Chapter 404: The Weight of Dying Stars! II

Achilles did not close his eyes as the waves swept outward, carrying his awareness with them as they approached their targets.

If he was going to end these lives, he would witness every moment of what that choice entailed. It was the least…and the most, he could do!

—

On the command deck of Marshal Ashfall’s vessel, diplomatic negotiations proceeded calmly.

But as extinction fields approached at velocities that defied detection, the illusion of controlled conversation was about to be shattered.

The first indication of catastrophe came not from sensors or warning systems, and instead from the Marshal’s own soldiers.

Throughout the ship, armored figures who had served the Sovereign Void Imperium across countless campaigns suddenly staggered as if struck by invisible hammers!

Their enhanced physiology, which had weathered spatial forces, began failing with systematic precision.

Blood filled their eyes like crimson tears, while unstable energies erupted from their bodies to express the fundamental cellular breakdown occurring at the quantum level. One by one, they collapsed, their consciousness extinguished with efficiency that reduced lifelong service to irrelevant statistics!

Marshal Ashfall’s expression transformed from composure to horror as understanding struck him.

“Enemy attack!” he roared, his voice carrying power that made the ship’s crystalline walls ring with sympathetic vibrations.

But even as he spoke, his own enhanced physiology began responding to forces that penetrated through defenses designed to withstand stellar bombardment.

Rings of planar energy erupted around his form as he activated every defensive capability at his disposal, but the extinction fields operated according to power that many would not understand!

—

In the hangars of the crimson star base, thousands of beings who served the Five Kings gathered in casual groups, their conversations filled with speculation about the gathering that had brought them together from across conquered territories.

“Why do you think they’re assembling all of us here?” one asked, his enhanced features bearing the marks of someone who had participated in dozens of successful conquests.

Another smiled with anticipation. “Maybe they’re about to launch the biggest campaign yet. I heard the tribute negotiation with the Sovereign Void Imperium is proceeding.”

Nods of understanding rippled through the assembled groups as beings who had built their lives on the suffering of others contemplated future opportunities for advancement through violence.

“Our families will be protected,” someone observed with satisfaction. “But I always feel conflicted about targeting newer civilizations for resource extraction.”

The responses from others came with the casual brutality that defined their existence. “It’s either our families or theirs. We have to make the choice.”

…!

Everyone…had to make a choice!

At that moment, extinction fields arrived with the silent precision of spatial regulation asserting its authority.

Blood filled their eyes…beings who ranged from Ethereal Physiology to Dharma King status, entities who had achieved Astral Core Ascension through years of careful advancement!

Their enhanced capabilities proved irrelevant!

They crumpled without sound, their consciousness extinguished before pain could register, their lives ending as abruptly as the civilizations they had helped destroy.

—

The Four Kings who had believed themselves safe within their fortress felt the extinction fields approaching like gravitational waves from colliding black holes.

Their enhanced senses, which could perceive across spatial barriers, suddenly blazed with warnings that transcended any threat they had previously encountered.

Two of them managed to activate defensive measures before the waves struck…barriers of compressed space, shields of crystallized void, armor forged from the hearts of dying stars. It was not enough!

The extinction fields passed through their defenses as if they were mere illusion, touching their enhanced physiology with entropy that recognized no hierarchy of power or accumulated strength.

They died as they had lived…quickly, violently, without mercy or consideration for their accumulated achievements.

The remaining two Kings survived, but barely.

Their enhanced forms bore the marks of power that had pushed them beyond any threshold they had thought possible, their consciousness flickering like flames in stellar wind.

Beneath them, the crimson star that had served as their base for generations began responding to the same entropic forces. Its core trembled as fundamental nuclear processes became unstable, stellar fusion shifting toward weavings that led inevitably toward collapse!

The fortress that had seemed glorious was dying, its death throes sending gravitational waves across local space as reality itself prepared to claim another victim!

—

Marshal Ashfall floated in the ruins of his ship, his enhanced physiology struggling to maintain coherence in the aftermath of forces that had decimated all forms of life.

One eye was filled with blood that would not clear, while his crimson hair moved with currents of instability!

Around him, devastation stretched in every direction. His soldiers were crumpled lifeflessly. The fleets that had represented centuries of accumulated military power were reduced to debris fields drifting through space like monuments to the futility of conventional defense.

Terror…genuine, primal terror, filled his consciousness as he contemplated what could have accomplished such systematic destruction without warning or negotiation.

It was then that space itself seemed to part like curtains drawn by invisible hands, revealing the source of annihilation that had reduced his powers to scattered atoms.

The Void-Born Thalassarian Sovereign emerged from dimensional folds with movements that carried the weight of terror itself!

Moon-sized, magnificent, terrible beyond description, it floated in the stellar debris like a predator surveying the results of a successful hunt.

And atop its massive form, small as a grain of sand but commanding attention like a gravitational singularity, sat a figure whose presence felt heavy.

Heavy!

“Marshal Korvain Ashfall,” Achilles called out, his voice carrying across the void with clarity that made space itself seem to listen.

His expression was stern and heavy with the weight of choices made and consequences accepted.

He had watched every life end, witnessed every moment of suffering his command had caused.

The knowledge of what he had done…what he had chosen to do, settled into his consciousness like sediment in deep water.

But he felt no regret. Could afford no regret.

Choices had consequences. Everyone here had made their own decisions about how to live, whom to serve, what values to embrace.

They had chosen conquest over compassion, predation over protection, systematic genocide over any form of mercy.

Now they had learned what it meant when someone stronger made different choices.

It was a moment that marked a changing point in his life!

It was also a moment that would allow him…to infiltrate the Sovereign Void Imperium as Marshal Korvain Ashfall…would be a key!

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