.
Buried in the depths of the destruction was a man with cracks running through his entire body. His clothing was ripped to shreds, and his body was curled into a ball, shivering like a wet dog in an alley.
However, his eyes were open, bulging with reddened veins as larger and larger pools of blood fell from him.
He was truly in the worst state of his life. He couldn’t remember having ever been pushed to this state. But, worse than anything...
His inventory. He couldn’t sense it at all.
In all the volatility of the space, it had been ripped free from its anchor—that being himself.
He was so focused on shredding apart the space in his way that he didn’t have the bandwidth to protect the one bit of space that he wanted to protect.
And now... he had no clothes, his body was half crippled, and he had lost every bit of wealth he had accumulated in his long life.
The Relentless had never been so utterly furious, never so utterly humiliated in his life.
Maybe the worst part was that he had absolutely no idea where he had landed this time, and the One Line Vessel he might have been able to use to return home should he find a teleportation platform...
Was gone right along with his inventory.
"Sucks to suck."
The words seemed to lag through spacetime, finally reaching him in the end.
The Relentless roared in fury, destroying the rest of the mountain.