Lord of the Truth

Chapter 1644: Arms of the Empire

Planet Jura — The Flame Continent

BamBam 🎶

Bam 🎶

BamBam 🎶

”Hooh~! Hooh~!

The hammer sings above the steel,The nails dance in the newborn keel!Tighten the ropes! Raise the sails!Today we’ll embrace the stars with courage unveiled!We may be small, yet our hearts are grand,With sweat and flame, we’ll forge this land!”

🎶 BamBam 🎶

From atop a high platform built halfway up a mountain, Zara stood with arms crossed, listening to the rhythmic song of the dwarves. Their deep, echoing voices rolled like thunder through the valley below, carrying with them the heartbeat of an empire that was—quite literally—being forged before her eyes.

”Your Highness, don’t you think we need to expand further?” came a calm, confident voice from behind her.

A tall, handsome man stepped forward — he appeared to be in his early thirties, though the faint glow around him revealed the might of a powerful soul master. He was known throughout the empire as one of the most promising of his generation. Many whispered that he could stand toe-to-toe with a World Cataclysm and live to tell the tale.

Any many whispered that he actually did.

Yet, despite such talent, he had volunteered to oversee the construction of the empire’s warship docks the moment Zara announced she needed capable hands.

The man approached her side, his eyes sweeping across the sprawling industrial landscape below before continuing,

”The shipyard has reached its full capacity. We can’t build another hull without tearing down something else.”

”...” Zara nodded silently. This was exactly why she had come today — to witness the scale of the operation herself, to see what her empire had become.

It had already been decided that Planet Jura would one day rival Nihari in importance. If Nihari was the beating heart of the galaxy, then Jura would become its mind.

The administrative headquarters, the grand academies, the research citadels, the colossal libraries, the training workshops — all of them were built here, on the central continent, within and around the imperial capital.

And it didn’t stop there. The empire’s most advanced military industries had also taken root on Jura, specializing in the creation of mid-tier epic equipment and its countless derivatives.

Other forms of heavy industry were scattered across Class-S planets, closer to the mining belts to reduce transport costs.

But lately, a new and far more ambitious field had taken hold upon Jura’s fiery soil — the construction of warships.

When Zoha Burton unveiled her revolutionary application of the Fundamental Reshaping Law, everything changed.

Previously, shaping was slow and delicate — a crafter might build a cup layer by layer from the bottom up, fearful of collapse. But Zaha’s method introduced a mold-based process: first, the outer shell, then the internal lattice, then the condensed material itself.

This allowed for precision and speed on an unprecedented scale. A process that once took an hour could now be completed in ten minutes — and the result was stronger, denser, and far more refined.

That simple principle — structure first, substance second — reshaped the entire empire’s industry. Zaha’s discovery enabled them to apply the same method not only to equipment but even to warship construction itself!

Before this, Zara’s engineers had to rely on elite Shapers for the most delicate components — command decks, targeting arrays, and the like. But now... they could use shaping to forge the entire hull.

This discovery changed everything. It led Zara to send out imperial envoys across the Class-S worlds, searching for individuals with even the faintest resonance with the Fundamental Reshaping Law. She had even lowered the soul affinity requirements drastically — because even a failed shaper could still contribute by crafting the reinforced hulls, leaving the complex work for the experts.

And now, she stood gazing down at the result: the largest shipyard ever constructed in the history of the True Beginning Empire.

To the far left, massive cargo vessels unloaded towering mountains of raw materials — metal, crystals, alloys of unknown composition with no end in sight. Yet even with all this, more supplies kept arriving, ferried in by transport ships that filled the skies like a swarm of mechanical birds.

Before those towering mountains of metal and dust, a breathtaking sight unfolded — thousands upon thousands of Shapers standing in disciplined ranks, each one radiating faint glow.

They formed an endless grid across the plains, the distances between them measured with precision — tens of meters apart, for even the smallest spark from their shaping energy could warp air, twist magnetism, or turn unrefined metal into liquid fire.

Behind every Shaper rose a personal mountain of raw materials — mounds of ores, minerals, enchanted dust, and purified essence stones, all meticulously categorized and marked with their sigils. Each heap represented a single component of a warship that should take years to complete.

When the command was given, they raised their left hands toward their materials and extended their right hands forward, directing the unseen flows of power. Slowly, the air shimmered, and a fragment of a ship began to form, expanding layer by layer, molecule by molecule, visible even to the naked eye.

Further across the field, waves of movement followed — legions of golems and ancient treants. came as they left and guided the refined parts to their destinations.

Together they advanced toward the far right of the shipyard — a region that thundered with noise and song. There, the dwarves awaited, masters of forge and flame. They received the enormous segments and welded them seamlessly into the hulls of warships, sparks flying like golden rain. All the while, their work chants echoed across the mountain valley: rhythmic, deep, and proud, each hammer strike falling in perfect time with the beat of their voices.

Once the dwarves finished their assembly, the Rune Masters began their solemn dance.

With brushes made from the feathers of celestial birds and ink distilled from condensed soul energy, they engraved runes across the ship’s surface — runes of defense, concealment, power amplification, and energy stabilization. Each rune shimmered faintly, merging into the metal as if the ship itself were breathing.

Then came the Moon Salamanders of planet S-355 — a mysterious race with six arms and luminous eyes like flowing mercury. They descended upon the finished hulls, painting them by hand, coating every curve and surface in brilliant hues of gold, azure, or crimson depending on the fleet’s rank and specialization. Their paints were alive — mixtures of molten minerals and lunar essence that shimmered with an inner light.

When the paint set, the Rune Masters returned again, this time for the final calibration — sealing the enchantments, adjusting the resonant frequency of each rune, and aligning the entire warship’s flow to its eventual pilot.

The entire process resembled a symphony of creation. Every group, every worker, every being moved according to a rhythm older than words — no shouting, no instructions, no confusion. The harmony was instinctive, a grand orchestration of intellect and labor that turned chaos into divine order.

...Zara watched it all in silence. The vast shipyard stretched toward the horizon — a living organism of steel, magic, and will. Even with her sharpened senses as a Level 50 Marshal Empress, she could not see the end of it. The scope was simply beyond the comprehension of mortals.

A full quarter of the Continent of Flame had been sacrificed to construct this colossal complex — a monument that accelerated fleet production by nearly sixfold compared to any prior age. Yet even that astonishing efficiency... was still not enough.

For the Three Empires, whose influence expanded daily across galaxies, every additional ship was merely a grain of sand in a cosmic storm.

The True Beginning Empire now commanded over one thousand planets, and was entangled in open war with seven separate multi-empire coalitions. Among their foes stood three Centennial Empires, entrenched and ruthless, stretching across two neighboring star sectors.

And just recently, alarming intelligence reached the Imperial Council — reports of a direct collision between the First Imperial Army and a Millennial Empire within the 99th Young Sector, an area ruling over a modest stellar field in the northwestern quadrant of the sector.

The Shadow Swords had already deployed there. For now, they merely observed — calculating, assessing, watching whether this was a fleeting border conflict... or the beginning of a catastrophic war between two Millennial Empires that could shake everything.