No school wanted him in attendance, spare a few very bad public ones, mostly because they knew that Nihil would straighten the Junior gangstas out. Bad schools wanted the bear killing genius to bump their tet scores up and bump the bad ones out. Nihil said no and refused to attend any school.

"I already know more than any regular school has to teach and I hate socializing with random people." He knew more than some collegiate institutions. He went on to prove it by taking a series of IQ tests and publishing the results of each along with the difficulty estimate. The last one made the schools and colleges give up on trying to recruit him, even the military accepted that he was intellectually out of their league.

Emperor Karcos eventually declared Nihil an exception to the laws about schooling and truancy, and only those specific laws. It was no surprise, he had written educational texts that advanced physics, medicine, and electronics. Everyone knew him as a cultural icon, not to mention everything else. The Emperor was declaring the obvious and admitting that Nihil was the one that should be teaching, not being forced into a school and lectured.

Gamgam didn't like it, she still believed that kids should be in school, which would come back to bite Nihil right on his iron-like glutes. He went on reinventing what should have never been lost and building his shadow army. The sheer number of homeless, terminally ill, and genetically deficient individuals were more than enough. Nihil only had to offer proper medical care and intervention along with food, water, and a place to live.

Nihil was spending way too much time in his subspaces just to get more done in his non-existent but constrictive timetables. His workouts had hit a level beyond most gods and his army was far beyond normal Nekogian capabilities. Most of his soldiers could singularly solo a squad of Smarcian Special Soldiers, even more if that soldier was wearing armor and was armed. It didn't hurt that Nihil had corrected all defects from inbreeding and the nasty genetic scrambling in his troops, smarter, faster, stronger, tougher, and loyal to a fault.

For every publicly patented invention rolled out for public production and use, there were hundreds that were never even mentioned. His Nekogian military forces quickly dwarfed that of the K.A.R. Empire. The tech of those forces could easily out compete the Smarcians, or whatever name they were going by this time. Stupid long lived giant human psychic weirdos, lying to everyone including themselves about damned near everything in the name of safety and security. Fat lot of nothing all that will do for them, all of the lies just to cop a plague to the face courtesy of the Shtukas.

Engineered moronics must be a popular major for the ruling class of most species, it's examples are everywhere and are unhidden. The Nekogians, Grequenok, Smarcians, Shtukas, Humans; all with the notion that an ignorant populace is somehow a safer population. Misguidance and misinformation leading everyone down the wrong path because they haven't the drive to read into it or wherewithal to ignore the red tape, with said path being the one paved with good intentions but leading straight to hellish ruin and the occasional apocalypse. The ruling class wanting it that way to maintain their "power and authority", falling back on claims of supposed sanctity that never was to keep out those what might threaten their perceived power.

Nihil didn't have time for anyone else's nonsense, he had his own to deal with. The possibility of others being returned to the past was a dangerous possibility, and so he had say to hell with the time tables and get everything done now. If it was a Smarcian returned, they would target Snok and the Nekogians. It was the same with most of the other races, nobody ever corrected the history about the Nekogians. Everyone who wasn't "need to know" wouldn't know and go against the Nekogians thusly spreading the misinformation backwards in time, further vilifying the Nekogian species.

He launched new defense systems and encouraged the Empire to create some of their own without telling them about his. The universe was not so peaceful, and would only get worse. Nihil didn't patent any forms of faster than light travel, and none of his subordinates would dare leak it. He paid them well, cured the incurable, extended lives, and was all around giving off "goodly shadow ruler vibes".

Investigation into the weird genetic scrambling led Nihil to discovering the cause. The fucking Shtukas, they were "a different species" according to the available public database, but purposefully changing two genomes and pretending like like you don't know each other after you shot them off to colonize a new system doesn't make it true. They had virus bombed Snok to prevent the rise of sentient life sometime before the Great Bloom of the World Tree. While it didn't have the desired effect, it did damage to the Nekogians.

The Immortals had a feeling that something was badly amiss and that horrible things were coming. The Empire noticed the changes in the behavior of the Immortals and also started preparations for every bad scenario that they could think of. Nihil even preemptively stole the "pilon" so as to make more clones of the world tree.

Nihil's fervent purchasing of land and businesses put the Emperor, and by extension the whole Nekogian race, into what would be called a compounding feedback loop of hyper paranoia by anyone other than Nihil. It got so bad that Karcos started going gray and called for a meeting, but had to settle for a teleconference with the Immortals, Nihil, the military leaders, and some big business types. Everyone was just too busy in preparation to go anywhere outside of making more paranoid scenarios and preparing for them.

The Smarcian monitoring stations, multiple were installed instead of the one, were reporting everything. Their coalition of returned individuals had insisted that the Nekogians were likely a major threat and moves had been made. The coalition had been around for millions of years, with known individuals spanning many lifetimes returning through time from all times to guide the Smarcians through peace and war. They were responsible for keeping the Nekogians stupid and hopefully preventing the plague, but they had a newborn that should have a plan.

The Emperor Karcosin was eager to find out what was going on. He had problems in the Empire and wanted solutions or answers, hopefully someone knew why they were preparing to defend and counter and overall not die. Nihil had answers, they sounded kinda out there but answerers none the less.

Nihil confessed to employing and housing the homeless, curing and employing the terminally ill, and all of the shady but not evil, nor illegal, incidents of people disappearing, like ninety percent of disappearances were him recruiting. Then he explained a few other things that, while he claimed it was just good business opportunities, were secretly preparations for everything to go sideways. It worked to lower the likelihood of them declaring him to be insane.

He then went on about certain things not adding up about their own historical records and actions of themselves and other species. The new video comms were to great benefit in the explanations, showing past events via an invention used to look through time and space (originally intended for ftl travel). Nobody liked what they were seeing, the weird mental haze around the ancient incident involving the original Nihil and young Shetieve was because of a Smarcian Scion.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

The end goal was to cause an evolutionary stall and decrease intelligence, which must not have been enough. There was another incident in which a certain hated historical figure was granted a weapon by another Smarcian with the planted idea to purge the spontaneous environmental evolution gene from the population. It resulted in the rise of the Strazi. Everyone watching was thinking that the Smarcians must be enemies, but Nihil pointed out that it wasn't worth pursuing war and they should focus on defense.

He went on to a full analysis of the Grequenok, concluding that they were likely a puppet species. Nihil lost a few people in the confoundingly convoluted analysis, but they caught up when he pointed out that they could be controlled by the Smarcians or another psychically gifted race or individual. Then everyone realized that the Smarcians are far more advanced than they claim to be, and less peaceful as well, given that they could have prevented the destruction of an entire civilization by the Grequenok.

Then came the craziest sounding thing. Nihil addressed the extremely high amount of junk DNA within the Nekogian species and how it had a pattern to it. It was a pattern that usually resulted from a failed encryption device, but obviously some sort of biological weapon or device. Nobody wanted to even entertain that idea, but it was there for later.

The meeting raised alarm and everyone resolved to double their efforts. The Smarcian monitoring stations had watched and recorded the entire conference. The high command of the Smarcians was displeased. The race that they tried to prevent from being able to create biological weapons now had every reason to make one specifically for the Smarcians. They had no clue about genetic encryption, but it sounded very familiar to some of the returned.

They just watched as the Nekogians radically expanded defensive zones and prepared for something. The Smarcian High Command suggested that the Nekogians were preparing to resist an assault from them, the Grequenok, or the Shtukas. The High Rulers and the CRI were convinced that Prince Nihil knew more and planned something, it didn't take long.

While Nihil was preparing to absolutely conquer all enemies, Gamgam got an offer. The Smarcians admitted to the Nekogians that they were more advanced than they had claimed and proposed to begin a student exchange program (to ease tensions and divert blame). This was also a devious plot to kidnap Nihil. The "students" that the Smarcians exchanged for Nihil and a few others were actually spy clones made for deep cover with the mission of gathering intelligence and performing sabotage.

Nihil refused to go, then refused again. The Emperor got involved and, with Gamgam, tried the whole "you're a child, so do what adults tell you". Nihil replied by showing the paperwork declaring him to be legally responsible for himself as an adult. They wanted the exchange to happen because the Smarcians promised an alliance to ensure the safety of the children during and after the exchange.

Everything had been hashed out, revised, and legalese-ed to hell and back before hand, they had just forgot to tell Nihil that he was on the list of exchange-ies. Nihil refused a third time and both governments approved a method of persuading him. Gamgam put a special chemical in the stew one night and all three individuals of the household were drooling everywhere and being way too friendly in a few minutes. A bit of nip for good measure had Nihil drooling, purring, and none resistant to being carried away for the exchange program.

The Smarcians kept Nihil on the ([TRANSLATION] Gabapentin) for the whole trip. This caused serious withdrawal symptoms and complete memory loss from the time subjected to the chemical. Nihil woke up feeling like he was being burned alive and turned inside out. He was also in an isolation cell with no memory of what happened, but his brain did have a clue to the amount of time that had passed. Three months of blank memory.

They only gave him the worst food and kept him isolated for years after he woke up. They claimed that he had bitten someone while under the influence of drugs. They admitted that they were the source of said drugs, but claimed intoxication of a minor was a zero tolerance law. It was made worse by their claims of no surveillance when Nihil's instincts could pick out each and every one.

They tried to forget that he existed. It didn't work. Nihil could feel the time flow in this new prison was altered, going faster than outside, exponentially so. Then there was the fact that he wasn't aging, which really had him concerned.

They eventually "released" him. They had engineered things to go how they desired, the exchange was a false flag attack amongst the spying and kidnapping. The clones had bugged, espionaged, and everything else as planned in the first year. They then all fell dead at the same time, the clones were serving their last purpose. It was an excuse to invade the Nekogians.

A few "accidents" happened after the Nekogians were defeated. It was a forgone conclusion that the Smarcians would win from the beginning. The only things that would have been an issue were already dealt with via sabotage and malicious software.

They stripped the Nekogians of all weapons and machinery to create weapons. The Smarcians were malicious in the definition of the word weapon, nevermind the fact that half of Snok was now a cratered hell scape and the population was a pitiful tenth of what it was. Unfortunately the forces of Nihil's shadow military didn't join in, they secretly evacuated about eight billion Nekogians into the hidden spaces between spaces, sorted them, and were training for the big reveal.

The damned AI ships were still in the in-between, or some version of it. They were just now getting their crap together after the whole treason thing. Stealthsea was still on lockdown, imprisoned within a shipyard for what "she?" did. Other vessels that had turned a blind sensor array to the incident also received punishment, but otherwise even the universe ending wouldn't make them unready.

The Smarcian fleets that were supposed to keep the Nekogians safe and keep them unarmed had responded to an emergency call. This was the same time that a Shtukas pre-colonization force showed up to virus bomb the planet of Snok. This left, to the Smarcians knowledge, only the six-ish thousand Nekogians on KR-9. The shadows were waiting for the signal, but kept waiting.

Eventually the Smarcians dumped Nihil on KR-9 and reminded him that they were not allowed weapons before they screwed off back to high orbit. They still got hit with the same plague as last, made by the same people, but it was a different delivery method. Note that the Smarcians were a multi galactic civilization and every one of their planets got hit, meaning it couldn't have been the, now stone age, Nekogians.

Nihil learned that not only did the Smarcians have returned individuals, but the Shtukas did as well. This was proven by how every inch of KR-9 was thoroughly searched right after the first plague attack and how things played out. Nihil watched and listened, the Smarcians did have some monitoring towers that played the news on large holographic projections.

Nihil built his house out of stone and clay, right at the edge of what the Smarcians would allow things to be built around the big central tower. Things were bad, shortages of food, water, absolutely no industry or medicine, but Nihil had a plan and it was already in motion. He had his house, a small garden, and was digging a well. It sucked doing it by hand, but why not.

While he was jailed, the Smarcians grilled Nihil with many interrogations, using any means outside of causing visible harm to learn any secrets of his, but failed. If he had secrets, which he did, they would never know. They even had to get medical staff because of the interrogations becoming to aggressive.

Where was Claus? He was staying hidden because from the time that the Smarcians took Nihil to when he finally put a door on the house, they were watching, listening, and psionicsizing. Sure they acted like they forgot that Nihil existed, but Claus could not risk exposure. As soon as the door shut, Claus popped up.

Nihil knew that being angry at him was unfair, so he shelved it. Too strong of any emotion near the tower would get the guards involved. Nihil talked quietly with Claus and eventually decided to strike out for the unpopulated side of the planet.