Halfway through his laugh, Klavisu stopped. He looked down at the screen, and the amusement vanished from his eyes, leaving only a thick, murderous intent.
"But he was still my son. My own son. I might have thought him useless, but no one in the Milky Way had the right to touch him."
"A native prodigy dared kill my son."
He rose from his bone throne. As his hundred-meter-tall body straightened, the blood mist throughout the hall converged on him.
Behind him appeared the unimaginably vast shadow of a dark star. It was a True Star Core, the defining mark of a Ninth Rank lifeform.
The shadow of the Star Core slowly revolved behind him, ringed by a dense halo of black-red psionic light.
"Good. Very good."
He walked up to the screen and slowly dragged a massive claw across Song Chen's image. Three deep furrows scored the metal floor.
"So what if he's with the Cangxing Alliance? He's just a brat from the Disciplinary Department. He has to die. And I won't merely kill him—I'll make sure he knows exactly why, and leave nothing of him behind."
An attendant reminded him quietly, "My lord, he does have the Cangxing Alliance behind him. Should we inform our superiors first?"
"No need." Klavisu turned and returned to his bone throne. When he sat, the entire hall sank an inch.
"I have a part to play on the battlefield anyway. The higher-ups hound us every day for nodes and attrition. I'll simply take a trip to the front line and crush a bug while I'm there. No one can say a thing about it."
"Go. Find me the latest news on their movements. Tell me the moment Song Chen leaves."
The attendant acknowledged the order and withdrew.
Klavisu sat alone in the