Slowly, very slowly, Pef cultivated towards the next Tier.

He had seen the current Archdemon reach the 4th Tier, and was quite certain of the required steps to achieve this for himself.

In fact, the Legion's standard cultivation method contained all the steps up to 6th Tier, or the Elder God Realm. However, the General in her immense wisdom, had neglected the slight problem of ascending while separated from the logistic chain, without the normal instructors, skill manuals, Legion energy pills and tactical memory jades.

Pef did have the glove, from a certain point of view, yet unreliable and uncertain type of instructor.

That he even survived to this day was more happenstance and luck than careful guidance.

The thousands of dead ancestors could attest to this, all while wearing the Xi name and the orange glove...and his own son, Hero.

With a slight push, Pef began popping out of the dense core of the gas giant, surrounded by a nimbus of hot gases and electric fields. A few seconds later, he broke free and sped away, reaching the void and a stable orbit around the gas giant Zeus.

There was a space station nearby, one that hasn't been there before.

With a Blink, Pef arrived on-board. A Guardian golem scanned him and then lowered the impaler gun. "Pef Xi, Legion Soldier, recognized."

Pef sighed inward and examined the modern station with his coresense. Quite modern and powerful the new station, especially the energy lances. The weapons could shatter a moon, going by the energy readings, so not too shabby.

He locked onto the command deck and Blinked there. "Commander! Welcome back, finally..." the green haired recruit exclaimed at once. A Monarch...and one he didn't know. Druid origins, quite certainly.

"Must have lost track of time...cultivating." Pef explained in a terse voice.

"... As you say, Commander. The Zeus battlestation has been emplaced here 56 years ago." the guy explained in a wry tone.

'And I never noticed?' Pef asked inwardly.

'Exactly. You're pretty much a moron.' the glove replied amused.

Pef sighed again and sat down into a command chair, extending a hand to tap the touch screen array.

A holomap of the galaxy opened, as well as a dedicated military com channel, rapidly logging various demands and orders down the command chain.

'Gimme a short resume.' Pef asked in a tired tone. Trying to create a big picture from disparate demands for Legion maize supplies and activated purple jade beacons made little sense to him.

'Well...the first 13 galaxies were colonized without much problem. It's the Purple Veil Galaxy that seems problematic.

Those Shadow Ants seem to provide a nice training environment and plenty of target practice. Legion losses remain stable, at less than 30 percent per year. Victory presumed to occur in less than a century.' the orange glove said in a military tone.

Pef almost spit his teeth out. 'You must be kidding me! 30 percent losses?' he asked in a horrified voice.

'Exactly. Out of 55 billion new Legion recruits last years, 16 billion have died on the battlefields of Purple Veil galaxy.

Seems pretty relaxed to me.' the adjutant glove replied, in a fine example of machine logic.

Pef blinked and checked the Legion's statistics. Roughly 34 thousand colonized planets, in this universe...100 thousand training camps, total Legion personnel: just shy of 1 trillion. About 5 percent of those were new recruits...

"You served at this Purple Veil?" Pef asked to make conversation.

The green haired guy nodded proudly. "Yes, Sir. I lead the assault of that jade beacon mine in the Scorpion Arm. Nasty business there. Lost most of the regiment. Then Lady Aria came and cracked their planet in half..." the man explained in a wistful voice, and flared a demonic blade to prove his point. Demon bone, and glowing white with sword intent.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"One with the World..." Pef remarked absently.

"Yes, Sir. Down in the tunnels...you get better very fast." the station officer replied wisely.

However, the seat was already empty.

Gathering momentum, Pef Blinked towards that galaxy at high speed, and kept accelerating.

Each Void jump became longer with every second, and light second. 20 Billion kilometers, 50, 100, 500...900 billion kilometers.

As Pef reached his new limit in length, he began pulsing the jumps faster. Instead of 1 per second he could instead do 3 then 7 then 10. With 10 jumps every second, he achieved 1 light-year travel each second.

'And thus you begin to reach towards your true potential.' the glove murmured softly.

'Just, shut up. 16 billion dead, every year. And it never crossed your mind they need not die?' Pef replied angrily.

The glove stayed shut.

In a few hours, Pef left his home galaxy already and began accelerating again, as the inter-galactic void was much less straining to pierce than the void inside the galaxy. Less dense, if that made any sense.

By the next day he already reached the outskirts of the Purple Veil.

Tremendous flashes and discharges of qi filled the void, as a myriad of Legion spaceships engaged the tubular vessels of the Shadow Ants.

Pef crushed into the battlefield like a comet, glowing silver and shooting beams of sword intent. A thousand beams at once. One with the Heavens was indeed a terrifying weapon, especially towards lower tier cultivators.

Silent cheers followed him as he rushed towards the next space battle. The void didn't conduct sound, not even in this universe. Behind him, an entire formic armada was broken into scraps.

Circling the galaxy in ever tightening orbits, Pef cleared the major engagements and vanquished most of the insectile opposition, before heading towards the deep core of the Purple Veil, and the formic capital.

The defense station didn't pose more of a problem than the regular warships. His sword intent had passed the 50 percent mark, and could pierce any known material already.

As Pef lithobraked onto the surface of the capital, the shockwave alone pulverized the nearby ant soldiers, levelling forts and mountains and creating a hundred kilometer wide crater, all devoid of life.

"You have one hour. Show me your sincerity." Pef proclaimed with a qi infused voice.

'The ants are presumed to have a number of last resort weapons. The Oracle herself proscribed the fleets from attacking their homeworld.' The glove advised him, and earned a faceslap.

'It doesn't matter, and you know it very well, my orange glove. If kind words won't work, I'm certain they'll listen to reason.' Pef replied in a sad tone.

Reason appeared in his hand, the gun almost quivering with anticipation.

As always, the glove's spirit drew back and let the gun speak instead.

'Don't tell me. You want me to sing.' the power word weapon said sarcastically.

'I actually don't. We're the aggressors here. Just keep them honest.' Pef muttered with a shrug.

It didn't take an hour for a formic delegation to assemble, including a dozen tier 2 Ant Warriors and a Royal Ant Queen.

The queen herself was a Tier 3 Entity and seemed reasonably powerful to anyone else. Her shadow was moving in strange ways, appearing quite menacing.

But Pef knew better. An ant was merely an ant. In this case, literally.

'A human ruler?' the queen asked hesitantly with her mind.

'The Legion isn't a humanocentric organization. The fledgling wing in this universe is a mere accident, thus conscripting mostly humans. But in the wider multiverses, the Legion has a trillion species as its members.' Pef said in a level tone.

'You have a Galactic class weapon in your hand. And it seems operational. We surrender.' the queen said after a few seconds.

Pef nodded. Reason always wins.