In the command room of the main ship, Morgan paced back and forth in front of the porthole, his expression both solemn and anxious. The crew in the room merely watched him in silence.
After a short while, he paused and gravely said, “Urge them again and ask when the people from the Black Star Army will arrive.”
By his side, his aide-de-camp could not help but speak up. “… Boss, you just asked them two minutes ago. The other party said that they were already rushing over. It’s not too good to keep pressing them.”
“Bullsh*t, I asked you to urge them, so do it! Else I’ll dock your pay!” Morgan’s eyes flashed, “Who knows when the enemies will appear? Would you know? You don’t, so why are you spouting so much nonsense! You don’t need to be responsible for my life, so of course, you don’t care! But I can’t possibly fight off seven or eight Calamity Grades at once, so if my little life is gone, I’ll make sure you accompany me in my burial!”
The aide-de-camp was speechless. However, he did not take it seriously, having followed Morgan for a long time. He knew this guy’s character too well. He was scared of dying, indecisive, calculative, petty, and stingy… Sometimes, the aide-de-camp wondered to himself, how could such a person become a Beyond Grade A seed?
Morgan Panselm, a senior Beyond Grade A seed, ran a small organization in the Endless Nebulae Star Field. He only cared about the convenience of his daily life, not seeking to expand, keeping a thin sense of existence.
The moment the Sanctum Revival matter was revealed, he did not speak another word, merely packing up and preparing to throw himself toward the Beyond Grade A Association. His top choice was the Black Star Army. Other than benefitting from close relations to an influential person, he also had some connections with Hadavy since both of them were hardcore gamblers.
It was just that, when he was about to take his team to leave the territory, he received a private notice from the Black Star Army, stating that some mysterious organizations were currently sending Death Warriors to kill off Beyond Grade A seeds. There could be up to seven or eight of them within a troop, so the army had sent out a few protective fleets to escort them and also reminded each person to be cautious.
This almost scared Morgan to death, and he immediately halted his departure, prepared to wait until the army’s escort fleet arrived before leaving. Not only that, but he also parked his fleet in the most bustling area, staying within the crowd for fear of being murdered.
Of all the Beyond Grade A seeds who had received this notice, he was the one who behaved the most cowardly.
At this moment, his spaceship communicator rang, and a tender young face appeared on the screen.
“Hello, hello, this is Nero from the Black Star Army. I’ve arrived and spotted your ship. Please come over to make contact.”
Hearing this, Morgan was overjoyed. He rushed to the porthole, seeing another fleet with the Black Star Army insignia stop not far away from him.
“The reinforcements are here! Listen to my order. Full speed ahead. Immediately rendezvous with them!” Morgan revealed an excited look.
“We’re in such close range. Just dozens of seconds is enough to reach them through normal cruising. What full speed…” The aide-de-camp secretly cursed.
The two fleets quickly merged, and Nero took his men into Morgan’s spaceship.
Just as he walked into the cabin, Nero saw Morgan waiting at the door of the passageway. Without a word, he rushed up and grabbed onto his hands with an emotional expression.
“My family, you’re finally here. Do you know how I spent the last few days‽ I was in fear every single day, and now I can finally feel relieved!”
“There’s no need to be so excited. It’s all part and parcel.” Nero’s mouth twitched, and he applied some strength to forcibly extricate himself.
If not for the fact that Morgan had kept repeatedly pinging him, he would have arrived another two days later.
Morgan, however, did not seem to mind. He excitedly glanced behind Nero, “May I know how many experts the army has sent to meet me this time?”
“Experts? If we had to force it, I guess it’s only me.” Nero scratched his head a little in embarrassment.
Morgan’s eyes widened, and he stammered, “Only one… er, it’s not that I don’t believe in your strength, but I heard that there’ll be seven or eight Calamity Grades moving together. It’s just two of us. I think there will be some danger…”
“There’s no choice. At the moment, there are too many Beyond Grade A seeds who wish to join the Black Star Army. Our manpower is not enough any longer. We can only send out Grade Bs to escort. This sort of job would be best for the Immortals, but they have all disappeared fifty years ago, so the army has no experts left,” Nero explained.
“Then… the safety issue…”
“Relax, all of the escort teams have a machinery squad from Black Star’s Mechanical Army, as well as Her Excellency Aurora’s special life potions, to ensure our safety.”
Morgan finally relaxed. He asked, “Then, can we leave now for the Flickering World?”
Nero shook his head. “That’s not necessary. We just need to go to the main army subdivision of each Star Field. Every location has a Throne that Godfather has placed. We can use that to teleport you straight to the main base.
Han Xiao initially did not wish to use this method, but after discovering the hunters, he could only lift the restrictions, allowing the Beyond Grade A seeds to utilize the King suits to warp, saving them from the dangers in their journey.
As for those Beyond Grade A seeds that wished to join other organizations, Han Xiao did not reject them either. He rendered the same help, albeit with a token sum. This was also one of the uses of the association, allowing the Beyond Grade As to integrate their resources. As the President, he naturally had to lead by example at this critical juncture.
Both of them walked to the command room while talking, and the fleet finally set off and began its journey.
At this moment, Morgan seemed to have thought of something. He curiously commented, “That’s right, you mentioned that there were a lot of Beyond Grade A seeds at the moment. Have they met with the hunters? Was anyone hit?”
Hearing this, Nero’s expression sank, and he lightly nodded.
“It was a smart choice for you to remain waiting here. Some Beyond Grade A seeds were nonchalant despite receiving the notice, thinking that they could continue their journey as long as they remained vigilant. In the end, even before the reinforcements could arrive, they encountered an assault and were killed.
“Because of distance issues, some people had long assembled with their escort teams. We’re one of the later ones. Before us, some of our colleagues crossed hands with the hunters and turned out fine. However, other organizations have done the same but have been annihilated by the hunters themselves.”
Morgan shuddered. “Who dares lay their hands on so many of the Beyond Grade A seeds? This is too frightening.”
Nero sighed. “While the Army Commander has not specified who is responsible, it’s not hard to guess… Since the enemy can discover the whereabouts of so many Beyond Grade A seeds, their intelligence network is no trivial matter. To also be able to send so many Death Warriors, the likelihood is that they are from an advanced civilization.
“While this was supposed to be a secret operation, the outside world would soon notice that all of these Beyond Grade A seeds had disappeared. This would inevitably scare some of people from joining the Beyond Grade A Association. Like this, the orchestrator’s goal would be achieved.”
“Oh, this is hard.” Morgan sighed as well, pulling a long face.
Nero patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, with me here, you won’t get into trouble.”
Morgan nodded before suddenly asking, “That’s right, with so many Beyond Grade A seeds also joining the army, how are our positions going to be arranged?”
“I’m not too sure. I think only a small portion will become part of the Guards Corps. The rest will hold various positions within the army, replenishing the gap in our high-ranked combatants. The main thing is to see what you want. The army will not force anyone to take up a position.”
Morgan’s eyes lit up. “Then, does that mean I can choose which Beyond Grade A to follow?”
“That’s right, everyone can send in their application, but it will depend on the Excellencies to choose you.” Nero nodded. “Who do you wish to choose? Is it His Excellency Black Star? The competition for my Godfather is quite fierce, and there’s a possibility of losing.”
Morgan immediately denied it and embarrassedly said, “No, no, I don’t want to follow Black Star. I wish to follow Her Excellency Aurora.”
Nero sized him up before coming to an understanding.
Ah, I understand now, this man must be afraid of death to the extreme, so if he is able to enjoy the healing from Aurora, it would be difficult for him to die in the future!
The phrase ‘good for nothing’ really describes you to a tee!
…
“Reporting, six of our Death Warriors have lost contact and might have been captured by the enemy. We have severed all related links.”
“Reporting, the attack on Target #45 has failed. Three Death Warriors were sacrificed. The rest escaped with difficulty.”
In a certain secret intelligence processing center, a large number of intelligence personnel were sitting in front of a set of instruments, constantly reporting on the situation. The room was full of noise.
On the wall of the room was an ultra large screen, made up of many smaller surveillance screens. A single chair was placed underneath it, with a tall, thin figure seated on the chair looking up at the screens, his back facing the crowd.
This place was a secret area jointly created by the Super Star Cluster Alliance many years ago. They had no specific name, shrouded in mystery yet having great authority. They only answered to the leaders of the various civilizations.
This secret department was responsible for managing black ops and cultivating Death Warriors. Various Super Star Cluster civilizations secretly selected talented children and sent them to such training bases to conduct cruel training from an early age before allowing them to specialize in performing tasks that could not be revealed.
Their training method was designed to squeeze out all potential, and coupled with their technological and magical advancements, it allowed them to effectively increase the rate of Calamity Grades being produced at the cost of a high mortality rate.
These Death Warriors would never know who they worked for, from the training period up till they performed their missions in the future. To this end, this department had even specially trained a group of Death Warriors who believed that they worked for the three Universal Civilizations. Many methods had been used to ensure that outsiders would not be able to trace the Death Warriors back to the Super Star Cluster Alliance.
Everyone within this department was a special member who was not recorded in any internal files. They were all referred to by codes. The tall and thin figure in the room was the person in charge of the department, with only his title known to people—’Skeletal’.
After listening to the reports of his subordinates, Skeletal leaned forward as he slowly spoke.
“It seems like the Beyond Grade As are aware of our hunting actions and have equipped all our targets with guards… The chain of suspicion has been formed; our goal is achieved. It will be a waste of manpower if we continue. Stop the operation. Have everyone withdraw.”
“Understood!”
Everyone immediately followed orders without asking.
Skeletal bit on his nails as he narrowed his eyes.
“Hehe, the reaction of the Beyond Grade A Association is indeed not far from our hypothesis…”
…
In the conference room of the three Universal Civilizations, the virtual projections of Marbruce, Louis, and the Pope appeared.
“Tsk, the situation has changed. The cleanup plan cannot continue.”
Marbruce frowned, and the other two had unsightly expressions as well.
While they had begun researching the Sanctum Revivals, the three Universal Civilizations also had plans to hunt down the Beyond Grade A seeds. Even if they managed to master the Sanctum Revival method in the future, since this large number of Beyond Grade A seeds would have gone to the association, they would not be able to transfer them over in the future. Both parties were destined to enter a long period of fighting for talents, so they would rather return to the problem of the excessive number of non-Beyond Grade As, making it such that it would be easier to contain the Beyond Grade A level in advance.
But before they could move, the three Universal Civilizations discovered that all of their targets were heavily protected.
At the beginning, the trio were a little dazed, thinking that Black Star had predicted their actions, flipping over the boat of trust they were on.
However, after careful investigation, they discovered that another unknown organization had first acted and alerted everyone.
This totally messed up their plans, causing them to feel a disgusting aftertaste.
Such a dumb way of doing things was not their style at all. If they wished to do it, they had to catch everyone in one fell swoop.
While they had not found out who had acted, the three Universal Civilizations did not even need to think to know that it was likely the Super Star Cluster Alliance.
“The Super Star Clusters purposely decided to create a commotion, leaving the association time to react, spoiling our operations.” Louis was fuming.
“Unexpectedly, this makes sense.” The Pope was expressionless.
From the perspective of the trio, the intentions of the Super Star Cluster Alliance were obvious. This served to intensify the suspicion between the association and the three Universal Civilizations.
The Beyond Grade A Association was only protecting them in the dark and had not publicly come out to accuse anyone. If the three Universal Civilizations took the initiative to state their innocence, it might backfire on them. Even if they tried to pin the blame on the Super Star Cluster Alliance, it would just look like their customary attitude of throwing shade at the other party.
With the current relationship of the three Universal Civilizations and the association, this was akin to having mud on the back of one’s pants. Even if it was not sh*t, people would naturally assume it to be. No matter what, it would be difficult to gain their trust unless they could provide hard evidence.
The Super Star Clusters had been pitted against so many times; they already had experience in this matter. Since their reputation was in the gutters, they could just go for broke.
I’ll pull you along with me as I fall from the cliff. If I’m going to die, then you have to come along!
In their current situation, the Super Star Cluster Alliance had nothing to be afraid of from the three Universal Civilizations any longer.
Since they no longer had any chances with the Flickering World, they would just stay cooped up at home.
If you have the ability, come and have an all-out war with us. Did you think you could really destroy us?
The trio present did indeed feel that the Super Star Cluster Alliance was a thorny problem.
If they had managed to kill off all the Beyond Grade A seeds that were trying to join the association, it might still have been a fair trade to get suspected, but now, they had become the scapegoats when only a few had been killed off. This was placing them in a disadvantage!
“Cancel the cleansing operation for the Beyond Grade A seeds. They’re all protected now. There’s no chance now.”
The trio were not in a very good mood.
