Timeless Assassin

(Planet Nemo, A Cult Spy's POV)

Usually, the rainless skies of planet Nemo always shimmered faintly with the glow of the mana harvesters, their towers humming with steady rhythm as they extracted mana crystals from deep beneath the planet's crust.

However, a week ago, the extractions suddenly stopped.

The familiar humming sound, which had become like a constant white noise for the citizens of Nemo, stopped without reason, as Commander Su Bal abruptly called for an end to the night shift.

It began haphazardly the next morning, as Commander Su Bal ordered the treasury to be relocated.

A few vaults sealed, a few convoys redirected, men whispering as crates of high and medium grade mana stones were escorted under heavy guard toward the bay area.

Nothing too unusual on its own, but the scale was strange, the urgency sharper than normal, and the Cult Spy observing all this, felt his quill move faster as he took notes.

By the second day, the orders grew stranger still. The mines, usually kept running day and night with no pause, were shut down completely in several sectors.

Workers were pulled from the shafts, their gear left idle, and reassigned toward the docks.

The spy heard Su Bal's voice carry across the command post, "Refocus everything on loading and shipping. Goods must move. Nothing else matters."

By the third day, the pattern could no longer be ignored. Cargo flowed out of Nemo at a pace thirty times greater than normal.

The hangar bay swelled with traffic, freighters lifting off in near endless streams, their bellies packed to bursting with ore, weapons, food, and artifacts.

What had once been steady commerce now looked like a frantic exodus of wealth, stripped from the planet before anyone could ask too many questions.

At first, soldiers obeyed without suspicion. A commander's word was law, and few dared question the Su family. But by the fourth day, the whispers began.

"They say it's the same on Krotos."

"My brother on Veyar wrote, mines shut down there too."

"All the Su planets… all of them are emptying out."

The spy heard the murmurs at night, drifting through camps, trading posts, even among the officers.

He noted them all, every rumor, every thread of unease weaving into something bigger.

By the fifth day, the tension was visible in the streets.

Civilians stood in clusters, pointing at the overloaded cargo convoys rolling toward the ports.

Merchants complained of contracts left unpaid, supplies seized without explanation.

The Cult spy could feel it in the air, an unspoken dread, the kind that spreads faster than fire.

On the sixth day, the order came that broke everything.

"Dismantle the planetary shield arrays. Strip them down. Load them for transport."

The spy's breath caught, his hand stilling over the page. The planetary mana shield, the one thing no world ever lowered willingly, was being torn apart before his eyes.

Soldiers froze at the command. One officer even spoke out, his voice shaking. "Commander… the shield? Without it, we are exposed."

Su Bal's answer was cold and final. "My orders are not a debate. Move."

And so they moved, though their steps were heavy, their silence louder than rebellion.

The shield core towers dimmed one by one, the protective lattice that had guarded Nemo for centuries vanishing into silence as its components were carted away like common scrap.

By the seventh day, panic was spreading openly.

Families hoarded supplies, merchants packed up their storefronts, whispers of evacuation spread like plague.

Soldiers glanced at the sky with unease, civilians muttered of betrayal, and the spy, hidden in shadow, quill steady over his ledger, recorded it all.

The Su Clan was shifting something vast, stripping their worlds bare, and though no one yet understood the destination, everyone could feel the same truth clawing at their throats.

Something monumental was coming.

And the higher ups didn't want them to know what.

—---------

(Meanwhile Veyr)

When Veyr got the news that the planetary shield on Nemo had been taken down, he began to dance like a kid on Christmas.

Taking down the planetary shield was always the most complicated part of any planetary assault, and with it already dismantled, the Cult's odds of victory automatically improved by thirty to fifty percent.

However, that wasn't all.

In what came as even more delightful news, the planet had also been stripped of other critical defensive equipment such as surface-to-air turrets, ammunition reserves, and even the expensive crystal cores that powered the railgun towers.

These were the jewels of Nemo's defenses, the pride of its military infrastructure, yet they were being carted off like spare parts, leaving the world bare and vulnerable.

"Capturing Nemo under these circumstances is going to be far simpler than anticipated. And once we get our hands on that planet, a lot of the Cult's current mana crystal shortage problems will be alleviated. It will be a big boost to our industry and will improve the lives of billions."

He muttered, as in his mind the victory was already sealed.

He began sketching out deployment routes in the sand with the tip of his boot, imagining battalions pouring in through undefended skies, imagining factories roaring back to life under Cult banners, imagining the cheers of billions as wealth flowed into their starving economy.

For Veyr, Cult victory on Nemo was no longer a question of if but of when, and that certainty thrilled him to no end.

The Dragon's Army wasn't the most disciplined or the most experienced, but under the current circumstances, it felt like they were about to steal candy from a kid.

And even though it was a mean thing to do, it felt like it was going to be objectively easy as hell.

"Man, did I become Dragon at the right time or what? Compared to me, brother Noah definitely had it a lot harder. He had no Shadow Dragon to rely on. He didn't have universal instability helping him. And in the end, he was hunted down by a Monarch before he ever matured as a fighter. Compared to that, I'm definitely living life in the easy mode."

He said to himself, as he rubbed his palms and thanked fate for being so kind to him.