Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Start of A Fledging Galactic Empire
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"In order to be able to lead, you need to be able to think a few steps ahead of everyone else."
- Levi Ackerman, (Attack on Titan)
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<(Atem POV)>
"And the new owner and King of Sakaar IS... ATEM." The announcer announced after a few moments of silence, quickly getting over the fact that their last 'owner' was dead without even being able to defend himself.
Soon, the entire arena was covered with sounds of cheers and whistles as every citizen of the Sakaar who had come to watch the game cheered with fervor.
"ATEM ATEM" "ATEM ATEM" "ATEM ATEM" The shouts echoed in the entire city as people yelled with all their strength. It sounded like they were either really pleased with the entire Grand Race, or they were very much delighted about the new change in the monarchy.
Me being me, of course, didn't appear humble at all and instead, I raised my hands in triumph at the cheering crowd with a big grin on my face. I wasn't a narcissist but sometimes it felt good to be celebrated... Not that I wasn't celebrated in Neo Genosha too since they held a goddamn national holiday on my birthday every year. But still being cheered for in gladiator style after you have just won a battle was something no man or god wouldn't be happy with.
"What did you do? Why did you kill him? Didn't you hear him, the planet is being sustained only because of his ship which was linked to his life. Now that he is dead, the ship would stop functioning and this entire planet is going to die with him too. By the time we try to reprogram the ship, it would be too late. It's all finished. We are done for, every one of us is dead." Suddenly the Red King who seemed to have survived one of the Grandmaster's champion babies crashing into him during the race ran to us while screaming like a madman.
Apart from his completely thrashed golden armor, a nasty cut on his chest and shoulder as well as a missing left hand, he seemed pretty okay to me.
"Wow, you are still alive man? You are pretty unlucky, aren't you?" I asked, quite amused.
"Unlucky?" He looked confused.
"Yeah, if you had died in the race, it would have been a good and respectable death but now, you are going to die at the hands of a woman who doesn't want your death to be merciful at all." I honestly answered as I gestured to the grey-skinned female warrior who was currently standing behind him with a huge silver spear gun in her hands.
"CAIERA? You, what are you doing here? How dare you rebel against your own king?" The Red King threatened while trying to activate the blasters in his armor's gloves as he aimed at his former slave. Unfortunately for him, however, his armor was way too damaged to even try to initiate activating any defense system.
Caiera didn't even twitch at the danger as she just stared at the crippled Sakaaran with cold eyes.
"King? It seems that this act of yours has truly gone to your head now Angmo Asan. You have forgotten that you are nothing but a false king who submitted to the Grandmaster the very moment your life was threatened. You were only a king in name before, a puppet with your strings in the hands of the Grandmaster. But now, you are not even that. Right now, you are just a nobody who is fated to be killed by my hands as vengeance for what you have done to my people." Caiera made her intentions known as she walked up to him while giving me a look that seemed to seek permission from me, to which I just gave a small nod.
As soon as I nodded, she swung her spear at the Red King, instantly separating his other good arm from his body. Then with another swing, one of his legs was gone too. A third one took out his remaining limb. Being completely amputated, the red-skinned Imperial Sakaaran's body began to rapidly lose blood as a small red pool formed around his figure, killing him slowly, yet painfully.
Caiera didn't swing a fourth time. She wanted the guy to suffer and didn't want to release him from his misery so easily. So, she just began to patiently wait for him to breathe his last while enjoying his pain and despair.
'Sadistic much?' I thought to myself, not at all intending to voice out my thoughts.
"Atem, are you seeing this? I am flying. I am GODDAMN FLYING. I have the coolest power ever. I am fire itself, the emperor of flames. I am the living Human Torch." Johnny yelled as he came flying through the sky while completely on fire.
"Yeah, congratulations for that... Also, I am glad that none of you guys are hurt." I smiled charmingly as I saw the rest of the three fantastic four members walking towards me as well.
"Yeah, our powers saved us from any physical accidents that might have happened, even before you could use your abilities to assist us. Our powers are actually quite useful when it comes to survival. I think we can even use our powers to help other humans as well when we return back to Earth." Susan responded with a smile of her own as she tried to show off her new ability by forming a forcefield around herself.
"But, before we return, I would like to study this planet further. I think humanity can learn a lot from the grade of technology that exists here. I mean have you seen those slave disks, they are beyond any sort of imprisoning technology we have back on Earth."
"Why would you think you are even going to get the time to study this place, Reed? Didn't you hear the Grandmaster, this planet is going to blow up soon, which means we should get out of here as soon as possible." Ben sounded like he was panicking, probably not wanting to lose his life too after recently losing his human appearance.
"Don't worry Ben. That was just a bluff from the Grandmaster in an attempt to dissuade Atem from killing him. Do you think if he was speaking the truth, Atem would have killed him?" Reed chuckled good naturedly as he answered with a matter-of-fact voice.
"Oh no, he wasn't bluffing. This planet contains huge mountain-sized genetically modified spike queens hidden under the ground. They seem to have a deep hunger for the planet's barely functioning core. The only thing that was stopping them from devouring the core and destroying this planet was a high-intensity sonic pulse beam that was constantly being emitted by the Grandmaster's spaceship in the middle of the city which bore into the planet to keep spike queens at bay from the core and keep it safe.
But of course, now that the Grandmaster is no more, his spaceship has ceased to emit that particular frequency of pulse anymore, thus leaving the core unprotected. The Queens of the Spike species are making their way to the core as we speak and will completely devour it within 6 hours max." I explained everything about the planet's destabilized core that I had learned through the usage of my telepathy and cosmic awareness.
"I can attest to that. I have seen it with my own eyes. It was the Grandmaster's way of making sure that none of his siblings would ever try to take away this planet from him. He wanted to have the last laugh even if he ever lost control of this stronghold." Caiera affirmed my words and like it was almost on a queue an earthquake rattled the entire planet signalling that the 'queens' had already started moving deep within the ground.
"So, what are we going to do? We do not have enough ships to rescue every person on the planet. Families, ordinary people, and innocents are all going to die unless we can stop the destruction of this planet somehow. By Odin's beard, killing the Grandmaster was a very very bad idea in hindsight, now that I think about it." Brunhilde said as she accusingly stared at me, a pang of heavy guilt in her eyes.
"Not really... I didn't just kill him because I wanted to, I killed him because I had a very good plan B in case this planet gets destroyed, a plan B who should be here any moment now." I answered as I looked at the sky, scanning the nearby space of the mini planet using my cosmic awareness. "Aha, there she is. I was almost worried that she was going to be late. Brunhilde and Caiera prepare for everyone and everything on this planet to be moved. We are going to ditch this planet and get an upgrade."
"... Wait, what?" Reed asked in confusion as everyone there looked at the sky.
"You guys never saw my divine city, right? Well, it's no Eden but I think you should feast your eyes on the... Zenith." I declared with an exaggerated wave of my hands as the silhouette of a massive city slowly became visible, breaking through the huge spatial reverse tornado in the sky that was the Devil's Anus.
For the next few seconds, everything was completely silent as almost everyone in not just the arena but the entire city was gobsmacked at the sudden appearance of the huge golden city from the sky. Its appearance was not only one of the most beautiful things ever seen on the planet but also one of the most terrifying since the city was not the only thing that suddenly became visible in the sky. Along with the city came hundreds of thousands of para-sentinels as well, flying right beside the city like its guardians and obedient soldiers.
"As I was saying, everyone who wants to live, queue up, we are going to abandon ship..., I mean, abandon this planet," I said as I caught a glimpse of Karnilla slowly getting out of the city's massive castle. Her eyes were roaming everywhere, trying to find me.
Her appearance seemed to have changed a lot in the last few months as she looked like she had become much more powerful than before, with magical energy radiating from her in waves and her eyes were now a color of Cyan green.
"Welcome back My lord. I have brought the city out of my dimension as you requested... Are we going to go take these people as refugees since their planet seems to be dying or perhaps do you want us to declare war on them and completely annihilate them?" Karnilla asked after she spotted me. The para-sentinels shifted their gaze at the various denizens of the planet at her words, ready to wipe out everyone as soon as I gave the word.
'The movements of those sentinels seem... slow for some reason. The difference between their standard performance at their peaks and their current performance was minuscule but still there. Is this perhaps because they lost Zoya who was the biggest server that fulfilled their tremendous processing needs? Well, I guess that is their disadvantage of them being pure machines and all...
Maybe, I should give them a biological touch as well... Obedient loyal soldiers who could die at my words without the least hesitation coupled with the sentinels' machine capabilities could potentially give birth to the most powerful cyborg soldiers in the multiverse. But where would I get such perfectly loyal and powerful biological soldiers without a single shred of humanity in such huge numbers whom I could enslave and use without feeling bad at all...?' I thought with a sigh as I took a look at everyone in the city already rushing to get all their belongings for their move to Zenith.
A metaphorical lightbulb suddenly lit up in my head as I looked at the hundreds of genetically altered Spikes that were all frozen in their places due to the high mental interference in their hive minds from their queen mothers.
"Wait a minute... Karnilla, you know how to genetically alter different races right, like what you did with your own previous army?" I asked with a big and evil smile. "Hey, Karnilla. Say, do you think we could make space for a couple of mountain-sized bugs in our city... for research purposes?"
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(A/N: And thus starts the New God's Galactic conquest.)
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