The golden intersection of the neutral trading city, Silverine.
The magnificent hologram billboards of the square, bustling with countless races and merchants, simultaneously shifted to the Imperial crest with a loud 'Bzzt—' static noise.
The festive noise of the square ceased in an instant.
"What is this? Why is the Empire broadcasting here...?"
Just as a merchant muttered anxiously, a cold, mechanical official Imperial voice echoed throughout the square.
[OFFICIAL WANTED NOTICE: DISRUPTION OF IMPERIAL ORDER & TREASONOUS TERROR]
The faces of four people floated across the screen.
"That woman... 'Witch of Chaos', Jayn Rumor?"
"Isn't that the genius guy who got kicked out of Silverine next to her? 'Heretic', Leon Bright!"
"Vent Steel! How did 'Vent of Steel' become a 'Fallen Hero'?"
"That mysterious woman is... 'Savage', Lilia Astrea?"
And below them, an astronomical number that would make every hyena in the sky dance floated up.
Someone in the square read the number aloud.
"Bounty... 1... 1 billion gold?!"
Jayn's Crew, whom Adrian Valentine had called 'Embers', had now become a 'Wildfire' chased by the entire Empire.
At that moment, the square was no longer a safe trading post.
Merchants who had been drinking together just moments ago were now staring piercingly at the bounty amounts in the holograms instead of each other's faces.
Someone adjusted their grip on their blaster, and someone else began to glance at the person next to them as a competitor rather than a colleague.
The square had turned into a dangerous hunting ground mixed with greed and wariness.
The Empire had made the four embers the most expensive targets in the sky.
*
"...Witch of Chaos, huh."
Leon turned off the Silverine public communication channel he had just intercepted.
As the booming Imperial broadcast that filled the bridge ceased, a deathly silence settled inside.
Our faces on the screen and the astronomical bounty numbers shimmered grotesquely in the red emergency light.
"Damn it!"
Leon slammed his fist onto the smashed console and spat out a curse.
"1 billion gold! Now every hyena in the sky will rush to bite our tails! Terrorists? Can't they think about what they did!"
Lilia, with a pale face, clasped her hands together and couldn't say a word.
She seemed to feel the weight of the reality that we had become 'Public Enemies' more heavily than the title of 'Savage'.
In that moment when everyone fell into confusion, it was Vent who broke the silence of the bridge.
"Captain."
He called me.
I turned my gaze from the hologram map to him.
"We need to change our course."
He pointed to the 'Forgotten Archives'.
"Our objective remains unchanged. But the Empire's regular routes are now suicide. Even without the Empire's dense surveillance network, we won't last 10 minutes because of the bounty hunters."
Leon refuted.
"Then where do you plan to go, Vent? Are you going to teleport with your Imperial technology? Did you forget the state of this ship?"
Leon was right.
The Lumina Lip was flying thanks to Vent and Leon's emergency repairs, but it was closer to drifting than flying.
The ship, with its stabilizer fins destroyed, screamed with every turn, and the power reactor's output wasn't even at half capacity.
"We turned the entire sky into our enemy with a barely flying tin can!"
"That is why we go here."
Vent pointed to a specific area on the map.
It was an area completely off the Imperial routes, marked with dark red swirling clouds: 'Uncharted Territory'.
"The Ancient Floating Island Zone. A graveyard of the sky that hasn't been properly explored since the Great Cataclysm."
Lilia raised her head in shock.
"That place... is the habitat of giant sky fish like Devourers! It's too dangerous!"
"Correct."
Vent agreed coldly.
"That is why we go. Neither the Imperials nor hyenas like Caligo have the capacity to chase us that far. The most dangerous path is the only safe path for us right now."
I looked at Vent. His blue-gray eyes were unwavering.
He was fulfilling his duty as a strategist.
"Fine."
I made my decision.
"Leon, just keep the engines running. Lilia, find a path with the minimum number of monsters. Vent, set the course."
Now, the Lumina Lip precariously turned its nose toward the darkest and most dangerous sky where the Empire's surveillance did not reach, the 'Ancient Floating Island Zone'.
* * *
The course Vent set was truly the entrance to hell.
Fragments of floating islands torn apart during the Great Cataclysm were scattered like giant bones, and polluted Aether clouds filled the gaps like fog.
Despite Vent and Leon's desperate tuning, the Lumina Lip shook precariously like a shipwreck swept by huge waves due to the broken stabilizer fins.
"Port 10 degrees! Rock approaching!"
If it weren't for Lilia's shouts, we would have become part of that bone grave dozens of times already.
It was then.
Beep—! Beep—! Beep—! Beep—!
A sharp alarm covered the entire bridge. But the pattern was different from the previous Imperial signals.
"This signal... it's not the Empire!"
Leon turned on the radar in shock.
On the screen, dozens of red dots were disorderly closing in on us from all sides.
"The pattern is too crude... These guys are!"
"Chrome Hounds."
Vent murmured quietly next to me.
His voice had sunk coldly, and his gaze was fixed as if to pierce the dozens of red dots on the radar.
As soon as he finished speaking, the Lumina Lip's front screen was forcibly hijacked.
Filling the screen was that hideous and giant artificial jaw we encountered in Silverine.
'Red Jaw' Caligo.
His red mechanical jaw opened with a 'clank' sound, revealing rotten teeth behind it.
"Kwahahaha! Look who it is! Isn't it Lord 'Witch of Chaos', Jayn Rumor!"
Caligo's mocking voice echoed throughout the bridge.
"The rat who gave me such humiliation in Silverine and ran away is still alive in a tin can like this!"
He ground his red jaw grotesquely, as if the humiliation of that day was still fresh.
"Thanks to you, my fleet was smashed, and my subordinates were scattered. I came to collect that debt."
Caligo's gaze pierced through the screen to me.
"But coincidentally... the Imperials put 1 billion gold on your neck! Kwahaha! Revenge and sitting on a pile of money! Isn't this a god-given opportunity!"
I tightened my grip on the control stick.
"Vent! Calculate the route! We're getting out of here!"
But Vent shook his head. His face was hardened like steel.
"Impossible, Captain. We are blocked on all sides. We cannot break through the encirclement with the ship in this damn state."
"Leon!"
As I shouted urgently, Leon slammed his fist on the smashed console.
"Damn it! Damn it! Not with this ship! Maneuvering combat is impossible because the stabilizer fins are smashed! The moment we get hit by one of their 'Scrap Harpoons', we're done! We'll be pierced by those giant steel harpoons and dragged to their base!"
His scream was reality. We were a barely flying heap of scrap metal, and they were a pack of starving wolves burning with revenge and greed.
Caligo's fleet completed a perfect encirclement in an instant. Soon, crude and hideous kitbashed ships aimed at us from all sides.
However, they didn't attack immediately. They were just enjoying our despair, looking down like a fish caught in a net.
Caligo's red jaw opened again with an unpleasant sound.
"How about it, Jayn? Those tricks you were good at are over now. This is my hunting ground. You are just a rat caught in my net. A 1 billion gold rat!"
I gripped the control stick until my knuckles turned white. But the ship didn't move as I willed.
Leon slumped at his console, staring blankly at the tactical board filled with red enemies.
Lilia was praying with a pale face looking at the encirclement outside the window.
Vent was just staring at the tactical screen. On his face lay the cold resignation of an expert that no maneuver was meaningful with this barely flying ship.
Despair.
A different, rougher, and more blatant despair than when we were trapped in Adrian's Aether Dampener trap crushed the bridge.
"Now, surrender quietly, rat. Then, without pain..."
Caligo began to narrow the encirclement, urging surrender.
It was that desperate moment when his ships were measuring the range of their Scrap Harpoons.
"No... No!"
Suddenly, Lilia, who was pale in the corner of the bridge, screamed.
Her gaze was not on Caligo's fleet, but toward the distant sea of clouds beneath our feet.
"Jayn! Down there... in the clouds... something huge... and hungry... is waking up!"
Before she could finish her sentence, the entire ship was engulfed in a massive vibration.
Thump...!
With a roar like the beating of a primordial heart, the sea of clouds we were floating on began to rise massively.
"What... is that!"
Leon shouted in shock.
What rose as the clouds parted was not a floating island.
A massive body reminiscent of a giant rocky mountain. Thick carapace that wouldn't even be scratched by ordinary bombardment. And... a mouth as huge as a whale shark's, seeming to suck in everything of the ship.
From the thick clouds beneath the route, the giant carnivorous sky fish, Devourer, whose territory had been invaded, revealed itself.
"Kwahaha! Stupid bastard! Walking into your own death!"
Caligo's mocking voice rang through the communication. He laughed at the appearance of this giant monster.
In his arrogant eyes, even that 'living natural disaster' looked like nothing more than a bulky beast he could suppress with his kitbashed fleet, or just a nuisance to his 1 billion gold hunt.
I didn't miss that gap of fatal misjudgment. This wasn't a crisis. It was an opportunity.
I shouted toward Lilia while holding the control stick.
"Lilia! Now! Connect my mind to that guy like with the Sky Whale!"
"Jayn? But that is...!"
"We're going to turn that bastard's rage... toward their fleet!"
Lilia hesitated for a moment, but soon realized my intention and closed her eyes.
As her hand touched the organic helm of the bridge, her pure Aether wrapped around me.
I closed my eyes and gathered the anger I had accumulated for 10 years, the hatred for the Empire that burned Rust Haven, and the murderous intent toward Caligo who was trying to hunt me now.
This was not 'Empathy'. It was a 'Transfer of Rage'.
The moment my consciousness connected to the Devourer riding Lilia's Aether, the beast's massive instinct flowed into me.
'Hungry... Noisy... My territory...!'
I overlaid my anger on that rage and amplified it.
'Those guys are the enemies who invaded your territory!'
The Devourer roared.
Initially, the beast turned its head briefly at the pure Aether wave flowing from our Lumina Lip.
But a stronger, more disgusting smell stimulated the beast's instinct.
The smell of crude and polluted engine exhaust spewing from the Chrome Hound fleet.
To the Devourer, the pure Aether wave was 'food', but that polluted exhaust was the stench of a 'competitor' invading its territory.
The giant sky fish ignored the Lumina Lip and opened its massive mouth toward the larger and noisier threat, the Chrome Hound fleet.
"This stupid beast... daring to interrupt my hunt?"
Caligo's voice rang through the communication.
It wasn't bewilderment, but cold anger at his perfect hunting ground being defiled.
"All fleet! Focus fire on that monster! Turn that nuisance into scrap metal! I must get my hands on that 1 billion gold bounty!"
The Devourer rushed toward Caligo's fleet, swallowing a small ship blocking its way whole.
"Damn it!"
Caligo spat out a curse. But it wasn't fear, it was the anger of a man whose perfect hunt was disturbed.
Instead of withdrawing the fleet, he ordered to concentrate all firepower to eliminate the Devourer first.
The battlefield turned into chaos in an instant.
"Leon, Vent! Now!"
I shouted holding the control stick.
"Maximum engine output! We're getting out of this hell!"
Leon and Vent frantically operated the consoles.
And so, the Lumina Lip leisurely exited the battlefield, using the chaotic gap where two massive forces collided.