The pieces of the puzzle began to click together in her mind. Every muttered comnt, every cryptic remark he had made over the past few hours—things that had seed like the ramblings of a man under pressure—suddenly ford a terrifying picture.
"You intend to broadcast the fights through your channel? Are you crazy?!" she shrieked, her voice rising in pitch as panic set in. "Don’t you know they can pinpoint your exact location using a live feed? You’re handing them your head on a silver platter!"
"I don’t care," Hye said, shrugging his shoulders with a nonchalance that bordered on the suicidal. "Against , against my forces... I’m confident that no race can pose a real threat anymore."
Olana stared at him, her mouth agape. She wanted to scream at him, to shake him until his senses returned. She wanted to tell him that he was being blinded by his own hubris, that he was catastrophically overestimating his own strength. These weren’t so mid-tier warlords or planetary rebels he was talking about; these were the Toranks.
The Toranks weren’t just the second strongest race in the known universe; they were the ancient architects of conflict. They were the ones who had been dealing with him since the first sparks of the apocalypse began to fly. If there was any race in existence that knew his secrets, his weaknesses, and his patterns, it was the Toranks.
Yet, as the lecture ford in her mind, she recalled the sight of his Soulers and his Reapers—the way they moved through enemy lines like a scythe through wheat.
She rembered the unstoppable, grim tactics he had utilised to crush every opposition he had faced recently. She knew, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, that his arrogance wasn’t born of ignorance. He truly believed he had moved beyond their reach.
Still, the fear remained—an unshakable, ancestral dread. She had lived her entire life under the shadow of the Big Three. Every child in the galaxy was taught that there were certain powers one simply did not provoke. To touch the Toranks was to invite extinction.
She fell into a tense silence. Hye didn’t seem to notice her inner turmoil; he was busy waiting for his friends to confirm the completion of their task. His eyes weren’t even on the Torank fleet indicators. In truth, he hadn’t placed them on his list of worries at all.
Where Olana saw a death sentence, Hye saw an opening. In these dark tis, when his people were consud by uncertainty and paralysed by fear, he knew that logic wouldn’t save them. Only glory could.
There was no better way to unify a fractured population than to let them taste a victory that felt impossible.
Watching him dismantle the second strongest race in the universe, one lesson at a ti, would be the ultimate sedative for the masses. It would silence the doubters, crush the brewing riots, and cent his status as a god-tier sovereign. This was why he had decided to resurrect his channel.
Since the end of the apocalypse, the channel had felt like a liability—a glaring neon sign pointing toward his ho. He knew his world was technically shielded by the System’s laws, but he had preferred to keep a low profile.
He had gone so far as to ban his inner circle and his subjects from sharing anything related to his world’s developnt or his future plans. They were allowed to consu universal trends, but never to contribute to them.
But the situation had changed. His internal world was facing a disaster of spirit, and the channel was the only scalpel sharp enough to cut out the rot.
A notification pinged in his ntal interface. It was a ssage from Angelica.
[We are ready!] The ssage read. [The broadcast equipnt has been successfully installed across all the newly integrated planets. Large-scale screens have been erected in every major city centre. The people are confused, but they’re gathering. They’re curious to see what’s going to happen.]
Hye didn’t rush to hit the ’Live’ button. He wanted the tension to simr first.
[Start by sharing the latest communiqués from the Toranks,] Hye commanded, his ntal voice cold and steady. [Make sure the people grasp the absolute gravity of the situation.
Find the most dire expert analyses regarding this declaration of war and loop them. I want them to understand exactly how serious this threat is. I want them to feel the weight of the Torank shadow before I step into the light.]
[Understood. Doing it now,] Angelica replied. There was a brief pause before she added, [How long before you intend to go live?]
Hye stared out into the ink-black void ahead. In the distance, ripples began to distort the fabric of space. One by one, small, rhythmic flashes erupted as portals began to tear open, shimring with unstable energy.
[Give one hour at most!] he sent the command back to Angelica.
"One hour? Why wait so long?!" Standing beside him, Olana was already reeling from the sheer scale of what was unfolding. She watched the portals stabilise around the flagship, a clear signal that Hye’s scout warriors had already reached the enemy’s coordinates.
They had successfully established the bridgehead, opening the door for him to step through and begin the spectacle.
She was consud by a burning, anxious curiosity. She wanted to see how he would fare against the Toranks, but more importantly, she wanted to see what the Toranks had brought to this fight.
The Toranks were not fools. Hye’s combat style—his reliance on the terrifying Soulers and the relentless Reapers—was no longer a secret to the apex races of the universe.
Every strategist in the galaxy had spent years studying his recordings, looking for a crack, a delay, or a flaw in his seemingly invincible tactics.
If anyone had finally cracked the code to stopping the human emperor, it would be the Toranks. She wondered if the universe was about to witness the fall of a legend or the birth of an era of absolute dominance.
"I’ll need ti to prepare a proper show for them," Hye replied, offering no further explanation.
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