Dunar found it physically impossible to close his eyes or stop staring at the screens displaying the view outside the ship.
They were leaving the planet at a rapid pace; the surface receded further and further, granting them the unique opportunity to see their home from afar.
It was breathtaking.
No matter how far they flew, the steel threads covering the planet did not disappear.
It only became more apparent how vital a role their state played—the metallic Towers and the entire surrounding territories, plated in steel, were visible even from space.
So too were the iron filaments connecting all the monoliths into a single network.
Their Empire.
However, after a time, a new object commanded his attention.
A gargantuan ring that blotted out a massive portion of the heavens—Telstarax.
In some sections, it still bore the scars of the past war, but the segment they were approaching was completely intact.
These were clearly new sections of the megastructure, covered in nanite swarms that were still hard at work.
Reconstruction was slow, but the first results were already evident.
But what impressed Dunar most were the machines—tiny from this distance—positioned near entire sections of the steel ring.
He was no fool; he could roughly calculate the true size of these titans in his head, and understand why someone would need functional starships.
And why they needed a cohort of the most brilliant young people who had proven their skills in action.
The end of the journey passed for Dunar as if in a fog.
One moment they were approaching the steel behemoth, then they paused briefly before flying into a vast hangar, where the issues of depressurization, artificial gravity, and pressure drops were resolved.
Then, they were told to leave their seats and walk down a small, enclosed ramp leading into a bright hall where adult escorts already awaited them.
This representative was clearly from the “Elite”—the title given to the most distinguished seniors.
Most often, these were the finest warriors or diplomats who had annexed the most tribes; however, as Dunar had heard from Vicarius, who loved collecting rumors, brilliant scientists and prominent researchers were increasingly appearing among the new generation.
Every one of them could boast advanced augmentics, replacing weak human limbs with superior machinery.
The man before them displayed two metallic arms and an eye replaced by a green artificial lens.
Many elders labored for such tools—even if they dulled sensation, they granted the ability to feel young again.
“Follow me,” he said in a gravelly voice, gesturing with his hand and immediately turning away.
No one argued or made a sound; they simply moved forward.
Inside, Telstarax looked much like their Towers—gray corridors with good lighting and plenty of machinery.
Cameras, locks, and air filters—Dunar had been born surrounded by these things, so their presence did not surprise him.
However, when they reached a spacious, grand hall, the boy momentarily stopped in astonishment.
On Sthenelus, there were hundreds of Towers, but until one reached adulthood, there was no way to communicate with anyone outside one’s own.
Even then, permission and a valid reason were required.
Thus, he wasn’t quite prepared to see the “best of the best” among the new generation include mutants who were far from the standard human form.
He could accept the stocky, four-foot-tall men or the albinos with white skin and colorless eyes, but the rat-men standing in the distance…
though even they weren’t the most unusual guests at this event.
A grim giant, nearly eleven feet tall, stood furthest away, right next to an empty platform elevated above the crowd.
They were legends among the students.
The only people who had not been brought under the direct control of the Empire, remaining instead as a protectorate.
They were protected, they shared information and knowledge gladly, but they were not part of the corps and continued to perform their mysterious tasks of guarding something clearly very important.
This alone was the source of many rumors and myths, especially when considering the fact that their Leader originated from there…
Few, even among adults, could boast of having seen the Lord of the entire Empire in person.
At the beginning of the Unification Wars, he had occasionally spoken personally with tribal leaders when annexing them peacefully, but as the war progressed, ordinary people saw him less and less.
Machines and recruited chieftains could fulfill his role, albeit with much less efficiency, but quantity outweighed quality.
However, no one thought he was idle—the constant improvements in their technology were the simplest and most obvious sign.
And so, every person in the crowd held their breath when He emerged.
Encased in his armor, with burning emerald eyes, their Leader calmly stepped onto the elevated platform and immediately began his speech, standing before the ranks of the gathered:
“We are order amidst chaos,” Ferrus began sharply.
“Our state arose in a moment of great need for all humanity. Once, we suffered from simple things like hunger or the fear of wild machines, but that era is long in the past. Now we must look toward a much brighter and more brilliant future. Now, we are masters of an entire world, and our task is to consider the future of the entire species. Having conquered the land, it is time to dream of the stars…”
His iron voice echoed throughout the hall, and hundreds of young people greedily grasped every word.
Simply being near him made them feel part of something great; all doubts receded into the background.
“…Our first step was the restoration of the great works of our ancestors. Telstarax has been in ruins for thousands of years, yet after only a few decades, we have managed to fully restore its first sector! This is all thanks to collective labor, unbreakable discipline, and the combined human genius. Of course, it was not easy, and we must pay for the negligence of our forefathers—our world was the primary forge of the galaxy for millennia, and therefore, critical resources are frankly in short supply. They were spent on the creation of other wonders, destroyed long before our birth.”
Ferrus paused, sweeping his gaze across everyone.
Or rather, so it seemed to the boy, for he could not see eyes behind their lord’s helm.
Yet at that moment, he was ready to swear by everything he owned to the truth of his words.
“…However, this is no reason to give up or abandon the dream of something greater. Space is a treasury of infinite resources waiting for someone to utilize them to forge something better. And your task is to become part of the first cohort that will head to other worlds to continue our unstoppable expansion. It is you who, after completing the necessary training, will form the core of the fleet that will one day reach the borders of the galaxy! The requirements for you are high, and the tasks incredibly complex, but the people rely on you, and therefore, there is no room for error. In the end, I wish for you to remember once and for all—the stars themselves belong to humanity by birthright.”
Finishing his speech, Ferrus swept his hand, allowing everyone to disperse, before turning and heading back himself.
Their escort immediately began explaining their new routine and the sheer difficulty of the training required for space travel, but Dunar barely heard him.
He only came to his senses when he met Vicarius’s equally stunned gaze—they were both thinking the same thing.
At any cost, literally whatever it took, they would prove they were worthy of the opportunity they had been given.
.
.
.
Watching another group of starships leave the planet’s orbit to explore the reaches of the star system, my fists clenched instinctively.
The work done wasn’t bad; in just twenty years, I had built a state and sent a group of savages into space, but it still felt too slow.
It seemed that for every achievement, the universe threw two new problems our way.
Limiting sleep to only four hours a day, the last years had passed in an eternal rush, trying to patch all the holes in a newborn state risen from the ashes.
And it couldn’t be done without complications.
Issues like creating a youth program, building a healthcare system from scratch, or finding energy sources seemed like child’s play compared to the process of dragging savages from the Stone Age into the far future.
I had to shed a lot of blood, crushing any resistance that refused to reconcile with the new order, and all the “clever” ones thinking only of how to seize my resources for their personal needs.
Thanks to numerous background checks and the possession of superior surveillance devices—allowing twenty-four-hour monitoring of all potentially dangerous elements—I managed to find all the rotten roots.
And eliminate them for the common good.
I was not a bloodthirsty maniac reveling in the death of people, so I tried not to spill human blood for no reason.
Almost all criminals were sent to laboratories, where they served as specimens to test the functionality of augmentics or new medicines.
Some were used as cautionary examples for the youth, to motivate them from childhood to develop and to warn anyone thinking of challenging our foundations.
However, only the most hopeless individuals were sent there—cannibals, serial killers, and outright terrorists who wished to destroy my state.
But the best results, strangely enough, came from experiments with captured shamans.
It was curious: absolutely every one of them who possessed even a shred of power and authority among the locals had either refused to submit to me or was clearly planning to join my state only to stab me in the back later.
In the end, their fate was predictable—anyone can witness it by reviewing my research.
Initially, I treated all reports that local “sorcerers” and “warlocks” could actually perform miracles through real magic with obvious skepticism.
Typical beliefs of primitive peoples who don’t understand the laws of nature and therefore attribute mystical and divine meaning to the unknown.
Except, this turned out not to be the case.
Before the first platoon of my army even reached the nearest settlement of a fairly influential shaman—one who held power over an entire village—my drones noticed increased activity among the locals, as if they knew what was coming.
This was the first suspicious fact, which I dismissed as the presence of very good scouts gathering rumors from already captured settlements or rare refugees, or perhaps some old tech useful for surveillance.
But when those very barbarians charged my tanks, covered in blood and staring at the world with crazed, clouded eyes—and when they were able to inflict actual damage on heavy machinery using only axes and swords—that was when I focused all my attention on them.
The mad berserkers, wearing bone skulls and armor made of human limbs, displayed superhuman abilities.
Their speed and strength rivaled my men in power armor, and their durability was staggering.
Even losing limbs and taking dozens of bullets to the torso, they only charged forward with greater fury.
Of course, we eventually won through numerical superiority and the use of excessive explosives combined with air support, but the losses were far higher than projected.
This meant more thorough reconnaissance was required to figure out the cause.
This specific case led to the formation of the first departments for combating a metaphysical enemy, which later spawned several more divisions for various opponents using “magic.” The growing staff, consisting mostly of the youngest and therefore most personally loyal individuals, worked in total secrecy to develop countermeasures against both the dangerous berserkers and the soon-to-be-found witches—who created dangerous homunculi and biological weapon analogs in the form of potions—as well as actual telepaths capable of dominating human minds from a significant distance.
The latter became quite a headache, requiring a radical overhaul of information security and general defense.
I even had to develop special implants to protect my people from this influence.
That is what I told everyone I outfitted with them, but the truth was far harsher: the microscopic implants were capable of shutting a person down with a single command from me.
Even my mind was powerless to create a counter to this poorly understood phenomenon, so I had to resort to extreme measures.
And this is where my experiments with captured shamans came in.
While any attempts to dissect them to figure out what led to sorcery proved fruitless, revealing only ordinary humans, experiments involving their immersion in simulations proved much more interesting.
By studying their minds and directly reading brain activity, I managed to find something linked to their powers.
Every time a sorcerer tried to use their abilities, their brain would practically glow, so great was the neural activity.
At times, this also led to literal anomalies, like a drop in room temperature or a sudden power surge that could fry all the equipment along with the warlock’s nervous system.
But once, I obtained a different result.
I created a simulation for the most “powerful” of the shamans found—one capable of hurling literal balls of superheated plasma—where he supposedly escaped our confinement and began wandering the wastelands, gathering strength to resist the Empire.
To him, one day, came a Voice.
Our equipment, thanks to the direct connection to the recipient’s brain, is capable of reacting instantly to actions and creating an environment on the fly; however, the voice that appeared was in no way connected to the simulation.
Cold and yet laughing, it seemed to descend from the heavens, completely ignoring the shaman’s pleas.
Instead, the Voice addressed me directly.
The unknown entity, which caused a cascade of errors in our hardware, began to describe in a voice full of mad joy the design of a construct that would supposedly grant my people absolute mental protection from outside influence.
“Blueprints of a device combining elements of technology and sorcery, given as a sign of fruitful cooperation.” After uttering the final phrase, the demon laughed insanely, causing the shaman to have a seizure as his blood literally began to boil.
Of course, I was no idiot and did not build the machine proposed by this spawn.
Instead, I immersed myself even further into developing defenses against such “otherworldly” threats.
The concept that such beings could appear to random mortals did not help my trust in those around me.
And then there were those signals of suspicious activity noticed at the edge of the star system…
they were mere brief blips from my monitoring devices, but suspiciously specific to be a common error.
More than thirty years have passed since my landing on this world, yet the sense of security remains non-existent.
Even after unifying the entire planet and beginning cosmic expansion, there are still so many tasks requiring my direct attention.
Threats fall one after another, and I have no chance to retreat or lose.
.
.
.
A tall man in a gray robe curiously observed the giant metallic tower rising hundreds of meters from the earth.
A moment ago, this man had not been in the vicinity, and he had only stepped onto the surface a few seconds ago, appearing literally out of thin air.
Not one of the advanced sensors could detect him, nor could any mortal.
The man looked with a gaze of steel at yet another civilization built in a mere few decades.
And the longer he watched, the more questions he had.
Questions that he would very soon ask his son.