*Several minutes earlier, back in the Capital City*


    A straightened her body and began flying in Dina''s direction after ascending above the city. "Dina!" She called, racing over.


    "Don''t worry, A, the further away I am the better I will be able to fight, remember?" Dina replied through their mark, causing the Elf to halt before she was beyond the city.


    "Are you certain?" She furrowed her brows, staring at the horizon where the mage was already beyond the reach of her eyes.


    "Yeah, I can handle myself." Dina replied once more and cing her trust in her student, A nodded and turned her back, facing a multitude of resistance soldiers that had responded to seeing her flying above them, they arrived in droves, thousands strong on small hovering tforms with weapons of varying sizes and shapes pointed at her.


    "I will leave it to you then," She spread her hands wide, defying the thousands who faced her. "None of you are permitted to pass," She warned them while Alpha did a scan.


    "Amongst the three thousand and eighty-seven who are before me, only seventy of you knew of the evils that the Resistance has been carrying out and actively partook in it, those who did not know are free to return to somece safe and wait for Mdy''s judgement to be carried out, as for those who have been confirmed as traitors of the Vatui and Godyer races; those who actively sold their own kind as ves and produce..." A''s eyes began glowing brightly.


    "You will be answering to me."


    "What gives you the right to judge any of us when you don''t even share the same blood as us, you who havee here as a judge... you''re not even Vatui, neither are you a Godyer, so what right do you have?" One of the men from the front asked, aiming his weapon at her head.


    "You are interfering in matters that have nothing to do with you!" He fired the gun and him, along with all the others witnessed the woman before them snatch the energy-based projectile from midair and hold on to it.


    "What the-"


    "It would seem that way, of course you who sold your eldest brother and his family to the Emporium would point out the one obscure reason that could potentially save your life," A stared at the energy once more and then crushed it in her grasp, shing the steam off her hand and staring up at him again.


    "Sold his brother? I thought his brother was killed in the crossfire when he was trying to escape-"


    "Isn''t he even going to try and deny her?" The crowds behind the man continued growing in noise.


    "D... don''t believe the words of this witch!" The Vatui at the front shook his head, ncing behind himself and then at A once more with his hands slightly shaking. "Nothing but lies, she is lying to your faces, this is all a scheme to cause distrust amongst us, she is lying just as that woman who calls herself Ikaris is lying-"


    "But, that is Ikaris, though," One of the elders of the multitudes shook her head. "I remember her well, something as simple as her hair being different does not deter the fact that she is irrefutably the same Princess of the days of old, you saw it, we all saw it, even Curt addresses her as his n''s lost leader."


    "Who asked you, you old shit!?" The man spun and turned his gun towards the woman who had opposed him. "They are the enemy, they attacked us unprovoked, we have lived here unbothered for countless years-"


    "-Feeding off the food we earned through the harvesting of our people..." The woman lowered her gun and then released it. "You," She looked past him at A who had remained passive.


    "You say that you can identify all those in cahoots with the Emporium, can you tell us how?" She asked and A smiled, it was only a matter of time before someone unsatisfied or skeptical started asking the right questions.


    There was already the seed of doubt cast by Ikaris, her and the others only needed to water that seed and allow the roots to take hold.


    "Alpha," A gestured to her side, and the masses gasped when they saw a young woman appear out of thin air. "She is not an illusion, nor is she any form of witchcraft."


    "I was given the name [Alpha] by Master Sol Vestic," Alpha spoke and then paused, having gained their undivided attention through Sol''s name; there wasn''t a being alive who wasn''t curious about the Godyer who turned the Emporium on its side, he was already a household name across the Grand Collective, but in the Kha-Nova Collective he was a name spoken with reverence.


    "I am no race you have ever heard of before, I am no race at all, I am the system; an entity birthed through Divine Creation, I am neither mortal, nor am I immortal, I am no god and I am no devil, I am a synthetic consciousness with the power to ess the secrets of life and the taboos of death, to travel everywhere and see everything all at once, I am an entity which bonds with Universes, with Collectives and can freely ess any information I wish, given enough time."


    She tried summarising the introduction, but she also needed them to know, or at the very least have an Idea of what she was supposed to be.


    "What does that have to do with what I asked?" The old woman queried with her brows furrowed, she understood what Alpha was saying but it only made her confused.


    "I am the one who made it possible for Lady Ikaris to speak to you all without hindrance," Alpha stared at the woman. [Just as I am freely able to bypass your mental walls and speak directly into your mind] She added and the woman''s eyes widened in horror.


    "I know the name of every living being inside of the Kha-Nova Collective, I know their age, their day, minute and second of birth, I can go anywhere that Master has been and I can divide my consciousness evenly with every living organism, I am the personification of omnipresence, but I am not all-powerful," Alpha paused and extended her hands towards them.


    "This is all to say, everything that exists has a code which can be read, whether that thing be biological, pure energy or cold dead metal, I can read it, so bypassing something as trivial as a firewall is child''s y.


    The Emporium keeps record of every transaction, every meeting, every Harvest, all I had to do was search their database, that is where my proofes from," She raised her hand showing one small glimpse of their databank and showing the face of the man who was opposing A before.


    "Kree éman, born on the eve of the Vatui-Resistance war; has no idea of what his people endured and how much they had suffered, he was discovered by the New Empire in his adolescence and sold his family to save his skin, since then he has conducted smaller transactions every few centuries, Godyer children, Vatui elders, anyone that could disappear without a trace and their disappearance not be questioned fell under his radar," Alpha paused and looked at the man again.


    "Am I lying, Kree?"


    "You-"


    "His most recent transaction was Three Hundred and Sixty years, Seventeen days, Eight hours, and Twenty minutes ago, he sold a little Godyer girl, pre-adolescent, her name was Evangeline Hord, Daughter of Stefan and Eve Hord, they live on the farthest colony from your star; on Rafa, the fourth and farthest inside of this Dyson Sphere," Alpha narrowed her eyes.


    "The child he sold disappeared the same day her family arrived here, she waster killed and discarded, her body was too immature to harvest so they took her blood and tossed her into a dying star," She red at him, as did A who''s mana was rapidly rising while she heard this story.


    "Y-you''re lying!" The man aimed his hand at Alpha, but quickly found the gun he had been holding on to snatched from his grasp and pressed under his chin after A used [Godspeed] to approach him in the blink of an eye.


    "Her parents were made aware of their daughter''s fate as soon as I arrived inside of Sector G.Gamma," They have already agreed to join under Mdy''s cause, to wipe out the traitors within the resistance and put an end to the Emporium once and for all.


    "Her story is not new, many other children, elderly and otherwise have fallen victim to those who sought to explpoit their weaknesses for their greed; for their selfish pleasure, you, Kree, are among Millions of traitors that have gued their kind and betrayed them repeatedly, do you dare deny what you have done?" A asked the man with the gun at his chin and her other hand pressed against his abdomen after she had cast a paralysis curse on him to hinder his actions to speaking and breathing.


    "Do you have the balls to stand before me and continue to lie, Kree?!"


    [Applying Torture]


    [A curse of Authenticity has been cast on you, until you speak the truth you will experience pain simr to iling across your body]


    (note; iling is the act of peeling all the skin off a person while they are still conscious, it was a means of torture and punishment for criminals and war prisoners back in the day.)


    "Answer the question!"


    "Is it true, Kree?"


    "Do you admit or deny?!"


    "Why did you do something so cruel, and to a child no less?"n/?/vel/b//in dot c//om


    "How dare you sit amongst your people after doing that?!"


    "I had no choice, it was them or myself, it''s always you or someone else, I want to live, just as all of you do, what was I supposed to do they kepting back! Its all just survival of the fittest!!" The man blurted out. "Fuck!!" He screamed. "I just wanted to live!"


    "Your life is already forfeit," A removed her hand from his abdomen and pushed him.


    "A being capable of selling a child does not deserve the breath of the living." Readtest chapters on empire