First Intergalactic Emperor: Starting With The Ancient Goddess-Chapter 451: Records of Astraxiom Industries Limited

"They gave us numbers, charts, testimonials. Paid local leaders to endorse it. Told mothers they were doing the right thing by switching. The powder required water. A lot of it. Clean water. Which most districts didn’t have, and the ones they had were now owned by AIL."

Klatos swallowed. "Infants started getting sick. Malnutrition. Organ failure. Dehydration. AIL blamed improper usage. Then blamed contamination. Then blamed the parents. By the time anyone connected the pattern, entire wards were gone.

When the deaths started, AIL reacted fast, not to stop them, but to control the narrative. Medical shipments were delayed on purpose so clinics couldn’t document patterns properly. Data teams scrubbed reports before they reached planetary health boards. Local doctors who spoke out were accused of mishandling cases, then sued, then quietly arrested on unrelated charges. In some districts, Iron Mandate units were deployed under the excuse of "stability enforcement," and entire medical centers were shut down overnight."

Klatos swallowed and forced himself to continue.

"When communities organized protests, AIL escalated. Supply routes were cut. Water purification units were seized for "inspection" and never returned. Then came the raids. Iron Mandate didn’t wear their insignia at first. They used proxy forces, mercenary guilds with no names, no flags. They targeted community leaders first, dragged them out in front of their families, accused them of sabotage, and executed them publicly. The message was clear. Compliance meant survival. Resistance meant eradication.

Some districts tried to flee. AIL tracked the convoys and labeled them "biological contamination risks." Iron Mandate intercepted them in transit and wiped them out. No records. No survivors. Entire population blocks erased and written off as quarantine failures.

The feeding powder was eventually pulled, not because it failed, but because it succeeded too visibly. Infant mortality spiked high enough that even corrupted oversight bodies couldn’t ignore it anymore. AIL issued a public apology filled with meaningless language and settled a handful of lawsuits in exchange for silence. The formula was rebranded, slightly altered, and sold again under a different name to a different species with similar nutritional needs.

Klatos finally looked up at Xavier.

"They didn’t stop," he said. "They refined the process. They learned how to kill quietly, how to profit while doing it, how to turn entire populations into test data without anyone powerful caring enough to intervene."

Xavier hadn’t touched the snacks again. He just listened.

"When employees inside AIL started leaking information, Iron Mandate handled that too," Klatos went on. "Executions disguised as accidents. Families disappeared. Records erased. I watched coworkers vanish between shifts and learned not to ask where they went."

He exhaled slowly. "Bull was one of the first people who hit back hard enough to hurt them. That’s why they never stopped hunting him. And that’s why they won’t stop with you either."

Klatos inclined his head slightly, then turned toward the door. "I thought you should know."

"I’m glad you told me," Xavier said. "Get some rest. Tomorrow gets uglier."

Klatos left quietly after that, closing the door behind him without another word. Xavier didn’t move. He stayed seated on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the floor like something down there had finally lined itself up.

The picture settled all at once.

The Earth prison. Klatos being there in the first place. A Kla’ots native with no business on Earth, no charges that ever quite added up, no real file anyone wanted to explain. Xavier remembered how thin the margin had felt back then, how Klatos had spoken like someone who expected not to walk out alive, how he never complained about the place because he already knew it could have been worse.

It was Dominic.

Dominic hadn’t been confused or hesitant when Klatos’s name came up. He’d been annoyed, like dealing with unfinished paperwork. Someone who was supposed to be dead but kept breathing because a transaction had gone through late. Xavier could see it clearly now. Klatos hadn’t been sent to prison to serve time. He’d been sent there to disappear quietly. Earth was clean for that. Far away. Bureaucratic. Easy to bury mistakes under layers of procedure.

But Klatos had bought himself time.

His land on Jupiter wasn’t sentimental property. It was power, lineage, leverage. Selling it meant cutting himself off from whatever safety net he still had left. Dominic hadn’t saved him out of mercy. He’d been paid to delay the execution and pass the problem along instead of finishing it himself.

Xavier leaned back and let out a slow breath.

"The pieces are falling together," he muttered. "And this time... I don’t even need to connect the dots."

AIL didn’t just destroy communities. They removed loose ends. They didn’t kill loudly unless they had to. They pushed people into systems designed to finish the job for them. Iron Mandate for force. Prisons for cleanup. And courts for cover.

And Bull had known all of it.

That was the part that locked everything into place. Bull hadn’t been hoarding wealth. He hadn’t been playing pirate for ego or chaos. He’d been building pressure, stacking resources, testing people, seeing who noticed patterns instead of prizes.

Every treasure was bait, but not for gold. For enemies. For truth. For someone stubborn enough to keep pulling threads even when it would have been easier to walk away rich and untouched.

Xavier straightened, decision settling without drama or anger.

This wasn’t about chasing treasure anymore. It wasn’t even about Bull. AIL didn’t get to keep operating like this just because they were big enough to pretend they were untouchable. Iron Mandate didn’t get to keep cleaning up their messes like hired gods. Systems like that only worked when people accepted them as inevitable.

He stood, rolled his shoulders, and glanced once at the door Klatos had walked through.

"Looks like I’m not just finishing Bull’s game," Xavier said quietly. "I’m correcting it."

The more Xavier sat with it, the clearer it became that Bull hadn’t just vanished and left a mess behind. The treasure wasn’t an ending. It was a handoff. Bull had built routes, caches, enemies, and pressure points on purpose, then stepped out before the weight of it all collapsed on him.

He’d taken responsibility as far as he could, pushed the system until it noticed him, then left the consequences behind for someone else to pick up. Not because he didn’t care, but because he knew he wouldn’t survive long enough to finish it himself.

Bull had known AIL wouldn’t stop. He had known Iron Mandate would keep spreading, swallowing cities quietly, wiping out anyone who resisted and rewriting the story afterward. The treasures weren’t just funding. They were leverage meant to force movement, to drag hidden players into the open, to make silence expensive.

Anyone who followed the trail wasn’t supposed to get rich and disappear. They were supposed to see the shape of the problem and decide whether they were willing to carry it forward or walk away and pretend they never saw it.

Xavier let out a deep sigh.

"So that’s the real inheritance," Xavier muttered, voice low.

It wasn’t the wealth or the weapons. But the accountability.

Bull had started a war without declaring one, and now the board was set. Xavier didn’t need speeches or vows to accept it. He just needed to keep moving, keep digging, keep forcing AIL and everyone like them to react instead of hide.

Bull had lit the fuse. And Xavier was the one who had to follow it all the way to the end.