CHAPTER 405: I HOPE! I

The aftermath of cosmic violence possessed its own terrible beauty, a silence that stretched across the void like a held breath waiting for the universe to remember how to exhale!

Marshal Korvain Ashfall floated amidst the debris of his shattered expedition, his enhanced physiology struggling to maintain coherence against forces that had rewritten the local definition of survivable trauma.

Blood wept from wounds that transcended physical damage, while one eye had become a crimson pool that refused to clear despite his body’s desperate attempts at regeneration!

His golden suit, forged from the compressed matter of a dead star, bore cracks that leaked stellar fire into the vacuum around him.

Yet as he gazed upon the moon-sized horror that had brought annihilation to everything he had known, his remaining eye held no surrender.

Fear, yes...primal and overwhelming, but beneath it lay the adamantine core of someone who had achieved the highest pinnacle of Stellar Genesis Embodiment through centuries of facing impossible odds.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice carrying across the void with musings that made the surrounding debris ring like funeral bells. "Why did you do this? What possible enmity could justify killing everyone like animals?"

...!

The questions boomed in space like accusations written in the fundamental language of moral consequence, demanding answers that might restore some sense of order to a universe that had just demonstrated its capacity for arbitrary destruction.

Achilles said nothing.

Instead, he simply stepped from the massive surface of his creation, his form descending through vacuum as if atmosphere were merely a suggestion rather than a requirement for movement.

His approach carried the inevitability of gravity itself.

When he landed within the Marshal’s vessel, the impact was silent but profound...reality itself seemed to adjust to accommodate his presence, the very structure of space-time bending slightly to acknowledge power!

The interior of the diplomatic ship had become a mausoleum of service and duty. Bodies lay scattered throughout the corridors, their enhanced physiology having failed against forces that recognized no distinction between warrior and diplomat, between the powerful and the merely ambitious.

Each corpse bore the same expression...eyes filled with blood, features twisted by terror that had struck too quickly for comprehension.

Achilles moved among them with the deliberate pace of someone conducting a census of the dead, his enhanced senses cataloguing lives that had been reduced to statistical casualties in conflicts they had never understood.

"They all had families they provided for," Marshal Ashfall said, his voice carrying the hollow weight of someone who had just witnessed the elimination of everything familiar.

"The Sovereign Void Imperium pays them for their services, and they help our civilization maintain order across impossible distances. You have culled all their lives, and it seems billions on these nearby worlds under the control of the Five Kings of..."

"No," Achilles interrupted, his voice cutting through the Marshal’s words with surgical precision. "Not billions. Just a few tens of thousands. And all willing participants in the choices that leaders like you and Edmond and the other genocidal architects made."

...!

The correction landed with force! Here was someone who had calculated the cost of his actions with precision, who understood exactly what had been sacrificed and why such sacrifice had been deemed necessary.

Marshal Ashfall’s remaining eye widened as the implications struck him, then closed as his enhanced consciousness processed everything.

His corrupted eye popped with a wet sound, releasing fluids that should not have existed in any biological system, before he allowed himself to collapse against the nearest bulkhead.

Even as his body continued its systematic failure, even knowing that his existence measured in minutes rather than hours, he found himself curious about the entity who had accomplished such precise devastation.

"What is your name?" he asked quietly, the question carrying weight that suggested genuine interest in understanding rather than mere identification.

Achilles moved to sit before the dying Marshal, his posture somehow managing to convey both royal authority and casual confidence.

When he spoke, his words carried the weight of inherited legacy that had been forged across cosmic timescales.

"Achilles," he said simply. "Adrastia. Maxwell."

The response was immediate and visceral.

Marshal Ashfall’s remaining eye went wide as shock crashed through his failing consciousness like gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars!

The terror that followed was primitive, instinctual, speaking to knowledge that had been carved into the fundamental culture of every civilization that served the Sovereign Void Imperium.

But beneath the fear came something else...incredulity so profound that it transformed into hysterical laughter that echoed through the dying ship’s corridors like final jokes.

When the laughter finally subsided, he stared at Achilles with an expression that mixed reverence and horror in equal proportions.

"Adrastia?" he whispered, the name escaping his lips like a prayer offered to malevolent titans. "Are you truly telling me I encountered such a monstrous legend? Are you saying that I have made contact with the Taboo of the Star Seas? Holy fuck. Then I guess this is a worthy way to die..."

...!

Achilles studied the Marshal’s reaction with analytical interest, his mind observing the responses that spoke to cultural indoctrination spanning generations of inherited fear.

"You won’t die," he said with cryptic certainty that carried implications beyond immediate survival. "You, Marshal Korvain Ashfall, will live to return to the Sovereign Void Imperium as a survivor of a truly devastating attack. Your position will even be elevated when you produce a unique crystalloid that the Five Kings had been greedily hoarding."

As he spoke, Achilles gestured toward empty space, and reality responded by materializing dozens of Voidborn Memorite crystals that pulsed with their own internal radiance.

Ashfall’s terror deepened as understanding crystallized into significance.

"I heard the stories," he began, "The Taboo Adrastia Tyrants who devoured entire planes of existence, who killed hundreds of billions without mercy or consideration. They were described as the worst things existence had produced across eons of cosmic history...a scourge that threatened the fundamental order of civilization itself."

His voice grew quieter, more personal, as he continued. "Is such a legend truly sitting before me now? And you plan to use me to infiltrate the Sovereign Void Imperium? This must mean your power is still developing, and I am merely a stepping stone in whatever grand design you have conceived. Haha...Holy shit."

...!