Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2100 The madness of behemoths

The accursed Behemoth had not expected such a violent response even for a single moment.

Never in recorded history had a Behemoth used planets themselves as flying weapons to strike another Behemoth.

The idea alone sounded absurd, something that should have belonged more to madness than to warfare.

Of course, the accursed Behemoth could have avoided those chaotic assaults with relative ease. The incoming planets were enormous, but they were still predictable once their trajectories became clear. He could have simply stepped aside, evaded their paths, and allowed them to drift helplessly into the endless darkness of space. After all, once a planet left its natural orbit, Kaylis would no longer possess the precision needed to guide it further.

But Kaylis did not give him that opportunity.

Instead of directing the planets toward him directly, she targeted something far more valuable.

The arrays.

Those priceless arrays that Darvion had painstakingly created, arrays whose construction had required the fear, suffering, and despair of countless living creatures. Each formation represented years of preparation and terrible sacrifices.

Darvion had no choice.

He was forced to defend them.

His sons reacted immediately. They abandoned the fleet waiting behind them and rushed forward at terrifying speed to assist their father in intercepting the incoming destruction.

Yet Kaylis had anticipated that as well.

Dozens of planets suddenly changed direction and began hurtling toward the fleet stationed in the rear, the very army that Darvion could no longer afford to lose after the catastrophic losses he had already suffered in the previous battles.

Faced with that threat, his sons were forced to turn back again.

Reluctantly and furiously, they destroyed those incoming planets one after another to defend the vulnerable fleet behind them.

In less than a single hour, the number of destroyed planets had already climbed to nearly two hundred.

Darvion roared in fury, his voice echoing across space like thunder. He hurled the vilest curses and insults he could muster toward Kaylis, his rage boiling uncontrollably.

Again and again he challenged her pride as a Behemoth.

He demanded that she come out and face him directly.

Power against power.

Behemoth against Behemoth.

But every time he shouted his challenge into the void, the answer remained exactly the same.

More planets.

More massive celestial bodies ripping free from their orbits and crashing toward him like divine punishment.

The exchange continued in this surreal and terrifying manner until the alliance army finally arrived.

Led by Serene and Orion, the alliance fleets surged forward and attacked the accursed Behemoth and his remaining forces from behind, forcing Darvion to finally abandon his position and withdraw.

But he had no intention of retreating peacefully.

Darvion ordered his sons and the remnants of his forces to escape first, sending them away from the battlefield as quickly as possible.

Then he remained behind.

Alone.

Standing in the vast emptiness of space, he faced the enormous alliance army by himself.

Using his cursed arrays, he unleashed waves of destructive attacks upon the approaching squadrons. The strikes were chaotic yet devastating, smashing through formations and scattering fleets apart.

The destruction he caused in those moments rivaled the devastation that had taken place earlier that same day.

Hundreds of armadas were annihilated.

Hundreds of Nexus State cultivators and thousands of World Cataclysms perished in the relentless bombardment.

Within that colossal formation of twelve thousand armadas, every single fleet had been led by at least one Nexus State cultivator or a Royal Soul Master.

Many of them had been powerful figures in their own right.

Nearly half of them had come from the seven Millennium Empires. These were individuals who had once been destined to live long and prosperous lives, overseeing their personal planets, guiding new generations of cultivators, and managing the countless responsibilities of their empires.

Yet on that day, all those futures ended.

And they were not the only ones paying the price.

Every planet that Kaylis had hurled toward Darvion and his army had originally belonged to one of her sons or grandchildren. Each planet had been carefully refined by its owner, tied to him.

Whenever one of those planets was destroyed, it signaled tragedy.

It meant the death or severe injury of the child who had refined it.

Those two hundred planets that exploded during the battle marked the downfall of two hundred of Kaylisʼ children, some killed outright while others were left gravely wounded.

They collapsed within their ships while being transported back toward their homeland, dying without ever receiving the chance to personally participate in the battle or demonstrate the abilities they had spent their lives cultivating.

Losses like these could never pass without leaving scars.

Even the most hardened soldiers felt their hearts pound heavily in their chests as they fought.

Even the fiercest Nexus State warriors felt fear creeping into their minds as they watched companions fall one after another beside them. These were the same warriors who had already witnessed a similar horrifying scene earlier that very morning.

And so, faced with Darvion, who now fought alone in the center of the battlefield...

The alliance army became the side that retreated.

Darvion stood there silently, watching his enemies withdraw step by step before the overwhelming pressure of his power.

He did not pursue them.

Instead, he allowed them to leave.

Slowly, he turned his gaze toward the distant Bright Galaxy behind him.

The galaxy that should have belonged to him without difficulty.

The galaxy that should have fallen into his hands through what had once been little more than a childish game between Zaryon and Hedrick.

Now it floated within his sight.

Yet somehow still impossibly far away.

For a moment he simply stared at it, the silence around him growing heavy.

Then he turned away.

Without another word, the accursed Behemoth departed, moving swiftly through space to rejoin the remnants of his army and catch up with his retreating followers.

The short period that followed that decisive battle was somewhat calm... at least when compared to the chaos and devastation that had previously engulfed the sector.

For the first time in many years, the enormous fleets that had been clashing repeatedly seemed to slow their movements. The thunder of cannons faded, and the void that had been filled with constant explosions returned to a tense and watchful silence.

The fleet of the accursed Behemoth began doing what the fleet of the Savage Behemoth had once done before it. Rather than attempting another reckless breakthrough or confrontation, they shifted toward a different strategy. They began attacking every nearby power they could reach. Planetary systems, independent forces, small alliances, and merchant routes were all struck one after another. Their objective was simple and brutally practical: gather every resource they could possibly seize, whether it was fuel, Pearls, food reserves, materials, or technology. Anything that could help them continue fighting... or help them escape.

As for the alliance fleet, it remained watching from afar.

The once unified army that had gathered under the banner of the Big Six had lost much of its cohesion. Three of the Big Six had already been severely injured during the continuous battles against the accursed Behemoth. The remaining three still possessed immense strength, but they lacked the authority and confidence necessary to gather the scattered alliance forces under a single unified command again.

Fear had taken root in the hearts of the soldiers.

The moment when Darvion had stood alone before the massive alliance army, facing thousands of fleets without retreating even a single step, had left a deep scar on their morale. That scene had spread throughout the sector like wildfire, whispered and retold by countless witnesses.

And the effect had been devastating.

Five full years passed during this uneasy stage of the war.

During those years, the army of the accursed Behemoth acted with near complete freedom within large regions of the sector. They plundered whatever they wished, destroyed whatever resisted them, and marched across the stars like a storm that no one dared confront directly.

Yet despite all of their raids and destruction, they still failed to gather the amount of resources required to complete the long journey needed to leave the sector.

Ironically, by this point almost every member of the alliance army secretly wished that journey would succeed.

Many of them hoped that the accursed Behemoth would finally gather enough supplies, leave the sector behind, and end the nightmare that had already lasted far too long.

Why had that not happened?

The answer lay with the Shadow Swords.

The Shadow Swords had quietly turned themselves into invisible guardians of the sectorʼs remaining powers. They monitored the movements of every fleet belonging to the accursed Behemothʼs armada with extraordinary precision. Whenever they discovered which planet or system would be the next target of destruction, they secretly warned the inhabitants in advance. Those forces would immediately evacuate their planets, gather whatever possessions and resources they could carry, and flee before the accursed

Behemothʼs fleets arrived.

Because of those warnings, many raids that should have yielded enormous supplies instead found nothing but abandoned cities and empty worlds.

The alliance army might have wished for the accursed Behemoth to gather what he needed and disappear.

But the local powers cared about something far more immediate.

Their own survival.

They fled with their lives and their property intact, and in doing so many of them came to view the Shadow Swords as saviors. Entire civilizations now owed their survival to those silent protectors who appeared only long enough to warn them before vanishing again.

As a result, even after five long years of plundering and destruction, the fleet of the accursed Behemoth still could not gather the resources required for its escape.

Naturally, these actions enraged many within the alliance army. Some commanders openly complained that the Shadow Swords were prolonging the suffering of the sector. Yet the Big Six could not publicly confront them.

After all, how could they stand before the universe and demand that the Shadow Swords stop saving innocent populations?

The tension inside the alliance only deepened for another reason. Since the final battles had begun until this very moment... the Note fleets had not participated in the war at all.

They had not joined a single engagement.

They had not fired a single shot.

They had simply disappeared.

Their sudden absence became among the alliance ranks. constant subject of speculation and suspicion

The Note fleets were nowhere to be seen, the Shadow Swords were extending the accursed Behemothʼs stay within the sector, and the war had become a slow and exhausting stalemate.

What exactly were they trying to accomplish?

No one could answer that question.

And meanwhile, the accursed Behemoth himself remained trapped within a strange and humiliating situation. Instead of commanding grand cosmic battles as a being of his stature should, he found himself dragged into a frustrating and pointless guerrilla war across scattered systems. It was a war he had never intended to fight.

Yet despite all the frustration on every side, the situation continued exactly as it was.

Until something happened that shook the universe once again. ...An event so sudden and so massive that even the accursed Behemoth was forced to halt all his actions and reconsider his plans.

The armies of the Behemoth of Destruction Helmor suddenly appeared across several distant sectors at the same time.

Without warning, they began attacking every force within those sectors completely at random, striking planets, fleets, and civilizations without discrimination.

The sectors numbered 106 through 114 suddenly found themselves under devastating fire. Eight sectors that had previously lived in relative peace ignited in a single day.