"As you command, Supreme Ruler."Vaern Thael's voice stayed steady, without a trace of hesitation.He bowed his head once more, deeply, before rising with the same measured precision as when he had knelt. No excess emotion on his face, only a cold composure that concealed something far more dangerous beneath.He turned.His footsteps echoed across the vast hall, moving away without a single glance back.Inside his mind, one thing was already certain.He didn't know how strong that creature truly was.But it didn't matter.Because this... would be the end for him.---Orders moved faster than sound. Within hours, the entire Aethon Vel military network had activated completely. Commands passed from one sector to the next without obstruction, like a system that had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.And in less than a day, thirty million Galactic Warriors had assembled.---The main field of Aethon Vel stretched like a continent without an end.Its surface was not earth b

The entire fleet stopped. A perfect formation, like a wall built from steel and light, stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. Millions of vessels, all still at once, hanging in outer space like something that had been waiting for this moment long before they arrived.Then the door of the lead craft opened.The figure stepped out, and instantly the entire space around him felt different.Three meters tall, golden robes moving slowly with no wind to move them, ears long and tapered backward in a way that was not merely a physical feature but something that radiated authority from every line. No armor. No weapons. And it was precisely that absence that made him look more threatening than every vessel behind him.He walked through the air the same way someone walks across the floor of their own palace.His eyes swept across the thirty-two cultivators standing before him, cold and methodical, before stopping on Kael.He looked long enough to make clear that he had finis