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910 -New Development II
🕑 Added 2025-05-16 13:20:58 +0000 UTCWhile the leaders silently questioned why the Grand Xor’Vak was so furious, the answer inside his mind was sharp and unwavering.
‘Who dares infringe on my territory?’
Yes, his territory. In his eyes, the entire Conclave belonged to him. He was not merely a leader of the strongest civilization, he was its rightful king. Its ruler. Its owner.
To Xor’Vak, this belief wasn’t delusion. It was a truth constantly reinforced by reality. His whims, if spoken aloud, were fulfilled by nearly every civilization without resistance. As long as his desires didn’t challenge the top ten powers or those who possessed wormhole technology, he could wage war on any of the remaining civilizations simultaneously and win.
But he didn’t want to rule directly.
He had no interest in the burdens of leadership. What he craved were the benefits of power, deference, wealth, and influence. And in the current arrangement, he had all of that. The lesser civilizations bent over backward to curry his favor, doing everything they could to stay on his good side. Why waste energy leading when the perks flowed freely to him anyway?
To him, and to all Xor’Vak, this was natural. They had fought and clawed their way to the top, earned their place through overwhelming strength. The feeling of superiority wasn’t a privilege; it was a birthright. Something they had paid for in blood and fire.
So when someone dared to take what he considered his, when someone tried to steal from under his nose, he didn’t see it as a mere attack. He saw it as an insult. A direct challenge to his authority. And if he didn’t respond violently, he would be acknowledging that insult as valid.
Which made the silence and deception of those who had lost territory even more offensive.
They had allowed it. They had hidden it.
And so, as each hand had risen in the chamber, the Grand Xor’Vak had taken note, not just of what was lost, but of who had failed.
There would be consequences.
…………….
“It’s a matter internal to our own territories. There was no need to report it to the Conclave,” one of the leaders said, attempting to justify his decision. He was relatively new to power and didn’t yet fear the Grand Xor’Vak to the point of silence. In his mind, his authority was being questioned by someone who had no business interfering.
“Internal? How?” the Trianrian leader shot back, disbelief clear in his voice. “More than thirty-four of you have lost at least one star system, and you still think this is a private issue, not something the Conclave should be informed about?”
Those at the top of the Conclave’s hierarchy did not need to mask their emotions. That kind of posturing was for the weak, who needed deception to survive. But for the powerful, openly expressing one’s thoughts was a mark of strength, and the Trianrian leader made no effort to conceal his scorn.
“We only just became aware of the pattern, at the same time as you,” the first leader insisted, trying not to appear incompetent. “We thought it might be isolated unrest, coup, pirate attacks, or just routine communication failures for some. We never imagined something coordinated.”
The Grand Elder’s voice cut through the tension, halting what was about to become a drawn-out argument. “How many star systems has each of you lost? What’s the total count?”
The affected leaders began reporting, one by one, the number of star systems that had gone dark or failed to check in for extended periods.
Within minutes, the scribe compiling the reports stood and addressed those in the call. “Confirmed attacks: 23 star systems. An additional 67 have failed to report since the first known attacks began. Total loss stands at approximately 90 star systems.”
A heavy silence fell.
The realization struck everyone at once: nearly a hundred star systems had been lost, quietly and systematically, and it had taken them this long to even notice. Causing a chill to run through nearly all of them.
“Have you gathered any intel on them?” asked the leader of the Yrall Coalition, his tone sharp and urgent, eager to extract any information that could help make sense of the situation.
“This was all we managed to salvage from the SOS transmission before they destroyed the communication nodes,” one of the affected leaders said, sharing a series of images.
The images displayed a diverse fleet; most of the ships bore unfamiliar designs, but scattered among them were unmistakable silhouettes: models that matched the military ships of several top-fifty civilizations. While the majority of the attackers’ ships appeared new and alien, a significant minority were clearly built using the same styles and technologies found in the fleets of some of the Conclave’s most powerful members.
Encouraged by the revelation, other leaders began sharing the limited data they’d salvaged. The patterns were consistent: unfamiliar ships working alongside those modeled after, or outright belonging to, the top fifty civilizations.
The room grew tense as the lower-ranked civilizations turned their eyes, not toward the top ten, whose power made them untouchable, but toward the rest of the top fifty, silently demanding an explanation. Why did the invading fleets carry warships designed by them? And how did they have access to wormhole technology sophisticated enough to launch these simultaneous assaults?
The answer was obvious to them, at least with the evidence and the knowledge at their hands. With the recent influx of mana stones, especially after trade with the Terran Empire began, the top fifty had the resources to not only maintain but greatly expand their reach. On top of that, many of them receive direct payments to help establish wormhole lanes, making rapid, large-scale deployments not only feasible, but alarmingly easy.
Suddenly, what once seemed implausible now made perfect sense. The wormhole lanes removed the biggest historical barriers to expansion: time and mana. Civilizations that had once been held in check by the sheer travel time or mana stone expenditure across the stars could now strike swiftly, before their targets had a chance to prepare. With this obstacle gone, the temptation to expand and conquer was undeniable.
It was a far more plausible explanation than imagining an external force. After all, outsiders wouldn’t have access to these ships. The top civilizations never sold their most advanced vessels; they retained exclusive rights to their cutting-edge military technology to avoid being attacked by their own creations. The ships in the attackers' fleets could only have come from within.
And then, one of the invaded leaders finally spoke, his voice calm but loaded with restrained fury. “Would any of you care to explain how they managed to get their hands on military vessels from your civilizations?”
Comments
GripenSupremacy
TYFTC!!! Great chapter, keep it up!
Billiam
Love this arc! I didn’t know the conclave was this big tho
