Dictator From Outer Space - Chapter 268:

Delfina looked around and was bewildered.

‘What is this…’

She didn’t expect a wide sea or a green meadow, but shouldn’t it be a familiar scenery to some extent?

There was nothing but iron around her, and when she looked out the window, she only saw light.

It was as if someone was shooting thousands of arrows of light.

‘What are they doing here… I have no limbs.’

She belatedly realized that she was in a soulless state without a body.

It was impossible to cross the walls of dimensions and time with a body, even with the power of Yggdrasil and divinity.

‘It’s a relief that I can hear. But how do I find Leobold in this place?’

She looked around carefully, but there was nothing familiar.

It was full of boxes and strange devices made of unidentified materials.

She approached a box and tried to read the letters, but gave up.

‘What language is this?’

It certainly wasn’t Astra.

It must be his home world, the other world.

As she looked around again, she heard a beep and someone came in.

It was a woman in a dark blue work suit.

She lifted her hat and sighed.

“Clean up the warehouse? Is this something a human can do?”

The Legion Strike Fleet was rightfully the strongest fleet of the human alliance, but they had nothing ready because of the sudden mission.

They didn’t even have enough workers, so everyone was having a hard time.

All the functions of the fleet were focused on destroying the Plague Queen’s nest deployed in the main orbit of Pluto, and everything else was trivial.

“No matter what, we need some workers… And why is it so cold…”

It was because of Delfina, who was nearby in a soulless state.

She realized that she hadn’t been noticed and sighed with relief as she entered the intruder’s body.

It was impossible to completely take over her body, but she could move it like controlling an animal.

‘Haha… Success.’

As her soul merged, the original owner’s memories flowed into her.

She remembered living among many people in a huge and grand castle, becoming a soldier, and joining some fleet.

‘Legion Strike Fleet? Is it inside a ship?’

She had no idea what kind of ship was full of iron like this.

Delfina cleared her throat and spoke.

“Ah, um… Hello. I’m… Huh?”

She greeted them in the continental language, but what she heard was a completely different language.

It was strange, but Delfina had no time.

‘Leobold… He said his original name was Yu Ji-ha. Anyway, I just have to kill him. He should be somewhere here…’

It was information from Kyoguk.

They were fools for falling for Drizden’s temptation and giving such important information.

‘Legion Strike Fleet… It would be troublesome if he was on another ship.’

She thought about various things as she approached the door, which opened automatically.

‘Amazing… Is it powered by ether?’

There were doors like this in Elvrande too, but they weren’t common enough to be used in places like warehouses.

When she went out to the hallway, there were more than one or two of these doors.

‘How big is this ship?’

The hallway meant that it couldn’t get out of the ship’s class.

The largest airship in Elvrande had a hallway that was only 10 meters long, and it was full of all kinds of equipment and structures.

But the hallway she saw stretched out and looked very neat.

As she cautiously went outside, someone waved at her.

“Lisa, Lisa! Did you finish cleaning up the warehouse?”

“Uh… No. I was about to do it.”

“You’re not doing it now, you’re going to the bridge now. The maintenance team has been deployed elsewhere, so we have to install the fire control cables.”

What did she do?

Delfina had no time to answer as she dragged her along.

The inside of the ship was huge.

She ran and walked for several minutes, but there was no sign of the bridge.

On the contrary, there were very few people.

There were no mixed races either.

‘They said there were only humans in the other world. They look different in skin color, but they’re all humans.’

Were there no elves here?

Anyway, she was dragged near the bridge and made to pull a cable.

She thought it was a simple line, but it was a thick line as thick as an arm, incredibly large and heavy.

Someone came out in front of everyone and shouted.

“The battle is about to begin! Our job is to finish installing the fire control cables before that! There aren’t many people, so you’ll have to use all your strength!”

Delfina looked at the corner as he spoke.

A short warning sounded and a voice came from the corner.

「Prepare to decelerate the fleet. Main booster reverse thrust starts. 5, 4, 3…….」

Soon the ship shook and the light coming in from the window decreased.

Delfina pushed people away and stuck to the window.

Surprisingly, a dark space greeted her.

‘What are they doing here…’

All she saw was a strange space full of black.

She could find out the identity of this space through the original owner’s memory.

Space.

The unknown area that humanity finally reached beyond the earth.

Even 20 years ago, space hardly gave itself to humanity, but it changed because of one person.

He was Yu Ji-ha.

‘He said he was a soldier, but maybe he was also an ether engineer.’

She stopped looking around and squeezed in between people to listen to the speech.

She wanted to hear where Yu Ji-ha was, but he didn’t come up at all.

‘I think it’s hard with this body, so I’ll have to find another one.’

He wouldn’t know her at all, so she could just sneak up on him at night and kill him.

A loud alarm rang in her ears as she searched for prey.

「Warning. Massive ether detected from the nest. The Plague fleet has started to move. Named A1 fleet from now on.」

She thought of ships floating on the water or airships when she heard the word fleet, and was surprised.

Hundreds, thousands of monsters popped out of the ruins and gathered together.

They looked small at a glance, but they were monsters that were hundreds of meters long each.

But… Somehow, the appearance of the Plague was very similar to something she knew.

‘Aren’t they demons? They’re so big?’

The demons of the demon world.

Demons were rarely seen in Astera these days, but two hundred years ago, they would appear whenever people forgot about them.

And the Demon King.

The current policies of Elvrande were nothing but desperate attempts to prevent the Demon King from descending into this world.

The current leaders, including Drizden, believed that the elves were suffering because of the ignorant humans.

Anyway, the demons that were visible outside the window boasted a size and scale that made her chest tight, even though they were far away.

‘If one of those things came to Astera…’

Could they stop it?

It was common sense that the power of a demon was proportional to its size.

Even the Demon King who appeared in Astera ten years ago and caused havoc seemed to be no match for the smallest one among them.

‘Is the Legion Strike Fleet meant to fight those things?’

He remembered the last bastion of humanity that President Yu Ji-ha had created.

In a way, Leobold had come to Astera after fighting these monsters in his world.

Delphina was shocked to recall that fact.

‘Then the power he showed now is only a fraction of his true strength?’

How much power was he hiding?

Delphina left Lisa and mingled with the crew of the bridge.

As soon as the battle began, she saw countless Goliath-like dolls leaving the ship.

“3rd Squadron, launch ready, launch as soon as ready.”

“Fire control system online, combat prediction start.”

“Laser salvo.”

Numerous beams of light spewed out from the fleet.

Each one had a tremendous power that overwhelmed the ether cannon fire of the airship fleet.

Delphina opened her mouth wide as she saw the Plague Fleet blocking it with a shield.

The scale of the battle was incomparable to that of Astera.

‘Too strong… How can we fight against this?’

She thought that even one of these ships could burn down all of Astera.

Speaking of which, according to the Pope, Leobold also brought a large ship with him when he came here?

Delphina concluded after much deliberation that it was impossible for her to find and kill Leobold.

There were too many people on this ship alone, and it was almost impossible to search the entire fleet. She also didn’t know how to get to another ship.

Even if she was lucky enough to find him, it was uncertain whether she could kill him.

‘I have to go back… What do I do when I go back?’

Her mission given by Drizden was practically a failure.

Now she had to either spill the truth or do something else when she went back. But she didn’t feel like doing that.

‘I can’t just tell Drizden this information.’

She thought she could use it to her advantage since she was the only one who knew it.

It would be foolish to go to Leobold and negotiate with him.

‘Okay… I have to go back to Astera now.’

It was a meager result for using Terra Hawk’s power.

But she was able to get a glimpse of what kind of place and power Leobold’s world had.

‘We shouldn’t have been hostile in the first place.’

It was useless to regret it now.

She and all the shadow elves were his enemies.

They had no choice but to bow down and obey him. But the hatred they had accumulated over time was not a joke.

Would Leobold accept the shadow elves?

‘Maybe he’ll kill them all…’

Delphina regretted being hostile to him and finished preparing to go back.

As soon as she activated the ether heart, she felt dizzy as she did when she came here.

And as soon as she felt the soul spring, she used Nocturne’s power to jump somewhere.

Drizden, who was waiting for her, was surprised when she disappeared without a word.

“What, what? Why did you run away all of a sudden?”

He hastily released his troops and ordered a search, but Delphina was nowhere to be seen.

“Damn! How can you run away without even explaining! This is why I didn’t trust those gray bastards!”

He knew very well that the fate of all shadow elves depended on him. It was strange that he acted like this.

What did he see and come back with that he ran away without saying anything?

****

“Why are you suddenly drawing pictures?”

“Maybe he has no confidence in his memory. He might be drawing them to show them to someone else.”

As soon as Delphina returned to Astera, she used Nocturne’s power to escape from the laboratory.

That’s when the location tracking through biochip started and Arma watched her every move.

She thought she would run away and go where her kin were, but she hid in a quiet forest and drew pictures.

The content was about her past experience.

“Her drawing skills are terrible. I can’t even tell what she’s drawing.”

“It looks like a warehouse of a battleship class…”

Leobold realized that it was a warehouse after a while.

“Which battleship is it?”

“It’s likely to belong to the Legion Strike Fleet, since it only took a few months after breaking through the dimensional wall and landed near the Master.”

“Legion Strike Fleet…”

He remembered the past.

In 2048, when the Plague Queen appeared in the orbit of Pluto and built a nest, Yu Ji-ha organized the Legion Strike Fleet.

They wanted to strike a fatal blow before they were ready and annihilate them.

They succeeded in that and finally managed to kill the Plague Queen.

But after coming to Astera, he thought he had just sent her to another dimension.

“By now, that Plague Queen might be grinding her teeth and building up her power in some strange place like me.”

“Don’t worry about Lucia. I’m keeping an eye on her.”

What Leobold was most worried about was that Lucia would be influenced by the original Plague Queen in some way.

She begged him to hand over the key, so it seemed that she didn’t have the ability to break through dimensions without a warp gate, but he couldn’t relax.

“It’s easy for souls to break through dimensions, as I’ve learned.”

“The analysis of Terra Hawk’s power revealed a pattern similar to an algorithm in the divine rank.”

Leobold looked at her with a sudden remark.

“Are you saying that the divine rank is an algorithm?”

“98%… The flow of data and ether are very similar.”

“That’s almost the same.”

Arma had often said that ether circuits were no different from semiconductors.

It was too early to judge at this point, but it wasn’t far-fetched to assume that the divine rank was a kind of artificial intelligence.

“To analyze it more finely, we need more awakening of the divine rank. Right?”

“Especially in Elvrande and the Holy Kingdom, we can get a lot of things.”

Arma knew a lot about ether, but she was somewhat weak in terms of time, space, and divine power.

To fully analyze the power, he needed to make contact with it.

He didn’t have to bring it here, he could just activate the measuring device and analyze it from a distance.

While they were chatting, Delphina had completed several paintings.

“That was when you had your first battle in the orbit of Pluto.”

He remembered that everything was lacking except for the firepower, because they had organized so hastily.

But thanks to Arma’s control, there were no big problems in navigation and combat.

Only the crew suffered a lot.

“If you saw that scene, you would have realized that Master’s assassination was meaningless. You must be starting to worry now.”

As Arma said, Delphina was worried.

It was crazy to contact Leobold with that information, and she wondered where she could sell this information for a high price.

“There’s no one else but the Holy Kingdom.”

They were the only ones who noticed that Leobold came from another world.

“I was going to kill you when you became unnecessary, but you keep proving your usefulness. I think it’s better to leave you alone for now.”

Delphina was a dangerous existence, but there was no big problem because they could control her.

“At this rate, you will be able to absorb all the powers of the Astera Pantheon.”

“How about the Elven Pantheon?”

“I’m in the process of verifying the existence of divinity through Margreta’s notes. Yggdrasil is definitely a god and her saint Ruster is also a god. But I’m not sure about Ailid.”

There was still a lot to analyze.

In fact, the gods of Astera were far from omnipotent and had limited powers that were closer to transcendents.

Therefore, if Arma analyzed all their powers, she would be able to look down on most of the gods.

If she was that powerful, what could he call her master Leobold?

He took his eyes off Delphina.

“What do you think will happen if the Kingdom gets the information?”

“They won’t be able to do anything great. It’s all speculation and they don’t trust the Shadow Elves anyway. But they might confirm Master’s identity and spread it across the continent.”

“That doesn’t sound too dangerous.”

Most of the people who could influence Leobold were already known.

The only problem was that the information that the Kingdom extracted through the saintess was not something he could ignore.

According to Arma, it was 2053 on Earth now.

“Are you sure? It’s only been five years?”

He had passed through the warp gate with the new pioneer fleet in 2048, but something was strange.

“The saintess’s power is getting stronger and stronger, and recently she can even hear people’s voices. Many people said it was 2048.”

“…Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

Arma told him the results of digging up information from the Holy Kingdom.

In short, it was a mess.

“After we left, all the megacities were engulfed in extreme chaos. Except for Pacific, most of them broke out in civil wars and it got worse after the Legion Strike Fleet returned.”

“I thought I had divided up several megacities so they could share them.”

Not only the Legion Strike Fleet, but also the existing space platforms and fleets had their ownership divided.

Many megacities in Pacific and Korea, which were the core, had a lot of power, but they didn’t exceed 40%.

It meant that he wanted them to focus on Pacific and restore the land that had been abandoned before.

But when Leobold and Arma disappeared at the same time, many megacities started to use their power excessively to regain their dominance.

“The most representative ones are Megacity America and Deutsch, who criticized Master and entered into an alliance formation. Many places including Megacity Manchuria responded and Pacific is isolated.”

“Except for North and South?”

“Yes. Pacific, North, and South are one body.”

They were very close because they were located in Korea and North Pacific.

According to her explanation, Earth was undergoing a reorganization of power by taking advantage of Leobold’s absence.

This was what he expected.

Without Arma’s control, chaos was inevitable and it was predictable that each megacity would start acting independently.

But he didn’t expect that nine megacities led by America would stamp a mark on him under the name of maintenance.

“They call him the worst murderer who abandoned seven billion people, a cowardly power-monger who ran away to save himself, and a cruel dictator who oppressed megacities too much.”

“I’ve been cursed so much that I don’t feel much.”

He had heard all kinds of negative words about him during his 20 years of activity as Maintenance.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that every derogatory word on Earth came before his name.

The bitter thing was that he had taken measures to preserve humanity, but they had completely forgotten that.

It was probably because the damage was too great except for the megacities.

In the end, 1.2 billion people were accommodated in 12 megacities.

The remaining seven billion were just abandoned.

For years, plagues appeared in the solar system hundreds of times and caused tremendous damage.

The Earth Fleet tried to intercept them as much as possible, but they couldn’t prevent the damage completely.

Many cities were destroyed and by 2045, the carbon emission level had dropped to one-fifth of what it was 10 years ago.

“That hatred accumulated. The remaining politicians gathered their hatred for Master and used it for their own power. I guess the more powerful and hateful the enemy is, the higher the concentration of power.”

“So what’s their goal?”

“To unify Earth. It’s only a matter of time before they absorb the rest of the megacities, except for Pacific, North, and South.”

“Congressman Baek Sung-min must have messed up.”

It was impressive that he had managed to calm the people and become the speaker of the parliament in the midst of that chaos.

Leobold had hoped that humanity would move forward towards the future, towards the space, while fighting and struggling moderately after he left the solar system.

But humanity was only trying to expand their power by gathering hatred under the name of maintenance, instead of working hard on space development after the plague disappeared.

That was the atmosphere in most of the megacities, except for three.

“It’s bitter, but I can’t help it… That’s the future they chose.”

“Do you want to go back?”

“…Not yet.”

As he had said several times, he still had things to do here.

Returning to Earth was something he had to do after finishing everything, even if he put aside the possibility.

And in some ways, leaving Earth as it was might be the right thing to do.

“Because that’s their choice. Right?”

“I will follow Master’s decision.”

Leobold nodded and listened to the rest of her report.

The war was nearing its end thanks to Valgad, who had slaughtered nearly a hundred Goliaths in Heston Canyon.

“Currently, Galisto has lost its will to fight and Duke Gram is showing his willingness to surrender. It is expected that entering the capital will not be difficult.”

“What about Zaium?”

“The emperor has sent another envoy. He might want to end the war at this point.”

“I want to wrap it up too, but there’s one person who doesn’t want that.”

For example, Archduke Pangral.

He had only suffered losses in this war, so he would want to make up for it.

He must have rejoiced at seeing Camilla’s territory empty, but he didn’t know that it was Leobold’s trap.

All that was left was to swallow up both lands at once and beg for mercy from the emperor.

“Let’s go and take over Galisto. Send out the fleet.”

Leobold watched the airship fleet preparing to depart from the direct territory.

They looked pitiful compared to the Legion Strike Fleet, but they would change a lot in the future.