Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2467 Dot

Millions of light-years beyond the shell—

Silence--

Here, in the vast emptiness where the Space Beasts roamed without restraint, there were beasts the size of entire planets, millions upon millions of them scattered throughout the surroundings, and yet despite their immense numbers and unimaginable sizes, not a single beating heart among them could be heard, nor even the faint tapping of one enormous scale against another.

Here, where light itself did not exist in any recognizable form, even the simple word color had no meaning, for there was nothing upon which such a concept could be perceived or distinguished.

The void was not merely a place where things existed but everything happened to be dark; it was utterly and completely empty. There was no black thing standing beside something of another color, nor any darker object that could be distinguished from a lighter one, but rather there was simply nothing at all for color to cling to in the first place... Here, anyone who tried to assign a color to what they saw would be like someone attempting to see through their own elbow; no matter how hard they tried, there was simply no visual input from which such a judgment could possibly be made.

Here, where an endless number of universes resided throughout that boundless emptiness, there was nevertheless not a single shining star or luminous moon that could be seen anywhere around, not even the faintest familiar celestial light breaking through the absolute nothingness surrounding them.

The only thing that emitted any level of visible light did not actually illuminate the emptiness around it or reveal anything nearby, but instead seemed more like a solitary lamp suspended in nothingness, meant to attract insects and stray animals toward itself... It was Universe B-14 itself.

Near the golden gate, the details of the shell could not be properly seen or distinguished, but the farther one moved away from it and the greater the distance separating them became, the more some of its immense features gradually began to become clear...

The shell was enormous, truly enormous in every possible sense of the word. Even from millions of light-years away, the shell still appeared like an impossibly vast, perfectly straight wall stretching endlessly toward an unseen horizon that the eye could never reach. The wall itself was entirely black, blending almost perfectly into the surrounding void, yet scattered across it were countless exceedingly faint points of light, so small and distant that they looked like fireflies quietly perched upon the surface of some incomprehensibly great wall... Those tiny, almost insignificant-looking lights were the galaxies contained inside Universe B-14.

”...” Sakar silently watched that magnificent scene before him. He was already extremely far away from the shell, separated from it by a distance measured in millions of light-years, but a relatively simple technique originating from Sky Opening City allowed him to detect the distant light of those galaxies using his spiritual sense and translate everything he detected into a clear and majestic image inside his mind.

Then a voice suddenly came from behind him, severing the long thread of thoughts that had formed while he stared at that distant sight. ”Marshal, you need to lay out the roadmap for the coming period.”

”....” Sakar slowly lowered his gaze from the distant shell, let out a quiet sigh, then turned his entire body around and looked behind him, shifting his attention away from that impossibly distant cosmic sight toward a scene that was far closer, more tangible, and considerably more real.

Before Sakar stretched an enormous industrial structure constructed from the scales and bones of Space Beasts, materials that should have looked crude and unmistakably organic, but they had been melted down, processed, and manufactured with such extraordinary precision that their original appearance had almost completely disappeared, leaving the finished structure looking as though it had been built entirely from carefully produced metal alloys.

The ground beneath him consisted of countless tightly interlocked black tiles fitted together to form one continuous surface, and far along the horizon, a large number of imps could be seen tirelessly installing even more of those black tiles tightly alongside one another, continuously extending the enormous platform... At fixed intervals across the vast surface stood massive towers resembling gigantic stakes, each positioned to help maintain balance across the entire immense structure through its tremendous weight.

Atop each one of those towers was also a gigantic blood engine integrated into the balancing system. Whenever one side of the enormous platform began to tilt even slightly and threaten the stability of the vast surface, those massive engines would automatically activate and exert their power accordingly, correcting the imbalance and restoring the platform to its proper equilibrium.

Several enormous arrays were also being carefully assembled across those countless black tiles, each one constructed with the purpose of protecting the platformʼs inhabitants from any sudden attack by an adult Space Beast, alongside a number of lighter offensive arrays and a method for using the enormous engines themselves to move the entire platform from its location whenever necessary... All of these different systems, despite their immense scale and varying functions, operated using the same blood power wielded by the imps.

Once the construction of everything required on the platform was finally complete, houses made from smaller black tiles would be erected across its surface to serve as proper shelters for the imp families that would eventually settle there... According to the established plan, once fully completed and prepared for habitation, this single platform would be capable of comfortably accommodating one hundred million imps, together with enormous food warehouses, vessels for traveling back and forth toward the shell, dedicated training grounds, and all the other necessities required for ordinary daily life.

Overall, despite its relatively simple appearance and straightforward structure, this platform was the product of the ingenuity of the engineers of the Sky Opening Cities, who had developed the entire structure after receiving a few simple suggestions and modifications from His Majesty, eventually producing a grand construction of this scale upon which an enormous population could safely live beyond the shell.

”There is nothing for us to decide at this point. Everything has already been decided on our behalf,” Sakar said, his words directly addressing the matter that had gathered everyone around him.

A number of high-ranking imp commanders stood around him as he spoke. Some of them still wore the familiar crimson armor simply because they had grown accustomed to wearing it after so long, while others had discarded it entirely because they regarded it as a symbol of the oppression they had endured, openly revealing beneath it their crimson bodies veined with striking purple... Sakar, however, had chosen to keep his own armor on, prepared for the possibility that he might be summoned and ordered to head out again at any moment.

”Is this fair?” one of the Imp Emperors raised his voice in obvious dissatisfaction. ”How can they suddenly stop producing the platforms after weʼve already begun the migration process and started moving forward with the entire plan?!”

They had received a message only a short while ago informing them that the Prime Minister had issued direct orders to redirect all available industrial production toward the Nota fleets and halt the production of everything else for the time being, and among everything affected by that sweeping order were the residential platforms that the imps depended upon for their migration.

The imp then waved his hand angrily as he continued, clearly unable to accept the sudden interruption. ”We barely managed to establish and populate just seventeen platforms over the past three decades, and despite all that time and effort, we still havenʼt even managed to see the other side of the universe yet. We need at least a hundred times that number before we can even begin thinking seriously about carrying out the mission of circling the entire universe!”

”I donʼt know what weʼre supposed to do now or how weʼre supposed to continue under these circumstances... but we canʼt simply tell them to ignore that war theyʼre talking about in Mid Sector 90 just so they can continue producing our platforms,” another imp spoke in a noticeably lower voice.

”Hmph, if the Master gives us the order, weʼll go straight there and crush his enemies in Mid Sector 90 ourselves and get the whole matter over with for both him and us. Then, once itʼs finished, we can continue expanding as we planned and obtain even more black matter!!”

”What do you think, Marshal?!” a third imp spoke with complete seriousness as he looked toward Sakar, waiting for his position on the matter. ”Are we just going to remain silent about this and accept what happened?”

”...Thereʼs nothing we can do about it right now. We canʼt protest against the decision, and we canʼt help with the situation either.” Sakar spoke while looking down, his tone remaining restrained despite the frustration spreading among those around him. ”And donʼt forget that the Master is entering this enormous war because of us in the first place... Everyone outside is talking about us and what happened because of us, yet despite all of that, he hasnʼt said a single word of reproach to me.”

”....”

”Itʼs fine. We can treat this as a good opportunity to establish ourselves more firmly in our new homeland while we wait.” Sakar turned his gaze away from the others. ”Weʼll focus on increasing our numbers on the platforms we already have, expanding the hunting grounds around us, and increasing the distance between each platform and the next so that our existing platforms can cover a larger area, while at the same time increasing the number of scout teams and the vanguard... Weʼll simply do whatever remains within our ability until more platforms arrive.”

”....” Everyone around him eventually nodded weakly, even though their dissatisfaction with the situation had clearly not disappeared.

”Marshal!!”

At that moment, an imp suddenly came flying down from above, approaching them with obvious urgency.

”Weʼve detected a point of light, Marshal! Weʼve detected a point of light!!”

”......?!??!”