I Only Wanted A Class In The Apocalypse

Chapter 1844: The Outer Battlefield Map!

A holographic projection shimmered into existence between them. It wasnʼt a globe or a flat map, but a complex web of celestial bodies and interconnected war zones. Hye leaned in, his mind already beginning to map out the point values for the milestones he intended to conquer.

The map revealed secrets that Hye had bled for in the past. He had tried to squeeze this data out of the Toranks; he had bribed shadow-brokers and scavenged the ruins of dead fleets, yet he had always come up empty.

As the map flickered into existence, Hye had to exert a terrifying level of control over his own heart rate. He couldnʼt allow a single speck of emotion to show on his face. He was standing across from a seasoned trade predator; if Moth sensed how much Hye craved this information, the price for the alliance would triple in an instant.

But as the details sharpened, Hye couldnʼt help but be swallowed by the scale of it. The map was divided into two distinct, jarring sections. It was alien, a violation of every law of celestial mechanics Hye understood.

One part of the map looked familiar: a cluster of sectors filled with rotating star systems and sprawling galaxies. But the second part—the larger part—was a nightmare of geometry.

It was a weird-looking, seemingly endless flat land. When Hye compared the two, he realised that a single star system in the ”Known Sector” was a mere grain of sand compared to the continent-sized expanses of the flat land. The disparity was soul-crushing.

”Are you telling me this is your first time seeing this map?! Impossible!!”

Moth was staring at Hye, his own eyes wide with disbelief. He had watched Hye study the projection for a full, silent hour. Hye hadnʼt blinked; he hadnʼt shifted his weight. He had simply absorbed the data like a sponge.

”I told you,” Hye said, finally breaking his silence but refusing to look away from the map. ”I never set foot into the outer battlefield! This is all news to me.”

”Weird… Then how come you have all these ships under your control then?!” Mothʼs scepticism was finally beginning to erode, replaced by a deep, unsettling confusion.

If Hye was a ”native” who had never left his home sector, how could he possibly command three huge fleets? Thousands of ships of varying classes and sizes didnʼt just fall from the sky. There was no way to acquire such a force without entering the outer battlefieldʼs shipyards.

”Donʼt overthink it,” Hye said, his mind racing. He knew a Hescos as sharp as Moth would eventually deduce that Hye had built a hidden base somewhere in the void. He quickly changed the subject to maintain his cover. ”I have lots of questions about this map… Just how on earth are there two different parts there?!”

”Well, one part belongs to us,” Moth explained, his thoughts visibly pivoting as he tried to solve the riddle of Hyeʼs fleets. ”And the other part belongs to the outer universe.”

”Oh, does that mean the outer universe is formed of flat ground?! An entire universe built from such a colossal and seemingly endless stretch of land?!” Hyeʼs exclamation of shock was genuine, and it was only confirmed by Mothʼs grim nod.

”We have very little information about the outer universe,” Moth admitted, his voice dropping an octave.

”Most of what we know comes from our long, bloody interactions with them in the middle universe—the battleground. But as for how their home universe truly looks, how itʼs arranged, or how their power structure works… we are in the dark. We donʼt even know if they follow the same political structures we do, with mighty races building empires and kingdoms.”

”No way!” Hye blinked, his shock mounting. ”You donʼt know the most basic information about your enemies? You know you donʼt need to actually visit their universe to know these things, right?”

”I know what you are trying to say,” Moth said, grasping Hyeʼs meaning immediately. Interrogation, prisoner exchange, the extraction of memories—standard intelligence protocols.

”But as I said before, itʼs usually a death mission when fighting against those crazy folks! They donʼt leave survivors, and they certainly donʼt let themselves be taken alive.”

”Surrender isnʼt in their vocabulary,” Moth continued, his voice heavy with the frustration of a thousand years of inconclusive warfare. ”And if we managed to capture a few out of sheer luck, they would prefer to fight to the death than to live in a prison. They have biological or soul-bound triggers—we still arenʼt sure which—that terminate their lives the moment they are incapacitated for interrogation.”

Hye remained silent, but his mind was racing. The shock he felt was real, yet it was quickly overtaken by a surge of inspiration. If the Hescos—the ”Trade Predators” of the multiverse—couldnʼt get intel, then information was the most valuable commodity in existence.

”I can even trade this in return for a high-fetched price!” Hye muttered, his voice thick with excitement.

Mothʼs brow furrowed. The human was acting like a man who had just found a diamond in a coal mine. ”What do you mean?” Moth asked, a crazy, impossible thought beginning to take root in his mind. ”You... Do you know of a way to extract information out of them?”

”Well, you can say that,” Hye replied cryptically.

He wasnʼt about to reveal his hand. He would never tell Moth that he already had several clans from that universe under his possession, captured through his thread control technique.

Even if those clans came from the distant past, their fundamental knowledge of the Outer Universeʼs geography and culture would be priceless. Furthermore, Hye knew his soul-thread technique bypassed standard psychological defences.

He hadnʼt bothered to use it for intel during the skirmishes around his territory because he had been greedy for their ships. Now, he realised he had been sitting on a goldmine of secrets.

”You arenʼt serious, are you?!!” Moth exclaimed. He looked at Hye as if the human had just grown a second head.