First Intergalactic Emperor: Starting With The Ancient Goddess-Chapter 478: Six Teams

Six teams tracked him.

Two members each, spaced across Helior Prime’s nightlife grid, rotating angles and data sources so no single failure would matter. One pair followed him through street-level cameras. Another rode public transit feeds. Two more stayed mobile in unmarked ground cars. The last pair worked from rented rooms with optics pointed outward, logging timestamps and behavior instead of faces. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

They didn’t coordinate in real time. They didn’t share sightlines. Every team reported directly to Velkhar, the way Iron Mandate liked it.

Xavier walked as if he knew that. He hadn’t spent the six days planning and fucking Arlen all the time, he was watching everything. He knew exactly how many people were after him and their routines when he went out in the guise of shopping or chilling.

He didn’t hurry or hide. He crossed streets at normal intervals, paused at storefronts long enough to look indecisive, took a detour through a side passage that smelled like spilled alcohol and old coolant. His route looked casual on every feed, a man drifting toward entertainment with money to burn and nowhere urgent to be.

The first team died without realizing they’d been selected.

They were posted in a service corridor that intersected with a pedestrian artery, one watching the crowd while the other pretended to check a handheld. Xavier stepped into the corridor like he’d missed a turn, bumped the first man shoulder to shoulder, and apologized without breaking stride.

The apology carried a pulse of force through the man’s chest that ruptured organs without marking skin. The second reached for his weapon and felt the corridor wall close around his throat, pressure snapping cartilage before sound could form.

Xavier adjusted their positions, leaned them together like drunk coworkers who’d overdone it, and walked out while the camera continued to stream.

Their channel stayed live. The feed kept reporting idle status.

The second team tried to be clever.

They stayed distant, switching vantage points every few minutes, feeding Velkhar movement patterns and probability curves. Xavier let them track him across three blocks, then stepped into a ride-hail pod and took it straight down a maintenance ramp marked as closed. The pod stopped, the doors opened, and Xavier stepped out.

The team followed on foot and lost him in the dark.

They found him a minute later standing beside their car, hands relaxed at his sides. One tried to raise a weapon. The other tried to shout. Both motions froze mid-attempt when the air around them locked into place, pressure folding muscle and bone inward until the vehicle rocked on its suspension.

Xavier wiped a smear from the hood, slid their bodies into the backseat, and reset the car’s internal sensors to broadcast normal telemetry. The team’s status light stayed green.

The third pair never saw him.

They worked from a room overlooking a plaza, lenses calibrated, mics tuned, logs filling steadily. Xavier crossed the plaza twice, exactly as predicted, then entered the building across from them. He took the stairs.

The door came apart when he hit it.

The first operator went down before his chair finished rolling. The second tried to reach the panic switch and lost the arm at the shoulder when Xavier closed the distance. The feeds kept running because Xavier left them running. He adjusted the operator’s posture, propped the headset back in place, and keyed a status update with the man’s own fingers.

Velkhar received it without comment.

The fourth team died in motion.

They shadowed him through a market strip, blending with foot traffic, passing information through subvocal comms. Xavier bought a drink, stepped aside, and spilled it across one operative’s chest like an accident. When the man cursed and grabbed him, Xavier pulled him in close and drove a reinforced knuckle through the base of his skull. The second reached for backup and felt his spine shear when Xavier turned and struck without winding up.

The bodies dropped into a service pit hidden beneath a loose panel. The pit’s sensors registered weight and sealed automatically. The channel reported temporary signal interference and recovered.

Now it was time for the fifth team.

They had watched four teams go quiet without triggering alarms. They told Velkhar they were maintaining distance and switched to passive observation. Xavier let them watch him stop under a lighted awning, let them see him check a message that never existed, let them decide he was stationary and safe.

He stepped backward into their blind spot and ended it in seconds. One died from impact against concrete. The other suffocated with his lungs crushed inward while his mic transmitted breathing that sounded normal enough to pass.

The sixth team realized something was wrong.

They broke protocol and asked for confirmation. Velkhar told them to hold position and keep eyes on ’Zyrex’, which they did. Xavier felt the optics sweep him and turned toward the building they occupied without changing pace.

He entered through the lobby and left through the ceiling.

By the time the team understood what that meant, the room was already breached. Xavier disabled them without spectacle, placed them where their cameras could still see his last known position through the window, and closed the channel himself.

Six teams. Twelve bodies.

Every report clean. Every feed active, and every status green.

Velkhar watched Zyrex’s final update arrive and leaned back, satisfied that his asset was still under control.

Xavier stepped out onto the street, adjusted his coat, and continued toward the Aurex Club with nothing left behind him that could raise suspicion.

He let out a sigh as he kept walking.

"This is getting stupid," he muttered. "Too slow."

He glanced at the time without pulling anything up, already calculating how long this would take on foot, how long before Arlen started noticing the silence, how long before waiting turned into worry. He didn’t like inefficiency, and he liked unnecessary waiting even less.

He had to finish everything and return to the hotel as soon as possible.

He looked right and found his solution parked ten meters away.

"Ah shit, here we go again."