Free Web NovelA massive rift gaped open above the capital world.
Now it wasn’t just the nobles who’d gotten the news early—every single resident living on this planet saw the scene that was enough to leave them slack-jawed.
“The capital world’s defenses... got broken...”
Zhuo Haoyu murmured.
In that moment, his expression was pure disbelief.
And plenty of people present looked exactly the same.
The residents who’d grown up on the capital world had been raised on the Empire’s glorious deeds since childhood. They’d even witnessed—back when His Majesty Bernard was young—the era when the Empire had been dazzlingly prosperous.
Even as Bernard gradually aged, even as the Hoffmann royal family lost its former dominance and undercurrents swirled between the royal house and the great noble clans...
in most people’s hearts, the Poes Empire still belonged to humans—still radiant beyond compare.
Humans were still one of the strongest races in the First Star Sector.
And as the most important center of power, the capital world’s defenses were also the highest-grade and tightest in the entire Empire. freёwebnoѵel.com
When the news came that the Padar people had lost contact with Kanirila in less than three days, StarNet had been full of people laughing at them.
They thought the Padar people lost so fast because their defenses were trash. If it were them, they absolutely wouldn’t be invaded that easily.
And yet less than half a year after those words were posted, they’d been slapped in the face—hard.
The Saint Clan’s warships tore through their defenses like slicing tofu, effortless and clean.
So now, a rift that was unimaginably huge—like the mouth of an abyss—hung across the skies above the capital world.
No matter what angle you looked from, you could see it.
In that instant, every bit of past glory, every shred of imperial radiance, shattered all over the ground.
StarNet exploded.
“What happened?!”
“There’s that huge rift in the sky... is an enemy invasion happening?!”
“Where’s our military? What the hell are the border garrisons even doing?!”
“The garrisons can’t stop this! Look—those are Saint Clan warships! They spatial-jumped in directly!”
The photo that person posted was clearly taken by satellite.
The universe—the star sea—was supposed to feel boundless.
But in that image, the vast cosmos looked crowded for the first time.
Countless black warships surged like a never-ending flood. One glance made it feel like there was no end, a solid, dark mass.
Compared to the dense warships all around, the capital world—alone beneath them—looked absurdly small.
It was only a photo, yet the suffocating sense of shock it carried made everyone who saw it fall silent.
There was no doubt about it.
With the number of warships in that photo, forget the border garrisons—even dragging the entire Empire’s military here wouldn’t matter.
—The gap was too big.
“Is the Saint Clan... invading us?”
After a long while, someone finally posted that question, cautious as if afraid to say it too loudly.
Yeah.
The Saint Clan suddenly mobilized that many ships and surrounded the capital world—if that wasn’t an invasion, what was?
Someone immediately panicked, screaming about buying a ticket to leave the capital world.
But the replies below didn’t hesitate to stab that fantasy straight through.
“Stop dreaming. Starship tickets sold out ages ago. The port’s packed with nobles! They got the news early and were already trying to run!”
“Not sure if this is good news or bad news, but the Saint Clan intercepted the routes. Even those nobles can’t leave now. They’ve gotta stay here and live-or-die with us commoners.”
As soon as those two comments went up, StarNet erupted into another wave of furious cursing at the nobles.
They were the first to get the news, and without even thinking, they hurriedly packed up, dragging their whole families along to flee for shelter.
They exploited the information gap to seize port resources first—just so they could get out before everyone else even realized what was happening, without caring that countless civilians below still had no idea.
Xi Heyan glanced at StarNet.
He saw the posts raging at the nobles, but he didn’t feel the same anger as everyone else.
He wasn’t surprised at all.
He’d already seen the faces of these so-called nobles once before—twenty years ago.
So of course he wasn’t shocked they would do something like this when the country was in crisis.
Zhuo Haoyu, on the other hand, asked Xi Heyan uneasily, “They summoned us... that means we’re preparing to fight, right? Do you think... we can win?”
Zhuo Haoyu had grown up on the capital world. All his family was here. Of course he didn’t want anything to happen to this planet.
Even though he already knew the answer, he still couldn’t help looking to Xi Heyan—wanting to hear it from someone else.
But Xi Heyan didn’t follow Zhuo Haoyu’s lead and comfort him.
He only said, calmly—
“We can’t.”
If it were twenty years ago, maybe there could’ve been hope.
A dark, mocking edge passed through his eyes.
Zhuo Haoyu let out a breath and scratched his head. “If only the Blackstone Legion was still around...”
When the Blackstone Legion existed, it was the Empire’s sharpest blade.
They were called the Empire’s protectors, always fighting on the very front lines.
Even now, when people chatted after meals, the most famous battles they talked about were the ones the Blackstone Legion won.
When they reminisced about past glory, what they were really reminiscing about was the era when the Blackstone Legion still existed—when the human Empire had been so powerful across the star sectors.
It was just a pity that twenty years ago, the Blackstone Legion’s leader was branded with the crime of colluding with the enemy and betraying the nation, and every trusted aide and soldier under that leader was brutally purged.
After that, control of the military fell completely into the hands of the royal family and the nobles.
Gradually, the academy’s °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° selection shifted from ability and grades—
to lineage and status.
For commoners, climbing upward became harder than hard.
All these years, the academy had produced only a handful of commoner top students.
The upper resources and promotion channels in the military had practically been monopolized by those powerful noble families.
That was why Xi Heyan found it so bitterly ironic.
His Majesty Bernard thought himself clever, but in the end, he’d wrapped his own cocoon—blocking every path of retreat.
He thought crushing one Blackstone Legion would solve everything forever.
He never considered that once the sharp claws in his hand were pulled out—
who would still fear an aging lion king, growing weaker by the day?
After the spoils were divided, backlash and betrayal were almost inevitable.
Xi Heyan understood that.
And so did the nobles who coveted the highest seat—along with the rebel organizations trying to overturn Hoffmann rule.
Long-term internal rot and external threats had already left this once-mighty empire teetering on the edge.
In fact, the current state of the empire was even worse than Xi Heyan had imagined.
The capital world’s defenses broke the moment they were hit.
All that funding poured in every year—how much of it had flowed straight into the nobles’ private vaults?
It had only been twenty years since the Blackstone Legion vanished.
And in those twenty years, the powerful Poes Empire declined step by step—
while the Saint Clan, after Mansendis took the throne, grew more and more terrifyingly strong.
While panic spread across the capital world, the palace finally made a move.
They sent an officer to negotiate with the Saint Clan.
And what made it even more bitterly ridiculous was—
when the order was passed down, that officer was still at the port, trapped in the crowd, holding onto a spouse and children.
The moment he heard he’d been selected to negotiate with the Saint Clan, his face turned ghostly pale.
But under pressure from above, he still had to stand in the command room, trembling, and read out the accusations written in advance on his script.
“Th-the Saint Clan... are you going to violate the peace treaty?!”
He wanted to sound angry. More righteous. More like a just interrogation.
But his deathly pale face and shaking body had already exposed his fear.
On the other side of the screen, in a command room as well, Selet lifted their gaze.
Selet was tall to begin with, and looking down from above only amplified the pressure.
More than that, Selet’s face was cold as frost—expressionless, like an ice sculpture that radiated chill.
Those green eyes looked like something cold-blooded. When Selet stared at someone, it felt like locking onto prey.
The officer instantly felt like a beast had already marked him.
Selet hadn’t even said a word yet, and the officer had already scared himself half to death.
He showed weakness in one sentence.
With no comparison, there’s no damage.
Put them side by side and it was a brutally clear contrast.
In sheer presence alone, the human side had already lost.
Selet answered the officer’s question in a cold voice. “A peace treaty? The Saint Clan never signed that.”
To avoid war and invasion, the races across the star sectors had indeed signed peace treaties.
But when they signed them, they excluded the Saint Clan.
How could they trust a pack of monsters?
In a way, that “peace treaty” was more like something designed specifically to target the Saint Clan.
The general meaning was: let’s form an alliance—if the Saint Clan attacks us one day, everyone remember to come help.
And then when the Saint Clan actually attacked Kanirila, the races that signed the treaty all chose, in perfect unspoken agreement, to “forget” it.
Because seriously—back when it was signed, the Saint Clan wasn’t this strong. Who could’ve imagined that after Mansendis took the throne, the Saint Clan would become this vicious?
So the human empire now faced the same situation as the Padar people.
No external rescue.
Their own defenses were basically decoration.
All they could do was watch the Saint Clan’s warships hang arrogantly above their heads.
The officer tried to pick up the script again, but Selet couldn’t be bothered wasting more breath.
Conversation was never Selet’s strength. That had always been Alvin’s role.
But this operation was under Selet’s command, so Selet had no choice but to grit through it.
Even so, two sentences was already Selet’s limit.
Selet had little patience for outside races—especially knowing these humans very likely had bullied their little prince. Selet’s chest was full of rage.
Selet didn’t want to keep listening to the officer babble.
Selet only left one line behind—
that they were harboring star pirates; that these star pirates had once stolen the Saint Clan’s most important treasure; and that this trip was to come settle accounts with humans.
Then Selet cut the comms.
Leaving behind nothing but an officer staring blankly.
Almost the instant the connection ended, the rift hanging above the capital world shuddered with sound.
Saint Clan warships.
They came through the rift and entered the capital world’s airspace.
As everyone held their breath and stared upward, the Saint Clan warships opened fire.
Everyone on the capital world thought it was the signal that the Saint Clan was about to invade them.
Not a single person was an exception.
A middle-aged man in a white lab coat was issuing orders to the staff under him. “The capital world isn’t safe anymore. Prepare to evacuate everything first. Preserve the experimental data. We’ve done this work once before—don’t make me repeat myself.”
The words had barely left his mouth when he saw his subordinate’s face turn to panic.
At the same time, his light-brain lit up.
Someone messaged him: “Dr. Kegso, are you at the institute? If you are, evacuate now! The Saint Clan’s target is the institute!”
Kegso saw the message.
But it was already too late.
Before he could react, a scorching, violent shockwave blew the roof above his head apart.
In the blink of an eye, this once-famous institute became ruins—along with everything above it, reduced to drifting ash.
Explosions rang out one after another.
It wasn’t just this one institute.
Several institutes tied to the underground black market were physically erased by the Saint Clan.
Each time a shell was fired, Selet absentmindedly crossed a name off the target list.
Once the list was completely cleared, the Saint Clan finally stopped their attack.
Just as they arrived with shocking speed, they left without dragging it out.
Warships pulled away one after another—neat, uniform, disciplined.
The people on the capital world, meanwhile, were still dazed.
It wasn’t until they saw the warships vanish from the sky that they finally felt the real, dizzying sense of surviving a catastrophe.
—The Saint Clan left! They lived!
But unlike the cheering civilians, the atmosphere inside the palace was suffocating.
Countless nobles and officials had gathered there, for a purpose that was obvious.
If the capital world fell, the palace was the safest place.
Bernard was afraid of dying—terrified of it. He dared let the nobles embezzle the capital’s defense funds, yet treated his own safety with obsessive importance.
The palace’s defense budget came straight out of his private vault, all to turn his location into an iron barrel, sealed tight.
And those well-informed nobles, seeing they couldn’t leave through the port, immediately ran to the palace under the name of “discussing countermeasures,” just to hide.
Now that they heard the Saint Clan had withdrawn, they weren’t jubilant like the civilians.
If anything, their faces looked even heavier.
Because even though the warships were gone, the torn-open rift still remained—hanging high above, like silent mockery.
Especially since after the Blackstone Legion was branded traitorous, they’d sworn to the public on every major channel that the Empire was still strong, and that the great Hoffmann royal family could still lead them forward.
Even if they lost one or two legions, the Empire had more, and stronger, armies that would rise up.
But after this battle, all the words they’d used to inflate their own achievements boomeranged back in an instant.
Turning the current imperial council and the Hoffmann royal family into complete jokes.
And that still wasn’t the worst.
When the news came that the institute had been destroyed—and that Kegso had died in the blast—Bernard spat blood in front of everyone, rolled his eyes back, and collapsed unconscious.
When Xi Heyan received word that Bernard had passed out, he immediately told the person on the other end of the comm, “Keep him alive. Don’t let him die that early.”
He still hadn’t even tasted the pain of mental energy torment.
If he died that easily, it would be letting him off far too cheap.
Because what Xi Heyan suffered back then was far worse than this.
......
What happened on the human side afterward didn’t matter to Selet.
They returned the same way they came—orderly, disciplined, retracing their route.
They even stopped briefly when passing the Dorente Star where the Pachi people lived.
And that nearly scared the Pachi people out of their skins. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
They watched all those warships stop in the planet’s skies, shaking in fear.
The news that the Saint Clan had invaded the human empire—and launched an attack—was already all over StarNet.
But what the Pachi people hadn’t expected was that one second they were still eating popcorn, and the next second one side of the story showed up right in front of them.
Surrounded by that dense wall of warships—who wouldn’t be terrified?
Thankfully, Selet treated the Pachi people with more patience than the human officer.
Selet stated up front: Selet was here to buy toys.
Every newest model on the market—Selet wanted them all. And Selet could pay in ore.
So, with one side trembling and the other utterly calm, a transaction was completed in a way that could only be called bizarre.
The Pachi people gained a heap of ore, and the Saint Clan returned to the Ninth Star Sector satisfied—warships full of toys.
-
But back on Esoris...
A sudden, unexpected change threw the entire base into instant chaos.
The moment Mansendis received the news, he hurried over with Mond and Alvin to Wen Yuzhi’s room.
Merita stood at the door.
When she saw Mansendis arrive, she lifted her skirt to salute.
Mansendis stopped her.
“What happened?”
At the sovereign’s question, Merita’s stone-flat face—rarely—showed a hint of troubled frustration.
“You should go see for yourself. The little prince won’t let us get close.”
When Merita said that, Mansendis’s gaze sank even darker.
He walked straight into the room.
But he didn’t see the cub.
Instead, there was a small lump under the blanket on the bed—and with the rise and fall of breathing, that little lump moved.
Mansendis frowned.
He stepped forward and reached to lift the blanket.
But in the next instant—
maybe the cub inside was a little flustered—
a tuft of something fluffy, almost like a tail, slipped out by accident.
