CHAPTER 372: LET THE HUNT BEGIN! I

A dream ended silently.

For the first time in a while, Achilles emerged from a dream that concluded only with knowledge- terrible, necessary knowledge!

No assimilation!

When he opened his eyes in the luminescent depths of the Sea of Thalassara, Arya’s small form stirring beside him as she too returned from the realm of memory, the first thing he saw was Rose’s face.

She had been waiting, her green eyes reflecting the gentle currents of their underwater sanctuary, her expression patient but alert.

"How was it?" she asked.

The question was simple. The answer was anything but.

Achilles felt the weight of generations pressing against his consciousness...his father’s grief-stricken face, the endless field of graves that marked the price of their lineage’s power, and beneath it all, the names that now burned in his memory like brands of vengeance waiting to be claimed.

"As of this moment," he said, his voice carrying undertones that made the surrounding water tremble, "we know some of our enemies. Those who aided, abetted, or betrayed my father and hunted him down."

HUUM!

The words had barely left his lips when the entire region responded to the fury contained within them!

The Sea of Thalassara rippled with waves that had nothing to do with current or tide, while the waters around them seethed!

His father had been careful in what he revealed, warning that knowledge itself could be a weapon turned against the unwary.

There were names that could not be spoken while one was weak, identities that carried their own gravitational pull of attention from entities too powerful to notice safely.

But the enemies within reach, those whose destruction lay within the realm of possibility, those names had been given freely.

Achilles felt his eyes ignite with a furious light that turned the water around him to steam as he spoke the names that would define his immediate future

"The Obsidian Sovereignty. The Nexus Glorious Coalition. The Crimson Dominion Hegemony."

Each name fell from his lips like a death sentence, carrying with it the weight of authority and the promise of retribution that had been delayed for far too long!

These were powers that cast shadows across entire sectors of the Star Seas, forces that commanded legions numbering in the tens of thousands of Empyrean Star Nexus Transcendents, with thousands more who had transcended even that lofty realm, and hundreds who stood at heights of power that defied comprehension.

They were behemoths of influence and might, yet according to his father’s bitter revelations, they were merely subordinate forces to the true architects of his lineage’s destruction.

Pawns in a game played by entities so ancient and powerful that their very existence rewrote the fundamental Regulations of reality around them!

The magnitude of it should have been crushing, should have driven him to despair at the impossibility of the task ahead!

Instead, he felt Rose’s hand find his beneath the shimmering waters, her fingers intertwining with his own as she leaned forward with an expression of fierce determination.

"Talk to me," she said, her voice carrying the unshakeable resolve that had first drawn him to her.

"Tell me everything. Your enemies are my enemies, and I will burn them alongside you."

The simple declaration, spoken without hesitation or doubt, sent warmth through his chest that had nothing to do with the stellar brilliance contained within his transformed physiology.

Here was someone who looked at impossible odds and saw only obstacles to be overcome, who faced the prospect of war against empires and offered not words of caution but promises of shared destruction!

She was...a bit crazy.

But he loved that!

Achilles nodded, raising his free hand to weave patterns in the radiant blue waters around them.

The sea responded to his will, its substance reshaping itself into a three-dimensional display that sparkled with the light of distant suns.

Stars began to appear in the construct...first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands upon thousands until the space before them swirled with an endless sea of stellar bodies that painted patterns of breathtaking beauty across the infinite dark.

"These," he said, "are the Star Seas."

...!

The display pulsed with its own inner light as he continued, each word carefully chosen to convey the scope of what they faced.

"Within them, countless lifeforms strive and fight for limited resources, seeking to attain enough power to protect themselves and secure their lineages’ futures. The competition is endless, brutal, and absolute. Only the strong survive, and even strength is no guarantee of permanence."

Arya had been unusually quiet since their return from the Lineage Memory, her typical chatter replaced by the thoughtful silence of someone processing revelations too large for easy understanding.

Now she floated closer to the display, her silver-green eyes reflecting the miniature stars as she absorbed every detail with the intensity that marked her as truly his daughter.

"The Adrastia Emperor Kings," Achilles continued, his voice growing harder, "stood at the very apex of these forces. We possessed a lineage capability that allowed us to do what no others could accomplish...we could devour anything to grow stronger. We could Assimilate... everything."

The word carried special emphasis, weighted with all the implications of power that recognized no boundaries, no limits beyond the wielder’s will and courage.

It was the ability that had lifted his ancestors from obscurity to prominence, that had made them legends and targets in equal measure!

"Because of this power, we became unfathomably strong in impossibly short periods. Realms that others required decades or centuries to attain, we could reach in mere fractions of that time. And in the Star Seas, there are major forces that have been ruling for tens of thousands of years...ancient, established lineages that saw the Adrastia Emperor Kings as nothing more than rising threats to their carefully maintained power structures."

His hand tightened around Rose’s as the memory of his father’s words echoed in his consciousness, each revelation a fresh wound opened!

But he continued regardless as he shared all that he knew!