“Contempt shall eventually invite calamity.”
So said the white-haired elder. More than once, he had pulled back his headstrong student, dragging him back from the brink of extremes.
“There is nothing in this world that cannot be done without a specific individual. Even heroes eventually become a part of history.”
The black-haired man was no longer young; the passage of years had forced him to shed his frivolous ways. The stench of gangrene and gunpowder that had risen from piles of corpses during the war was now masked by courtly perfumes. The weeping and screams that once made sleep impossible had gradually faded into a background of white noise.
A person’s sensitivity and empathy are always worn away by one thing or another. Just as Sakti, during his time as a commander, had felt a pang of heartache for every casualty report of a soldier he had personally trained, the list of the dead had now been simplified into a mere document of black ink on a white background.
He did not drink, he did not indulge in luxury, he did not touch electronic drugs, he did not tolerate cyber-accelerators, and he was never embroiled in any scandals involving men or women.
Even his obsession with power was not as deep as it appeared. Whether it was money, weapons, or power itself, they were merely tools to be used without hesitation to achieve a set goal, rather than collectibles to be enshrined for admiration.
Thus, most of the criticisms leveled against Sakti Shali-ban himself focused on his "belligerence" and "militarism."
In terms of cultivation and education, Marshal Yeats had invested a great deal of effort.
The Marshal’s wife had sacrificed herself on the battlefield in her early years. While executing a rescue mission for wounded civilians and children, she perished when the medical facilities were subjected to indiscriminate bombing. From then on, this straight-laced man never entered into another marriage.
The childless old man, having lived through the greater half of his life, encountered a young man who was ambitious, resourceful, and so reckless in battle that he gave all his instructors a headache.
Most of the Reformists were delighted that such a rare military talent was beginning to emerge, but Yeats himself held the opposite view.
The youth was clever, but it was a cleverness akin to that of a wild animal; he possessed neither a sense of pan-species consciousness nor the capacity for empathy. The burgeoning young man was fiercely protective—but only of those he had brought within his circle of protection, much like a rising lion king who is perfectly clear about the boundaries of his territory.
Anything outside those boundaries rarely evoked any sympathy from the young man.
The world was divided by him into "the parts I love and are important to me" and "the irrelevant parts."
Once such a trait appeared in a general leading troops, it became a terrifying double-edged sword. The merciful are unfit to wield military power; bottomless tenderness and indecisiveness turn into a steady stream of blood, flowing equally from every soldier.
However, a person who is too violent and lacks moral constraints will also trigger new conflicts and bring down inhumane destruction, while simultaneously eroding their own "human" essence.
The event that truly made Yeats notice Sakti as an individual for the first time was a trial report following the destruction of V217. At that time, Sakti’s rank was not high enough to alarm someone in Yeats's high position, but the *Red Tai-Sui* was.
The youngest compatible pilot had unauthorizedly mobilized the *Red Tai-Sui*, descending upon a completely devastated habitable planet. No one knew how he had bypassed the security protocols or how he had broken through the port’s blockade. By the time everyone realized what was happening, this audacious fellow had made off with an entire starship without filing a single report.
The Five Great Legions were in an uproar, briefly suspecting that the Federal Conservatives had pulled some new stunt, attempting to secretly hollow out their ace or plant a spy in their ranks to strike from behind.
As it turned out, the culprit was merely a former resident of V217. His guardians and all his acquaintances had died in that accident. The reckless youth had treated rules and discipline like scrap paper, stealthily abducting the *Red Tai-Sui* to conduct rescue work.
Different stakeholders held different opinions on how to handle this incident.
After long deliberation, Yeats gave the final verdict: a demotion, an ideological cognitive assessment, and a short-term suspension for observation. Crucially, his synchronization link with the *Red Tai-Sui* would not be stripped away for the time being.
He protected that young man, just as one might protect a wolf that had crashed into human society—rambunctious, yet fierce and wild.
For a long time after that, as the war raged and the young man’s rank climbed higher, the aging Marshal began to keep this fearless beast by his side.
After a busy half-life, he finally had a student of his own.
The people of V217 had taught Sakti how to recognize love and being loved; Yeats’s duty was to teach him how to transform from a beast running on all fours into a human walking upright.
"Beast" was not a derogatory term.
They are powerful, honest, and refuse to be bound, viewing all stagnant rules as nothing.
But a human living in society cannot function that way.
His student could not act like a beast forever, merely absorbing vast amounts of knowledge and logic while lacking the corresponding morality and social graces.
the former would allow a ruler to bring calamity upon others, while the latter would make it impossible for Sakti to move an inch among the cliquish masses of humanity.
“I want to stand at the highest point.”
On a quiet night after he had first decapitated a Sub-Queen, Sakti suddenly made such a declaration.
Klein Young sat at a nearby table, mimicking Sakti’s handwriting to piece together a lengthy self-reflection report for his friend, who hated writing them.
Evelyn Holman, the heiress of the Holman family who was busy maintaining her firearms, smiled noncommittally.
“You’ll be in big trouble if you’re overheard,” she warned.
She wasn't wrong.
The old Marshal, who had been prepared to have a talk with his student, did not push the door open. He simply retracted his steps.
As the acclaim for the *Red Tai-Sui* and the young man who had beheaded the Sub-Queen grew louder, people began to deliberately dig into his background. A hero of humanity, the Reformists' unique war genius, bearing the bloodline of the Griffin family, inheriting those unforgettable golden-brown eyes.
What a resounding gimmick; what excellent material to exploit.
Various voices existed within the Reformists as well. Different factions considered how to use this young man to maximize the advantages he offered.
But Sakti’s ambition lay beyond that.
The beast, forever carrying dissatisfaction and anger, did not want to be a chess piece. He wanted to flip the entire board, forcing those who planned to use him as a bargaining chip to shut their mouths and bow their heads.
He dared to speak, dared to act, loved and hated clearly, kept his word, and was fiercely ambitious—exactly what most lifeless people lacked and envied.
Fate favored him, his friends favored him, the lower-ranking soldiers favored him, and even the elder who treated him as a student could not help but favor him.
Many times, their conversations did not take place between a Reformist Marshal and the pilot of the *Red Tai-Sui*, but between a teacher and a junior regarded as a son.
“The casual resentment and impulsive decisions of those in power act directly upon those who are powerless to argue or resist.”
Under the lamp, the old man with black eyes and mottled white hair shook his head slowly, restraining his proud, cold, and reckless student.
“In terms of never being indecisive, you have already done well enough. But at the same time, you must remember that those numbers and names representing death are humans—just like your friends, your guardians, your neighbors, and your soldiers.”
“We do not preach mercy in war, but we do preach the reduction of attrition.”
“Do not compare yourself to those despicable people; you are far better than that.”
He looked at the man who was gradually becoming steadier, as if looking at a child whose thoughts were laid bare.
“Do not view death as an evil, but do not take pleasure in needless consumption. Understand the cost behind a decision at the moment you make it.”
“These are the things that distinguish us from beasts.”
“Being a human is much harder than being a beast.”
The Core Species who let out this sigh blew apart another of the enemy's medium-sized ships with a single shot, commanding all the Grey-wing members to converge toward the center.
“The turn-based game has reached our move. Clear out all the vessels intercepted before the near-earth orbit.”
The Myriapods, who had unexpectedly disconnected and lost control, were in terrible luck. Although the downtime wasn't long, the reboot was far from smooth.
The lingering effects of the Great Information Nest were still present. Even though it was no longer seizing control permissions, the damage caused during the intrusion continued to manifest like a residual virus.
The originally tight blockade was torn to shreds, allowing the Grey-wing Sub-Queen and the black Core Species, who could only crawl on the surface moments ago, to return to their medium-sized ships.
Every second of delay was a sign of disrespect to the disconnected enemy.
What could be more joyful than picking up easy kills on the spot?
After opening his eyes again as a female, Sakti could sense that his constant anger was gradually subsiding over time, replaced by a new, deeper sense of something akin to softness.
The fellow who had barely managed to complete his personality had seemingly added something into the mix; much like this body of mysterious origin, it was characterized by complexity and tolerance.
Otherwise, he likely wouldn't have picked up a male cub to raise in the first place, nor would he have rediscovered fragments of warmth because of it.
He and the Sakti Shali-ban who was once human had, in the end, walked in different directions.
The other "him," as his life drew to a close, had completely polished away those cynical outward emotions, discarded all behaviors that did not conform to etiquette, and allowed his joys, sorrows, and hobbies to take a backseat, thinking and acting like a true, qualified human emperor.
It was very boring, very dull, and very... long.
So long that it felt as if he had spent an entire lifetime lying hopelessly still and resting on the bed in the Red Deer Palace.
“Understood!”
The Grey-wings who received the command replied instantly, adjusting their formation to tear into the enemy before they could return to normal.
The survivors who once guarded the King were like a plague.
If they could not be strangled at the fastest speed, they would instead bite every enemy to death at the cost of a frenzy that burned until the very last member of the swarm. Hundreds of Myriapod medium-sized ships were destroyed within the second hour after the battle resumed; the three layers of isolation—upper, middle, and lower—were completely shattered.
The blue plasma tails of the ships, along with the bursts of fire, plummeted toward the atmosphere, falling toward the continuously expanding Akasha Rift.
Clark, having restored communication, joined Sakti in charging in the opposite direction toward the near-earth orbit, merging with the Alpha-class warship fleet that could no longer descend in altitude.
The leaderless main force finally found its backbone.
Their tribal leader and that black commander-in-chief were both alive and well. Thank heavens the Grey-wing tribe didn't have to experience the tragedy of cycling through three Sub-Queens in a single Great Cycle.
“Attention all members.”
Sakti, stepping back onto the Alpha warship, cleared his throat. While signaling Clark to hurry and get medical treatment, he opened a channel-wide broadcast.
“Left and right wings, follow me. Prepare to wipe out the enemy’s fleet matrix.”
“Main cannons ready. All escorts, disperse and follow.”
He had once promised to cross the sea of stars to level the enemy’s territory, to tear off the limbs of their Sub-Queen, and to pour molten gold over that head.
Since the enemy dared to pile the males and larvae of his tribe into mountains like skinned frogs, since they had shamed Clark by grinding his face into the mud, and since they even harbored designs on seizing the Grey-wings' habitat to revert his newly stabilized social consciousness back to its primitive form—then he would repay them tenfold using the same methods.
“Keep close. We’re going to go cut off the head of the Myriapod Sub-Queen.”
Whether it was the previous him or the current him, he had always been protective of his own and vindictive to a fault.
The molten gold was already prepared, the fires of the funeral pyre were already burning, and the lava flowing from the torn planet was consuming the mountains that were about to collapse.
Now was the moment for the Myriapods' retribution.
***
