I Only Wanted A Class In The Apocalypse-Chapter 1947: Flames of Civil War

Moth stared at the message, his mind reeling as he tried to process the huge volume of evidence Hye had dumped into his lap. He spent several minutes grasping the scope of the betrayal.

The most shocking revelation wasn't just the existence of the traitors, but their numbers. There were far more rats in the Council than even Moth and the Grand Elder had dared to estimate combined.

He immediately forwarded the message and the high-definition interrogation videos to the Grand Elder. The response from the supreme leader was a rare, raw exclamation of shock.

[It's the evidence Hye sent!] Moth messaged back, sensing the tremor in the Grand Elder's exclamation. [What shall we do now? It's not just one rogue faction anymore. Look at these names, Grand Elder. There are members from at least two other major factions implicated in these confessions!]

Hye hadn't just sent a list of names, which could have been dismissed as fabrication. The videos showed high-ranking officials from the mountain city, listing the Elders who had facilitated their smuggling, the officers who had looked the other way, and the specific roles each had played in the century-long theft of the God ore.

[We need to uproot them, but we must do it wisely!] The Grand Elder's reply came after a long, tense pause. He was famous for his ruthlessness against treason, yet even he was forced to adopt a more cautious approach in the face of such massive rot.

[We must take custody of those witnesses Hye captured. Without them, any move we make will be seen as a partisan purge. We'll end up flaming the entire upper circle of our empire and sparking a total civil war!]

The sheer stretch of the conspiracy across multiple factions made even the Grand Elder hesitate. Each faction within the Hescos hierarchy represented thousands of formidable warriors, ancient bloodlines, and massive economic interests.

To antagonise three major power blocs openly and all at once would be to douse the empire in gasoline and hand the Toranks the match.

[How about this then...] Moth suggested, his youthful aggression clashing with the Grand Elder's caution. He didn't like the slow, wise approach. He proposed picking a single, most implicated faction to expose first. Dealing with one corner of the rot, he argued, would be far easier than fighting a three-front war within their own walls.

[This won't do! Did you forget?] the Grand Elder countered calmly. [They aren't here just to mine the ore. Their primary objective is to divide and weaken our empire from within! They are traitors, yes, but they are also interconnected. If they see us move against one part of their dirty gang, the others will act out of desperation. Things will spiral out of our control before we can even blink!]

[Then… What do you propose?!]

[Let me handle this!] the Grand Elder commanded. He could easily tell that the young Elder lacked the cold-blooded experience required to safely navigate a political minefield of this magnitude.

In the hours that followed, the atmosphere inside the Council Hall shifted from a tense trial to a military staging ground. Moth watched in silence as the great gates of the hall were unsealed, and a frantic stream of messengers and high-ranking officers began to cycle in and out.

Moth couldn't fully read the Grand Elder's intentions, but he recognised the movements of a master strategist.

As the supreme leader of the Hescos race, the Grand Elder possessed deep, ancient ties with formidable figures across the empire. Even if the traitors had infested multiple factions, the Grand Elder still had trusted loyalists within those very same groups.

The first thing the old man did was bypass the Council entirely. He used private, high-security channels to contact the few leaders he trusted in every faction, sharing the incriminating videos. He forced them to choose: side with the traitors and face total annihilation, or help him purge the rot and save their factions.

Simultaneously, he issued a "Red Alert" to the scattered Hescos grand fleets orbiting the outer systems of the homeland star system. He commanded them to return to the capital within days.

On top of that, he didn't rely on the general Elder Council hall guards. He ordered his most elite, personal subordinate forces to surround the Council's location, effectively placing the entire Elder Council under a silent, high-pressure siege. His personal faction took total control of the planetary communication and the orbital defenses.

He was preparing for a decapitation strike.

Moth didn't know the specifics of the deployment, but he could see it in the eyes of the people entering the hall. Something grand and terrible was being cooked by the old man.

As for the traitors sitting in the room, the air of arrogance they had maintained since the start of the meeting was beginning to evaporate.

They tried desperately to contact their subordinates in the outside world; they tried to call for familiar faces they recognised among the messengers; they tried to sneak encrypted warnings to their collaborators outside.

The Grand Elder's iron-fisted control was absolute. His strict orders—that no soldier was to accept any item, message, or even a stray whisper from any Elder in the hall—negated every desperate attempt at subversion.

To the guards, the command seemed bizarre, a breach of traditional respect for their superiors. However, under the crushing weight of the Grand Elder's aura, they simply followed orders, turning the Council chamber into an inescapable vault.

By the end of the first day, the Grand Elder had successfully established secure lines with the loyalist remnants of the factions infested by traitors. The initial responses were predictable: the faction leaders, stung by the dishonour, demanded that the traitors be handed over to them for execution.

The Grand Elder was not in favour of this. He knew that during the transit of such high-value prisoners, accidents could happen. Moreover, his instincts told him that the names Hye had provided were just the tip of the iceberg.