Lord of the Truth
Chapter 1384: The guards’ preparations

Chapter 1384: The guards’ preparations

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—!!"

"AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

"Urghh..." Latania clutched her abdomen in agony, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if trying to hold her soul from tearing apart. Every nerve in her body screamed. Her muscles trembled. She fell forward slightly, gasping through clenched teeth.

Then, forcing her chin up with raw willpower, she raised her eyes toward the horizon—

toward the obliterated ruins of the Imperial Palace.

A ruined monument, once the heart of pride, terror, and unquestionable authority.

Now, it was nothing more than smoking rubble, shattered towers, broken marble, and flame-lit bones.

She stared at it without blinking.

And she listened.

She listened to a music made of screams.

A macabre symphony played by the voices of the dying and the damned.

Howls echoed from within the collapsing remains—screams of betrayal, disbelief, and pain.

The palace that had once dominated half the capital’s skyline had been reduced to a dying grave.

"A detonation at the level of stabilized particles..." she murmured, her voice hollow but precise.

"Reinforced with high-pressure wave compression... He took his life...

Erased his disgrace by his own hand..."

She blinked slowly.

"Good."

BAAM—

Her legs gave out completely.

She fell to her knees, barely managing to catch herself with both hands before her face hit the ground.

Her entire body shook with exhaustion. Her breathing became sharp, harsh, uncontrolled—

a rapid panting like a hunted animal in its final breaths.

Her iconic, wide-set eyes—always alive with wild energy—now bulged with fatigue.

They flickered, red and wet, and looked as if they could drop from their sockets at any moment.

Ordinarily, the Imperial Guards did not rely on their laws.

They were designed as living weapons, honed by blood, steel, and punishment.

Each guard was armed with body strengthening tattoos of the fourth stage, the model that was once exclusive to the Nihari Giant Race!

They had endured Jabba’s personal array rituals, which tore open their physiology and restructured it at a molecular level, unlocking body strength no ordinary human should have.

Their equipment was not just gear—it was legend.

Armor forged from materials harvested from dead stars, something the True Beginning Empire only came across after getting access to the Mid-Belt.

Their mid-grade epic weapons and armor set were made to last.

Each set was bound to its user—reacting to their breath, their blood, their will.

And their spatial rings...

Inside each, an arsenal:

Dozens of high-grade talismans

Battle arrays

Tens of thousands of energy pearls

Emergency pills, scrolls, and warding orbs.

A walking war chest.

All of that, plus their hellish training on Hulak’s brutal methods,, was more than enough to deal with most missions.

But even all that might—was not always enough.

Against World Cataclysms...

They had only one last trump card:

The use of Fundamental Laws.

Yet it came with a grave price.

They used their Laws only when absolutely necessary—

and only to escape.

Two reasons explained why:

Secrecy.

The Laws they used were not minor forces.

They were Major, Fundamental Laws, believed to be reserved for Behemoths.

Physical backlash.

Their bodies were simply not meant to handle such power.

Each guard had been trained with a certain affinity—toward Waves, Time, or Space.

But this was not above 90%, no, much lower.

For laws of this high, even 10% affinity was good, 10% would make Zara select that individual!

They weren’t supposed to be able to touch those Laws.

And yet, Robin made it possible.

Using personally crafted alchemical formulas, he tailored each elixir to unlock just enough control over a Law to be used in an emergency.

But the catch?

The window of activation was absurdly short.

The strain on the body could rupture organs, burn nerves, and collapse bones.

The cost of each elixir was staggering—enough to purchase a warship.

Among the Guards, only the three Commanders could sustain their Law for long enough to even attempt a duel with a weak World Cataclysm.

Latania...

Was one of those Commanders.

"Huff..."

She exhaled deeply, her breath still unstable, and leaned back slowly into a seated position, spine rigid.

She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, attempting to control her breathing through discipline alone.

From her spatial ring, a set of small jade-gold banners shimmered into existence.

Shoo—Shoo—Shoo—

They stabbed into the ground in a tight circle around her position.

A moment later—

HUUUMMM—

A soft green dome enveloped her like a womb of light.

It pulsed with healing rhythm.

It was a medical formation, specially created to repair the internal cellular damage from wave compression backlash.

Specifically, it treated the strain from her Spectral Phase technique—

the skill that altered her body’s frequency to let her phase through matter like a ghost.

Woooosh—Wooosh—

More flags shot from the ring, this time expanding wider, embedding with force.

Then—

HOOOOOO—

A low, swirling vortex of energy was summoned.

It siphoned energy from the ruined city around her, funneling it directly into the dome.

That energy didn’t just fill the formation—

It merged into her body through contact.

Automatically.

Flawlessly.

With no need for conscious control.

Then—

Whoosh. Whoosh.

A third wave of rune-marked mini banners erupted from Latania’s spatial ring, shooting out with purpose and embedded themselves in the ground around her.

As they settled, a third barrier began to shimmer into existence—this one gray, ghostly, and ethereal.

It spread like a heavy mist over the existing green healing dome and blue energy absorption array, wrapping them in a silken cocoon of suspended time.

Anyone observing Latania from the outside would instantly know:

Something terrifying was happening within that cocoon.

Her breathing had accelerated so violently that it exceeded the biological limits of perception—her chest rising and falling faster than flickering candlelight.

The energy vortex above her spun at such a staggering velocity, it appeared motionless, like a perfect ring frozen in midair.

Her facial expressions—pain, resolve, tension—flashed across her features so rapidly they became a blur, creating a ghostlike afterimage of emotion.

This was the Timefall Cascade Array—an advanced, restricted temporal array that bent the natural flow of time within a small radius.

Within these critical, compressed seconds, she could reap every last benefit from the Field Hospital Array and Energy Cascade Array.

To others, it was a brief pause in chaos—

To her, these minutes ware hours of concentrated regeneration.

"Hoooo~"

When she felt the crushing weight on her muscles vanish, the trembling in her bones fade, and her organs settle into calm equilibrium—

Latania retrieved a thick, round-bellied vial from her ring.

Shaped like an ancient wine decanter, filled with a glowing silver-blue elixir—it was no ordinary potion.

With a single tilt, she drank it all, letting the thick essence slide down her throat and ignite every nerve within.

She didn’t scream.

She didn’t flinch.

Instead, she exhaled softly, then forced her breathing to silence—to a whisper of a whisper.

This was the legendary Elixir of Resonant Waves Affinity, created specifically for wielders of the Fundamental Law of Resonant Waves.

And she was not alone.

To her far right and left, two other warriors sat like living statues—Malik and Wade.

Both had mirrored her movements, seated in identical meditative stances to the corpses of the two world cataclysms they killed, their bodies wrapped in the same triple-layered array domes.

Their eyes remained closed.

Their expressions—serene.

Their chests—rising and falling in perfect rhythm, as if they were meditating atop a mountain, not seated amid the wreckage of war.

Around them, the battlefield burned silintly.

But inside those domes—

It was as if eternity had paused to let them recover.

Suddenly—

"Ahh! AAAAAHHHHH!"

The screams from the palace began to fade into the distance—

not because the agony ended,

but because the dying had begun to scatter.

Swoosh. Swoosh.

Figures launched out of the wreckage like shattered meteors, fleeing in pure terror.

There were no fewer than ten survivors.

Naked. Burned. Broken.

One man’s leg hung by strands of muscle, flailing in the wind.

Even the Minister with the Green Hat—the symbol of arrogance and scheming—was flying through the air nude, his face pale with disbelief.

Not a single survivor walked.

Not one escaped on their own two feet.

This was no ordinary suicide detonation.

This was a molecular-level rupture—the annihilation of a body’s stabilized particles, unleashed with a precision and power designed to vaporize.

And in the final half-second of life, the guard had activated Wave Amplification Channels, turning the entire explosion into a magnified vibrational storm.

It was beyond suicide.

It was vengeance incarnate.

"THE BLACK WASPS!"

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!

A dark figure emerged slowly from the collapsing palace—

Untouched.

Unburned.

Clothed.

But his face...

That face had seen hell.

He was a Planetary Emperor.

A man who had reached the Nexus State.

Yet now—

He walked with the silence of a ghost,

having witnessed the annihilation of his bloodline.

His pupils—wild.

His aura—unstable.

His rage—biblical.

His eyes locked onto Latania—

The one who had proposed the middle path.

The one who had reached the palace first.

"You... I will make you beg for death, and you shall be denied even that!"

He pointed toward her with a trembling hand, every word saturated with vengeance.

His voice was not loud. It was measured, as if holding back the urge to obliterate her in an instant.

Then he pointed toward Malik and Wade.

"You will all be subjected to torment the universe itself has never imagined!"

Latania...

opened her eyes.

"Hoo~"

With a single fluid gesture, she retracted all three array domes.

The sigils burned away in silence.

The light faded.

And she stood—fully restored, fully armed, fully resolute.

She cracked her neck—once to the left, then to the right.

The small war mallet in her hand shimmered.

WHOOOOOM—

It expanded into a colossal battle hammer, the head as large as her entire upper body.

She lifted it with ease, resting it against her shoulder.

Her eyes met the emperor’s.

And she spoke—not as a subordinate, not as a soldier—

But as a warrior in judgment.

"His Majesty once endured a full-force strike from a Nexus State Being while still merely a Saint...

He stood tall, carried our homeland on his back, and secured our future."

She took a step forward.

Then another.

Her presence swelled, her aura becoming a tidal wave of focused power.

"Today, I want to know how far apart we truly are."

Her voice, once sharp and fierce, now fell into a cold, solemn vow.

"Come."