Published at 5th of November 2026 7:32 am

Chapter 2491: The clear choice

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"This gift is from Raiden. Nice of him to remember me after all this time." Robin nodded as he looked over the gift in his hands. "These are his memoirs as the oldest field general in our entire system. He recorded every plan he was ever ordered to carry out that ultimately failed, the reasons behind each failure, how he managed to overcome those failures personally on the ground and far away from the plans drawn up inside Headquarters, as well as methods for breaking through stubborn fronts, crushing enemy morale, and many other things he learned through direct experience."

Then he smiled strangely as he continued examining the contents. "This particular kind of experience isn’t something even Peon and Caesar possess, especially the experience of dealing with plans after they fail on the actual battlefield." He raised an eyebrow slightly as he looked at the memoir again. "But again... what’s with all the memoirs today?"

"Robin Peter Burton!" Billy muttered sharply from the side, once again having completely forgotten that he was still broadcasting everything happening between them. "You still didn’t answer me. Do you really see everyone as already dead? Is that why you don’t even bother trying to clear your name of everything being thrown at you? Are you thinking exactly like the rest of the universe’s great figures and simply planning to save yourself?" Then he suddenly shouted and pointed eastward. "Then why are we bothering ourselves with the war in Mid Sector 90!!"

"...I don’t know." Robin replied with the same calmness, seemingly unaffected by Billy’s rising voice, then began searching through the rest of the gifts scattered before him. "Actually, there’s currently a truce between Helmor and me, and apparently Intares and Qarun have temporarily joined it as well, which is why their forces aren’t moving right now."

"What does the truce have to do with what we’re talking about?!" Billy asked in surprise, unable to understand why Robin had suddenly brought it up. He already knew about the truce just like the rest of the empire’s high-ranking officials, but while he knew of its existence, he had never known the actual reason behind it.

Robin laughed lightly. "Of course it has something to do with it." Then he continued in the same relaxed tone, "The ten-year truce began three years ago, and its purpose is to give me enough time and an opportunity to decide whether I intend to save myself like they do, or whether I’ll continue standing in their way and remain an obstacle in the path of their plans and the plans of their masters." Then he shrugged as though the matter he was discussing wasn’t nearly as enormous as it sounded. "And frankly, I haven’t decided yet."

"You haven’t decided?!" Billy shouted as he immediately sprang to his feet, staring directly at Robin. "You haven’t decided whether you should sell us out or not?!"

"Be reasonable, Billy." Robin shook his head as he calmly pulled out the next tablet from among the gifts. "How could I possibly abandon you? How could I abandon my children, my loved ones, and all my followers who followed me beneath every hell and above every sky, no matter where the path led?" Then he continued calmly, without changing his tone, "If I ultimately choose neutrality and survival, then all my thoughts will be focused on one thing: how to save as many of you as possible along with me."

"...." Billy slowly looked down after hearing those words, remaining silent for a moment before asking, "What about the rest?"

"The rest of our citizens?" Robin let out a long breath as he considered the question. "...I’ll try." Then he cast Billy a glance and continued, "The rest of the universe’s great figures are planning to survive completely alone. They’ll even leave their own children and their own blood brothers behind when the time comes. Their greatest ambition is simply to emerge alive from the Day of Judgment and become an Executioner, or what you know as an Ancestor of the Space Beasts..."

Then he shrugged again, his words remaining calm despite the weight of what he was discussing. "I can’t promise you that I’ll be able to save everyone, Billy, because I don’t know whether that’s something I can actually accomplish, but I’ll try... They trusted me and accepted me as their leader, and in return for that trust, I’ll do everything within my power to save them, or perhaps I should phrase it more accurately and say... save their lineage."

"When I said the rest, I meant the entire universe!" Billy raised his voice slightly as he finally clarified what he had meant from the beginning. "You’ll try to save your own citizens, fine, but what about everyone else?"

"What about them?" Robin casually returned his attention to the tablet in his hands and began examining it. "...Ahaa, Jaba finally finished analyzing the first degree of the Master Law of Identity. There’s an explanation of it and its patterns here. Haha, this tablet truly is priceless!"

"What do you mean, ’What about them,’ Robin?!" Billy waved his hand in frustration, refusing to let Robin move away from the question again. "Are you really going to leave everyone else to their fate? No one cares what happens to them, and now you want to become just like the rest of them and simply watch while everyone dies?"

"They’re watching me being besieged right now." Robin stared directly into Billy’s eyes, raising his voice slightly as the weight behind his words became increasingly difficult to conceal. "All the great powers have turned against me because I’ve become an obstacle in their path, because they see that I’m trying to strengthen the very universe they’re tearing down. And what did everyone do to help me when all of them turned against me? Everyone stood by and watched as though none of this concerned them. Everyone simply watched from the sidelines, and everyone calls me the devil!"

Then he slammed his hand onto the table with visible anger. "Then let them deal with the real devils themselves!"

"Tsk~" He calmed himself slightly, suppressing some of the anger that had surfaced before continuing, "The Cosmic Elder discovered that I could use Spacetime to penetrate the End-of-the-World Wall, and he personally begged me to use my knowledge and the strength of my armies to kill as many Space Beasts—the Reapers—as possible, because he believes that the hundred-million-year catastrophe is somehow connected to them. And indeed, I’ve personally remained here ever since that time. My forces have surrounded this entire place to prevent even a single Space Beast from escaping, while my Imperial Guards have been dying day and night for the sake of protecting the universe... Yet despite everything we’ve been doing here, I never announced any of this to anyone because I didn’t want such information to cause panic. I simply remained here and continued protecting the universe in secret without asking anyone to know what I was doing, and in the end, I’m the devil!"

Then he raised his voice slightly again, the anger that he had just suppressed beginning to return. "When I finally decided that I had to stop my own forces from continuing to die, I didn’t bring in the armies of another race to die in their place. I didn’t go to the Syndicate like EVERY single Star Academy does without exception and gather enormous armies of slaves to throw into battle instead. I brought the Crimson Plague, trained it, strengthened it, and made the Plague and the Space Beasts kill each other, while I remained here personally watching over everything that happened, leaving behind my research and my loved ones simply because I was afraid that even one Space Beast might escape from this place and hurt people."

Then he finally roared, unable to keep his voice restrained any longer, "AND IN THE END, I’M THE DEVIL!!"

"...At the Cosmic Elder’s irrational request, I poured all my wealth and all the knowledge at my disposal into creating entirely new Cosmic Academies because he knew perfectly well how corrupt the Star Academies had become and that their leader cared about no one but himself. So I created centralized armies and respectable institutions of learning that everyone who saw them can testify to, abolished the slave armies they had relied upon, and made the knowledge and power that my followers and I had accumulated throughout our entire lives available to everyone without keeping it confined to ourselves. And in the end, after all of that, they abandoned those academies and left them deserted, then went crawling back to their own Executioners and desperately seeking their favor!!"

Then he pointed eastward as his expression remained filled with suppressed anger. "The Hidden Hand Syndicate has been violating the entire universe for tens of millions of years, and throughout all that time no one opens their mouth to say anything about them. The crimes they’ve committed on any random planet would be enough by themselves to execute every single one of them, one by one. And when they finally decided that what I was doing would harm their interests and therefore decided to kill me, I found myself fighting completely alone on behalf of the universe, fighting on behalf of Cosmic Elder Zolan, who himself went beyond the End-of-the-World Wall to kill the Ancestors of the Space Beasts and rid the universe of them, while all the peoples of that same universe stood there laughing at me, waiting for me to die, even cursing me and cutting themselves off from me by refusing to sell anything to me or buy anything from me!"

Bam! Robin slammed his hand onto the table again with enough force to make everything resting upon it jump into the air. "For hundreds of years, I’ve been fighting alone and standing alone, doing all of this in a rotten universe where people refuse to look any farther than what’s directly beneath their own feet and adore the very hangmen waiting to execute them. After everything I’ve done and everything they’ve done in return, why should I do anything at all for them?!"

Then he released a long breath, cracked his neck, leaned his back against the chair once again, and reached out to pull another book toward himself as his voice gradually returned to its earlier calmness. "...They should be grateful that I don’t intend to burn the universe and everyone in it... and if I did, it would be my right."

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