Chapter 2722: Interrogation With the Prefect’s direct intervention, both crises tilted in Emery’s favor. The explosion in the lower slums was swiftly declared a criminal incident. Emery’s role was reframed as the victim who had acted in desperate self-defense. The charred remains of the thin magus were gathered from the debris, while the wounded grand magus was shackled and taken into custody by the station guard. Unfortunately, the Sealbond did not remain in his possession—it was seized by the Alfa Station authorities and logged away as evidence. Still, he had not come away empty-handed. With the recipe crystals destroyed in the explosion, the spoils became his: three hundred million spirit stones and the very pill he had auctioned earlier. The outcome was more than satisfactory. After all, Emery never expected to cash it in on the sealbond. From the beginning, the Sealbond has been the means to uncover the identity of the corporation that dared to mess with him. The Zypher Corps. One of the Big Four corporations of the Magus Universe. Their reach stretched far beyond simple commerce. On the surface, Zypher maintained over a hundred legitimate outlets across dozens of star systems, trading in potions, artifacts, and magitech. But their true power lay deeper. They were weaponsmiths and war-dealers, supplying fleets and outfitting mercenary legions, their influence woven into the very machinery of conflict. Now they had shown interest in Emery’s body-refining pill. Their intention was obvious: fold his creation into their vast arsenal, refining soldiers as easily as they refined weapons. Emery exhaled slowly. He wanted to burn the Zypher Corps to ash. But he was not naive. Picking a fight with a giant whose roots spread across the stars was suicide. He clenched his jaw, suppressing the urge. #### The other matter, the one involving his light avatar and the crew, proved far more complicated. Though Alfa Station officially belonged to a Neutral faction and operated beyond the Magus Alliance’s direct authority, the station generally maintained cooperation with the Alliance. For this reason, the Imperium Enforcer was caught off guard when he and his squad were intercepted and surrounded by Alfa’s full security force the moment they tried to depart. The confrontation teetered on the brink of disaster, forcing the Prefect himself to mediate. However, the Alliance’s Major Taka refused to reveal the details of his mission, invoking "classified protocols," a stance that smelled of a cover-up. The Prefect, unimpressed, pressed the matter with calm but unyielding authority. Under pressure from a supreme figure and with his mission already at risk of exposure, the Major reluctantly agreed to a compromise: a limited-access interrogation under the Prefect’s oversight. For Emery, the revelation was staggering. The entire confrontation had been sparked by the fragmented data salvaged from the ruins of a missing Magus Alliance Outpost. He had nearly forgotten them, tucked away while he focused on repairing the ship and returning home. But to the Alliance, those fragments were dangerous enough to warrant silencing him and his crew indefinitely. The truth became clear. The Major’s orders were not only to retrieve the data but also to ensure the secret never surfaced. Had the Imperium succeeded, Emery and his crew would have been quietly imprisoned simply for possessing information they were never meant to see. Thanks only to the Prefect’s intervention, that fate was averted. Once the Prefect confirmed that neither Emery nor his companions had accessed the data, the Major seized the fragments, purged every trace from the station’s systems, and departed with his squad. Yet in the shadows of bureaucracy, an unofficial arrangement was struck. The Prefect, unwilling to let such a mystery vanish, had copied and repaired the data before allowing the Imperium to erase it. From there, he convened an exclusive meeting with his most trusted executives—and, by right of involvement, Emery was invited to attend. It was in that closed chamber that Emery saw the reconstructed image flicker to life before his eyes. And what it revealed left him stunned. A Magus Alliance outpost, massive and fortified, orbiting a barren world. Then—rifts splitting open in the void. From them surged a monstrous abomination: a beast of writhing tentacles, its body drenched in purplish miasma that bled across the stars. Emery’s breath caught. He had seen simmilar horror before, on Tartarus, during the Northstar Fortress siege. The projection continued. The beast descended upon the outpost like a storm given flesh. Alliance warships fired, spell arrays blazed, but nothing slowed it. The miasma spread like poison, corroding ships and armor alike. Warriors screamed as they were dragged into the writhing mass. Within minutes, the entire station was torn apart, swallowed whole. Silence crushed the chamber. Even the Prefect’s councilors, hardened veterans, stared in mute horror. The Prefect’s voice finally broke through, low and sharp. "To think... the Alliance dared to bury this." His eyes burned like coals. Emery could only stare in silence. The Scourge had fielded many horrors before, but this—this purplish beast that could tear through matter and vanish—was on a different scale altogether. A creature capable of destroying megastructures at will. When the session ended, Emery left the chamber. Behind him, the Prefect and his council deliberated furiously, voices echoing with urgency. The weight of that knowledge pressed on him as he sat, waiting. Hours later, he learned the Prefect had already taken decisive action. Originally, Alfa Station had been preparing to withdraw further from the borderlands, away from the spreading war. But the revelation of such a monster changed everything. For the safety of his people, the Prefect ordered the station to cross into the Alliance’s protective zone, abandoning neutrality in favor of survival. When the decision was made, the Prefect turned once more to Emery."The Alfa Station owes you another great favor." Emery inclined his head, though unease lingered in his chest. He had altered the station’s fate, reshaped the course of millions of lives—but whether his influence had steered them toward safety or into greater peril, he could not yet know. x x x