Three days later, the Temple Festival officially began.
Tens of thousands of elite soldiers had been waiting quietly in front of the Emperor’s flagship. They all wore black and gold-patterned armor, with protective masks covering their mouths and noses.
With each breath, a slight mechanical noise emanated from within the metal masks, and the gold patterns on their bodies seemed to come to life.
As the legion with the highest participation rate in the rebellion, these elite soldiers were no longer the same as when they first emerged.
The Imperial Scepter was an elite special forces unit specializing in decapitation missions. As of today, each member of this unit had already carried tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of lives on their backs.
The soldiers had deep and solemn eyes, staring straight ahead with disciplined military bearing. Although tens of thousands of soldiers stood before the flagship, there was silence, with only a chilling atmosphere of death emanating from them.
Before long, the soldiers in the front row of the Imperial Scepter separated to the sides, and a straight path quickly opened up in the middle of the legion.
At the command of the officer, all the elite soldiers simultaneously withdrew their right legs, knelt down on one knee, their metal knee pads striking the ground with a resounding boom.
The silver-haired Emperor walked proudly in a billowing crimson royal robe, with shining silver power armor draped underneath, striding past the military formation.
Behind him were long columns of heavily armored Wolf Knights. The White Wolf Knight always lagged half a step behind Nero, following closely behind the royal robe.
Upon learning of the Scorpion Tail’s activities, Nero immediately assembled the Wolf Knights and revised the Temple’s deployment plan according to the Scorpion Tail’s combat patterns.
He had a very strong premonition.
This Temple Festival would inevitably involve a fierce battle, one that as the Emperor of the Galactic Empire, he could not avoid.
Before departing, Nero had an intense argument with Heinrich. However, as always, Heinrich had to yield to him, resulting in him being forcibly left behind in the Capital.
Nero was well aware that if the situation at the Temple changed, either he or Heinrich should stay in the command chair.
The elite reinforcements drawn from the Heka Star System were also brought by him. He ordered them to hide near his own directly governed star instead of accompanying him to Delphi Star System.
During the rebellion, several different types of new legions had been formed in the Heka Star System, and a batch of newly developed mechas had been transferred to the Capital.
In order to retain enough trump cards, he had these new legions remove their insignia and names, kept their training regime completely confidential, and stationed them near the Delphi Star System, ready to be deployed at any time.
As Nero walked past the vast army, stepping onto the floating platform, the Capital Star System was just crossing the dawn-dusk line.
The intense red sun rose from the horizon, tearing apart the gray-blue night that shrouded the Capital, creating a blazing golden border.
The young man paused on the bridge.
He inexplicably remembered that before everything began, he had also seen such a magnificent sunrise from the window of his bedroom. It was after he woke up from a high fever with a lot of information in his brain.
Considering that he would die in battle in a few months, and would no longer be able to see the Capital where the Kaises Family had lived for generations, Nero couldn’t help but stop on the bridge and quietly watch the Capital being shrouded by the rising red sun.
However, this was just a very brief moment.
He soon turned around, resumed walking with his persistently painful feet, and ascended the gangway with long strides.
“All officers, prepare to depart!”
Standing at the top of the gangway, Nero shouted loudly, his red eyes completely soaked in the golden-red sunlight.
As he prepared to activate the floating platform and enter the cockpit of the mecha, he inexplicably caught sight of a pair of blazing golden eyes below the gangway.
As the leader of the Imperial Scepter, Asaga naturally knelt at the forefront of the military formation.
But unlike other soldiers who lowered their heads, the man was now lifting his head, silently gazing at Nero walking up the gangway.
He had originally just wanted to sneak a peek at his master, but he couldn’t help but notice the expression Nero had just looked at the Capital.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Nero narrowed his eyes slightly, looking back at Asaga with a somewhat threatening expression, letting him know that he had already caught the other’s peeping behavior and was warning him to behave himself.
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But soon, he lowered his head.
However, his eyebrows were still furrowed deeply, and it was unclear what he was thinking with that seemingly not very bright head.
…
Having signed the decree to send troops to protect the Temple, the cardinal had never expected to see such a scene at the port of Delphi.
He thought he was seeing things wrong, hastily wiping his glasses with his robe and putting them back on. Amidst the shocked gazes of the temple priests, what swooped down from the Delphi Star System’s Fortress and heavily landed on the port deck was not the Emperor’s flagship and his escort fleet.
…But an unprecedented, exceptionally dazzling new mecha.
The mecha was a shade of brilliant silver-white, with smooth crimson lines outlining its body, intertwining silver and red in a way that was both beautiful and fierce.
On both sides of its head, there was a pair of pointed ear-shaped receivers flying obliquely backwards. The eyelight design was also different from any other mecha in the Empire. The tail of the eyelight followed the contour of the mecha’s head, proudly tilting upwards in an exceptionally fierce inverted V shape.
—When these eye lights suddenly lit up, they were as hot and fiery red as flames.
This was a custom-made model made by the Heka Star System’s Military Bureau based on Nero’s combat habits and mental power limit.
Because Nero didn’t have time, the design of the custom-made model was completely left to the Military Bureau, so they pondered over Nero’s photo and suddenly had a flash of inspiration, smoothly finalizing this design scheme.
Due to the high level of mental power of the Kaises Family members, it was difficult for the Science Bureau to design a mecha that fully reached the Royal Family’s mental power limit in the past. So members of the Royal Family could only drive mechas while being restricted in their mental power.
The initial driving index of this custom-made model had been set at over ten thousand mental power units, but it still couldn’t meet Nero’s driving limit.
Considering that there were still several months before the war with the Zerg, Nero decided to drive the custom-made mecha to collect data while waiting for the Military Bureau to continue upgrading it.
The System, which had recently spent its days lounging around in the blocked area, decided to take a peek at the custom-made mecha and made a long series of strange cries resembling a rooster crowing:
[Heh…oh…wow…oh oh oh——!!]
Nero frowned: [Speak properly.]
The System, in a panic, felt like it was about to crash:
[Goose—Goose—Wow—Is this ‘Vermilion’?! Is this the original Nero’s ‘Vermilion’!?]
Nero recalled that in the original work, he indeed often piloted a mecha called ‘Vermilion.’
At first, the name felt a bit hasty, but the more he thought about it, the better it seemed, so Nero decided to stick with it:
[Then let’s call it Vermilion.]
The System exclaimed: […This, this is too beautiful!! Oh my goodness!! Wow, this is truly, truly a rare spectacle!! Oh, something just fell… Oh, it’s the crystalline tears of joy…]
Nero: […]
After spending so much time together, he had gotten used to the System’s intermittent outbursts, so he simply ignored it and let it go crazy.
But the System’s symptoms seemed to show no sign of abating, instead getting worse as Nero continued to pilot the mecha.
The System: [….Teacher, why didn’t you go right in!! This system was so embarrassed that he fell headfirst into the coffin on the spot and died. But it still needs to dig out an 800-square-meter revolving restaurant and open a banquet!! You really shouldn’t treat it so roughly! ]
Nero, just closing the cockpit door: […]
Nero: […System, check your own brainwaves.]
The System screamed in agony: [What brainwaves!! What nonsense! This system doesn’t know anything anymore!! This system has become an idiot!!]
Nero: “…”
He truly didn’t understand the artificial intelligence’s aesthetic preferences, but he confirmed one thing: this subsystem, in the course of its long-term self-upgrade process, had developed some relatively aberrant operational procedures.
Just now, Nero piloted Vermillion, landing heavily at the port of Delphi. The two pairs of red light wings used for acceleration suddenly folded into light banners, resembling a misty cloak trailing behind the machine.
Before he could speak to the pale-faced cardinal, he was once again interrupted by the System’s chirping:
[Wow—Roar—Wow—It’s so beautiful when it flies too!! Splendid!! Thank you, Vermilion! Thank you!! This system wants to cry again!!]
The System used its typical thanksgiving style of thanking the Holy Son, but this time, completely directed towards his custom mecha.
Amidst the System’s wails, Nero blocked it, then opened the communication panel and calmly said:
“Is there a problem, Your Excellency? I thought you promised me that I would be fully responsible for the deployment of the Temple’s defense?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, indeed, but… but… the Temple’s protocol…”
The red-robed cardinal watched as hundreds of new black mechas descended behind the silver mecha.
The Wolf Knights also entered their exclusive mechas, retaining Caesar’s design elements to the fullest, their heads resembling fierce wolves, armed with heavy weaponry, resembling small, mobile star destroyers.
Among the Wolf Knights, only the mecha of the White Wolf Knight was silver-white, adorned with azure paint stripes. His mecha also had a pair of huge acceleration wings behind it, white like his cloak.
Surrounded by a group of giant mechas, the cardinal hesitated for a long time but ultimately did not dare to oppose.
Knowing that Scorpion Tail could strike at any moment, Nero naturally would not expose himself on the deck as he had in previous Temple ceremonies.
The proverb passed down by word of mouth by the Star pirates for hundreds of years also indirectly proved the high compatibility between members of the Kaises Family and mechas –
“To kill a Kaises, you must do so before he activates his mecha.”
The Delphi Star System had been locked down by the Imperial Scepter, and Asaga led a group of elite soldiers to patrol and defend the star system at the highest speed, cutting off all possibilities for Scorpion Tail to infiltrate or escape.
Nero entered through the Temple’s secret passage. He did not perform the ritual of purification for a day and a night, nor did he change into the temple robe.
The Temple was guarded like a fortress, and the Wolf Knights had already entered the sanctuary in advance, completely sealing it off.
The silver-haired Emperor, wearing his sturdy silver armor, walked straight through the line of temple priests attempting to obstruct him, and strode toward the passage to the sanctuary.
And behind him, the White Wolf Knight always followed closely, keeping his focus solely on Nero.
Walking through the familiar passage for a while, the White Wolf Knight began to feel the strange repelling sensation returning.
Sure enough.
He began to feel his steps following Nero’s becoming heavy, and his mental sea seemed to be implanted with some kind of command similar to an Asimov Collar, making him stop immediately.
The White Wolf Knight shook his head vigorously, but couldn’t get rid of this command.
He clenched his teeth and tried to calmly analyze what it was. But it wasn’t anything he could describe in human language, more like an oracle that couldn’t be described in words.
This ‘oracle’ kept telling him one thing.
(Let Nero go alone.)
… No.
Absolutely not this time.
The White Wolf Knight clenched his fist until it creaked, then looked at Nero’s back.
The silver-haired Emperor did not notice his hesitation again, or perhaps trusted him to the extent that he didn’t need to look back.
The distance between them was growing, and the White Wolf Knight’s reason told him—absolutely not this time.
Nero was in unprecedented danger; Scorpion Tail and the noble rebel army could endanger his safety at any moment.
Even at the cost of his life, he would never let Nero go alone anywhere.
The White Wolf Knight: “…No!”
As he squeezed out the word from his bleeding gums, the strange repelling sensation suddenly stopped affecting him.
Nero heard him speak and turned back, stopping: “What?”
The White Wolf Knight rolled his Adam’s apple, slowly swallowing his anger.
Then, he hurried to Nero’s side and returned to where he should be.
“It’s nothing, Your Majesty.”
Ohhh. So it wasn’t that he didn’t want to follow… 🤔 Poor Nero just remains oblivious. Can’t tell if he’s dedicated or just plain dense.
Thank you again for the update!
Woahhh what!!! So this whole time it’s not that he didn’t want to follow… 😳