1013 to 1017

1013 - Eyes Open

Bip. Bip. Bip. Bip.

The man on the bed could hear the rhythmic beeping that engulfed the room as he tried to fight his mind, which was trying to force him to wake up. He wanted to sleep more, as it was something he had missed quite a lot and didn’t want to cut short.

But that was only momentary. The moment the line of thought finished forming, and just as he was about to try and make it a reality, a blue screen spread in front of him despite his eyes being closed. It startled him as if he had been hit by a flashbang, and the shock also acted as a trigger that broke the dam, as his memories started flowing once again, as if recovering backup data from a computer that had been shut down.

[Soul reconstruction complete. User health in perfect condition!!!!!!!!]

Those words on the screen were the only thing he could see as his mind took the recovered memories and cataloged them in sequence to prevent any misremembering or any other potential problems that came with a soul being torn apart. The system, with its ever-watchful eyes, made sure nothing was misplaced, no matter how small the likelihood of that happening was.

“MH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The sound of him taking a deep breath, as if he hadn’t breathed in years, could be heard as his eyes opened in sync, finding himself inside a very familiar room of his palace.

{Welcome back, sir. Empress Rina and your family have been informed and are on the way to see you,} Nova, ever vigilant when it came to matters related to Aron, was the first to be informed, having already discovered the change in his brain waves the moment he became conscious again. She had remained observing, a moment away from calling Ayaka should something wrong have happened or been seen in the data.

“How long have I been out for?” Aron asked, as his mind had now finally finished bringing him up to date with his latest memories, reminding him that they were in an active war with the Conclave when he went out. He was curious as to how long he had been gone and how they had dealt with his absence.

{Forty days, sir. That is how long you have been out,} Nova answered as a hologram with that number written on it appeared.

“How is the situation with the Conclave?” he asked in a hurry, knowing that forty-five days was a long time for the empire, which could travel anywhere so long as they had access to the absolute coordinates. It was enough time for plans to be implemented and either succeed or fail, and for the other side to have been able to do the same.

Before Nova could answer, the door to his room was kicked open as Rina, who had come flying after deeming walking to be too slow, came through, only a few seconds ahead of Henry, who also arrived just behind her. Twenty seconds later, his mother and father came with Rina’s parents, immediately crowding the room as one after another, they started drowning him in questions.

“Are you fine? I was debriefed on what happened. Why the heck would you do that?”

“If you do that again, I will take a soul piece myself, understood?”

“Why did you put yourself in that position when you have capable subordinates?”

“You are the Emperor. You should keep that in mind when you act.”

“I’m glad you look fine………..”

“........................................”

“.................................”

“...........................”

“.....................”

Questions, statements of worry, reprimands for what he did, hugs, tears—the room was a buffet of all those emotions and more as each member of the family expressed their concern in their own way. But the emotion in all of their eyes was the same: relief and happiness that he had finally woken up.

It took a whole hour before he could fully appease all of those in the room and was able to convince them to give him some time alone. They did so begrudgingly before Aron could finally be alone with Nova. He immediately lay down once again as the medpod door closed and logged him into the VR. When he opened his eyes, he found himself inside the situation room with all the officials who were in the initial situation room present to welcome him. They were ready to answer any questions or explain their reasoning for why they took certain decisions, and more as the Emperor was provided with an update on the situation.

Having already been briefed about his condition and full recovery, none of those in the room pestered him like his family did. The most they did was express their happiness that he had managed to heal without any problems and had returned in full health, before they immediately got to work.

{The Conclave is no more, as we are currently in control of all the previous Conclave civilizations, including subordinate civilizations, barring ten civilizations from the eleven top-ten civilizations, who are now all acting under a single directive,} Nova said as she started her debriefing. The room dissolved, and everyone in it found themselves hovering in space with miniature star systems appearing in the same positions as their real-world counterparts in a part of the galaxy that everyone had nearly memorized.

A golden color started spreading, covering nearly all of the star systems around them, leaving a few of them in comparison that were at the center of the whole map. It was the only unconquered part of the Conclave that remained, with everything in its surroundings being fully and completely taken over.

{Due to their significance and expected complications upon facing them, we had elected to focus on taking control of the other civilizations, buying time until your recovery was complete before we made any move upon them. As a result, we are currently in control of thirteen thousand, four hundred and seventy-three star systems that are under the administration and control of both our imperial forces and imperial citizens, who are responsible for miscellaneous things like dealing with rebellions and other insurgency movements in the captured star systems. To avoid making irreversible decisions in your absence, all of those who caused problems, barring those who could only be neutralized by lethal force, are currently being held in prisons, with the total number of prisoners totaling five billion people of different civilizations.}

1014 - Debrief

Five billion prisoners, that number was nearly a quarter of the total imperial citizens in the empire, and all of them were now the empire's responsibility.

The reason many countries directly killed prisoners of war or elected to massacre villages instead of capturing them was because a human is very difficult to keep alive, and even more so when they are prisoners, as they are now your full responsibility. This meant the empire had to field a large enough logistics force to be able to feed, clothe, and contain five billion prisoners on a daily basis. 

The situation was further complicated by the fact that the five billion prisoners were not from the same civilization, meaning they couldn’t all be fed or kept in the same conditions. Each civilization had different nutritional, dietary, and even environmental requirements, so the logistics had to take that into consideration.

It would be a nightmare for any civilization to pull it off, even more so without any problems occurring that could lead to thousands, if not millions, of deaths. But the empire, which had just been a two-star system, had managed to do exactly that without even a hint of an obstacle from the start, as it was something they had already considered and planned for ahead of time.

Atomic printers had, at some point, even stopped producing anything but more atomic printers, which did the same, all for the sake of ensuring that the war machine kept being fully supplied with whatever it needed to be fully effective.

The top ten civilizations had expected the empire to crumble, unable to keep control of the civilizations they had captured due to the responsibility they would be taking on, paired with their inexperience in such wide-scale governing, having only had experience ruling two star systems. 

This was one of their most optimistic plans: to use the period when chaos occurred in the captured civilizations' star systems and, as the empire tried to quell that and have their forces tangled in the mess, to attack and gain leverage to bring the empire to the negotiating table and have an iron-clad mana oath that would protect them for the foreseeable future. But to their surprise, no such news reached them. It was as if the empire had streamlined the takeover structure into Lego-sized pieces, allowing them to build the structure to be as large or as small as the situation required and be able to apply it to any situation without any trouble.

Other than dealing with the living beings in these civilizations, another problem the conquerors would face would be the data side of things. Unfortunately for the conquered, the empire specialized specifically in that. The program that had been created and refined to go through the Conclave-wide VR data was applied to all of the collected data across all of the conquered civilizations, backed up as they were in different server clusters, with a few of them being taken offline for a more secure backup. 

A version of the data was then converted into the Terra Empire data format, analyzed, filtered, and parsed for anything important for immediate analysis. Another, slower and more thorough program went through the entire data set to capture anything the fast-parsing program might have missed, before all of it would then be presented for the empire to use to its advantage. The slow and thorough program was still going through the data, organizing and cataloging it into the Akashic Server for later release to the public.

{For those who are not causing any problems, we have provided them with VR devices for them to be able to continue logging into VR to receive updates on their specific planets or situations, while having them use it as an escape from their real-world situation. Due to the curfew being limited to only the most problematic sectors, the majority of people are already living their lives as normal, with only a few inconveniences, like the stock market, that we have forcibly frozen to prevent an additional fall that we had triggered through financial attacks before moving to capture those star systems. 

Leaving it to continue crashing would cause more problems for us in the future, but stopping it should allow us to control when they reopen and if we want to shift everything in their financial markets into our imperial government's market before reallowing access to those funds post-conversion. It gives us the widest margin of control...}

Nova went on and on, updating Aron on everything major that had happened during the takeover process, starting from when the takeover took place to a summary of how things were going at present, with visual aids being present the whole time for easier digestion of information. Despite her knowing that the Emperor didn’t need them in the first place, she also knew that seeing is better than hearing when it comes to how you contextualize information.

When she was done giving the update on what happened to the conquered civilizations, their surroundings paused for a moment before the middle part of the uncaptured Conclave started enlarging as the captured parts vanished. The larger that part got, the more information about their surroundings started appearing. At first, only small dots could be seen in the shape of a circle, as if a render of a ball had been made transparent, revealing what was inside, while the outer circle had only its grid's connecting parts visible as points.

{These are our imperial fleets, currently fully mobilized and awaiting your recovery for you to make the decision on what to do,} Nova said, pointing at the dots, while speaking calmly as if unaware of what that image would do to a normal person once they realized what it meant. Each point was a mini imperial fleet, and the number of them neared a hundred thousand.

The empire had literally created an encirclement of the entire uncaptured Conclave territory, consisting of the top ten.

Although it was not an airtight encirclement, as one fleet was at a minimum of five light-years from another, in space, this was as close as it gets. The empire had already mapped all of the area within the circle, meaning there was no need to have ships shoulder to shoulder, since they could arrive at any part of the circle at any moment through wormholes to deal with any anomaly.

1015 - Ecstasy

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Aron, who had been silently listening to the debrief, found himself having a hearty laugh when he saw the dots making the circle. This caused everyone attending the session to look at him curiously, wondering what was going on. After all, the Emperor had rarely behaved like this in front of them, making them wonder for a moment if he was still recovering. But that thought appeared only for a moment before it fully disappeared, as they were sure Nova wouldn’t make such a mistake when it was about someone who held absolute power.

“Atomic printers met with tens of thousands of planets to collect materials from, sure is a deadly combo,” Aron said, finally allowing everyone in the room to understand his reaction.

During his absence, the empire seemed to have pushed the use of atomic printers to the limit, out-producing what the entire Conclave had sent to them at the start of the war by a difference of 1 to a thousand fleets. For every fleet the Conclave had sent, the empire had now produced a thousand mini-fleets as a counter, which were now surrounding them, leaving the only exit to be a wormhole.

When they understood the reason, they all breathed a sigh of relief, but only Nova was silent. She knew that the reason he had given was only secondary, with the main one being the SP he had gained as a result of the campaign they had waged during his recovery period.

As a byproduct of the empire wanting to give the conquered civilizations something to do during the initial capture days, they had managed to finally spread VR across all of the star systems, bringing what the empire had planned to do in a century with the cooperation of the Conclave to fruition in a matter of a month. This meant the SP that he had expected to earn in a century was now earned in a month, giving him a nearly unfathomable amount in his hand.

The amount was enough to justify his burst of laughter, as it was something that had removed one of the few possible regrettable things that his mana poisoning had caused as a consequence of the system draining SP while trying to look for an applicable solution.

“So, what are the plans that you have already come up with about dealing with them?” Aron said, pointing to the remaining parts of the map with his chin before crossing his hands on his chest and using his right hand to play with his chin on the path of his nonexistent beard.

{Our Little Protagonists in the Yrall Coalition have already finished spreading to all the robots of one of their top star systems, giving us the ability to take control of it the moment you give the order...} Nova went on and on about how they had managed to do that, including Nyx’s contribution to the achievement and more, before she finished and went on to a few more specialized attacks that their spies had managed to insert in different star systems of different civilizations, exploiting the most relevant and widely used tech of those star systems to gain as wide a range of control as possible without the other side knowing.

At the same time, having those things be as close to the people as possible due to their constant use, she also informed him about their now-complete infiltration of the mana network through different Trojans in different star systems, allowing them to send back important information from different areas constantly, despite the Conclave's digital vigilance.

{These are the specialized attacks for about twenty-five of the star systems. As for the rest, we consider doing it in the conventional means, which we can confidently overwhelm them due to our numbers, material, information, production, and logistical advantages. But this means is expected to take some time and would yield a large number of casualties from their side, due to a large number of them being civilizations with pride as the center-most part of their worth, and many of them would rather die than accept defeat or the shame of surrender,} Nova said, finishing the briefing on what plans they had in place to deal with the remaining top ten of the Conclave.

Tap, Tap, Tap, tap.

A rhythmic tapping motion could be heard in the now-quiet situation room as Aron rhythmically tapped his lap, causing everyone else in the room to try not to make a single sound. They knew that sound and motion only came when the Emperor was in deep thought while either evaluating something or coming up with an unconventional plan.

After five minutes of complete silence, with only the rhythmic tapping being heard across the room, TAP! A final tap was heard before focus returned to Aron’s eyes. A smile appeared before he said, “That is true, and it is something we need to deal with at the moment, or we might find ourselves with a never-ending guerrilla warfare with them as pirates. So, we will attack them in a week.” 

He paused for a moment, looking at the reactions of those in the room before he continued, “We will also inform them that we will be attacking them in a week by destroying one of their most prized star systems if they don’t surrender by then, and will continue to do the same for every five hours that pass if they do not surrender. 

If they continue their disturbance by the time we finish all of our inserted special means of attack in the twenty-five planets, then we will send all of our forces into all of their territories for a fight to the last man. We will spare those who surrender and kill anyone who doesn’t and is in a position of power. 

As for the minions, we will remove that hatred through the VR before releasing them to continue with their lives, but now under imperial government rule, unaware of the hatred that had been taken from them, with their only recollection being that they were among those who surrendered and were spared. We can’t go around sending civilizations into extinction when genetic diversity is something the empire should strive for…”

As Aron explained his plan, everyone in the room understood that this was most likely going to be used as a means to pacify all of those who still harbored thoughts of retaliating against the empire by showing how he dealt with those whom they once feared. His next words sealed that: “All of this will be broadcasted across all of our territories. I’m sure you must have realized that the Xor’Vak are not included in the plan. That is because I have a better way of subjugating them than threatening them into surrender,” he said with a smile on his face, causing goosebumps on all of the humans present, as they already knew what his plan was.

1016 - To control A trillion Krill, You Only Need to Kill One Whale

A few hours later, a letter with the Emperor's seal was sent to everyone inside the VR, with a similar one being sent to all of the top ten civilizations still free.

It was quite long and got directly to the point, but anyone who read it would have most of their focus on a single paragraph: [We ought to end this one way or another, as only one of us can come out as a victor. To avoid needless bloodshed and the risk of your civilizations being reduced in number to the point of extinction, the Emperor gives you an imperial week to think and come to a decision to surrender. If you don’t surrender by then, we will destroy a random star system of high importance every five hours until you surrender or our patience runs out, and we go ahead with a total invasion, which will be brutal and undeserving to your people, who can live prosperously under the Terra Empire's leadership. Don’t let your arrogance or hunger for power lead to the humiliation of your civilization in front of those you once brutally ruled over.]

Due to it being forwarded to anyone with VR, no one missed it, and it instantly became the topic of discussion for everyone. It also acted as the first time they had heard the Emperor’s words directly since the last time he had appeared to address the Conclave citizens who were in VR about the war.

@areck479: Do you think he is bluffing?

@TheNiniteGamer: Have you seen the Empire bluff even a single time? They always make absurd promises and always end up keeping them. What makes you think it is different this time?

@Ziegel: You humans have a saying that the scariest lie is the one told by the always truthful, since you won’t have any reason to not believe them after they have always been truthful in the past. I think your emperor was making all of those absurd promises and keeping them in preparation for the bluff of the universe, and it seems like it is already working.

@Wesley Spangler: It is good that you've learned something, but don’t apply it randomly. It might appear sound, but such a bluff would not only bring shame to the empire but also shatter the trust it has consistently built for the past decades. Such a gamble of a bluff would only be made behind closed doors, since it would give the other side the ability to pull back without shame. But the empire doing it openly breaks that. These are civilizations that are known for their pride. Do you think they would risk the harm to their pride when the empire has challenged them publicly? The Valthorins, for sure, will fight to the last man before they accept such a public surrender.

@Artega: I pray that they don’t accept the offer and the empire actually goes ahead with their threat.

@Bluestar_sword: @Artega, shouldn’t you be cheering for them instead of the Empire?

@Artega: The love of my life was forcefully taken by the Grand Xor’vak as a tribute when he fancied her, only for her dead body to be returned a week later. You think I would support them after that? Plus, they abandoned us to focus on themselves when if we had united, we could have delayed the inevitable longer.

@Great Saint: I can’t argue against such logic. But since when did Pangaea get united? Imagine my surprise when I saw a human reasoning with a Glukrar.

@Zabulus: Looks like it is a special access for the current topic. But it is quite bizarre that we are having a back-and-forth with people who are currently acting as our guards. What a time to live in.

@psy0nic: I’m tired of living in an unprecedented period. For a year, I really want to live in a precedented time and not have to experience what would be a nightmare for future students' history classes.

@SL0: That is the thing, someone has to live in unprecedented times, and it just turned out that those people are us. Plus, I’m pretty sure what is to come is the rock bottom; after that, it is only upward movement from here, so rejoice and pray that you don’t die before seeing the rise after the dip.

@Guilherme Ferreira: Will the empire really broadcast them keeping their promise? If they do, I will swear a mana oath to be loyal to the Emperor.

@Sol_Invictus: @Guilherme Ferreira, you weren't already? HERESY! @Imperialmilitary @Imperialpolice @Imperialpalace @EmperorAron @GAIA @.......

@Billiam: Damn, shouldn’t you be busy collecting MP? Why are you here reporting someone? Do you want him dead or something?

@Jeffrey Iverson: How do you think they will accomplish that? They say an interval of five hours, meaning the destruction of a star system needs to be over within five hours before they start the next. Do you think they will let the empire keep doing that when they can see them coming? What is to stop them from making a stand with the intention of lasting more than five hours?

@Aden Ignanga Moussirou: I can’t say he is always right, but I have yet to see him be wrong, so I will withhold my speculations lest I become part of history in a negative way, the same way Ea-nasir is.

@Norito Menteval: These are real people's lives we are talking about. Why are we speaking about them as if they are pixels on a screen when the empire literally threatened to kill them?

@GripenSupremacy: That is because they have done and will do worse than this to you if they were in your position. Did you already forget the millions of our citizens who were killed without any provocation from our side when they decided to attack us without justification? This is us removing a problem so that it doesn’t come back as a problem in the future. Plus, the Emperor gave them the chance to surrender, and if they don’t, then the blame is theirs, not ours.

@Fraceball: What wouldn’t I give to be a fly on the wall as those arrogant pricks read the empire's demands.

@Katherine: @Fraceball, quite a few things, but who am I to ruin the fun?

@jordan payet: I’m announcing that I’m ready wherever the Emperor needs us. I can’t die anyway, so why not have a story of me invading a powerful civilization for my grandchildren?

@Mohamed Arusad: May God guide them to the right path and decision.

@Jade: With the MP I’m about to earn from this, I will feed generations.

@EternalCosmos: The empire is taking its final steps to becoming a giant power broken in the galaxy. I can’t believe I’m alive to see it happen.

@SomeNotTakenName: Why limit yourself to a portion of the galaxy and not the full galaxy?

@Wolfsbubi: Can’t argue that. Just a few decades ago, we were a single planetary civilization, but look where we have come in that short period. I can’t believe it, man, and doing this without sending people's children to needless deaths. What a time.

@Wait4Mi: What is with the wait, man? Why not start the broadcast now? I can’t wait for a whole week.

@Tobias Lauer: Patience, patience. As with all beautiful things, it takes time, but it is worth it.

@Jpo192: Who wants to guess how the Valthorins are reacting?

@Kryonic: I can bet half my MP that at least one of them died from sheer disbelief at the letter.

@Jeff Billon: LOL, can’t deny that at all…

The imperial citizens' side was overwhelmingly positive, as many of them saw this as an opportunity to earn more MP. Although those conquered by the empire were not really on the empire's side, they were rooting for the empire because they had suffered under the oppression of these top tens, and seeing them suffer a thimble of what they had dished out was worth it.

There was a vocal group who argued that the evil they knew was better than the one they didn’t, as they argued that they didn’t know how the empire would treat them, so it was better for the top ten to win, but they were being silenced by their own people.

The opinions were wide-ranging as each person interpreted the situation from their experience, but all of them wondered the same thing: how would the other side react, and what would their response be? The empire had just shot the first shot, and the ball was in their court, which also meant that the empire was fully ready and confident, considering that they took their time to shoot the first shot.

1017 - How to Kill a Whale

The reaction from the Conclave, or what remained of it, was what many expected.

“I would rather die than live with the shame of being forced to surrender to some mongrel,” the Valthorin ruler said. As someone in a position that literally stood as an acknowledgment of their pride being the highest, even reading that letter felt like losing his pride with each word. By reading it, those words appeared in his mind, and his pride couldn't handle having them stain it. Had it not been for the situation he was in requiring calm, he would have gone and tried to come up with ways to humiliate Emperor Aron to regain even a thimble of his tainted pride. But he had to set it aside for now, though he still had the hope of doing it in the future once things settled.

“So, you think that they are not bluffing and are planning to end it once and for all, and they have only sent this letter because they are now fully ready and prepared?” the leader of the Zelvora spoke calmly through his mental network. As the most reasonable civilization of the top ten, his reaction was more analytical than angry, like many of the others, but even he didn’t look pleased at being made to read that letter. It was very obvious from the way the letter was written that the empire was confident it would win this fight, no matter what their united forces did. The way it was written hinted that the empire was taunting them not to accept it if they couldn't handle the consequences. Despite it being very obvious, many leaders would knowingly fall into it, since the other side of them accepting the offer was nothing pleasant at all.

“They are just bluffing. To keep their promise, they would need a way to arrive at our star systems, but since we are constantly scrambling the coordinates, finding them in a year is impossible, and more so in five hours, since even we don’t know the coordinates as they are random,” the Trinarian leader said. Despite that, the printed letter was currently being scrunched into a ball from the anger he felt from the obvious disregard and taunting, something he had never experienced in his life, having enjoyed being at the top of the food chain for his entire life. It was a new and unpleasant experience for him, one that he knew he needed to cleanse himself from fully.

The remaining leaders reacted in similar but slightly different manners, but anger was a constant among all of them except one, who could be heard heartily laughing in his luxurious room once he was done reading the letter sent to him.

Unlike what the other nine received, what he received was a completely different letter. It was a letter from Emperor Aron Michael using his right to challenge him for his position—a right he, the Grand Xor’Vak, had given to him after he deliberately made Seraphina surrender, confident that the Emperor was never going to use it. 

But here he was, receiving the challenge letter, which gave him the option to choose who he, the Grand Xor’Vak, would like to face for the ownership, control, and loyalty of the Xor’Vak civilization: the Emperor or Seraphina. The Emperor had given him the decision to choose his opponent, and in return, he took the right to choose the date, which he had set as a week after the remaining nine civilizations fell. In return, the empire would not attack Xor’Vak territories, although the Xor’Vak forces sent to other civilizations' star systems were considered a fair game by the Emperor.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” the Grand Xor’Vak continued laughing heartily for a long time, but as time passed, the heartiness in the laughter vanished as it got more and more sinister with each passing minute. Not long after, the laughter turned into a suffocating and suppressed rage that would have suffocated anyone inside the room had there been one.

“Fine, I accept your challenge. My challenger will be…” The Grand Xor’Vak wrote his response and sent it back to the empire through the same channel the challenge was sent.

Time, uncaring of all that was happening in what would be a speck of dust on the scale of the cosmos, continued moving, and it wasn’t long before it was only a few hours before the week the empire had given the remaining civilizations to surrender was up. At the moment, a massive screen could be seen in every part of the VR with a timer set to complete at the exact time the week-long period would have passed.

When only fifteen minutes remained, the timer moved aside as images now started being transmitted as if from a movie, as angles changed every few seconds to a few minutes. All the footage looked like it was being shot at eye-level, showing the daily lives of the Yrall Coalition's citizens, making it clear to anyone watching that they were the first, randomly chosen target, just as the Emperor had promised.

The world for those under the control of the empire stopped for a moment as nearly all of those eligible to watch found themselves sitting, ready to see what would unfold as the excitement, fear, worry, and pressure continued to accumulate the lower the timer got. It wasn’t long: 09, 08, 07, 06, 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00.

The moment the timer hit zero, it was as if the cameras sending footage had malfunctioned, as the ones that were moving stopped in unison. The screen widened to accommodate nearly a hundred different POVs, and in unison, all of those POVs started moving to a switch or the control panel of an important piece of infrastructure before crashingly starting to destroy them.

Anyone who tried to stop them was dealt with uncaringly, as the robots, who were now visible thanks to the camera shifting from a POV to a third-person point of view, were in every part of the star system: sewers, security, electric, food, delivery, and many more. This had resulted in the robots being in nearly all important areas, which translated to the damage being dealt, causing hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths indirectly as a result of their actions' cascading effect.

Everyone watching found themselves with their mouths open and their bodies full of goosebumps in disbelief at what they were witnessing. It was not something they were expecting the empire to pull, as they had all speculated that the empire would try to overwhelm a star system by sending all of its forces there. But it didn’t send even a single ship as it started dismantling it from the inside, and by the look of it, five hours was way too long, since everything was nearing its conclusion in a matter of half an hour.