Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2192 Necrofortress Galaxy

The records concerning The Necrofortress Galaxy became Caesarʼs greatest hope for understanding what was happening to him, yet despite the countless restricted archives he opened and the ancient cosmic testimonies he searched through personally, the information he managed to gather remained frustratingly scarce, fragmented, and filled with contradictions, as though even history itself wished to avoid remembering that place properly.

In truth, The Necrofortress Galaxy was neither an artificial galaxy nor a Behemoth Galaxy in the commonly understood sense. It had originally been a completely natural galaxy, one containing millions of stars and tens of millions of planets spread chaotically across space without any special order or structure, its sheer scale rivaling entire stellar fields by itself before its name became synonymous with death throughout the universe.

According to the oldest surviving records, everything began because of a single individual who delved far too deeply into the Path of Death until he reached a level no living being was ever supposed to touch. That person was known as Mortix, though countless civilizations throughout history referred to him by another title instead: the Angel of Death.

Mortix was described repeatedly as a strange mutant unlike anything the universe had ever produced before or afterward, a being whose affinity toward death itself bordered on absurdity. No one fully understood what race he belonged to originally, nor how he managed to push a Minor Law from the Path of Death to such horrifying heights, yet the records unanimously agreed on one thing: he was the only being in recorded history who successfully cultivated a Minor Law all the way to the peak of the Nexus State and completely stabilized himself there.

And perhaps that impossible achievement itself was what eventually destroyed both him and everything around him.

The records discussing Mortixʼs behavior were disturbingly consistent despite originating from sectors separated by unimaginable distances. Mortix did not merely kill, nor did he pursue destruction for conquest or revenge like ordinary tyrants. Rather, he possessed an abnormal fascination with death itself, with the process, the sensation, and the transformations surrounding it, causing him to continuously experiment upon living creatures in ways that became increasingly horrifying as his understanding of the Path of Death deepened.

The stronger he became, the crueler and larger his experiments grew, until entire planets began disappearing after his visits, while civilizations collapsed into silence overnight without anyone understanding precisely what had happened there. Some worlds were left behind as endless graveyards, while others became worse than graveyards, because what remained upon them could still move, still wander, and still spread corruption to neighboring systems.

Yet despite the escalating horror surrounding his name, almost nobody truly managed to stop him. Many lacked the strength entirely, while others who possessed enough power simply refused to approach him because the Path of Death itself inspired instinctive dread even among the strongest beings in existence, and very few people were willing to gamble their souls, minds, or futures merely to confront a monster wandering the distant sectors.

Thus Mortix continued descending deeper into corruption unchecked until eventually he crossed another terrifying boundary and became a Monarch of that Minor Law. Even after reaching such heights, however, he still showed no interest in establishing kingdoms, gathering followers for political gain, or constructing empires like ordinary rulers. He sought neither wealth nor glory, nor did he possess any ideology or ambition capable of justifying his actions in the eyes of the universe, because everything he did seemed driven purely by personal amusement and fascination.

Instead of ruling territories, Mortix wandered endlessly from sector to sector like a living plague, leaving death behind wherever he traveled while gradually planting the seeds of what later became known as the undead, the only existence he genuinely appeared to love and the only creatures that responded to him with loyalty rather than fear.

Those undead eventually became his army.

At first they merely followed him silently, but over time they began spreading independently across planets, exterminating living populations or transforming them into undead as well, causing entire regions of the universe to slowly fall into terror as his influence expanded farther and farther outward.

Mortix himself eventually stopped being viewed as a dangerous cultivator and instead became recognized as a catastrophe capable of threatening entire cosmic regions, especially because all of this unfolded during an era where the great powers of the universe were flourishing peacefully and had not yet experienced the devastating large-scale wars that later generations became accustomed to. Compared to civilizations born in bloodier eras, the people of that time viewed Mortix as something monstrously unnatural, a corruption capable of ruining the perfect order they believed the universe possessed.

Eventually, the endless complaints and reports regarding his atrocities reached Athena, the supreme ruler of the universe during that age and the woman said to step upon the heads of Behemoths themselves. At first, her subordinates attempted handling the situation, but even approaching Mortix safely proved difficult, because some died before reaching him while others fled after witnessing what his powers were capable of doing.

And so Athena personally descended to confront him.

The surviving records described the battle itself as absurdly brief, almost anticlimactic compared to the terror surrounding Mortixʼs name, because Athena simply located him within some random distant sector and struck him down with a single slap, ending the existence of the Angel of Death before most of the universe even realized the confrontation had begun.

Or at least...

That was what everyone believed afterward.

Because the location where Mortix died, if the concept of death could truly apply to a creature like him, transformed almost immediately into something resembling a colossal cosmic graveyard, as an overwhelming aura of death erupted outward and consumed the surrounding regions so violently that many records described the phenomenon as though the Path of Death itself was mourning Mortix in its own twisted manner.

Others disagreed with that interpretation entirely and instead believed the expanding corruption was not mourning but rather a final technique, curse, or contingency deliberately prepared by Mortix before his death so that even destruction itself would fail to erase his influence completely.

Whatever the truth was, the surrounding planets immediately began withering. Oceans darkened, forests died, civilizations collapsed, and countless living beings transformed into undead after exposure to the spreading death aura, while ordinary mortals touched by that corruption occasionally mutated into World Cataclysms overnight through grotesque changes no one understood properly.

The corruption continued expanding outward for years, then decades, then centuries, swallowing system after system until it eventually consumed the entire natural galaxy within whose borders Mortix had been killed, and only after engulfing the whole galaxy did the expansion finally come to a halt, leaving behind what the universe would forever remember as The Necrofortress Galaxy.

After thousands of years of slow expansion, every creature within that galaxy transformed into something that belonged neither to life nor death, becoming existences suspended unnaturally between the two states, creatures far more horrifying than specters themselves, especially among the weaker populations whose minds and bodies gradually collapsed until all that remained were distorted instincts and fragmented remnants of memory wandering endlessly across dead worlds.

The stronger inhabitants of the galaxy experienced a different fate entirely. Those possessing sufficient cultivation, stronger souls, or extraordinary willpower managed to preserve portions of their awareness after the transformation, and over time they gradually adapted to their new existence while beginning to discover an entirely different cultivation system together, because after all, the centers through which they once gathered energy as living beings had already died completely.

Everything they relied upon before became meaningless there. Natural energy no longer circulated through them properly, life force itself became irrelevant, and even soul force behaved differently inside bodies that technically no longer belonged among the living, yet despite all of this they still continued growing stronger through methods the outside universe neither understood nor wished to understand.

Slowly, through countless experiments and failures spread across generations of undead existence, they began building an entirely new structure for themselves. Bloodlines, noble origins, ancient authority, and former empires lost their meaning inside that galaxy, because none of those things could determine oneʼs place among the undead anymore. Instead, status became dependent entirely upon current strength and the amount of awareness an individual managed to preserve after the transformation, causing new hierarchies, new titles, and new roles to emerge naturally among them.

Thus the dead galaxy everyone once viewed as a mindless disaster gradually evolved into something disturbingly organized. Borders formed between territories, armies appeared, generals began leading enormous groups of undead, and powerful leaders took control of entire regions until the galaxy itself resembled a complete civilization rather than a spreading curse.

The wider universe only fully realized how stable and dangerous The Necrofortress Galaxy had become when the first great wave of space beasts attacked it by coincidence. In the end, space beasts desired planets themselves and cared little whether the creatures living upon them were alive or dead, so the dead galaxy became nothing more than another feeding ground in their eyes.

Yet instead of collapsing beneath the invasion, the leaders, generals, and Death Eaters of the galaxy emerged personally to confront the attacking space beasts across every category imaginable, and surviving records repeatedly described the battles as terrifyingly savage, with some witnesses even claiming the undead fought more fiercely than living civilizations because fear, exhaustion, despair, and hesitation meant little to creatures that had already crossed beyond ordinary life.

That event forced the surrounding powers to look toward The Necrofortress Galaxy once again, though not all of them reacted the same way. Some viewed the galaxy with growing fear, disturbed by the existence of such an unnatural civilization yet unwilling to move openly against it because of the overwhelming number of undead inhabiting it and because, despite everything, the undead displayed almost no expansionist intentions toward the surrounding sectors.

Others looked toward the galaxy with entirely different emotions.

Hope.

For many cultivators approaching the one-hundred-thousand-year limit imposed upon living beings, the existence of intelligent undead represented a possible escape from inevitable death itself. Those creatures clearly retained awareness, individuality, strength, and even the ability to continue cultivating, causing many desperate individuals to question why they themselves should accept death if another path existed.

And so certain cultivators willingly traveled toward The Necrofortress Galaxy hoping to transform themselves into undead as well in exchange for extending their existence indefinitely. Some sought survival, others sought power, while a few simply feared death more than corruption itself, but regardless of their reasons, their arrival only increased the number of undead within the galaxy further, especially among the stronger ranks.

No official ruler ever unified that galaxy, nor did anyone truly speak in its name. It possessed no emperor, no supreme monarch, and no central authority governing everything within it. Instead, it remained a massive black scar within the universe formed entirely because of the madness and whims of one terrifying individual named Mortix, yet despite the absence of proper leadership, everyone eventually came to know that place by the same title:

The Necrofortress Galaxy.

The name suited it perfectly, because it truly resembled a colossal fortress standing against both the living and their enemies alike, a region where ordinary cosmic laws seemed twisted beyond recognition and where fugitives, exiles, and desperate cultivators could theoretically hide from the rest of the universe forever.

Of course...

There was always a condition attached to that safety.

One had to become dead first.

That was ultimately all Caesar managed to obtain from the cosmic records. Everything consisted of fragmented history observed from a distance by civilizations too frightened to investigate further, because almost nobody willingly descended onto the planets of The Necrofortress Galaxy directly to study what truly occurred there.

The only detail repeatedly mentioned within restricted records concerned the stronger generals and leaders of the galaxy. According to scattered testimonies, those undead beings absorbed a certain form of energy that continuously strengthened them, yet it was neither natural energy, nor life force, nor soul force, but something entirely different that no living civilization properly understood.

And regardless of whatever that strange energy truly was, there appeared to be an enormous amount of it within that galaxy, causing the strength of its undead inhabitants to increase at frightening rates until the surrounding powers eventually abandoned any desire to study the phenomenon too deeply and instead settled on a far simpler hope:

That the undead would remain hidden within The Necrofortress Galaxy forever and never emerge to remind the universe why death itself once feared Mortix.