Chapter 1778: Chess

Deep within space, the flagship hung in silence. Leonel watched the scene of his death with a cold expression. Indeed, Rychard dared to attack, and indeed, his strength wasn't a joke.

Leonel had sent his clones constructed of Emulation Spatial Force in his stead, feeling that something like this would happen. In fact, he felt that this would have likely happened even if he had been more lenient with his words and actions. It was clear that Rychard was already prepared for the worst case scenario and his level of alertness was high.

In the final moments before his clone's death, the Spatial Force activated and replaced it with a real corpse. With the depth of his Dream Force, it was almost impossible to see through the differences, especially if Rychard was going to shatter his skull like that. As for Leonel's brothers, Rychard was even less familiar with them.

That said, Leonel didn't particularly care if Rychard saw through the ruse since things were already past this point. The results would be the same so long as he dared to attack.

But now, Leonel had to choose his next step carefully, and the best course of action would depend on what Rychard's choice was.

As Leonel saw it, there were two possibilities. Either Rychard was confident enough to double down and remain in Earth's territory, or he already had an exit plan.

"This little bitch," Raj's expression twisted with rage. He was only just sane enough to not go running down there for revenge. Watching himself die, even if it was just a clone, triggered memories he didn't like to remember.

The same went for most of them. Though they didn't express it like Raj had, they stared daggers at the floating monitor, wanting for murder. If not for Leonel's orders, they might have already gone all out to attack.

"We can't take him casually," Leonel suddenly said. "He's in the Seventh Dimension, and he's most definitely not weak among them. If I'm correct, he would probably rank favorably against the Domain Ranked disciples of the Void Palace."

Raj grit his teeth. "How'd he become so powerful?"

"My best guess is that he gained greatly from the Zone, and it might also be related to that secret of the Viola family my mother mentioned. Unfortunately, there were too many things that happened one after another after we went to the Void Palace and I never had the time to investigate it..."

Leonel wasn't wrong. By the time they got there, the trial began immediately. Rychard obviously hadn't had the skill to make it far in the trial back then, so he ended up in the ranks of Nominal Disciples while Leonel had become a quasi Galaxy Ranked disciple for a wall. Then he lost the Segmented Cube and was basically kidnapped by his uncle, so there really was no time to worry about the likes of Rychard.

"What's the plan, cap?" Milan asked.

"We'll have to wait to see how he'll react... The problem with the Thrusting Skies Sector might have to wait, I have a feeling that Rychard is a much bigger threat."

So, the group waited. But after several moments, Leonel's eyes couldn't help but narrow.

The monitoring system of the flagship was excellent. When it was configured correctly, picking up sound and images across even light years was very much possible. However, depending on the defenses of your target, these images could be better or worse.

Even after configuring, Leonel could only pick up images and not sound from Planet Viola, proving that their defenses were actually quite excellent considering how close to the planet the flagship was. However, this didn't matter much. With his abilities, reading lips was all too easy, the sounds might as well have been blaring in his ears.

But to Leonel's shock, Rychard really had no intention of leaving. In fact, he was delegating normal tasks and sending his ministers off to maintain order. There was nothing out of the ordinary, as though he hadn't just killed an Imperial Prince at all.

Leonel leaned back in his chair and chuckled when Rychard even tasked someone with fixing up the throne room.

Soon, they dispersed and Leonel's configuration was no longer useful. It would take several hours more of effort to configure it to a new location, so there was nothing left to observe. This was the only real drawback of the monitoring system. Unless he had an exact location like a throne room that would obviously be used to welcome guests, it was quite useless.

Leonel fell into his own thoughts.

Although he had listed this as an option, he hadn't actually expected it to happen.

Leonel now had enough justification to turn his canons toward Planet Viola and eradicate them. But he did have his reservations about it. The Zoltene Faith wasn't taken out by him, so it wouldn't be a sin for him to bear. But this would be different, especially since he had just finished destroying those four families.

Whether it was the Impreza or Rychard, they were both right that Leonel would have reservations, it was just that Leonel was good at finding ways to circumvent this. The unfortunate part was that while he could see the depths of the Zoltene Faith easily, he couldn't seem to do the same with Rychard. This made things far more complicated.

Leonel's finger tapped his arm rest. In just a few seconds, he had already gone through several possibilities.

'Interesting... In that case, we'll have to suffocate them in other ways. It's fine if other Sectors are in turmoil, but this Sector, Earth's Sector, has to be entirely problem free.... Chaotic Water Sector... Thrust Skies Sector... Three Pillar Sector...'

Leonel's gaze began to glow, information flying by one after another.

Leonel suddenly stood, a plan formulating in his mind.

Battling personally really would be too troublesome, and that of course considered the fact he wasn't certain if defeating Rychard in his current state was even possible.

In that case, he would just have to play some chess.