But then—

“Enough!”

The single word cut through the rising storm like a blade, silencing the room instantly.

It came not from the Second Elder, nor the fifth elder, but from…

The First Supreme Elder’s Drekanor voice boomed through the chamber like thunder, silencing them all in an instant.

His voice was quiet, aged, and yet carrying a weight that made even the war-hardened veterans among them straighten like chastised children.

He stood up slowly, his presence towering, even though he had just paused his healing of Jarkon. His gaze swept across each elder—cold, disappointed, burning with restrained fury.

“Are you all brain-dead?” he asked, his voice sharp and biting. “Do you even understand what you’re saying?”

The elders froze, stunned.

Stunned into silence, they could only stare in disbelief at the First Supreme Elder, shocked by the harshness in his tone.

And none of the supreme elders dared to speak, as stunned as they were by the harshness and authoritative tone of the first supreme elder, but they also caught that disappointment in the First Supreme Elder’s voice.

They were all stunned—not just by the First Supreme Elder’s presence, but by the weight of his words and the sheer authority in his tone.

“And you, Depharion,” the First Supreme Elder growled, turning his gaze sharply toward the Second Elder. “You’re disappointing me the most. All your so-called strategic thinking—do you even realize what you’re causing here? Chaos. Nothing more.”

Depharion stiffened. His face twitched, and his lips parted to rebut—but before he could speak, the First Elder’s eyes locked onto his with a force that made the room colder.

“I haven’t finished,” the First Elder said coldly. “Until then, keep your mouth and your rebuttals where they belong—buried in your gut.”

Depharion clenched his fists but said nothing. The shame was visible in the downturn of his shoulders.

“I don’t understand,” the First Elder continued, addressing the entire hall now. “Where did this foolish thought come from? That the five superpowers would think we’re playing games with them? Yes, they’ll be angered once they hear we failed to secure the Holy Region. But capturing it was never the point. That was never part of the primary alliance agreement!”

He paused, sweeping his glare across the gathered elders.

“Our goal was simple—to protect our interests and share them with our future allies. Capturing the Holy Region was merely a gesture of goodwill. Nothing more. It’s not like we didn’t send fleets—we did. The Seventh Fleet, no less—one of our most advanced technological pinnacles. And yet, it was obliterated.”

He let the silence settle.

“Obliterated… by a force completely unknown to us. Far more powerful than anticipated. So instead of acting like mindless fools, we just have to speak the truth. That even our Seventh Fleet fell. That will tell them we truly couldn’t do much.”

He exhaled, voice cooling slightly. “Yes, there will be some dissatisfaction. But they won’t trouble us over it. What they value is the Holy Land—and it remains hidden. They will not act until they can claim it fully as their own. That’s the basis of our alliance, and that is what we should be mindful of.”

The First Elder’s voice rose again. “Instead, what do I hear? Proposals to send forty percent of our entire war fleet—one hundred thousand ships—into a region we know nothing about?! To face an enemy we can’t even define?!”

His eyes darkened as he turned to his grandson. “Jarkon… despite your loss, you still understand nothing.”

He turned his fury back to the others.

“And you—how could you all be so idiotic? How can you believe that sending ten times the number of ships would defeat an enemy that annihilated a formation one hundred times stronger than anything we’ve seen before?”

Jarkon’s face paled. He lowered his gaze.

“You even admitted,” the First Elder went on, “that you never made it inside the Holy Region. That everything that happened to you and your fleet occurred along its border star systems. Then answer me this…”

He stepped forward, voice razor-sharp.

“How did they know you were coming? How did they know your fleet was being deployed there? That you intended to invade the Holy Region?”

Jarkon blinked, caught off-guard by the question. He opened his mouth… and no words came. His thoughts scrambled to find a reason. He hadn’t even considered it.

“I… I don’t know,” he muttered at last.

The First Supreme Elder shook his head slowly, voice full of disappointed disbelief.

“You don’t know,” he echoed. “Exactly. You don’t know—and that is the problem. You should’ve stayed. Not to win, not to die—but to learn. To collect information. Instead, you came back beaten, blind, and empty-handed.”

He paused, letting the words settle like a hammer on stone.

Jarkon wanted to scream in frustration at his grandfather—that he hadn’t simply escaped. He had tried to uncover something, anything. But the enemy had been so cautious, so meticulous, that they left behind nothing. And when he refused to speak, they tortured him until he was forced to use his teleportation talisman.

“Let me make it clear to all of you,” he continued. “Those humans—or whatever they truly are—knew of our plans. Somehow, they knew exactly where we’d position our fleets. Maybe even more than that.”

A long, ominous silence followed before he spoke again.

“What makes this terrifying isn’t just that we lost… it’s that we know nothing. Nothing at all. We don’t know what they are. We don’t know how powerful they truly are. We don’t know their motives, their structure, their limits. Humans? Hah. I doubt that’s all they are.”

He glanced back at Jarkon.

“And if what you say is true—if they’ve truly inherited something ancient, something beyond comprehension—then I fear they hold trump cards we haven’t even dreamed of yet.”

“…And that,” the First Supreme Elder continued, “is what gives them the advantage over us—and over any other power in the quadrant.”

His voice dropped, but the intensity in his eyes only grew.

“Because whoever they are, they operate in darkness… while we’re in the open. So open, in fact, that they knew our every move before we even made it.”

He turned slowly toward Jarkon, a strange mix of disappointment and hesitation clouding his expression. A proud grandfather who had watched his grandson rise through the ranks, earn merit after merit, lead with strength and strategy. But now, that pride wavered.

The First Elder couldn’t help but question—were those victories truly earned through brilliance… or just handed to him by favorable odds?

His voice was quieter this time, but no less serious.

“Jarkon… answer me honestly.”

The young commander straightened, still bearing the weight of his earlier failure.

“When half your fleet was obliterated in a matter of seconds—caught in a sudden, overwhelming strike—did you ever attempt to retreat? Did it even cross your mind?”

Jarkon blinked. His confusion was genuine. Retreat? He looked at his grandfather as if the very concept was alien. His brows furrowed deeply.

“Retreat…?” he echoed softly, almost disbelieving. “No, Grandfather. I did not. If I had…” He hesitated, then said with pride-tinged certainty, “It would’ve been the same as damning the honor of our entire race. We Minotaurs do not retreat from battle—especially not when we still have numerical advantage. Yes, I lost half my fleet in that moment—but we still outnumbered them.”

Around the chamber, a few elders nodded approvingly. One or two even voiced quiet praise, murmuring about the pride and strength of their warrior race. Some closed their fists in ritual salute.

But the First Supreme Elder’s expression twisted into fury.

“Good,” he said—mockingly. “Good. Good!”

His voice cracked like thunder.

“By the Ancestors, how foolish can you all be?!”

The sudden rise in his tone silenced the room. Every elder’s spine stiffened.

“What is pride… in the face of annihilation? What is honor… when you don’t even stand a chance from the beginning? That is not bravery, Jarkon. That is not leadership. That is folly. That is stupidity!”

He pointed a trembling finger at Jarkon and then swept it across the others.

“And the fact that you all agree with him—that you praise this recklessness—makes me question if anyone in this room is truly thinking with their brains anymore!”

His voice cracked again, full of bitter frustration.

“You speak of numerical advantage… but the moment your instruments failed to detect their ships—when your fleet was ambushed and half of it destroyed in an instant—you should have understood: they didn’t need numbers. They had firepower. Superior technology. Hidden strength.”

He slammed his fist down on the podium before him.

“So why… why didn’t you retreat to minimize your losses?! You gained nothing from that confrontation! Nothing but a deeper grave and wasted lives!”

The First Supreme Elder’s doubts about his grandson only deepened.

He sat back slowly, breathing heavily, his sharp eyes never leaving Jarkon. Was all of it just circumstance? he wondered. All the accolades, the victories, the praise Jarkon had earned over the years—were they merely the result of favorable conditions? Of battles fought with overwhelming numbers, predictable enemies, and safe outcomes?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep