Lord of the Truth

Chapter 1258 1258: The Imperial Guards

Three days later—

Baaam!

The massive double doors of the throne hall were shoved open with a thunderous force. A deep, booming laugh echoed through the chamber as a towering figure stepped inside, arms thrown wide in dramatic flair. ”Haha! BOOOOOSS!”

The newcomer was an imposing figure, nearly three meters tall, with skin shaded somewhere between icy white and pale blue. His long, jet-black hair flowed down his back like a shadow, and he was clad in a full-body suit of obsidian-black armor that shimmered with a foreboding dark aura. The armor covered him from his neck all the way to the very tips of his fingers. Every step he took, every word he spoke, exuded an overwhelming presence—an attitude that declared he feared nothing, respected no one, and held the world in the palm of his hand.

Robinʼs eyes opened slowly, and a subtle smile crept onto his face as he recognized the incoming giant. ”Holak… I see time hasnʼt done much to change you.”

”Hey now, are you picking on me just because Iʼm still stuck at level 49?” Holak grinned mischievously, then burst into hearty laughter. ”Haha, Iʼm just messing with you, Boss! Howʼve you been?” He walked confidently across the grand hall and dropped heavily into the nearest chair without asking for permission.

Robin tilted his head upward with deliberate slowness. Having the towering giant seated across from him made him feel as if he were a child sitting before his stern father. He let out a dry comment, ”...Nice armor.”

”Oh, this thing?” Holak looked down at himself and casually ran a hand over his chestplate. ”This is the newly designated armor for the Imperial Guard. They say itʼs more advanced than the standard-issue low-tier epic sets used by the rest of the armies... or something along those lines.”

”That much is clear. The armorʼs construction is exceptional—pure Urasylium through and through, enhanced with shards of even a higher-tier metal. A metal that, if Iʼm not mistaken, wasnʼt even available to us until recently, correct?” Robinʼs golden eyes scanned the armor meticulously from head to toe, picking up every detail with uncanny precision.

”Yeah, yeah. That short fellow—whatʼs-his-name—said they found the new metal inside comet fragments theyʼve been harvesting. Or something like that. I wasnʼt really paying attention,” Holak said, waving his hand dismissively. ”But more importantly, Boss, this thing is stiff as hell. Tell the engineers to redesign it! I can barely breathe in here.”

”Redesign it? Are you serious? This armor set alone could easily be classified as a mid-tier epic. Do you even understand what that means?” Robin raised an eyebrow in disbelief. ”How many sets have they even managed to produce so far?”

”The manufacturing process is excruciatingly slow. It takes them anywhere between one and three years to finish a single full set. As of now, I believe theyʼve completed around 23 sets total,” Holak muttered while shaking his head. ”And honestly, what am I supposed to do with only 23? The number of candidates for the Imperial Guard that Her Highness Zara gave me a hundred years ago was 950!”

”Only 950 candidates?” Robinʼs brows drew together in a concerned frown. He had explicitly instructed Zara to bring every individual she could find with the specific affinities he requested. Not only that—heʼd provided her with a specialized method to detect them.

”...Well, she did bring me 11,176 over the span of a hundred years. But only 950 survived. The rest... didnʼt make it,” Holak shrugged nonchalantly and averted his gaze.

”Youʼre telling me 10,226 of them died? What in the world happened?!” Robin leaned forward, voice raised in shock. ”I specifically asked for untrained boys— They arenʼt even supposed to begin their training yet!”

”Oh come on, did you expect me to sit beside them for a century, playing dice and singing lullabies until the Laws dropped into our lap?” Holak threw up his hands in exasperation. ”These kids were meant to be Imperial Guards—the elite, the best of the best, the last shield between you and annihilation. How could I just sit back and wait? I thought we could, you know, have a little fun. Keep them a little busy while you were away.”

”Holak...” Robinʼs tone hardened, his frown deepening. He extended a hand toward the giant, voice laced with suspicion. ”What exactly did you do to my Imperial Guards!?”

”Relax, Boss. What, do you think I ate them? Just because Iʼm a giant? Thatʼs racist!” Holak laughed deeply, then waved it off with a lazy hand. ”No, no. Itʼs just that we couldnʼt begin internal energy training. So I focused their development on building up raw physical strength. Muscle before magic, right?”

”I took them,” Holak began, his deep voice carrying the weight of distant memories and unapologetic confidence, ”to those body enhancement arrays crafted by that peculiar boy, Jabba, back in Greenland. You remember them, donʼt you? The ones that were shut down after the war—completely abandoned. Too expensive, too dangerous, too controversial. The process of enhancing a single body from scratch up to level 40 consumed so many resources, so many energy pearls, your HQ considered it madness to even attempt and shut it down.”

He chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that echoed through the grand hall. ”But I figured—youʼre the Emperor, after all. You wouldnʼt mind spending a few pearls for the sake of strengthening your personal guard, right? So I took them all. Every last one of those bright-eyed hopefuls. Dragged them to those arrays and shoved them right in.”

Robinʼs eyes narrowed, tension growing behind his composed face.

”Of course,” Holak continued, unfazed, ”some of them died right away. Their bodies couldnʼt take the pressure. Those arrays werenʼt gentle—they used pure, compressed energy to simulate years, even decades, of training and physical torment. Itʼs not like they were designed for ordinary humans. But the ones who survived…” He paused, grinning. ”They were molded into something else entirely. Over the course of a few grueling years, they reached the very peak of the Sage Domain in raw physical strength alone. No soul force, no inner energy center yet—just sheer, unrelenting muscle and bone honed to near-perfection.”

Robin clenched his jaw. He knew of those arrays. He had seen what they could do. The enhancement process they used was brutal—forcing energy into the body until it either adapted or shattered. It was a method so costly and risky that it was banned outright. Many of those who entered never walked out.

”...Then what?” Robin asked, though he wasnʼt sure he wanted the answer.

Holak stretched, as though recounting nothing more than a pleasant vacation. ”After that, I figured their training needed... context. So I took the survivors on a little tour of our empireʼs harsher regions. The Sea of Lava. The Abyss. Beast zones across every planet under our jurisdiction. Let them see the real world. Let them taste fear and danger and blood.”

Robin didnʼt speak. His gaze sharpened. These werenʼt ʼtoursʼ—not by a long shot.

”Some of them died, naturally,” Holak said with a dismissive shrug, as though death were a minor inconvenience. ”It happens. Survival of the fittest, right? But the rest... oh, they grew. You could see it in their eyes. They werenʼt just soldiers anymore. They were becoming warriors.”

”...And then?” Robin asked, his voice a low murmur of restrained disbelief.

”Then,” Holak said with growing excitement, ”I sent the ones who lasted through that hell to various fronts—embedded them within different divisions of the army, gave them small missions to complete before they could return.”

He leaned in slightly, voice dropping conspiratorially. ”Assassinate a Martial Emperor. Annihilate an enemy battalion. Capture a hundred enemy officers. Little things, really.”

Robinʼs chair creaked beneath him as he leaned forward, eyes wide. ”Those arenʼt ʼlittle thingsʼ, Holak. Those are suicide missions!” Robinʼs voice trembled with rage, disbelief, and a strange, dark awe. ”…What next?”

”Oh, youʼll love this part,” Holak said, eyes sparkling with mischief. ”The ones who made it back—I took them and carved fourth-stage body-strengthening tattoos into them. Not the human versions. No, no. The giant-class tattoos. Half of them… well, their bodies gave out. Couldnʼt handle it. Their muscles tore apart, their bones shattered like glass.”

Robin stood in a flash, the air around him suddenly tense, golden light beginning to swirl in his irises. ”You WHAT?! Do you have any idea—any idea what that tier of tattoo can do to a normal human?! Those runes were never meant for anything but the strongest of the giants!”

”Yeah, but…” Holak grinned proudly, ”We still have the other half!”

Robin stared at him in stunned silence. Even among the mighty humans of Nihari, only a rare handful—like Orzon—could bear the pain of the first or second stages of those tattoos. And even they nearly died in the process.

This was insanity.

”Holak, you absolute madman… what have you done to my Imperial Guards?!” Robin roared, teeth grinding.

Holak, however, only laughed harder. ”Nothing you wouldnʼt have done yourself, in my place. I just took the best of them—the ones who survived all the trials, endured the arrays, the monster zones, the battlefields, and the tattoos—and brought them to the Poison Rock Planet.”

Robinʼs heart sank.

”There,” Holak said, eyes gleaming with warrior pride, ”we encountered Dorger and his faction. That arrogant little mutt, always barking about territory. Well, we didnʼt bark back. We crushed them. Flattened them like bugs. My boys wiped the floor with Dorger and his elite. You shouldʼve seen it!” He slapped his massive palms together with thunderous glee. ”Sure, a few more died, but the ones who survived... they lifted my head high that day. I was even planning a second round when your summons reached me.”