Total domination. That is what the empire's forces could be described as, the moment the main forces started attacking and targeting the lower-level civilizations.

In a single week, the imperial forces had successfully taken over all of the civilizations below the top fifty. They had faced heavy resistance at the start, but after each civilization had one of their military bases, parliaments, or one of their military strategic locations sent out of existence with a different weapon from the last one used on other civilizations, the resistance was instantly reduced to nearly nonexistent. The majority of leaders and the richest people of these civilizations tried to escape their civilization's territory, paying exorbitant prices or bribes to the powerful civilizations to save themselves.

Some who had something desirable managed to get their proposal accepted and successfully escaped the inevitable end. Some of them failed to pay the needed price before the imperial forces finished taking over the planets they were on. For those who had spaceships but not enough leverage or desirable materials to trade for a wormhole to be opened for them to escape, they boarded their ships that were packed to the brim with materials and just entered light speed, heading in a random direction, ready to remain in their ships until things calmed down before they even considered returning. As a result, they left behind only those who were poor enough to not even afford a ticket on one of these escaping ships.

This allowed the empire to easily capture some of the planets, as anyone who had a semblance of governmental power had used it to save themselves, knowing that facing imperial forces meant an assured loss.

Immediately after capturing a planet, the imperial forces remained on patrol as the imperial citizens' avatars were then sent to the planet to start taking over control, ensuring security and a direct line for the empire to control the planet, even as the mini-fleets left and headed to another star system on their list.

Thanks to Dreznor having already carved out a large part of the lower-level star systems before the war even started, it allowed for the process of taking over all of the lower-level star systems to be very easy. He really didn't have an ambition to become a leader; even his current position was all because he wanted to end slavery, per the promise he gave his family the day they were massacred amidst their escape attempt.

To repay him for the hard work he had put in, together with him easily handing over all of the planets he had captured without as much as reluctance, the empire left him to maintain the position of transitioning the slaves into normal people. This was basically him retaining the power to do the same thing he had done to all the planets he had taken over, which made him even more grateful to the empire.

He seemed to have been reinvigorated now that he didn't have to focus on leading planets, but only dealing with the slavery situation, which he did with full force, going through the same process he did in the past, this time with the empire's full open support. Imperial citizens were the ones responsible for enforcing all of the collection processes for the previous slave owners, and the imperial citizens on those planets did so with all of their enthusiasm, as they were both against slavery but also because doing all of this allowed them to continue accumulating Merit Points, which everyone was working hard to gather.

……………..

"Give a status update on the possible coordinates of where that thing is leading," a fleet admiral asked, walking back and forth as he nervously pointed at one of the ship's walls that was in transparent mode, as images captured by the 360 cameras were wrapped around the room, making it look no different than them being in a transparent room with no protections.

On the other end of his finger was a massive wormhole about a thousand kilometers in diameter that had been open for a whole week with nothing coming from the other side, forcing everyone on this side to remain ready and active for the entire duration.

This was one of the many ways the empire used to keep each civilization isolated and fully focused on securing their safety by targeting their self-preservation instinct, making it so that the chances of them being attacked were not zero. The moment that instinct was triggered, no one would want to help anyone else, since doing that meant risking leaving an opening for the empire to exploit, resulting in a situation where the empire had the freedom to choose which civilization to target and take over, while everyone else was left to do nothing but watch it happen.

However, that didn't mean everyone was going to remain watching it happen without trying to do something. At the start, quite a few civilizations attempted to send a fleet to face the empire on the other side so that they could catch them by surprise while they were still in the middle of preparations, only to either find themselves locked inside a spatial prison that was activated the moment they exited the wormhole, leaving them stranded and incapable of returning to act as backup for their empire. Others had also tried to receive absolute coordinates from the civilizations under attack in order to drop bombs on those civilizations. Although it had succeeded momentarily, it was immediately dealt with by doubling whatever they dropped in a civilization's star system, no matter what they sent. If they didn't stop, the empire would just accelerate its plan and send a fleet towards them to properly deal with them.

Many other tactics were attempted as a response, but none of them managed to slow down the imperial forces to a level that justified their continued use, which ended with the current situation where every civilization was fully focused on preparing itself for the inevitable.

At least, that was the situation for those below the top ten civilizations, as the empire seemed to have left the top ten in peace at the moment. This seemed to have allowed them to form an alliance of complementing each other's technology through fleet exchanges to cover all of their weaknesses and benefit everyone else with their strengths, which gave them quite a high confidence to be able to at least stall the empire long enough before they could deal with them once the empire cracked under the might of having to control and deal with all the problems that would arise from having to forcefully take over all of the civilizations.

This had resulted in the majority of their prior leadership just being captured, escaping, or killed, leaving them with none of their previous government structure, something they knew was problematic enough that it had stopped them from annexing all of the civilizations and even proposing the formation of a Conclave, since it gave them similar levels of control without the hassle of micromanaging everything.

"The coordinates of the other side keep changing every second, making it difficult for us to pinpoint or approximate it, sir," the navigation officer, who hadn't slept for the last week, answered. His eyes were bloodshot from sleep deprivation as he shook slightly from both the lack of sleep and from receiving the reprimand from the admiral, who seemed to be losing his mind from anger and nervousness over the inevitable that kept taking longer and longer to happen.

"SON'S OF UNAWAKENED WHORE!!!!!!!!"

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.