Novel Full Chapter 987: Hindsight is always twenty-twenty
Chapter 987: Hindsight is always twenty-twenty
With the surrender agreement already signed and binding, Hogu was released to coordinate the imperial army’s takeover and the securing of the planets. To do that, he started by providing the entire civilization’s absolute coordinates to allow the empire to send personnel as fast as possible.
“…………,” Hogu watched, speechless at the massive wormhole that had opened in the orbit of his civilization’s capital planet, followed by a fleet of massive ships coming through it before dispersing throughout the solar system to secure it.
But that wasn’t where the empire stopped with wormholes. Hogu started receiving reports of wormholes opening inside the atmosphere of all their planets before millions upon millions of soldiers came through them, dispersing and starting to spread all over the planets. This happened moments before the civilization-wide announcement was made, and a speech that Hogu was very sure he hadn’t delivered was being broadcast by someone who looked exactly like him, announcing their surrender to the empire.
The speech contained both the news of the surrender and also advised caution not to do anything drastic, or else the empire, now present on those planets, might just use them to set an example for the rest. It was all worded just enough to act as a warning but not so aggressive as to be considered taunting.
In a matter of a few hours since his surrender, the empire had already completed the takeover of the whole civilization, leaving the government to still operate as usual, pending a decision on what the empire was going to do with them once the war was over.
Following the address, many accepted their fate as they were expecting it to happen. Although they didn’t expect it from the empire, it didn’t change the fact that their expectations came true, so a majority of them took it well. However, a few tried testing the waters, but the moment they were made an example of, the rest of the civilization fell in line, praying that the empire they had come to understand as very reasonable would be reasonable to them as well following the war. But there was some worry about what would happen to them if the empire lost the war and the Conclave came for revenge for their surrender.
…………………..
Conclave Central Command
The chamber that had once been filled with chaos had calmed down quite a bit, as a majority of them once again became reasonable the moment the fleets they had sent to the empire were allowed to retreat, either to return to the planets that were being attacked as reinforcements or to act as planetary defense for those who were yet to be attacked.
At the moment, they were discussing the next course of action, but many of the lower-level leaders were not present, as they were either coordinating the defense against imperial invading forces or in the midst of an escape from their capital planets as they continued losing ground.
“I can’t believe that, after all the preparations we made, we were still forced to retreat not even a day into the attack,” one of the leaders said, getting directly into the main matter that many didn’t want to bring forward but knew was inevitable.
After all, it was quite embarrassing for them to be forced to retreat when they had set up a perfect surprise and had enough time to prepare, while the empire continued living their days unaware until the moment the attacks started. But it seemed like to the empire, the surprise aspect didn’t matter at all.
The empire had not only responded fast enough to not suffer too much damage from the surprise attack but had also responded with enough force due to the advantageous field they had set up, which made all of the Conclave forces’ preparations moot. Not stopping there, they were now forced to be ready to fight against an invasion from the empire.
“Who was it that said this was going to be easy?” another leader asked in anger. Although his civilization had managed to hold the invading forces back, the imperial forces were still gaining ground. And although they had agreed near-unanimously to the war following the discovery of the empire being the backers of Dreznor’s forces, he was not about to think of it calmly when the situation had gone from losing only a few star systems to Dreznor’s forces to now the possibility of losing their entire civilization’s territory, all because they decided to bring the fight to the empire.
Many of the lower-ranked civilization leaders who were present looked at Kumakar, who had started the push to accuse the empire of being the support behind Dreznor, which led to a domino effect of events, leading the Conclave to attack the empire, resulting in them now being on the verge of losing their entire territories.
In hindsight, it was a bad decision, and all of this could have been avoided had they turned a blind eye or accepted Dreznor’s demands to abolish slavery. But by the time hindsight shows the result of the decisions made, it is always already too late to avoid the consequences of those actions.
“How about we contact the empire and bring them to the negotiation table to end all of our hostilities?” another leader suggested, wondering if doing so might reduce the amount of damage they would suffer.
“I’d better not hear anyone bring that suggestion again, or I might be the one who attacks you instead of the empire,” the Valthorin leader said, silencing everyone in the room the moment they were about to agree to that suggestion, as it looked to be the easiest way out.
“What are we going to give the empire that will make them agree to even stop the situation that is now advantageous to them?” a leader below the top ten but in the top twenty continued with the topic, completely ignoring the previous threat. It was a period where the empire was like a sword hanging above them, and the moment they became targets, there was really nothing they could do to completely stop it.
“You!!!!….” The Valthorin leader, about to shout and promise additional retaliatory threats, paused mid-word as it was the moment he received the information of the Nymari civilization surrendering to the empire.
Things had now just escalated. Although that was the direction things were going, no one expected someone to surrender, not even a few hours after the first retaliatory attack from the empire. And although it was the weakest civilization, the surprise came because there was no information of them being attacked at all until the news of the surrender arrived. The news came at the same moment the speech of surrender was broadcast, showing how the imperial avatars were already spread all over their territories, with imperial fleets in their star systems, meaning they had already finished consolidating their control of the star systems by the time the Conclave became aware of it happening.
“They dare!!!!!?” the Grand Xor’Vak, who saw the entire Conclave as his, shouted, hitting his real-world table and breaking it while his hologram’s hand in the central command just went through the table.
He had been silent most of the time until now, but the surprise was that it was the first time in the lives of many leaders present to see him shout like that. Nearly all the times in the past, there was no need for him to raise his voice at all, but it looked like the empire had hit him where it hurt the most.