I'm Trying To Go Broke, So Why Do I Keep Getting Richer?!-Chapter 189: Sixty minutes

The sky above Earth had started to darken as multiple bright red portals could be seen opening, shining like distant stars.

Across the globe, from the streets of the modern metropolis to the sprawling hubs of the Hero City, people looked up to see the sky rippling like a disturbed pond.

The Lionel Family’s fleet didn’t simply arrive. They literally surrounded earth, as a myriad of ships came out of the thousands of portals.

At the center of the formation was the Pride of the Frontier, a Dreadnought-class ship that dwarfed even the moon’s silhouette.

Inside the Hero Tower’s command center, Blaze stared at the radar. The screen was a solid wall of red dots, making it appear that their radar was malfunctioning.

"They’re ignoring our calls," a communications officer shouted, sweat dripping onto his console. "They’ve locked onto every major city’s defense grid."

The main screen flickered, replacing the map with Fiona Lionel’s cold, aristocratic face. She wasn’t crying anymore. She looked like a queen presiding over a slaughter.

"People of Earth," her voice resonated through every speaker, every phone, and every holographic billboard on the planet.

"Your ’heroes’ have stolen the heart of my family. You have sixty minutes to bring my grandfather and the thief. If the countdown reaches zero, I will start by turning your ’Hero Tower’ into a monument of ash, and then earth will follow!’

"Sixty minutes?" Blaze gritted his teeth, his hands bursting into literal flames. "We have nothing to do with this! How can she blame us?!"

Blaze was still unaware that Leo was the person behind the kidnapping, or that he was responsible for the explosions.

He knew that Leo and the Lionel Family had some bad blood, but he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Leo could have done such a thing.

"She isn’t insane," Lancer whispered, looking at the sheer scale of the fleet. "She’s desperate. She knows that if she doesn’t finish this quickly, the Warlords behind her will realize she’s stalling and tear her apart."

Another hero nodded, looking strangely calm. "It seems like this is all just an excuse for her. She will use that excuse to destroy us, and then take over earth. She wants to use earth to pay them back... What a black hearted woman!"

Back in the stasis room, light-years away, Leo watched the countdown on his phone. 08:42... 08:41...

The old Patriarch was shaking, his eyes darting between the screen and Leo. He wanted to scream, to tell Fiona to stop, to tell her that she was walking into a trap set by a man who treated billions of credits like pocket change.

"You know," Leo said, leaning back in his chair, "the problem with ’Old Money’ like yours is that you think wealth is about what you own. You own land, you own ships, you own people." 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Leo stood up, checking his reflection in the nearby window that was showing a black space beyond with stars flying past them.

"Unfortunately, there are some things that you can’t own. And you shouldn’t have even tried."

No one could have expected that the cause of something like this was a small loan being denied to Leo, which spiralled out of control. It was Fiona’s urge to control Leo, which further messed things up.

At the same time, Fiona finally responded to the Hero Tower’s messages. However, her message to them was simple.

"Bring Leo Vanderlen to me, if you want to save your planet. If you can give me his location, then I can give you a little more time to catch him. But at any cost, if you want to save this place, bring me that person!"

She was sitting in the Battleship, looking at the small blue planet like an overlord. Earth looked so small from this angle that it was as if she could simply reach out her hand and grab it.

However, just at that moment, alarms began to resound in this ship. Fiona’s expression on the screen shifted from arrogance to confusion.

"My Lady!" a voice yelled in the background of her broadcast. "Multiple warp signatures detected!*

"Who is it?" Fiona snapped. "The Galactic Union? No, they shouldn’t be this fast."

"No," the commander’s voice trembled. "The signatures... they don’t match any registered military. But we do have a zoomed in image of the ships..."

An image appeared on the screen with ships that looked no worse than Lionel Family’s Ships. No, if anything, they looked even better and more advanced.

However, what made Fiona stand up was the symbol that was visible on the ship’s, albeit a bit blurry.

It was the symbol of the Alpha Corp, that she had seen quite a few times in her life. It was also prominently visible when she had gone to the auction on earth, belonging to Alpha Labs.

Space behind the Lionel fleet seemed to bleed black.

One by one, the ships Leo had spent months commissioning appeared. They weren’t flashy. There was no gold trim or family crests. They only had the symbol that only a few people could recognize.

While the Lionel ships were manned by thousands of superhumans that were a force if they were to fight in person, Leo’s ships were 90% automated, run by high-tier Virtual Intelligence that he’d bought from a collapsing techno-sector for a ’small’ fee.

The 10% human crew? They were mercenaries and specialists hired from the most cutthroat sectors in the galaxy, paid more in a week than a Lionel general made in a year.

Since they didn’t have to know any secrets of Leo about his kidnapping incident, they didn’t need to be absolutely loyal as long as VI could prevent any unexpected betrayal.

Even now, the ship crew didn’t know that Leo had caused this incident. They simply thought that they were truly to protect the home of their master.

The ratio was terrifying. For every Lionel ship, three Alpha Corp vessels emerged from the void.

Leo didn’t send a message. He didn’t even reveal his face. He simply sent a payment notification to every Lionel captain in range.