NOVEL WEB Chapter 339: Hand in Hand with Evil.
"I kind of miss Dr'ul's presence," Dina spoke up after several more hours had passed and everyone else had settled down once again, doing small mana exercises on Arla's orders. "It would be around times like these that she would suddenly pop up saying she was bored and wanted to fight someone."
"Indeed," Arla agreed while Ikaris nodded, thinking likewise.
"She chose her path though, I can only hope she does not fail, that would be a severe blow to the power we have on our side, minus Master's power scaling proportionally greater than all of us combined, she makes up ten percent of the might we wield," Ikaris added.
"Just ten?" Dina asked surprised at the low estimate, from where she stood, Dr'ul should have been far beyond a mere ten percent.
"Of course, I alone in contrast with our full force have fifty percent of the overall power we possess, Dr'ul holds ten percent while Cecelia probably has around eight, you are probably six and Arla three, the rest is shared between everyone else," Ikaris explained with a rather disappointed stare.
"The five of us alone have nearly Eighty percent of the forces total power, somehow, that does not make me feel at ease, by losing the two of them we have lost eighteen percent of our effectiveness," Dina furrowed her brows in thought. "Considering our enemy, that makes me very uncomfortable, we are not in any position to lose anyone else."
"Correct," Ikaris relaxed in her seat and looked out into the void once more. ""This is why I need all of you to grow, it is asking a lot I am sure, but as we are right now it is not yet a plausible goal to take down the Emporium, we need power many times that of what we already have," She tapped the desk before her, prompting a steering-station to rise out of it after reading her mana signature.
She slowly held on to the steering device shaped like a wishing bone and slightly tilted it to the left, tossing the ship out of the smooth stream of horizontally stretched stars and galaxies into a chaotic field of debris when they came to a halt.
Hearing the ship's engines and core cooling from slowing down, everyone gathered at the screen behind them, staring out into the desolate field.
"Is this how they deal with it, is this how they have handled their business all this time?" Ikaris's seat slid backwards and she stood with a deep frown etched into her face.
"Even when we destroy everything, I have never seen anything this cruel..." She watched a child's doll slowly bump onto the screen as the ship began moving toward a shattered donut planet, scanning hundreds of millions of corpses floating in the void.
"Analysis shows that these people were all killed by the void of space, the ring world has no gravity at all, the atmosphere is also gone, to my knowledge the Resistance was supposed to attack and destroy the outpost on the nearby moon, I will try salvaging any availible data," Alpha announced before she vanished.
"The Resistance did this?" Shar-Khan asked, furrowing his brows and shaking his head. "This is not how I have seen them act in the past, this is the most extreme-"
[On the contrary] Alpha interrupted him, speaking directly in their heads. [This is how the Resistance usually treats systems allied with the Emporium as strong supporters, they only came here to destroy the outpost, but instead they exterminated an entire civilization, it is all by the Emporium's design though] She added. [The destruction of these people was predetermined and premeditated].
"Did you find anything?" Ikaris entreated the System to remain on topic.
[Indeed I did, Milady, There have been anti-Resistance campaigns running on this world for years now with hundreds of thousands of Emporium applicants every single year, they are a weak people though, not human and more fragile than most human children on average, it was an extermination ordered seven days ago by the Empire, directly from the Emperor's own mouth]. Alpha answered.
[The destruction of this world was carried out by a Vice-Leader of theTesistance; Rem, Milady, this was his last stop before meeting you].
"I should have killed him instead of offering any mercy," Ikaris seethed, walking towards a pod door to the side and entering the small area.
"Where is she going?" Zara asked, but instead of Dina whom she had requested an answer from responding, it was Hudor who replied to her appeal with a deep sigh and his hands folded against his chest.
"The Princess intends to give them a proper sendoff," He answered, looking at Dina who was lost in thought and nigh trembling with anger.
"It would be fair to assume that Rem destroyed the power grids first, killing the artificial gravity and then he attacked the backup stations which primarily control and disperse the atmosphere, with no power this entire structure is nothing more than a floating object in space, they all died terrible deaths," Alpha appeared before them all, taking control of the ship and turning away after Ikaris suddenly appeared in her seat with her eyes closed and her fists balled while her brows twitched. Discover exclusive content at empire
"Milady, shall we?"
"Yes, Alpha," Ikaris answered, opening her eyes once more as a small light began shining from the middle of the donut-shaped mega-planetary structure. "There is nothing here to salvage and nobody left to save."
After their departure, the light rapidly expanded, swallowing everything with a powerful gravitational field like a black hole, turning all it swallowed into more energy to feed itself, over the next few days this anomaly swallowed all the corpses and grew staggeringly massive swallowing the star of the system and then harmlessly imploding on itself at the end of it's cycle when there was nothing close enough for it to constantly feed on.
[Divine Tier Skill: Perishing Gluttony]
***
"Another one," Hudor stared in disbelief, this time it was a twin planet that had crashed into each other, but it was obvious at a glance that this was because of a great struggle on said celestial bodies, there were clear signs of fights, and again the cores of these planets had been destroyed, causing the balance they shared to collapse and send them spiralling into each other, there were no signs of bodies, but the amount of debris was the most they had seen till that point.
"This is the fifth site of mass destruction in just as many days," He swallowed and frowned.
"They were attacked unannounced and unsanctioned by several powerful members of the Emporium for housing Fugitives of the Resistance, there was no such member, neither Godslayer nor Vatui parties were found yet they still destroyed them after their search," Alpha announced her presence with that bit of information and then cleared her throat once more.
"According to the data provided before the last communications were cut seventy years ago on the day of the attack, it was a high ranking General of the Emporium, the Eighth General, Lars, to be exact."
"Well fuck him," Dina snapped her fingers. "He's already dead so their revenge has been served." She added.
"I don't understand something," Zara looked at Alpha. "If there was no sign of either Vatui or Godslayers on these planets then why did the Emporium destroy them?" She asked.
"There was probably no such threat to begin with, I think they did it for resource," Ikaris answered bitterly.
"They missed a small pocket somewhere because I can sense a subnormal amount of the same material they use to make their ships here, it is faint but I would never mistake it for anything else, it has a very unique biology which can bond with living tissue and sentient forms, I believe they call it Araculite."
"Correct," Alpha nodded at Ikaris's pinpoint analysis and gestured to the side of the screen where an augmented slider explaining the makeup of the organic living metal appeared.
"Araculite was mined here by the Emporium for a long while, but after the governing bodies decided to stop selling their precious metals and weakening their eco-systems, the Emporium destroyed them and continued mining it until there was none left, it was never about the enemy, this was destruction brought by nothing but greed."
"Humans..." Dina stared at the dead field of debris. "The humans of the Grand Collective are pure evil, I can't believe the things I have seen over the course of this trip," She clenched her fists trembling with rage. "It makes my blood boil."
"Aye," Cosmo had an expression of wrath as he stared outward into the void towards their destination. "I cannot believe that Vatui and Godslayers alike would partake in the wicked slaughter and cruel acts of genocide I have witnessed either, it is unbecoming of our species to do such horrible things, I am ashamed to have the same blood as them running through my veins-"
"Sol has also committed similar acts," Ikaris pointed out, but Cosmo shook his head and gestured to Alpha.
"I have requested information of the feats Master Vestic has accomplished, I already know of the imminent danger which the Demon race posed in the Sol Collective, they were antagonistic villains which went about destroying worlds in the name of dark beings who sought to swallow all realms and destroy everything," He pointed out.
"They are not the same... the Resistance and the Emporium; they both walk hand in hand with evil, they should all be destroyed!"