Olegen slowly walked up to the central podium.

He did not look like the proud, untouchable Patriarch they all knew.

He looked pale, trembling, and aged by a decade.

​Still, his aura was suffocating.

​"Pack only your most vital mana stones, your personal Beyonder cores, and whatever liquid credits you can carry on your persons. We are boarding our private stealth cruisers in exactly thirty minutes. We are abandoning Sol-III."

​For a while there was a baffling silence. Then chaos erupted.

Lucius’ roared,"Abandon Earth?! Father, have you gone crazy? We own half the commercial sectors on this planet! We are royalty! Where are we supposed to run?"

Bang!

Olegen slammed his fist against the podium, making it nearly crack.

He roared back,

​"Listen well. Don’t teach your father how to do things. I am still the patriarch. And we are running anywhere that is not here!"

Everyone including the children, went quiet.

​Olegen looked over his pampered daughters, and his innocent grandchildren, his expression turning grave.

​"Twelve Federation Fleets, Three Titan-class warships and three hundred thousand of our finest soldiers. They were Sent to capture a rogue. But none of them returned. They were utterly defeated."

Gasp!

​Lucius took a stumbling step back, all the color draining from his face.

"Annihilated? That... that is impossible. Who could possess that kind of military power?"

​"Neo Godson," Olegen answered grimly. "He is a Dominator. And it gets worse. I... I sent the the Arcane Assassin to assassinate him."

​The revelation dropped like a massive bomb inside the secure hall.

His sons and daughters stared at him in disbelief they had never known.

They all knew of Vesper. She was their family’s ultimate shadow, a flawless assassin who never failed.

"Is Vesper dead, father?" Lucius asked.

Olegen replied,

​"Not confirmed. But It has been two days on Zenith time, and she has missed her extraction window. She is either dead, or worse, she has been captured. And if a monster capable of wiping out twelve fleets managed to break her mind, he would know exactly who sent her."

​"We did not just poke a sleeping beast. We invited a cosmic apocalypse to our front door. If Neo Godson traces Vesper back to us, there will be no trial. There will be no negotiations. He will wipe the Rothschild bloodline from the very fabric of the universe."

​Olegen then pointed a shaking finger toward the evacuation bays.

​"Move! Now! If you value your lives, you will run and never look back!"

​The Rothschilds did not dare hesitate any longer. If the patriarch was that serious, they were definitely in danger.

​However, just as they were about to depart using the emergency teleportation bays, a figure appeared like a ghost.

​"Fufu, where are you going, Family Head?"

​Olegen’s heart skipped a beat.

​He turned around, only to see Vesper’s masked figure. But something about her unexpected presence deeply unsettled him.

​Still, he forced a look of relief onto his face.

​"Vesper, when did you arrive? Were you not caught by the Dominator?"

Vesper tilted her head. Her raven-black adamantite armor shone with a chilling light.

​"Caught? No, Patriarch. I wasn’t caught. I was remade."

​She slowly reached up and unclasped her mask.

​Olegen took a step back. The woman standing before him was Vesper, yet she was fundamentally fundamentally different

Her skin was a flawless, pale porcelain... There was no scars that once made her ugly. And her eyes, once cold, now glowed with otherworldly depth.

Her aura, it became far more stronger and potent than any other person Olegen knew

​"Vesper, Your face... what has that monster done to you?!"

Vesper replied with gaze of fanatical devotion,

​"He opened my eyes, Olegen. He showed me the true pinnacle of evolution. He is not a monster at all. He is a true god. And my Emperor has sent me back with a singular, final mission regarding the Rothschild bloodline."

​Lucius, the eldest son, frowned. He ignited his Type 6 core, drawing a high-frequency energy blade from his suit.

"Kill her! Guards, tear her to pieces!"

Woosh, woosh, woosh.

​Several elite family guards attcked with killing intent, even though their souls were screaming to run.

​Vesper smiled, casually raised her delicate hand, and snapped her fingers.

​[ Activating Skill: Spatial Manipulation ]

Boom!

​The space around the incoming guards violently collapsed inward.

Crunch!

With a sickening crunch that echoed through the grand hall, the elite Beyonders were instantaneously compressed into bloody, unrecognizable spheres of flesh and metal.

They dropped to the floor, completely lifeless.

​The entire assembly hall erupted into pure pandemonium. Women screamed, and the arrogant sons of the Rothschild family scrambled over each other in a desperate, pathetic attempt to reach the teleportation bays.

​"Activate the teleporters!" Olegen roared while gathering every ounce of his Type 6 cosmic force to strike Vesper and buy his family time.

"Die, you traitorous—!"

​Vesper vanished.

​She moved through the void and rematerialized directly in front of him.

​Olegen became a statue. His energy empowered fist stopped a few inches from her face.

He was already bound by invisible threads of space.

SCHLIK!

A sickening, piercing sound echoed.

He looked down.

​Vesper’s bare adamantite-reinforced hand was effortlessly buried deep inside Olegen’s chest.

She didn’t need her Arcane dagger. She was now a living biological weapon, like Neo.

​"The Emperor sends his regards," Vesper whispered directly into his ear, sounding like a literal devil.

​Then, with a merciless twist of her wrist, she crushed his heart.

​Olegen Rothschild, the untouchable Patriarch of Sol-III, was choked to death.

The light rapidly faded from his eyes, and his powerful aura completely dissolved.

"Farewell..."

Vesper casually withdrew her blood-soaked hand, letting his lifeless corpse crumple heavily to the floor.

​Her purple eyes turned toward the terrified family members desperately banging on the locked teleportation bay doors.

Vesper had already severed the facility’s power lines the moment she arrived.

There was no escape.

​"Now, let us finish the harvest, shall we?"

She was only told to kill Olegen, her former employer. But she wanted to do extra. She wanted to wipe out the entire bloodline so that Neo wouldn’t have to suffer from their pitiful revenge plans.

But—

"HALT!"