The force now facing Arkhan’s armada was not the only group to have made its way into Arcadia space. There was another, smaller force comprised mostly of current-gen corvettes and destroyers with a few cruisers mixed in for good measure that was speeding across the void that was attempting to link up with the much larger main AHU armada. They would not, however, manage to make it to their destination. This was partially due to them doing the same old thing that every sizable Holy Union force did; jumping straight into a minefield. More ships managed to make it out (mostly) intact due to them being the newest and best ships of their class, but more than a few were now limping across the blackness of space.

This smaller force would be easy pickings for any defenses that they could to run into, but whether out of sheer dumb luck or perhaps favor from some higher power they somehow managed to avoid any further traps. They were not fortunate beyond that point, unfortunately for them, as they ran into what appeared to be a simple space yacht. Thinking this would be an easy mark, the Angels, in their hubris, opened fire on the space yacht and sunk it without any resistance.

This was a massive, and I do mean massive mistake on their part.

That ship was not the pleasure barge of just some average high society individual. No, they had just targeted and sunk the ship carrying the Dragon-Queen of Arcadia herself, Asharia Ophedein Draconis. While a normal person would have died in the explosions or due to exposure, Asharia was no normal person. She had endured far worse than what the Angels just threw at her, and while she may not have cared for the ship all that much, she did care that it, along with everything on board, was now drifting away in various directions.

“That ship was mine, god damnit, and so was everything on board!”

Okay, maybe she did care for the ship, but mostly it was just the anger that she now had several less possessions of her own. She was, after all, still a dragon and dragons are notorious for being possessive. In almost every tale where a dragon runs roughshod over a place, there is always the hint that something pissed it off, and few things piss off a dragon more than having something that they feel is theirs being taken from them. These Angel bastards had not just taken her personal yacht from her, but also had taken several pieces of fine art, some expensive clothes and a whole lot of precious metals and gems.

All in all, Asharia was not having a good day now, and the people that ruined her day were going to pay dearly for it.

…

The smaller AHU fleet moved on, leaving the rapidly spreading debris behind. They were about to put the pedal to the metal again, but something caused their sensors to flip the fuck out. They were now, somehow, in the presence of something massive. And not just massive, but also radiating such pure and raw energy that it began to break their equipment due to the sheer magnitude of what was hitting their systems.

“What the bloody hell is going o….”

The Angel in command of the fleet did not finish her sentence. Her ship and roughly half of the spread-out force simply ceased to be. Those just out of the destruction’s reach saw what happened out of their view ports. Five heads, each one colored differently and each one far larger than the largest battleship had simultaneously chomped down on a good portion of their taskforce. It was as if they were the JSDF in a Godzilla movie; they watched helplessly as the five heads pulled away and they were powerless to stop those same five heads from snapping their jaws shut on of them.

The ‘full power’ of the Five-God Dragon was on display in a remote corner of Arcadian space. Easily dwarfing the size that she had been forced to be in when she first reemerged from beneath the city all that time ago, her size now compared to back then was like comparing a one-story house to the Empire State Building. She was large and in charge and beyond all other things she was rightfully pissed. She needed something to vent her fury on and the light of the Colony Laser breaking upon the Holy Union’s main armada was like a lighthouse in a storm.

She had previously been big enough to fit inside the ‘Adeptus Deorum’ even in her true form, but now that she was back to ‘full strength’, she was big enough to be the very ship that Arkhan had such pride in. Her wings spread wide, increasing her size even further and as they began to conduct mana the very spacetime around her bent and reshaped to propel her towards the battle that had just started up again.

As if things were not bad enough for the Angels already, a being who truly fit the definition of a ‘physical god’ was on her way to wreck house.

…

Inside the ‘Final Judgment’, the flagship and mobile headquarters of the Angelus Holy Union’s military and its governing body, hymns were being sung as the main weapon of the massive capital ship thrummed with power. With each verse sung aloud the faith-powered contraption grew closer to firing its superweapon and with every passing moment the weapon that was just as powerful as the Colony Laser that was used against them grew closer to being unleashed. No one could interrupt the ceremony for any reason, which made it impossible for the commanding officer that controlled the ship, the very head of the theocratic nation itself, to know that there was a gigantic, pissed off, five-headed divine dragoness on its way to mess them up.

The guns of the ship were silent and there was no more energy left for shielding. The various ‘primitive’ tools used by the Arcadians were now making sizable dents in their lines and in some cases were even making holes in them. Every few minutes another couple of ships would be damaged beyond any hope of recovery and would make a final sacrifice by blowing up, hoping to take their foe with them. Some of the MSGs and MAGs were taken down and many fighters and bombers were lost, but so far the main fleet had been keeping itself at arms-length from the opposition. They were just close enough to fire at the AHU, yet just far enough away that neither side was too accurate.

It was a battle between an army of men with of 9mm Pistols and a few dozen men with M16 Assault Rifles. One certainly had a better chance of killing at long range, but the other was far more numerous. Both would kill you, and both were up against armor that covered most of the ‘body’ but it was just a matter of how many would fall before one side emerged victorious. Arcadia was like a bunch of ants fighting an elephant in that regard. They had the numbers to deal with a foe far better equipped and armored than them, and while some of them may end up squished they would still have more to throw at the problem.

True, they had to worry about the ‘Anti Summoned Being’ Weapons, but after enough of them were shot down without causing Arkhan trouble they realized that the weapons were not mounted onto the ships themselves.

Despite all of that, there was still a time limit to how long this fight would last and a degree of uncertainty regarding how this would all end. Would the forces of Arkhan realize that their ruler was in danger and get him the hell out of there? Would the ‘Final Judgment’ obliterate a large amount of Arcadia’s military? Would Asharia somehow intervene and throw a wrench in all of it as she descended on the Angels like the supermassive kaiju she had transformed into?

Only one thing was certain, no matter what happened there would be massive destruction.