Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2433 Shifting the balance

Ten Years Later—Year 785 After the Coronation

Mid Sector 90—

Krssh—

A private white spacecraft descended with a distinctive and unmistakable elegance onto a vast stretch of ground whose color hovered somewhere between yellow and orange, its smooth descent carrying a certain refinement of its own, then Krrr the door slowly opened and the stairs extended downward until they reached the ground.

Then, from the top of those stairs, a breathtakingly beautiful figure gradually descended...

Renara, with her nine long tails swaying gracefully behind her with every step and her alluring feminine armor fitting closely around her figure, looked almost like a supreme being that had descended from somewhere above and was now walking upon the earth.

All the guards and generals alike bowed respectfully as she walked past them, without exception. Some of the generals standing here had personally been present on the day of the coronation, the very day when His Majesty had publicly cursed Renara in front of everyone without showing her the slightest consideration, yet today every single person here knew exactly what her current standing within the Empire had become, and because of that, no one among them dared to raise their head while she passed.

As for Renara herself, she didn't have to walk very far... She soon spotted a spacious tent standing near the edge of the grassy hill, immediately quickened her steps toward it, then Ploof pulled open the large flap covering its entrance and stepped directly inside without waiting for anyone to announce her arrival. "Did I keep you waiting?"

Inside that spacious tent, there were only three people waiting for her, three men, and absolutely no one else.

The first was an enormously built man with a broad, square face and a thin mustache that curved around his mouth in an almost square shape, his eyes fixed intently on an enormous map before him while his brows remained deeply furrowed and unmistakable anger covered his expression... Gravity Behemoth Gravor.

The other was a man with a long, pale beard that descended prominently from his face, wearing a long and loose robe while a scarf was carefully wrapped around his head... Temporal Behemoth Arkail.

Each of those two possessed his own distinct aura, powerful and dangerous enough to make his presence impossible to overlook, but the aura surrounding the latter was noticeably heavier and far more composed, carrying a greater sense of stability compared to the other.

As for the third among them, he was a clean-shaven young man with long white hair flowing down behind him and two bull horns protruding upward from the top of his forehead. His aura was considerably weaker than those of the other two, to the point that his presence seemed almost hidden beside them, yet despite that enormous difference, he stood at exactly the same level as the other two around the table... Marshal of the Third Army and ruler of the Grave Empire, Aro.

The moment Renara entered the tent, all three of them turned their bodies slightly toward her and nodded in greeting. Those gestures weren't filled with the excessive reverence she had received from the guards and generals outside, but neither were they simple or casual greetings that could simply be overlooked; each of the three was clearly acknowledging her presence and recognizing her as an essential part of this gathering.

"Lady Renara, you've brightened the council with your presence." Aro opened both arms toward her in welcome, the movement causing his dazzling and gleaming blue robe to spread around him and reveal itself more clearly. "If you'd told me that the journey here was too long for you, I would've arranged for the meeting to be held somewhere else, haha."

"Shhh." Gravor immediately waved twice toward Aro, clearly telling him to stop talking, then turned his attention directly toward Renara with the same serious expression still covering his face. "We need to talk."

"That's why I came." Renara continued forward until she reached their side around the terrifyingly enormous table, with each of the four now standing at one of its four ends and forming an imposing scene around the massive map before them, then she folded both arms beneath her chest and looked toward the others. "What's new?"

"The situation in Mid Sector 89 can no longer be ignored or allowed to continue under any circumstances." Gravor spoke sharply, the anger that had already been visible on his face becoming even clearer as he addressed the others. "This cold war between us won't last for another year." Then his voice rose even further as he firmly declared, "We have to make a move!!"

"..." Renara listened silently until Gravor had completely finished speaking, and when she saw from his expression and continued silence that he had nothing further to add for the moment, she shifted her gaze toward Aro instead. "Details."

"The situation over there has continued developing." Aro seemed noticeably pleased that, among the two of them, she had chosen him to provide the explanation. "At first, the Relativity Behemoth was merely preparing for our expected attack on Mid Sector 89, so he gathered his army there and began strengthening the entire sector in preparation. That's when the other powers started supporting him in its defense, as you already know, because they refuse to hand Mid Sector 89 over to us... But the nature of the situation changed after the Lord of Thrones' declaration ten years ago."

"...More than ten other Behemoths openly sent support to the Relativity Behemoth after that, providing him with money, weapons, men, and entire fleets. The Syndicate sent another two hundred Dominators along with ten thousand additional Nexus States, while the Tyrant Antares sent fifty Dominators and five hundred Nexus States of his own, and completely barred us from using the Major Space Gate to travel toward Mid Sector 89 or toward any other sector beyond it to the east. You could basically say that he has confined us to Mid Sector 90 and everything above it, and of course, he has also started charging us ten times the normal travel cost even within those sectors."

Then Aro continued explaining without stopping, "The Council of Thrones also sent another two hundred Dominators, fifteen thousand Nexus States, an even greater number of World Cataclysms, and a huge amount of weapons under the pretext of stopping the spread of evil. And that's without even counting all the independent cultivators who have volunteered on their own, or the Millennial and Centennial Empires that want to earn themselves a good reputation at our expense. All of them have been sending support in the form of men and weapons, with their people openly wearing their armor and raising their own banners... Somehow, fighting against us has become a matter of honor."

Then Aro furrowed his brows as the seriousness in his expression became much more obvious. "All of this has caused the assembled army in Mid Sector 89 to grow to an absurd degree, far beyond what it was when this situation first began. Whatever opportunity we once had to launch a surprise attack against them is already gone, and now the Relativity Behemoth and all the powers that have supported him are actually becoming afraid that we might not attack them at all... So they've started thinking about taking the initiative themselves."

"They want to attack us here in Mid Sector 90?!" Renara revealed a stunned smile when she heard where the situation was heading, clearly finding the very idea difficult to believe. "Have they gone insane?"

Mid Sector 90 was by no means some easy piece of prey that anyone could simply reach out and swallow.

All of Gravor's, Arkail's, and Aro's forces were currently stationed there, numbering around ten thousand fleets in total, with fifteen hundred Nota fleets positioned among them as the central heart of that enormous assembled armada.

And that was without even mentioning the enormous number of planetary offensive and defensive arrays that the Shadow Swords had gathered through their dedicated purchasing network, along with all the arrays manufactured directly on Nihari by the geniuses of the current generation... At this point, the entire sector had effectively become a fortress, and it wasn't merely an ordinary fortress either, but a fortress containing both Arkail and Gravor.

And standing at the very center of that enormous fortress was Renara herself.

"What insanity are you talking about?" Gravor immediately interjected after hearing her words. "The difference in strength between us and them has already become enormous, and that difference continues growing larger with every single day that passes. Even if we gathered every one of my sons, every one of Arkail's sons, and whatever Dominators that horned fellow can somehow bring here through his own methods, we still wouldn't be able to gather enough strength to repel the two hundred Dominators sent by the Council of Thrones alone. Then what about everyone else standing with them? How exactly are we supposed to stand against all of them?"

"I'm here." Renara immediately raised her head with unmistakable pride, as though her own presence was already an answer to the problem Gravor had just described.

"You have your own problems to deal with." Gravor impatiently waved his hand toward her and turned his gaze away, clearly unwilling to count her presence as an absolute solution to their current situation.

"....?" Renara's eyes immediately flashed when she saw that dismissive gesture and heard the way he had responded to her.

"Lady Renara." At that moment, Aro's voice came from beside them, interrupting before the exchange could continue any further. "Unfortunately, Lord Gravor is right..." Then his voice grew noticeably heavier as he finally revealed the information behind those words. "Marlik the Butcher has been spotted in Mid Sector 89."

"Marlik has arrived?" Renara finally abandoned her previous expression and began taking the matter seriously.