CHAPTER 419: PLANS! I

The revelation struck both Achilles and Sun heavily!

Adrastia Emperor Kings...could only have a single progeny with a single Species, and the difficulty of having more children was immensly high!

Achilles felt his stellar form pulse as understanding crystallized.

His relationship with Rose, their daughter Arya...these weren’t only personal bonds but potentially the only opportunity his lineage would have for continuation.

|The woman at the center of the original conflict,| Ethemia continued, |carried within herself certain... modifications to existence that affected anyone who came into contact with her. The First and only Adrastia Emperor King’s descendant inherited both tremendous power and significant limitations. The same ability to assimilate anything, came with reproductive constraints that ensured each generation would remain small, manageable, controllable.|

She gave him a child!

The Second Adrastia Emperor King...came from an entity born from an unknown cosmic phenomena!

The entity that had caused the original breakdown of brotherhood hadn’t merely been beautiful or desirable.

She had been designed, engineered, created to serve purposes that transcended individual attraction.

|The two sworn brothers who betrayed their oathmate discovered this eventually,| Ethemia’s voice carried notes of cosmic irony.

|They realized that their obsession had been artificially induced, that the woman they had murdered their brother to claim had been a trap designed by forces operating beyond their understanding. But by then, the deed was done. The First Adrastia Emperor King was dead, his progeny hidden, and the precedent had been established.|

|Rather than acknowledge their manipulation and seek to undo the damage they had caused, they chose to embrace the power structures their betrayal had created. They transformed their shame into doctrine, their guilt into systematic policy. They hunted down thr only Son of their friend for years...but they could never truly succeed in eradication before another seed was planted. Every subsequent Adrastia Emperor King became evidence of their failure to completely eliminate the consequences of their actions.|

Achilles absorbed this cosmic history with calm rage.

The scope of what he faced had expanded beyond individual vengeance!

Sun’s golden radiance pulsed with understanding mixed with growing excitement. "So the woman... she was created by someone else? Someone who wanted the three brothers to destroy each other?"

|The architects of that manipulation,| Ethemia replied, |remain active to this day. The Infinite Radiance Sovereignty and the Void Dominion Empire could do nothing but join hands with those existences who predates the current structure of the Star Seas themselves. The Outsiders! After all, they had schemed and killed the strongest among them. The one the whole plot was aimed at...the First Adrastia Emperor King.|

BOOM!

|Now, they had to join hands with Outsiders. Forces that view the rise and fall of cosmic civilizations as entertainment, that engineer conflicts spanning geological timescales for purposes that transcend individual comprehension. All of them...are your enemies.|

Achilles felt his enhanced consciousness expanding to accommodate all possibilities.

The game was larger, older, more complex than he had ever imagined.

"So me, in my Lineage..." His stellar form pulsed with radiance that reflected the magnitude of what he was contemplating. "It is partly Adrastia Emperor King, and partly an Outsider?"

The question emerged from depths of understanding.

If the woman at the center of the original betrayal had been an Outsider, if her genetic material had somehow become integrated into the bloodline that defined his very essence, then everything about his nature...his capabilities, his limitations, his fundamental relationship with reality itself...took on entirely new significance.

Ethemia’s pristine voice resonated through dimensional barriers with the measured power.

|The genetics of existence are unique,| she began, |The genome of the Adrastia Emperor Kings was so intricate, so fundamentally complex, that it may not have simply absorbed the genes of that woman. It may have been that much stronger...the genetic architecture of your lineage might have entirely suppressed the Outsider genome through sheer dominance.|

|But yes,| Ethemia continued with clinical certainty that cut through speculation like stellar fire through void. |Part of you, traveling back across generations of Adrastia Emperor Kings, carries the genetic legacy of an Outsider. Whether active or dormant, whether influential or suppressed, that heritage flows through your enhanced physiology like an invisible current.|

BOOM!

The power that defined his existence, the capabilities that had allowed him to transcend conventional limitations, might carry within them the influence of Outside forces!

Achilles briefly closed his stellar eyes, his gaze and existence turning inward to examine the genetic architecture that had just been optimized through his own modifications.

The ten Adrastia Genome Points he had recently allocated, the segments he had enhanced to increase his resistance to Existence Corruption and expand his assimilation capabilities...would deeper examination reveal traces of that original Outsider influence?

The nine massive helical structures of his genetic pillar floated through his awareness like monuments to inherited potential, each one carrying within itself accumulated legacy.

Eight remained dim, locked, awaiting future advancement to reveal their secrets.

But the first pillar blazed with crimson-gold radiance!

Somewhere within that intricate architecture, buried beneath layers of Imperial authority and cosmic enhancement, might lie genetic sequences that connected him to horrors he did not yet know!

He did not truly know. The uncertainty was both terrifying and intoxicating!

When he opened his eyes again, they blazed with stellar fire. "That woman, that Outsider... is she still here? Still alive?"

The possibility sent ripples.

She would be a paramount figure connected to the very First Adrastia Emperor King. If she lived, if she could be found, what truths might she reveal about the true nature of his lineage and the forces arrayed against it?

Ethemia remained silent for a moment that stretched like the space between stars. When she finally spoke, her voice carried weight that made nearby reality pulse in acknowledgment.

|Yes. She is the link between the Outsiders and the Infinite Radiance Sovereignty and the Void Dominion Empire. Even the two Sinners...the ones who betrayed and killed the First Adrastia Emperor King...they still live to this day. And they have grown powerful. Powerful beyond conventional measurement.|

...!