Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 669: Temporary Alliance

Ten days passed.

To anyone watching from the eastern horizon, the Kingdom of Suryax appeared to be doing what every kingdom in the warfare event was doing — recovering, drilling, maintaining patrols, and not much else. The Mega Dreadships sat in their outer harbor in apparent idle. The Skydread Crafts ran observable patrol arcs along predictable routes. The dome pulsed at standard idle frequency. Soldiers were seen running drills in the outer courtyards using formations that observers could identify as carryovers from the kingdom’s pre-awakening doctrine.

This was all theater.

Operation Illusion had been Silvester’s proposal on the morning after the Celestara-Dravokh battle, and the leadership had adopted it within an hour. The premise was simple: every enemy observer expected the Suryax-Ananta Alliance to be building. Therefore, the alliance would let them see building — but only the building it was prepared to expose. The genuine work happened beneath that visible layer.

The real Mega Dreadship upgrades were tested at night, in shielded inner harbors that Saffa had wrapped in selective opacity. The Skydread Crafts that ran observable patrols were the older, unconverted squadrons; the converted ones rotated through covered hangars and trained in simulation chambers that produced no external energy signature. The Asura Executives’ progress was deliberately understated in every drill that occurred where an observer could see. Kayla’s precognitive thread network was tuned to mute its presence on outer scans, returning the kind of routine signal pattern that an old, unmodified Suryax defensive grid would produce.

What every observer reported back to their respective alliance was a kingdom that had stabilized but had not significantly grown.

The truth was different.

By the tenth day, Vael Drakhar’s combat power had crossed 230 million. Seris Vanthell, Kaedor Ashenveil, and Tharion Fluxbane had crossed 200 million. The remaining Asura Executives were all approaching that line. The Mega Dreadships had received not one but three layers of new integration. The dome could now anticipate threats fifteen seconds before they materialized along any vector. Ainen had developed four new dishes whose buffs lasted between eighteen and thirty-six hours, and one of them — which he had not yet served, even at the dinners — was something he refused to describe aloud.

The leadership had agreed not to deploy any of this until necessary.

Necessary arrived on the morning of the forty-first day, in the form of a single neutral-signaled vessel approaching the southeastern perimeter.

The vessel was Kezryx in design — sleek, narrow, carrying the violet-tinged hull pattern that the Kezryx Void Imperium favored. It stopped twelve kilometers out from Suryax’s outer barrier and transmitted a formal contact request.

Aryan brought the request to the morning meeting before anyone had finished breakfast.

"Jaskrit Kezinos requests an audience. Personal, formal, neutral terms. He is offering himself and one Virexion senior officer as the delegation. He proposes meeting at the outer reception hall."

Marcus blinked. "Kezinos himself?"

"Yes."

"He almost killed Rudra two months ago."

"He almost didn’t," Rudra corrected mildly.

Lily set down her cup. "What does he want."

"He didn’t say. Only that the proposal would interest us."

Almond looked at Rudra. "Your call."

"Bring him in. Outer reception hall. Full protocol. Saffa, run the prediction layer at standard depth and not above — we’re not showing anything during this meeting."

Saffa nodded and was already moving.

The outer reception hall had been built specifically for situations like this. It was wide, high-ceilinged, finished in the kind of polished stone that suggested wealth without suggesting power. The energy signatures within it were calibrated to register at exactly the level a successful but not exceptional mid-tier kingdom would project. Everything about the room said we are doing fine, thank you.

Jaskrit Kezinos walked in with one companion at his side.

She introduced herself as Marshal Veylara of the Virexion Stormwatch. She was tall, lean, gray-eyed, and her aura carried the controlled-storm signature characteristic of senior Virexion command — Tier-46, combat power somewhere in the high two-hundreds. She bowed once at the threshold, precise and shallow, and then took the position at Jaskrit’s left.

Jaskrit himself looked exactly as he had on the battlefield. Composed. Unhurried. Carrying the kind of authority that did not need to be demonstrated.

He bowed his head fractionally to Rudra first, then Almond, then Lily.

"Thank you for receiving us."

Rudra gestured to the seats. "Please."

They sat.

Jaskrit did not waste time on courtesies beyond that. "I will be direct. The five depths of this ocean each correspond to one of the existing kingdoms of this world. Suryax’s depth has been opened. The other four remain. Each of them contains resources, technologies, and potential reinforcements equivalent to or greater than what Suryax recovered from theirs. None of them have been touched since the event began."

Almond inclined his head. "We are aware."

"My alliance proposes a joint expedition to one of the remaining four depths. The Suryax-Ananta Alliance and the Virexion-Kezryx Alliance, operating together, would have a meaningful chance of clearing the resistance and recovering what is held within. Neither alliance could accomplish this alone in the current period without unacceptable losses."

Lily’s gaze did not move from his face. "And after the recovery."

"The proposal includes a structured division of recovered assets. Equal split on general resources. Specific items would be allocated based on which alliance has greater functional use for them, with disagreements resolved by mutual evaluation."

"Generous," Marcus murmured, "for a proposal that has no enforcement mechanism."

Jaskrit met his eyes. "There is no enforcement mechanism. We are aware of that. So are you."

The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that occurs when two parties at a negotiation have both privately acknowledged that the other intends to betray them.

Rudra spoke after a moment. "We will discuss your proposal and respond within the hour."

Jaskrit nodded. He and Marshal Veylara were escorted to a waiting chamber.

The leadership reconvened in the inner war room.

Almond leaned back in his chair. "He’s going to betray us."

"Yes," Rudra said.

"And we’re going to betray him."

"Yes."

Lily was already pulling up the depth maps that Big D’s intelligence team had been quietly assembling for the past five weeks. "The question isn’t whether. The question is when, and where, and how. We need to be the ones who set those terms."

"Agreed," Almond said. "Which depth?"

Aryan stepped forward. "Not Virexion-Kezryx’s. They’d have a home-field advantage in terms of attunement, and the recovered assets would empower their existing kingdom more than ours."

"Not ours either, for the same reason inverted," Maya added. "They’d refuse it."

"That leaves three," Aryan continued. "Thalmyr, Celestara, or Oblivion Tyrant. Thalmyr is the strongest alliance currently. Going to their depth invites a response we cannot afford right now. Celestara has just been neutered by the recent battle — extracting from their depth would be the easiest path, but it sets a precedent that any alliance with reduced ability to contest us becomes a target for stripping. We do not want that precedent established this early."

"Which leaves Oblivion Tyrant," Almond said.

Lily smiled slightly. "And Oblivion Tyrant Sovereignty is aligned with the Velkarion Dominion, who is currently the third-ranked participating power and an active threat to both us and Virexion-Kezryx. Stripping Oblivion’s depth weakens Velkarion’s effective long-term position. Two strategic gains in one operation."

Rudra nodded. "And Virexion-Kezryx will accept it for the same reasons."

"They’ll accept it because they want to weaken Velkarion as much as we do," Almond agreed. "And because they assume they can betray us at the recovery point and walk away with both the resources and the strategic shift."

Marcus exhaled slowly. "So the trap is the trap."

"The trap is the trap," Lily said.

She turned to Almond. "We accept. We bring our best. We get to the recovery point. And then we hit first, hit hard, and leave with everything."

Almond looked at the rest of the leadership. No one objected.

"Bring Jaskrit back in."

The agreement was reached within twenty minutes.

Both alliances would deploy a core expedition team — twelve named members each, supported by a controlled allocation of secondary forces. The expedition would descend into Oblivion Tyrant Sovereignty’s depth within forty-eight hours. Resource division would follow the proposed framework. Disagreements would be resolved by mutual evaluation.

Both alliances signed.

Both alliances understood that the signatures were ornamental.

Forty-six hours later, the joint expedition entered the depth.

The Suryax-Ananta team led with Almond, Lily, Rudra, Ainen, Natalia, Kayla, Silvester, Hiroshi, Marcus, Maya, Vael Drakhar, and Seris Vanthell. The Virexion-Kezryx team was led by Jaskrit, Marshal Veylara, and ten others — senior commanders and elite combatants from both kingdoms.

The descent ran through dark, pressure-warped waters that thickened the deeper they went. The ambient energy here was different from Suryax’s depth. It was heavier, more aggressive, and carried a low resonance that the Oblivion Tyrant Sovereignty’s combatants would have recognized as their own native signature. To the rest of them, it felt like descending into a long, slow growl.

The first wave came at the three-kilometer mark.