The void of the Boötes Reach in the outer space of our galaxy was no longer empty. It was a breathtaking canvas of multiple space fortresses covered with Magic Garment Armor that vibrated slowly in the cold vacuum.
Flagship General: "Everyone, hold your lines! Do not allow these Orc hordes to cross our defense line, or our galaxy will be doomed."
Six Space Fortresses, commanded by Master Garment Realm Generals, began to steer through the void, moving to fully cover the space breach that had begun to form. Slowly, the breach widened, and the Orc army began to swarm outward.
The first wave of the attack commenced. The fortresses opened their gates, and Advance Garment Realm Lieutenant Generals dispatched their battleships, followed by swarms of frigates and destroyers. After arriving at a tactical distance from the fortresses, the battleships opened their railguns, raining fire upon the horde of savage grunts charging forward in semi-bio ships.
This was only the beginning. Soon, blooded veteran Orcs began to pour from the breach.
General: "All Colonels on the battleships, dispatch the mecha units to intercept the blooded veteran Orcs!"
Slowly, the battleship dock gates opened. Under the supervision of the controlling staff, large mechas began to emerge.
Colonel 1: "Soldiers, let's go! Crush these brutes with me!"
As the mechas engaged the blooded veterans, a brutal battle, where life was merely a number began. The mecha pilots cut through the blood veteran Orcs like paper, but due to the sheer volume of the Orc horde, several mechas were cornered, dismantled, and destroyed. The casualty count began to climb on the General's control screen, but he watched the data with a cold face.
As Orc Titans appeared, the destroyers and frigates moved to engage them head-on. Then, more Titan Orcs emerged in small numbers, and the battleships diverted all their attention toward them. Battleships, frigates, and destroyers began to vanish in massive explosions, but they were not my concern.
I stood at the center of the command center, staring through the floor-to-ceiling window. I watched the chaos with a cold gaze until a female Lieutenant General in a red dress appeared behind me.
Seraphine: "Are you feeling afraid?"
I shook my head and, while looking out at the carnage, said, "Not at all. It is my duty to attack when commanded."
Seraphine stepped behind me and hugged me from the back. I could feel that she was crying, but I did not look back. After some time, her emotions calmed; she took a step back, looked up at my 6'2" frame, and said, "I hope you can come back."
She turned and left. I continued to stare out the window in my blue Colonel's uniform and murmured softly, "I hope so, too."
The fighting grew more brutal outside. More battleships surged from the fortresses, and the fortress ion cannons began to fire at the Orcs. Yet, the fortresses were still not firing at full capacity; they were waiting. They were waiting for the higher-level beings on the other side of the breach.
The moment the Generals had been dreading finally arrived. Beings nearly the size of the breach itself began to emerge. They were larger than the battleships. Seven mythical Orcs had arrived.
I took a deep breath. The red Magic Armor made of my magical red fibers began to hum in rhythm with my breathing. My blood flowed faster. If anyone had stood near me at that moment, they would have been suffocated by the dense red mana fog dissipating from my armor.
Commander: "All Master Garment Realm Mages, immediately dispatch to handle the mythical Orcs."
I turned and looked toward the center of the command center. Seraphine was stationed behind the General, commanding the vessels. She did not look at me.
I began to walk out. Every officer who saw me as I headed toward the mecha harbor saluted. Inside the hangar, I watched the staff frantically repairing units returning from the front. I moved to the center of the harbor, toward the largest mecha. It was a beast in hibernation, its eyes pulsing with red light, its steel body shining.
As I reached it, red fibers flowed from my body, and with their aid, I entered the chest cockpit. The mecha was already an extension of my body, its nervous system woven from my own fiber yarns. As I connected my extended fibers from my hand to the yarn network, the mecha roared to life, its red lights flaring.
I became the mecha. I maneuvered it out of the fortress.
After traveling some distance, a fissure appeared behind me, and a massive red-and-steel battleship emerged. It began to disassemble, its parts locking onto my mecha to add armor layers. A frigate appeared from the rear, its hull merging with the battleship parts to form a blade and shield in my hands.
Now, only this one hundred meters of crimson steel stood between me and a mythical Orc.
I took a deep breadth and tightened my right hand around the colossal blade forged from the frigate's hull. In my left, a towering shield hummed, its kinetic-absorption field vibrating with the protective garment I had meticulously stitched over it.
As a Newbie Tesseract Realm mage, I had pushed my biology past the breaking point. My body was a furnace, overloaded with hormonal signals to keep my synapses firing at speeds that defied nature. I expanded a spherical layer of my garment, a private domain of three-dimensional space, to enclose both me and the Orc. Within this volume, I was the Grand Tailor. I could feel every movement.
In my head, the Redveil, my dark crimson AI, acted as my extended nervous system. It rained hellfire upon the surrounding horde from my railguns and ion cannons, keeping the Titans at bay so I could finish the mythical Orc quickly.
"Redveil, status," I rasped, my eyes glowing a deep, dangerous red.
"External batteries at 90%," the Redveil's cold voice responded. "I am holding the line."
I looked at the mythical Orc. Suddenly, my mecha lunged, cleaving down with the blade. The Orc anticipated the attack and countered. Sparks showered the void, and our speeds began to increase as we fought like shadows, appearing and disappearing at will.
Finally, after a long battle, I found a small opening in the Orc's defense. I propelled my blade through it while blocking an attack with my shield. The blade passed through the Orc's stomach, and a heart-wrenching sound escaped its throat. I mercilessly cut the beast in two.
As I prepared to move toward the other six mythical Orcs, an Orcish Sovereign suddenly emerged from the breach. The fortresses flared with red alarms.
It let out a roar that cracked the Magic garment cover over my mecha. Seeing me as the most powerful mage. It locked eyes with me and swung a blade that caused gravity to collapse, hitting my shield with the weight of a dying star. Despite the armor and the battleship modifications and magic garment layer, the mecha began to buckle.
"The machine... is failing," I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.
The Sovereign's second blade bypassed my modifications and sliced through the mecha's shoulder. Red hydraulic fluid and mana sprayed into the vacuum like arterial blood.
"Is this it?" I thought, the world slowing as my fiber-nervous system tried to sharpen my senses for a final survival push. My thoughts began to drift. "After the reincarnation, after years of building the perfect machine... am I about to fall?"
The beast roared in triumph. I looked past it, toward the fortress, a line of silver mana garment struggling against the dark. I looked at the flagship, and for a fleeting second, my neural links became so focused that I saw Seraphine looking toward me, her eyes filled with worry.
I realized then that some endings require an imperfect method. To stabilize the situation, to remove this Sovereign, I had to remove myself.
For a second, fear which was cold and primal gripped my chest. My hands hesitated on the haptic controls and my magic fiber begin to become uncontrolled. But then, as I saw a Titan Orc crush a nearby frigate, I knew it was time.
"Redveil... full system shunt," I commanded. "Authorize Overclock."
My body and the spherical garment around me ignited with red mana. It wasn't a controlled attack anymore; it was the violent, terrifying radiance of a dark red quasar burning in the void.
On the bridge, I felt Seraphine's silver mana falter. She understood. But she didn't scream for me to stop. She stood her ground as a Lieutenant General, her heart breaking in the silence. I turned the scarred head of my mecha one last time, finding her gaze through the layers of space.
"Sorry, Seraphine," I murmured.
With a final, violent surge of my red fibers, I lunged. The collision was instantaneous. A blinding flare of crimson and obsidian light swallowed the Sovereign and me. For one infinitesimal second, a quasar burned at the heart of the Boötes Reach, and then... nothing.
The creature and I were gone.
Tesseract Space
I was no longer in the void.
I was floating in a realm of time, where the timelines of the universe looked like the very magic fibers I had spent my life mastering. I could see it all. The past, the present, and the flickering possibilities of what could have been.
I saw my past life on Earth, the chalk dust, the lonely hospital bed, and the family I had treated as constants, those who would never leave me.
I saw this life. The pink-haired mother who protected me, the mage-father who believed in me, and the girl who became a goddess of the galaxy falling for me.
I felt the weight of my regrets. I hadn't given Seraphine the life she deserved. But as I watched the silver mana threads of the fleet begin to push back the darkness in the wake of my light, I felt a spark of peace.
I had done something before dying. I had lived a life worth living. At least humans will be safe for a long time.
Then my consciousness began to drift, I wondered, Am I about to die?
Then, I saw a tiny, newborn hand reaching out for the light. I extended my own rough, large hand toward it.
I begin to thought am I about to be a first beginner tesseract realm mage.