Harem Assassins : King Sekton's Harem Planet, Book 2: A Space Opera Harem Adventure Baron Sord (good books to read for adults .txt) 📖

flash, the red CyberKnight’s ginormous horse galloped through the air in a wide arc looping around toward one of the Hellstorms from above. Flying guardswomen nearby were showering him with blaster bolts, but most of them bounced off his tower shield.

Theia said, “I’ve never seen a shield so small deflect bolts like that.”

“Me neither,” I chuckled grimly. “It must be projecting a larger kinetic shield sphere of some kind around the entire knight and his robot horse.”

“Seems like it,” Theia agreed.

Swooping toward the nearest Hellstorm, the red CyberKnight leveled his lance and a storm of energy collected around the tip before exploding in fiery blast — ZHOOM! — that shattered the cannon in an explosion of spiraling triangles. A second later, the Hellstorm was completely gone.

“That’s not good,” I snorted. “Is that red knight’s lance a Tesserack Cannon of some kind?”

“It appears to be, my king,” Theia said with aplomb.

“Kane to Base!” shouted Sergeant Kane over comms “They’ve got a Tesserack Lance!”

I said audibly over my loudspeaker, “I didn’t realize they could make them that small.”

“Neither did I,” said Theia ominously.

The only Tesserack Cannon I’d seen used was the one on the Artemis. Any of you Star Blazers nerds will know that much like Space Battleship Yamato’s Wave Motion Gun, a Tesserack Cannon required a huge amount of energy to power, and took quite some time to charge up to fire. Me and the Bombshells had used the one on the Artemis to fold the empty pirate warship commanded by Blorgo — everyone’s favorite purple-pink Phallodome mushroom man — randomly across the four dimensions of spacetime.

The same thing had just happened to the Hellstorm hit by the red CyberKnight’s lance. He galloped proudly by, his plasma hooves blazing as they cut through the air.

I grunted, “I better do something before he—”

Before I could finish my sentence, he leveled his red lance and another blast exploded from the point, shooting out to shatter another Hellstorm cannon into spacetime fragments that quickly dissipated. The destruction of the second cannon had created an undefended avenue of attack for the rest of the four-colored space demon horde. They quickly circled around the outpost, staying low to avoid fire, and came pouring up the opening.

“Control to Crown!” Ursa yelped over comms. “Two Hellstorms down!”

At the same instant, the white CyberKnight fired his lance at a third Hellstorm, bathing it in bright white light. The cannon went from gunmetal gray to white, and it sprouted spikes and the barrel assembly turned into several long, octopus-like tentacles that writhed and whipped randomly.

My jaw dropped. While there may have been some incredibly complex but sensible technical process involved in transforming a mostly metal cannon into an organic monster — a process that would require insane levels of energy to split heavier inorganic molecules into lighter organic ones, and rearrange them into organic life — seeing it happen like this was beyond phenomenal. I wasn’t even sure I could pull off a transformation like that with my rings. Theoretically I could, but as fast as the white CyberKnight’s transformative energy blast? No way.

In other words, I was blown away.

The number of beings in this wide, wide universe that had powers that equalled my rings was growing by the day, and my status as the Universe’s Resident Badass was dwindling just as quickly.

“Make that three Hellstorms down!” Ursa bleated over comms.

The black CyberKnight fired his lance at another Hellstorm, and the black beam crumbled the cannon into rusty red dust like it had aged a billion years in the blink of an eye.

“There went a fourth one!” I grunted before Ursa could say it.

Instead she said, “The enemy is approaching base, my king!”

“I see that!”

“Dragonfires are requesting permission to launch, my king!”

“What are those?!”

“Air Guard mechs, my king!”

“Tell them to stand down! I’ve got this!” I barked, already focusing on my ring HUD.

I had two good reasons for issuing my order. One, I didn’t want any guardswomen getting killed unnecessarily. Two, my True Ring had one function I suspected these CyberKnights did not have, otherwise they would’ve exploited it already.

TIME

If I had the ability to control time, I had the ability to handle an entire army on my own. If I could stop time for everyone except me, I could go around to every enemy troop or unit and extract their mass while they hung motionless in the air, eliminating each one at my leisure and with surgical precision. To them, it would seemingly happen in the literal blink of an eye.

It would go like this:

One second, CyberKnight demon army on the attack.

Next second?

Poof!

No more army.

In my HUD, I focused on the word TIME until it flickered to blinking.

Ring, I thought, stop time.

A string of familiar blinking purple text appeared in my ring HUD.

ERROR_PROCESS_MALFUNCTION!

ERROR_INVALID_COMMAND_REQUEST!

ERROR_INVALID_ACCESS!

ERROR_BAD_OPERATOR!

Shit.

I’d completely forgotten.

Same thing had happened only yesterday, when I had tried to rewind time to undo the fate of that dead deer thing that I had believed might be Violet.

Was there a way to restart my rings? Clear my cache? Upgrade my system software? Reinstall Space Windows, or whatever space Operating System it used? In less than two seconds? Because the CyberKnights and their demon horde were approaching fast.

Time for me to troubleshoot.

I checked my dual-fuel doughnut in my ring HUD. It was plenty charged from extracting energy from Titano’s cybernetic enlargement spine. Sufficient ring energy wasn’t the problem.

I tried one more time, just in case.

Ring? Do me a favor and please stop time. Please.

I waited.

The CyberKnights and their army continued surging toward the outpost. Snarling, roaring, and slavering acidic drool from their demon mouths as they approached.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I hissed under my breath. “Stop time already!”

Same result.

A string of blinking error messages.

“Why isn’t this working?!” I grunted to myself.

Maybe I was asking too much.

Okay, ring, please slow down time. You don’t have to stop it. Just slow it down, okay? Can we manage that?

A new string of messages appeared blinking in my HUD.

SHEEBA_CODEX_CORRUPTED!

SHEEBA_DRIVER_DISABLED!

SHEEBA_PROCESS_ABORTED!

I had no idea what a Sheeba Codex or