A Core Ship From The Start
Chapter 1448 - 981 Mysterious Message

Chapter 1448: Chapter 981 Mysterious Message

For Duanmu Huai, the encounters in that world were just minor incidents. After all, he had far greater tasks to accomplish.

Namely, the threats posed by the Tyran Swarm and the Chaos Legion in the real world.

After opening the teleportation portal, Duanmu Huai immediately returned to the Tribunal and connected with Aikute. Upon learning of his safe return, Aikute breathed a sigh of relief and quickly reported the situation.

According to Aikute, she had already followed Duanmu Huai’s orders to completely annihilate several adjacent galaxies, cutting off the Tyran Swarm’s routes deeper into the Milky Way. At least for now, the Tyran Swarm could not launch an assault on the civilizations within the Milky Way, not until they found another stepping stone to invade.

Of course, Duanmu Huai wasn’t about to let his guard down. He had already instructed Aikute to dispatch large reconnaissance fleets to the peripheral galaxies of the Milky Way. Should any signs of a Tyran Swarm invasion appear, an extinction order would be issued for that galaxy, obliterating it entirely to sever the Swarm’s path of attack.

At present, the Tribunal still didn’t have the strength to face the entire Tyran Swarm head-on—let alone the fact that the Chaos Legion within the Milky Way had already resurfaced. The last thing Duanmu Huai wanted was to encounter the kind of internal and external chaos that plagued the Human Empire, with never-ending troubles. As the saying goes, "Before dealing with external threats, one must eliminate internal discord." He planned to first eliminate the Chaos Legion before turning his attention to the Tyran Swarm.

In truth, Duanmu Huai wasn’t entirely without a way to permanently deal with the Tyran Swarm. The most straightforward method would be to leave the Milky Way, delve into the core of the Tyran Nest, and then activate the powers of the Ancient Dominator to summon Azathoth: "Let the two of you tear each other apart and see who devours whom."

Of course, to Duanmu Huai, this was a last-ditch measure—a trump card to be used only as a final resort.

Compared to the Tyran Swarm, whose trajectory was more predictable, the Chaos Legion posed the greater immediate problem. The Tyran Swarm relied on planetary gravity to perform warp speed travel, allowing their movements to be calculated. The Chaos Legion, however, traversed using Subspace Travel, making their destinations utterly unpredictable. According to Aikute’s earlier reports, after the Tyran Swarm clashed with the Chaos Legion in the Lumiaire Galaxy, the latter vanished without a trace, further heightening Duanmu Huai’s vigilance.

Considering foes like the Corrupted Foil or the Brutal Wrath, it’s the Chaos Believers of the Obsessive Sin faction, such as those from the Emperor’s Sons, that were far trickier to deal with...

Even amidst his packed schedule, Duanmu Huai didn’t forget about that Wasteland World. He had sent Sherry along with a detachment of Night Guards into the Wasteland World, directly suppressing the Salvation Army with sheer force. Sherry didn’t disappoint; using a potion formula Ellie had left behind, she successfully synthesized a cure for the viral epidemic plaguing that world... Going forward, the Tribunal would take over the Salvation Army’s duties to restore order to that world as much as possible, gathering refugees and rebuilding human civilization.

The one notable detail: Duanmu Huai named the cure "Ellie" as a tribute to the girl’s sacrifice and contributions to humanity.

This way, when future generations in that world use the potion, they’ll inevitably wonder about its name. Then they’ll learn about the girl who sacrificed herself for the sake of all humanity... At least her death wasn’t in vain.

By contrast, Joel’s death was rather pointless—not even deserving mention in the textbooks.

So you see, everyone meets their end eventually—"some deaths are as heavy as Taishan, while others as light as a feather."

Some people’s deaths are remembered for a lifetime, while others... are forgotten as if they never existed.

Currently, Duanmu Huai had deployed the Tribunal fleet to monitor various galaxies. Fortunately, the Tribunal Fleet utilized the Net Path, meaning they didn’t need to worry about being detected by the Chaos Legion. As long as they could pinpoint the spatial fluctuations caused by Chaos Legion activity, they should be able to intercept the attack in its early stages...

During this time, Duanmu Huai had been relentlessly busy orchestrating the fleet’s movements within the Tribunal. At the same time, he had to advise other planets and factions to remain vigilant against Chaos forces... But as the saying goes, "The busier you are, the messier things get." Just when Duanmu Huai finally managed to catch a breather, yet another problem surfaced.

"Tch, why now of all times?"

Staring at the notification in the system before him, Duanmu Huai had just barely sat down to sip his coffee—only for it to almost spray out of his mouth.

The reason for his reaction was simple: floating before him was a line of system text.

[User stats detected at required threshold. Specialty Assessment now available.]

"Damn, who would’ve thought even after becoming a god, I still can’t escape this crap?"

Glaring at the system notification, Duanmu Huai could only stare speechlessly.

The Specialty Assessment was something he remembered from the game. After a player reached max level in an occupation and met certain thresholds, the Specialty Assessment would unlock. Upon passing it, the player’s occupation would gain a ’Specialist’ suffix, substantially boosting the power of their occupational skills.

Take the Assassin’s Court, for instance: a max-level Assassin could deal five times the damage in a sneak attack. With the specialist boost, that multiplier jumped to ten times. If that wasn’t satisfying, what was?

As for Duanmu Huai... the only thing he could think about now was how he previously completed a "Journey to the West" module and had obtained an upgraded version of Destruction Magic. It seemed like with the [God of Destruction] specialty, his [Destruction Magic] could at least increase in potency severalfold, adding penetration and area-of-effect buffs to boot. That would be exhilarating!