Ch.134134. The Hero’s Return

Not long ago, a massive event shook the entire galaxy.

Though called an event, it wasn’t exactly an accident or disaster; rather, it could be considered good news.

It was the return of the legendary ancient hero, the great mercenary king ‘Teresia.’

She had disappeared at some point, but then dramatically reappeared—just like the widely circulated “※Hero’s Return” legend—saving a recently colonized planet. Naturally, her name once again spread throughout the galaxy.

※Hero’s Return Legend (A folk tale claiming that the missing Teresia would someday reappear and exterminate monsters. This absolutely was not artificially spread by certain individuals.)

Tourists and journalists from across the galaxy swarmed every planet she visited, hoping to catch a glimpse of her face or even just her Titan Armor. Her mere words frequently caused planetary governments to change hands.

Above all, her return had the greatest impact on—quite predictably—the mercenary industry and mercenary guild stocks.

While her influence partly stemmed from being like “a legendary CEO returning to the company she founded,” what mattered more was the 55% of total mercenary guild shares she owned—shares that had been considered void during her disappearance.

Her reappearance, with contractual rights to 55% ownership of all companies bearing the mercenary guild name, effectively meant the mercenary guild could now exert influence across the galaxy as a unified power.

Because of this, Teresia integrated the previously haphazard operations under the mercenary guild headquarters while simultaneously eliminating various corrupt practices that had persisted under the name of “tradition.”

Of course, the existing factions—those who had divided the remaining 45% of guild shares among themselves—opposed her monopolistic decision-making, but… what could they really do?

With the majority of shares in Teresia’s hands, even if they all united, a single word from her would overrule their opinions.

Thus, all they could manage were sleazy media plays and near-terrorist operations. Naturally, Teresia, as a top-tier psychic user with transcendent senses, easily detected these and began purging them.

Most had to pay enormous compensation according to federal law, enough to disrupt their existing businesses. Numerous media companies that had foolishly gotten involved were forced to shut down.

Some corporate executives with particularly heinous offenses literally ended up with nooses around their necks—truly reaping what they had sown.

In any case, the reorganization of the mercenary guild after her return was welcomed and supported by almost everyone except those being reorganized.

The mercenary guild had lost its leader in an instant when she disappeared, and though large in scale, its internal power structure had become a mess—treated less as a faction itself and more like a trophy for competing powers.

Consequently, while ordinary citizens and guild-affiliated mercenaries were dying, the ancient great hero appeared to establish a clear order.

With widespread support, the mercenary guild’s system was completely restructured.

First, concrete standards for evaluating mercenary groups—previously loosely classified as medium or small-scale—were established, similar to individual mercenary rankings.

Like mercenary ranks, these consisted of five levels—lowest, low, middle, high, and highest—further subdivided into eleven grades from 10 to 0. The evaluation criteria were extremely fair and reasonable.

To reduce dissatisfaction among mercenary groups, Teresia chose to increase benefits for higher ranks rather than reduce them for lower ranks, while also expanding the range of support for mercenary groups in general.

The massive capital gained from selling off shares and management rights of underperforming companies made this extravagant spending possible, and even after all this, vast amounts of capital remained.

With these remaining funds, Teresia cultivated a new guard force with all authority—from command to minor privileges—vested solely in her.

While direct forces under the mercenary guild had existed before, they had all been removed through purges.

To be precise, nothing remained, so Teresia had to form an entirely new guard force…

Surprisingly, this guard force was quickly organized.

With Teresia leading this mercenary guild guard, applicants flooded in from across the universe, and with industry-leading compensation, the human resources were top-notch.

Moreover, their exclusive equipment was manufactured by Nano-Tech’s headquarters factories, incorporating technology from artifact Titan Armor that couldn’t be analyzed before due to technological limitations.

The large, heavy powered suits were implanted with artificial neural networks made of psychic crystals, allowing users to control them with the precision of their own bodies, and the equipment quality was on another level entirely.

Plasma hand cannons—so expensive that even high-rank mercenaries complained about the cost—were issued to non-commissioned officers (roughly equivalent to rank 4-5 mercenaries), and the CQC daggers issued to everyone were plasma weapons.

The standard infantry rifle was something called a pulse auto-gun, which fired light clusters like a real gun but in laser-like bursts.

Naturally, these traveled at near-light speed, and thanks to several psychic engravings, they possessed slight mass, creating unimaginable destructive power.

While these weapons were issued to what were essentially regular infantry, higher positions filled by high-rank mercenaries were equipped with newly created Titan Armor based on Teresia’s own.

Even the lowest-grade models required liberal use of psychic crystals in their frame, making each one cost equivalent to an escort ship, and ordinary people—even mid-rank hunters—couldn’t use them.

However, when a high-rank mercenary mounted such advanced weaponry, they effectively became ten times larger and could exert their high-rank mercenary strength ten times more powerfully.

From various maneuvers previously impossible due to size constraints, to performing these maneuvers while flying at tremendous speeds, they were deemed impossible to counter without similar forces.

To these high-rank hunter pilots in Titan Armor—weapons that might change the paradigm of human space warfare—Teresia gave a name:

Titan Warriors, warriors who fight as giants.

※ ※ ※

As mentioned before, the planetary defense forces of each planet generally vary widely in quality.

This phenomenon, caused by differences in each planet’s environment, industry, civilization, technology, and government systems, occurs even within the same planet since different regions often have different governments.

Thus, while some planetary defense forces are little more than serfs with laser rifles, others are fully equipped with advanced powered suits comparable to the Federal Army.

The planetary defense force of this agricultural planet Biden was, unfortunately, only slightly better than the first example.

Planet Biden specialized in agriculture, particularly high-end organic produce for the elites of nearby industrial planets, and remarkably still operated under a feudal system.

Knights wore powered suits and rode bikes instead of horses, while common people were “serfs”—property belonging to lords—who normally worked themselves to the bone before being dragged into territorial wars between lords as cannon fodder.

Moreover, to prevent environmental pollution from devaluing agricultural products, all work was done by exploiting human labor on this planet—

WHOOSH!!!

“Hang them all!!!”

“Kill them! Kill them!”

“Don’t give them an easy death!!!”

A serf rebellion had broken out, throwing the entire planet into chaos.

The beautiful castles built through the exploitation of countless workers had collapsed, and the once serene landscapes were now overrun with grotesque fleshy plants.

The wheat fields had long since burned to ashes, becoming empty wastelands of dust, while the orchards had grotesquely transformed into jungles where landowners’ and nobles’ flesh chunks and heads hung from trees.

The livestock and the rebelling serfs themselves had all mutated into hybrid monsters—part plant, part animal—each shockingly powerful, somewhere between mid and low rank.

To understand why this happened, we need to go back in time and first examine the state of the Hive Mind.