Chapter 759 - Traitors?

Chapter 759: Chapter 759 - Traitors?

Meanwhile, the attacks in the void never truly stopped.

Voidwatch had changed the nature of those attacks, but it had not removed them. Black Mass monsters still appeared near conquered worlds, sometimes in small groups that tested the outer defenses before retreating, and sometimes in enough strength to force the local factions into open battle.

Monster Emperors continued to appear from time to time as well.

Whenever that happened, Astraea and the other ancient beasts remained on standby. They no longer needed to stand beside every damaged barrier, but Lootwell kept them close enough to the emergency routes that they could respond whenever the pressure exceeded what Voidwatch and the local defenders could comfortably handle.

For the most part, the arrangement worked.

That was precisely why Lucien began paying attention to the factions that chose not to use it.

At first, there was nothing especially suspicious about them.

Not every conquered world needed Lootwell’s help. Some factions already possessed powerful barriers, while others had enough forces to defend their territories without outside assistance. A few simply preferred maintaining their own systems, which Lucien had no reason to object to.

Voidwatch had never been compulsory.

Then reports from the Shadow Information Network began arriving.

Several factions had become unusually active around their conquered worlds. Emergency supplies were moving in large quantities, combat forces were disappearing through private teleportation routes, and formation masters were being reassigned without public explanation.

Their conquered worlds had clearly encountered trouble, yet none of those factions had contacted Lootwell.

Lucien initially dismissed the pattern as pride.

Then he looked more closely at the names involved.

His expression changed.

Those factions shared another connection.

They were powers that had once carried some of the ugliest reputations on the five continents. Slave markets, illegal experiments, raids against weaker races, and the buying and selling of people had once been associated with several of them.

Most had become remarkably quiet after Lootwell rose to dominance.

Lucien had assumed that silence meant they had finally understood the new reality.

Lootwell had made its stance clear enough that even the most stubborn factions knew which practices would immediately draw its attention. For years, the reports coming from their territories had remained clean enough that Lucien believed they had adapted.

Now, as he watched the unusual activity surrounding their conquered worlds, a colder possibility settled in his mind.

They had adapted.

Just not in the way he had hoped.

The report that confirmed it arrived almost by accident.

One of Lootwell’s Shadow Spies had been sent with a reinforcement group belonging to one of the suspicious factions after repeated Black Mass attacks struck the northern boundary of its conquered world.

The spy expected to find mines, defensive stations, temporary camps, and perhaps several cities supporting the extraction operations.

All of those were there.

What he had not expected were the workers.

There were tens of thousands of them.

The first images reached Lucien without any commentary because none was necessary.

Long lines of people moved through enormous excavation fields beneath armed supervision. Some wore enchanted restraints, while others carried collars linked to formation nodes embedded throughout the mining districts.

Humans were among them, but they were far from the only ones.

Members of other races worked beside them under the same conditions. Some were already old, while others looked young enough that they might never have seen the five continents at all.

Several families had clearly been born there.

Lucien stopped reading for a moment.

The room around him felt unnaturally still.

Then he continued.

The deeper he went into the report, the worse it became.

The faction had never abolished slavery.

It had simply relocated it.

When Lootwell’s influence made the practice too dangerous to continue openly on the five continents, the faction moved most of its captive population into conquered worlds where outside inspections were rare and inconvenient.

Official records described them as contracted labor populations.

The contracts themselves were meaningless.

Some people had been transported there years earlier, while others had been taken from minor races or purchased through hidden networks. A number of humans who had disappeared from remote regions years ago had apparently ended up in those same worlds.

The conquered world produced rare ore.

Most of that ore was being extracted by slaves.

By the time Lucien finished reading, his expression had become completely calm.

That was usually worse than anger.

He immediately pulled records connected to the other suspicious factions, and the Shadow Information Network began digging deeper.

Patterns emerged quickly.

Not every faction with an ugly history had continued the practice. Some really had changed.

Others had simply learned where Lootwell was not looking.

Lucien leaned back and let the realization settle.

He had made a mistake, and it was not a small one.

He had assumed that becoming the dominant power of the five continents would be enough to force certain practices out of existence.

Instead, it had only pushed some of them farther from sight.

He had cleaned the rooms everyone could see.

The rot had moved into the walls.

That explained why these factions had never requested Voidwatch.

If Lootwell engineers entered their conquered worlds, they would need access to the local defenses, transport routes, population records, emergency systems, and major facilities. Installation teams would move through places those factions had spent years keeping hidden.

There was no realistic way to conceal tens of thousands of slaves from that level of scrutiny.

So the factions had chosen the more expensive option.

They fought the Black Mass on their own, spending more resources, risking more elders, and allowing their barriers to deteriorate rather than invite Lootwell inside.

Lucien’s expression darkened further.

That alone told him how deeply they had committed themselves to the deception.

They would rather face Monster Emperors at their gates than allow Lootwell inspectors into their conquered worlds.

That was impressive in the worst possible way.

Then another report arrived.

This one changed the nature of the problem entirely.

A Shadow Spy attached to a second faction had intercepted fragments of an internal communication concerning evacuation contingencies.

The leadership had already prepared plans in case the conquered world became impossible to hold.

Those plans were not meant to save the slaves.

They were meant to save themselves.

Senior members, portable wealth, and important resources would be withdrawn first, while the labor population would be left behind.

That revelation was already enough to make Lucien’s anger deepen.

Then the spy uncovered another message.

A small group within the leadership had proposed establishing contact with whatever intelligence appeared to be guiding the Black Mass attacks.

The proposal had not yet become official policy. Several elders had opposed it, while others had remained open to the possibility.

Their reasoning was simple enough.

If the Black Mass could somehow be persuaded to spare their extraction zones in exchange for information, routes, or access to rival territories, then perhaps they could preserve their operations without ever exposing them to Lootwell.

Lucien read the message once.

Then he read it again.

The room seemed colder afterward.

It was not yet proof that the entire faction had betrayed the Thousand Races.

But it was proof that some of its leaders were already thinking about it.

Lucien knew how easily thoughts like that could change under pressure.

Fear could create excuses.

Greed could make those excuses sound reasonable.

And if they were given enough time, cowardice would eventually start calling itself strategy.

•••

Lucien thought of Vorren almost immediately.

If these factions were truly part of the larger problem, then Vorren’s instincts might react to them long before conventional evidence revealed the full extent of the danger.

He ordered Vorren to accompany the investigation teams, though he was careful not to treat the man’s unease as proof by itself. Vorren was useful because he could tell them where to look more closely, not because his instincts could decide guilt.

The first visit was enough to make Lucien take the possibility seriously.

Vorren had barely entered the faction’s territory before his expression changed. By the time the inspection delegation reached the central administrative complex, the color had drained from his face and he looked as though remaining there required conscious effort.

Kael later reported that Vorren had quietly asked how long the inspection was expected to last.

When he was told several hours, Vorren muttered that he would prefer not to digest his lunch twice.

Lucien nearly laughed when he read that part, though the rest of the report killed most of the amusement.

The crude danger scale they had created months earlier had suddenly become useful again. Vorren’s reaction placed the faction somewhere between strongly uneasy and the point where he would normally prefer to leave immediately.

That still did not make them guilty.

It did, however, make it difficult for Lucien to dismiss the situation as ordinary corruption.

Something about the faction carried enough risk to disturb Vorren on a level that went beyond hidden slaves and falsified records.

The second faction produced a similar reaction.

The third was worse.

Vorren became so uncomfortable inside one of their council halls that he refused to remain seated until someone opened the windows, despite the fact that the room’s climate formations were functioning perfectly.

One administrator pointed that out to him.

"There is nothing wrong with the air."

Vorren glanced at him with a strained expression.

"I know."

Unfortunately, knowing that did nothing to make him feel better.

The investigation continued, and the deeper they looked, the clearer the pattern became.

They uncovered transport records that had never appeared in official reports, slave populations absent from census documents, private prisons hidden behind restricted formations, ownership contracts disguised as labor agreements, and unregistered portals connecting faction territory to conquered worlds.

Some facilities were protected more heavily from outside inspection than they were from the Black Mass itself.

That alone was damning.

Then the investigators found internal communications between senior figures discussing whether the coming war might finally give them an opportunity to escape Lootwell’s influence.

A few had gone even further.

They were already considering the possibility of outside alliances if remaining under Lootwell became too dangerous for them.

After that, Lucien stopped thinking of them as merely suspicious factions.

The problem had become much larger than corruption.