In nearly all media devices across the empire, TVs, holograms, phones, and AR devices, the imperial government’s royal office seal appeared, accompanied by a one-minute timer counting down to the emperor’s address.The closer the timer got to zero, the slower the empire seemed to move. Sports games, school lectures, tours, and even fights came to a halt as everyone turned their attention to the broadcast. Tension and fear gripped the citizens, fueled by the empire’s recent increase in defenses and the lack of enough and clear information about why.When the timer hit zero, the seal disappeared, revealing the emperor standing behind a podium, dressed in full military attire. The sight alone sent a chill through the empire, as the emperor only wore his military uniform during moments of grave importance. The last time he had done so was during the first Conclave-Empire faceoff, when Xalthar led to the empire being discovered.“Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, dear citizen

By the tenth minute since the application portal was opened, a whopping eleven billion people had already registered, with the majority of the applicants coming from the Proxima star system. Happy and excited, they finally had the chance to help the empire instead of being on the receiving end. Although that was the main reason, they were also joining to take revenge for their killed comrades who were among the casualties of the empire, despite their side of casualties being on the low end due to all of them being awakened. The majority of their casualties came from the top ten civilizations as a result of space-station-destroying-level attacks that were used against them, leaving no time to escape. Anyone who applied was either immediately accepted if they were deemed to have been of age or denied if they were below the age of eighteen. Following that, for those who were accepted, they immediately received a link to an authorized-only location within the VR that they could join w

The moment the avatar-making process started, the situation finally became clear. Although a large number of people chose to create their own avatars from scratch ot bring their imaginations to life, the majority of humans used the Universal IP option. Some chose to become Space Marines, others Hell Divers, clone soldiers, Jedis, Superman, and more. Every strong and famous character from any world of entertainment, be it movies, comics, anime, books, and more, was selected. The empire allowed free range, so long as their abilities were things they could replicate in some way or form. Not stopping there, and to help dissociate what they were about to do from their actual selves, the empire went ahead and even gave all of these characters a backstory. For those who were custom-made, the empire improvised depending on the person’s dreams and imagination about their character. For those who chose legacy Universal IP characters, the backstory matched closely to their original counterpar

[...........][..........][........][.......]The system lines stopped the moment he triggered the knot in his soul, as if it were now trying to adapt to Aron’s actions.With it also came a moment of silence and reprieve from the pain, but despite that, he didn’t feel relief as he was yet to know if it was a temporary fix or not. Soon, his body answered for him.“Mhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” he groaned, trying to hold the shout in, knowing that the moment he shouted, his mental defenses against the pain would once again give up. Instead, he decided to sit down in a meditation position, interlocking his fingers while touching his thumbs together and closing his eyes, trying to pinpoint what was happening. Although the pain had returned and was worse than the first hit, this one felt like a mixture, with a part coming from his soul that constantly poisoned his mana, while the additional pain was coming from a different source.As he once again started dumping all of the newly poisoned mana, si

TWIF! TWOF! TWUF! TWAFF! TWIF! TWOF! TWUF! TWAFF!In the silence of space, thrusters in different areas of an attacking ship activated with millisecond intervals to ensure the ship's movements were predictable, while also fine-tuning its positioning in preparation for the next action half the imperial interceptor fleets were about to partake in. The thrusters divided the sheeps into their respective assigned action groups, with everything taking place while invisible to the enemy due to the large shield curtain in front of them, which was still deflecting the lasers being continuously sent by the Conclave fleet, who wanted to try and drain its energy and see if they could break through it.Only ten seconds had passed since they started attacking each other, but the number of attacks and the speed at which things were happening would make anyone who experienced it think hours had gone by.Once all the action groups were divided, totaling eighteen to be exact, they instantly started ac