Chapter 33: Information
In the chess room across the street, Omega and the mysterious woman played chess again. The entire room was empty; the woman had bought it as a place for the two of them to play privately.
"You seem calmer than you were a few days ago," the woman said with a nonchalant smile after losing a game. "Did something happen?"
Omega smiled. "Human hearts are uncontrollable. Only the law can discipline oneself."
"Ohh~ You've chosen law as your path. Interesting." The woman rested her chin on her hand and blinked, smiling with surprise. "But the law is merciless. Perhaps a little more morality, like love, would be better."
She'd noticed something else, too. The murderous intent that had surrounded him before had vanished by more than half.
"Love, as an emotion, cannot be rationally quantified," Omega said. "Its power may be immense, but it also carries the risk of spiraling out of control."
"Even with danger, love is still essential to humanity, isn't it?"
"That makes sense." The woman smiled sweetly and lowered her slender hand.
She introduced herself earnestly. "My name is Erda, a woman who made mistakes because of love in the past. And I thank you for your support and love for humanity."
"My name is Alpharius Omega, and I have always been loyal to the love of humanity." Omega introduced himself with a smile.
"Aren't you loyal to the Emperor?" Erda raised her eyebrow.
"That depends on whether he is worthy of loyalty. My loyalty is never unconditional. Loyalty to humanity is now my unwavering choice."
Erda was surprised to hear this. She was fairly certain the other party was one of the twin Primarchs of the Twentieth Legion's Alpha Legion. But he didn't have Alpharius's die-hard loyalty. He was observing whether the Emperor was worthy of allegiance.
She understood why they'd met. The intangible connection and encounter were truly a wondrous fate.
Omega glanced around and chuckled. "I'm off on an expedition. Until we meet again."
"Wait a moment." Erda nodded and stood. She went to the inner room and returned with a beautiful diamond, handing it to Omega. He looked surprised and puzzled.
Erda smiled. "Don't overthink it. This diamond is a storage device. I've stored countless Go game data inside. I'll wait until you become a chess master so we can have a proper match. I don't want to take advantage of you being too busy to play chess."
Omega was surprised to receive the diamond. He'd received several gifts in the past few days. He reached into his pocket, took out a piece of yak jerky wrapped in packaging, and handed it to Erda as a return gift.
Erda chuckled and happily accepted the dry, hard jerky.
After talking with Erda for a while, Omega stood and left. Erda watched his tall, strong figure retreat quietly until he disappeared from her sight.
...
The following day, on Terra's starport, Alpharius, Omega, and the others watched as the planet they'd returned to in such a short time receded into the distance. The warship set sail toward Pluto. A few days later, they left the Solar System through the Hades Gate warp jump.
On the warship, Omega used the cogitator to read countless Go data from the diamond storage device. He immersed himself in study during the warp jump.
Alpharius didn't disturb him, and the ten warships traversed the warp calmly.
When they returned to the northeastern sector of the Milky Way several months later, the Primarchs had gradually rejoined their Legion fleets. Omega had finished studying all the Go materials on the diamond storage device.
They focused their attention on the general offensive plan. More than a thousand warships made a warp jump and headed straight for the Rangdan homeworld of Advex-Mors.
The various Legions launched a general offensive from all directions across the Rangdan Xenomorph territories. Fierce battles broke out. In one star system, thousands of Alpha Legion warships clashed with over eight hundred Rangdan alien warships in space.
The enemy possessed a massive space fortress spanning tens of kilometers. War raged everywhere. In space, in the sky, on land, and on the sea.
Seven years later, after a brutal interstellar war with billions of xenomorphs battling against the human army, the Xenomorph homeworld of Advex-Mors was conquered. The Imperium emerged victorious.
The Alpha Legion and Space Wolves pursued a fleeing Rangdan alien fleet, annihilating the enemy and capturing their war commander.
On a vast desert planet's surface, Omega pulled his power sword from the body of a Rangdan alien lord. He watched with surprise as the Space Wolves army hastily took off and withdrew into the sky.
Company Commander Skol approached, clad in power armor stained with green blood and wielding a serrated broadsword. He looked at the sky strangely. "Sir, the warrior commander of the Rangdan aliens was captured, but why did the Space Wolves take him away without even letting us see him?"
"Who knows." A gust of yellow sand blew by. Omega looked at the alien corpses scattered across the ground, the smoking alien warships lying on the sand, and the Alpha Legion warriors cleaning up the chaos. "Is it all cleared out yet?"
Skol laughed happily. "It's all resolved! The war against the Rangdan aliens that has lasted for over a hundred years is finally over!"
Omega was stunned when he heard this. The war was over. It had been almost thirty years since he first fought the aliens. 'So long. '
He contacted Alpharius to find out what the Space Wolves were up to.
Alpharius responded after a long pause. "Leman Russ has captured the Eleventh Primarch."
The Eleventh Primarch. The same Primarch of the Eleventh Legion whose forces were already wiped out.
The Primarch had returned.
It seemed the Space Wolves had captured the Warmaster of the Rangdan Xenomorphs before. Could it be that the Eleventh Primarch was the Warmaster of the Rangdan Xenomorphs?
What a joke. After all this time, the Eleventh Primarch had become a War Commander among the xenomorphs? What kind of nonsense was this?
The entire Space Wolves Legion in the galaxy withdrew and returned directly to Terra. The Alpha Legion packed up and prepared to return to base when, in space, they encountered five strange fleets that suddenly jumped out of the warp.
The dark, crescent-shaped spaceships were unlike any other alien warship they'd encountered before, yet they exuded a strong sense of advanced technology.
Omega knew aliens had never been kind to humans. He prepared for battle without attempting communication. But then he saw the five alien warships, tens of millions of kilometers away, disappear in a flash.
When they reappeared, they were already among the human fleet, unleashing powerful arc cannons that attacked the surrounding warships.
The surrounding five hundred warships counterattacked without waiting for Omega's order. Barrages of laser cannons and energy cannons struck the strange, dark, crescent-shaped warships and proved completely ineffective.
"Launch torpedoes!" Omega commanded from his flagship.
Numerous warships launched torpedoes at the enemy. Streaks of green destructive cannons fired from the alien warships to intercept the torpedoes, which exploded directly in space.
The alien warship was powerful, more terrifying than the Rangdan vessels. It startled Omega.
He was skeptical that five ships could fight against five hundred warships, so he ordered continuous attacks. Even if the enemy came from a higher civilization, he didn't believe they could defend indefinitely.
With over a dozen of their own warships destroyed, the five alien warships seemed unable to withstand the damage. They vanished in a flash and reappeared at the rear of the fleet.
Omega and Alpharius were both alarmed. They immediately ordered the fleet to shift its guns toward the alien warships.
Each time the alien warships couldn't withstand the pressure, they changed their position in space.
Seeing many of his fleet's ships damaged, Omega adjusted his fleet formation to prepare for possible attacks from all sides.
When the five alien warships reappeared, the human fleet launched a fierce attack. Under the intense firepower, the alien warships couldn't withstand the assault and had to retreat. Each attempt to probe was met with a counterattack from the human fleet's formation.
Suddenly, as if a spatial rift had appeared out of thin air on Omega's flagship, a large number of mechanical, skeletal aliens carrying weapons resembling heavy machine guns materialized onto the ship.
Intelligence came through the communication that Alpharius's ship had been attacked as well.
The Alpha warriors beside Omega immediately engaged the mechanical skeletal aliens that had appeared.
[End of Chapter]