Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2424 Invasion of the stalkers

"Heh~" Another person standing nearby slowly rose to his feet, holding a similar device in one hand as he examined it with obvious satisfaction. "With footage like this in our possession, we'll make an absolute fortune once we manage to put it into the hands of the right people." He then began lightly tossing the device upward and catching it again with casual movements. "I honestly don't understand why more footage like this hasn't already spread throughout the universe when obtaining it is this easy."

The third member of their group also stood up and slowly began making his way toward the small vessel waiting nearby. "Do you seriously think every intelligence agency out there possesses light capturing devices with this kind of extraordinary range, power, and precision? Hmph!" Then, as though unwilling to waste any more time discussing the matter, he quickened his pace toward the vessel. "Let's get out of here before we're discovered."

"Discovered? That's impossible." The first man calmly began walking toward the vessel as well, showing none of the urgency displayed by his companion. "From here, I can already clearly see the outer ring formed by the Nota fleets' defenses. As far as they're concerned, that's the defensive perimeter they need to protect, because this distance represents the furthest known range that any existing sensor can possibly reach. Heh~ They apparently believe their master is the only person in the universe capable of inventing a new machine."

Then his eyes gleamed with excitement as he continued speaking. "When people truly want something badly enough, they'll rush to create it themselves, especially when the entire universe has united against you. Once something like that happens, then no matter what you do or how hard you try, you simply won't be able to stop the coming tide." Then he casually waved his right hand and turned toward his companion. "What do you think about that, Miz? Hehe, these devices alone cost us thirty-two million pearls, but the footage we've obtained today will easily sell for ten times that amount, haha."

Silence

"Miz?" The first masked man finally noticed the complete lack of response and turned his head toward the second man, but the instant his eyes landed upon the scene there, his pupil immediately widened to its absolute limit and his breathing came to a complete stop...

The scene before him had completely changed during those few unnoticed moments. His friend, who had only recently been standing there confidently while casually tossing the valuable device into the air, had now become nothing more than a headless corpse lying motionless upon the ground, while his severed head was being held firmly in someone's hand.

Someone...

It was a person dressed entirely in deep black, with a pitch-black cloak fluttering behind his body, a hood covering the top of his head and a calm, dark mask completely concealing his face. At his waist hung a long and unusually slender sword, while positioned beside that sword was a dagger approximately half its length...

That mysterious person was currently holding the severed head in his left hand, while the valuable light capturing device rested in his right... and he was examining the device with complete calmness as though nothing unusual had happened around him.

"A Shadow Sword?!" The masked man immediately took two instinctive steps backward after recognizing the newcomer's appearance, then abruptly turned toward their third companion, who had already been on his way to start the vessel and prepare their escape. "Aaa—"

Yet his third companion was already in an almost identical state. His lifeless body lay stretched out on the ground directly beside the small vessel, while his severed head was still rolling nearby, and most terrifying of all, there wasn't even the slightest sign that another person besides the people he had already seen was present anywhere in the surrounding area!

Humm

Suddenly, something changed within the surrounding space as a beam of light emerged from the light capturing device held by the Shadow Sword and rapidly materialized into a clearly visible scene before him.

Naturally, there was no accompanying sound because of the enormous distance from which the footage itself had originally been recorded, but what the device had managed to capture visually was perfectly clear... It showed several imps who had removed their masks and were voraciously devouring large pieces of meat with obvious hunger.

"Hmm..." The Shadow Sword remained where he was and stared at the projected footage for several minutes, carefully examining what had been recorded before finally speaking. "Couldn't you have pulled the viewing angle back just a little farther so the footage would also reveal the fact that what they're actually eating is a Space Beast? How pathetic." The Shadow Sword then tightened his left hand around the device and crushed it completely. Crush Afterward, he turned his sleepy eyes toward the only remaining member of the group. "And what exactly did you record with yours? Let me guess, you captured footage of them happily removing their armor, but conveniently didn't record the moment when they actually entered the passage afterward... right?"

"...." The spy slowly took another step backward as the fear that had initially filled his eyes gradually transformed into vigilance and open hostility once he realized the situation he was facing. "Looks like you've reviewed your lessons pretty well, little Sword. Those are exactly the kinds of clips that people are willing to pay enormous amounts of money to obtain, because when you're dealing with material like this, the actual facts don't matter."

"What about the fact that you're definitely going to die today? Was everything you did here really worth that price?" The Shadow Sword casually tossed the severed head he had been holding aside and began calmly walking toward the remaining spy without showing the slightest hurry. "Only a little while ago, you were asking yourself why there isn't much footage like this circulating around despite how valuable it is, but apparently you were far too stupid to answer that extremely simple question yourself."

"Don't do this, Sword!" The man immediately pulled two small energy cannons from his spatial ring with remarkable speed, gripping one cannon tightly in each hand as he pointed them forward. "We're both people from the same line of work. The footage we've collected here will earn us at least two hundred and fifty million pearls. Join me and we'll split the profits between us. Use your head for once and start looking after yourself first. Do you really want to spend your entire life serving someone else?"

"...?" The Shadow Sword abruptly stopped advancing, visibly angered by the comparison the man had just made. "You're actually comparing me to someone like you? You're comparing the Shadow Swords, an intelligence organization that works on behalf of a Great Empire and whose every single member is one of that empire's own sons, to the likes of you, the scum and rabble crawling around the underworld for money? Tsk, tsk. It seems that the Shadow Swords' old reputation really does need to be erased sometime in the near future."

"You brought this upon yourself!!" The spy immediately raised both energy cannons and fired them toward his opponent without any further hesitation. "Hyaaaaaaa—"

Dam Dam Dam Dam Dam

The two cannons unleashed hundreds of shots within mere fractions of a second, filling the space ahead with an overwhelming barrage in an instant, and every single egg-sized projectile carried enough destructive power to completely demolish a building. While both cannons continuously drew the enormous amount of energy required for that barrage from several pearls, the spy simultaneously concentrated his full personal power into his eyes, focusing every bit of his attention on tracking the Shadow Sword so that his target wouldn't be able to escape from his sight during the attack.

But as he continued watching with all his concentration focused entirely upon his opponent, he suddenly noticed something extremely strange. "...Eh?"

The Shadow Sword continued walking steadily toward him with completely unhurried steps, staring directly at the spy through those same sleepy, almost indifferent eyes... while the countless projectiles being fired toward him simply passed straight through different parts of his body as though there were nothing there to stop them.

"Impossible! Is this some kind of dark illusion?!" The spy immediately began looking around him like a madman, his eyes moving frantically from one direction to another while he spread his spiritual sense as widely as possible throughout the surrounding area, desperately attempting to locate the real body that he was certain had to be hidden somewhere nearby.

Yet every single time he searched the surrounding space and tried to find another presence, his attention inevitably returned to the exact same spot and locked once again onto the exact same person walking toward him... Even his frenzied spiritual sense, pushed to its limits in his desperate search, continued telling him with absolute certainty that the figure standing there was a genuine, physical body!!

"What's happening?" The spy continued retreating backward while maintaining the same overwhelming density of fire, directing the relentless barrage toward every possible part of the Shadow Sword's approaching body until, out of sheer desperation and confusion, he even began blasting apart the entire area beneath his opponent's feet in an attempt to strike him somehow. "What's happeniiiing!?"

"Clown." The Shadow Sword calmly stepped through the cloud of dust created by the continuous bombardment and comfortably reached the area directly in front of his target, looking down at the increasingly terrified man with the same detached expression a mantis might use when looking at a tiny cockroach before it.

At that moment, the Shadow Sword's body was visibly riddled with numerous perfectly round holes created by the projectiles that had passed through him, yet despite those impossible openings scattered throughout him, everything that still remained of his body was completely real!!

"No..." The spy instinctively took another two steps backward as recognition finally began appearing within his terrified eyes. "I've heard about this.... I've heard about something like this before... But they were supposed to be nothing more than rumors!!"

"There's no smoke without fire." The Shadow Sword replied with a small smile, showing no concern whatsoever about the horrified realization gradually spreading across the other man's face.

"Y-You..." The spy swallowed hard as he continued staring at the impossible figure standing before him. "You're not a Shadow Sword, you're..." His lips began trembling uncontrollably as he finally understood what he was facing. "You're a Space Darkne—!!"

Poof

The spy's head suddenly fell from his body before he could even finish the final words he was desperately trying to say... and throughout the entire exchange, the Shadow Sword hadn't even bothered to draw either the long, slender sword hanging at his waist or the dagger positioned beside it.

"Hooh~" The Shadow Sword casually bent down beside the fallen body and began collecting the man's spatial ring along with anything else he found that might possess some degree of usefulness or value, and after finishing that simple task, he made another small movement and completely concealed the corpse from the area.

Afterward, instead of immediately leaving, he raised his head and quietly looked toward a certain direction in the distance.

Whoosh Whoosh

Several vessels could be seen moving rapidly through the nearby space, desperately fleeing while a Phantom Shadow vessel pursued them from behind.

Then the Shadow Sword shifted his gaze toward another direction and activated the magnification mechanism built directly into his mask so that he could see what was happening farther away... Several clearly visible explosions were erupting one after another across the surface of another planet, making it obvious that the Imperial Guards had discovered yet another group operating in the area.

Then his expression changed slightly as he frowned...

If this sheer number of clashes and interceptions was already taking place within this relatively small circle alone... then what exactly was happening across the entire length of the imposed boundary surrounding the region? How many separate incidents of surveillance and intervention were taking place simultaneously at this very moment without him even being able to see them?

"...The imaging devices that the Soul Society started selling have truly driven people insane." The Shadow Sword quietly muttered to himself after considering the situation, then turned away and went to clean up whatever traces still remained throughout the rest of the scene.

After that, he would simply return to his hiding place once again and patiently wait there for another unsuspecting victim to appear.