Chapter 531: Ch

His eyes narrowed as he scanned the room, meeting the uneasy gazes of the lords.

"Yet, terrifying as that may be, it is not the core reality we must confront today. The reality is that the Star Empire has suffered an unprovoked act of total war at the hands of the Celestial Void Empire. We must respond in kind! We must muster our resolve and crush this existential threat once and for all!"

The Emperor paused, letting the heavy words settle before his voice lowered with calculated gravity.

"However... the Imperial Household and the standing Imperial Armies cannot bear this alone and at once. This enemy is simply too formidable & imperial armies stretched thin. If we are to bring down a colossus of this scale, we require absolute numerical and military superiority. We need every gun, every ship, and every expert our empier can muster."

His gaze shifted purposefully away from his own shaken allies, locking directly onto the neutral lords and the leaders of the loyalist faction—lingering sharply on Marquis Grey.

"Therefore, I call upon every noble house present. Whatever private armadas, ancestral legions, or strategic reserves you can mobilize, you must muster them immediately! Dispatch your fleets toward the northern front to rendezvous with the Imperial Elite First Fleet. These are the darkest hours our empire has faced. If we are to survive, we must cast aside our squabbles and stand united as one!"

"However... the Imperial Household and the standing Imperial Armies cannot bear this alone and at once.

"A once-weak enemy has simply become too formidable for the Imperial armies to handle alone—at least not right now, when we are already stretched thin. With the simultaneous eruption of three Tier-4 peak outer realms about to happen, I simply cannot pool enough forces."

These words shook the members of his own faction, while those from the other factions merely frowned. Although what he said was true and straight to the point, it was his earlier attitude that soured their expressions.

After all, the simultaneous explosion of three Tier-4 peak outer realms was an exceedingly rare phenomenon—and since only the Imperial family had the means to detect, verify, so it fell on the toforewarn the noble households about few months in advance so they could prepare. Yet here they were, almost on the very eve of the catastrophe and only now did they were learning the truth.

Earlier, when the Star Emperor ordered them to deploy their personal fleets toward these three outer realms, the official justification was merely that unusual spatial fluctuations had been detected.

They were told the realms were far from critical eruption and nowhere near reaching an explosive threshold. That was the explanation they had received. Now, at this critical juncture, they were suddenly being told that full-scale eruptions were imminent across all three realms.

"What is the meaning of this, Your Imperial Majesty?!" Archduke Brian Leach from the Loyalist faction slammed his fists down, stood up, and roared. "Earlier, you notified us only of minor abnormal surges—not a simultaneous explosion, nor that we would be facing a full, three-layered beast tide!"

The Star Emperor frowned. In an instant, he directed the crushing weight of his Star Law Realm aura straight at Archduke Brian Leach, demanding coldly, "What is the meaning of this, Archduke? That is something I should be asking you. At such a crucial hour, acting out like this—how should I interpret your defiance, huh? You tell me."

"Hmph!"

The Archduke easily shrugged off the oppressive pressure, releasing just enough of his own aura to form a protective barrier. As a peak Star Law Realm powerhouse, he was the Emperor's equal—and perhaps even his superior in raw combat prowess.

He retorted with equal chill, "Your Majesty, I am not the one causing a scene; you are. You deliberately misinformed us about the true situation in the three outer realms, keeping us in the dark until who knows how few days remain before the eruption!

Do you even realize what that means? Our fleets—the fleets belonging to the loyalist factions since this is our term to guard—have made zero preparations for a crisis of this scale! Do you understand what will happen when the eruption hits while we are in this state?!"

"The fleets and garrisons stationed at those three fronts won't stand a smallest of a chance against the initial out break, let alone the outer beasts that pour through at peak eruption! Not only will we fail to keep the horde at bay, but they will breach our perimeter and tear straight into the Empire's interior territory!"

Archduke Brian Leach roared without yielding an inch. His explosive fury stunned the entire chamber, and the color rapidly drained from everyone's faces—even the Imperial faction nobles who had been ready to gloat.

While they relished seeing the Loyalist faction squirm, the cold reality of Brian's words sank in. If what the Duke said was even remotely true—and deep down, they knew it was—then what the Emperor had done bordered on madness.

The nobles hardly dared to fathom the consequences. If those three outer bases fell, all hell would break loose. These outer beasts were not mindless vermin; they possessed cunning, intent, and coordinated battle instincts. If they realized the defensive line had shattered, an unending tide of creatures would surge from the void like a boundless ocean, devouring every star system and habitable world in its path.

It would be an absolute, unmitigated catastrophe.

Immediately, a horrifying memory surfaced in the minds of nearly every elder noble—a nightmare that had unfolded seven hundred thousand years ago.

Back then, due to a cascade of complications, the garrison fleets stationed around those same three outer realms were only halfway through their defensive preparations. The sudden eruption caught them completely off guard. At the eruption's violent peak, the forward garrisons lost their footholds, and the outer beast horde smashed clean through the lines. More and more monstrosities poured from the realm rifts in ceaseless droves—numbers far too overwhelming for the frontier forces to withstand.

In the wake of that breach, nearly half of the Empire's core territories fell into the clutches of the rampaging beasts.

It was only by begging for salvation from one of the Seven Super States—at a ruinous, humiliating price—that the tide finally turned. Only after that super-entity deployed its ultimate, supreme powerhouses were they able to halt the horde's advance, driving the beasts back into the abyssal realm from which they had spawned and finally putting an end to the apocalypse.

Yet the price of that salvation was almost too catastrophic for the Star Empire to bear. It took a grueling three hundred thousand years of struggle, sacrifice, and tribute just to settle the debt and rebuild. Only recently had the Empire truly begun to recover and prosper again.

And now... if the Emperor...

Every noble in the hall shuddered, their faces turning deathly pale as their collective gazes shifted toward the Star Emperor. If His Majesty had truly engineered something so reckless and horrific just to suppress his political rivals, then everything was lost.

It would be the absolute end of the Empire.

and at that another enemy was rushing at them and there power was no joke at all to defate them the celstial void empier they would need .... the noble werent even sure about that as there thought were compeltey clouded with thought's of outer beast and the following beast tide...

"Wh-what have you done, Emperor?! What have you done?!"

The sudden outburst came from Lewis, the Archduke of Darkness—a foundational pillar of the Imperial faction and by far the Star Emperor's most formidable ally and staunch follower. His trembling voice instantly drew every gaze in the grand hall.

Even the Star Emperor froze, completely taken aback. He could not comprehend why his greatest confidant was looking at him with utter, unmasked horror.

"Suppressing the Loyalist faction was one thing, but thi—this?! How could you make such an imbecilic decision, Emperor?! How could you?!" Archduke Lewis's voice cracked with raw dread. "This won't just annihilate the Loyalists and their fleets—along with them, the entire Empire will fall! Dammit all!"

"You fool, don't you realize what year this is?! Don't you know the cosmic alignment?!" Lewis slamed his shuddering hand's on the table in front of him, his dark aura trembling erratically. "This is the Tenth eruption, the last Cycle of erruption that happen's every one million year! Do you have any idea what that means?! It means when the eruption triggers, it will unleash energy at a terrifyingly escalated magnitude!"

He glared at the Emperor, his eyes bloodshot. "It means the initial wave—the very first surge of the beast tide—will already rival the peak intensity of a standard eruption! And once it hits its true zenith? It will dwarf a normal peak by more than a hundredfold!"

"And you... you utter lunatic didn't even warn the Loyalists so they could fortify the perimeter for a cataclysm of this scale?!"

"Wh-what are you saying, Duke of Darkness...?" Ben Lark of the Lark Corporation stammered nearby, his face utterly drained of blood as he spoke in paralyzed disbelief.