My Talent's Name Is Generator Chapter 824 The Clash

Mid-formation, the spatial matrices grew unstable. The crafts shook with fierce intensity as Essence overwhelmed their cores. One by one, the ships burst apart from the inside. Blasts ripped through the launch areas, hurling pieces of metal and crystal over the cityscape while the startup processes buckled beneath the massive influx.

A number of crafts were just starting to ascend when the wave hit them in flight. Their engines sputtered wildly before bursting in dazzling bursts, crashing down to the surface as flaming wreckage.

Attempts at long-distance teleportation wavered and faded away.

"No one would be leaving," I declared, my voice booming over the whole city.

The rage burning in my chest showed no sign of dimming. If anything, it grew even more acute.

Slowly, I lifted my hand and fanned out my fingers.

Space obeyed.

A new wave radiated outward, this one tightly reined in. It stretched wide and began to blanket the entire city.

Once the wave finished its full sweep, the city stood completely boxed in.

No teleportation link could take hold. No space passage could hold firm. No outside portal could break through.

From overhead, it looked like nothing had shifted. The sky kept its blue hue, the grass its verdant shade. Yet the city had turned into a locked vault.

I brought my hand down.

Panic below me ramped up. Awareness raced through those attuned enough to sense the change. Their ways out had disappeared. Their flight paths had been wiped clean.

My eyes dropped to the aged Naga on his knees in front of me. After the consumption, his frame hardly clung together, with scales split and breaths ragged, but his stare still held a frantic scheming glint.

"Go ahead and use it," I stated with calm. "I know you have it. Do not worry. I will not stop you."

His breaths came thicker. For an instant, doubt crossed his features, but need overpowered reluctance. His shaky hand dipped into the storage ring and withdrew a little brown token.

The second it emerged, I sensed it plainly.

It bore the System's aura. The elder Naga eyed the token in his hand for a short moment, as if gauging the price, then smashed it in his fist.

The piece crumbled to powder.

Nothing occurred.

Over a few beats of the heart, the sky stayed unmarred, the enclosed city hushed.

Suddenly, the air over the city split open.

A fissure crawled across the very sky, slim at the start then broadening, like brittle glass yielding to strain. Through the rift seeped light, not everyday sunshine but a heavy golden glow that swept over the city in growing swells.

"You are here," I whispered, my gaze rising.

The golden illumination grew denser, cascading down like a falling shroud. Clouds melted away in its track. The space barrier I'd set up quivered as a much vaster power bore down on it from the heavens.

Then I spotted it.

A massive finger, shaped from packed golden energy, started to descend from the split sky. It matched the structure I'd met before, enormous beyond scale, its skin etched with moving lines that echoed rune designs but flowed like active pathways.

It was the System's alone.

Or perhaps just an image of it.

The elder Naga uttered a sound caught between a chuckle and a wail. "You… you cannot stand against that," he wheezed.

I paid him no glance.

My focus locked on the lowering structure as the golden shine brightened, weighing upon the world underneath.

The finger dropped lower, pointed straight at where I hovered.

The planet's green Essence pulled back on reflex from its nearing, as though it knew an outsider's order was disrupting its normal rhythm.

As I stared up at the approaching structure, a single query clung stubbornly to my thoughts.

Why?

Why did the System step in this way? This marked outright involvement, a manifestation huge enough to fracture a whole planet's sky.

What could possibly drive it to act so boldly?

I couldn't yet accept the System arrayed against the Prime Universe. All I'd studied, all Amun had shared, suggested the reverse. It served as a ruling force. A framework designed to support the First Executor. It wasn't built for picking sides in small squabbles.

Yet there it stood.

Reacting to a token to guard the Hollow Star and play their protector.

That didn't add up.

No straightforward deal could push an entity this grand to behave like a summoned sentry. Even Amun, shackled yet awe-inspiring in reach, hadn't claimed casual control over the System. He haggled. He laid out terms. He didn't summon sky fingers.

So what secret did Hollow Star hold? What pact had they struck?

Or was this no safeguarding at all?

"I will not be running this time, and it is thanks to you only, System," I murmured softly as the golden structure kept descending.

I raised my hand.

Prarambh materialized in my hold.

The instant my fingers gripped the hilt, the sword stirred. The red streak tracing its dark blade flashed briefly, then glowed deeper, as if sensing the purpose rising in me. With one sharp pull, I swung the blade upward.

The purple Essence coursing through my frame jerked wildly.

It felt like a huge pull had gripped it inside, yanking it to the sword. What started as a smooth current turned into a rush. Essence flooded from my pathways, raced past my center, and streamed into Prarambh at quickening pace. The pull grew fiercer than I'd guessed. In a single pulse, close to ninety percent of my full stores got drawn off.

The blade thrummed in my grasp. Red light flared along its edge.

Then the strike took shape. A enormous arc of focused power, spanning as far as the city down below, it shredded the sky on its upward path. Air tore open behind it. Space itself buckled outward from the strain of its motion as the red surge charged toward the lowering golden finger.

High over the locked city, the two powers smashed together.

For a split second, the sky filled with clashing shades—gold forcing down, red driving up.

The clash burst out in a searing glare.

The golden structure shook. Fractures raced over its form where the strike hit, rough paths speeding down the falling finger's span. The rune circuits stuttered unevenly as the red power chewed into its core.

The clash's power hurled tremors through the air. Structures below crumbled. The earth shook as shoved winds hammered out in spreading circles.

My form hung steady in the sky, but the Essence loss weighed my limbs down. Prarambh buzzed in my hold, its red line glowing fiercely as it resisted the golden image.