(Meanwhile amongst the Righteous Faction commoners, a couple days after Juxta's fall)
The news of Juxta's demise spread fast amongst the Righteous Faction media outlets, who covered it like it was the greatest development of the century.
Before the ashes of Juxta had even cooled, its annihilation had already been transformed into a story — polished, repackaged, and circulated across every major network under the banner of 'Victory for the Righteous Faction.'
Within hours, the broadcast channels replayed the same footage on loop: the flash of the explosion, the blinding collapse of a world, and the triumphant crest of Commander Raymond's fleet hovering against the ruins.
Commentators spoke of it with awe, with reverence even, their voices trembling as they declared it a turning point in history, a moment that would be remembered for millennia as the day the ancient Evil Cult finally fell to the light.
On GalaxyNet, the largest civilian network spanning half the known universe, millions of live feeds erupted at once, as Hashtags like #RaymondTheRedeemer, #JuxtaFalls, and #EndOfTheCult flooded the trending charts within minutes, climbing past every entertainment or economic headline until they swallowed the grid entirely.
"Finally! The Evil Cult's good times are over!"
"Two billion cultists dead? Good! That's two billion fewer monsters in the universe!"
"Commander Raymond is following in his father's footsteps and eradicating Evil from this universe. It's indeed like people say.... The apple does not fall far from the tree."
Messages like these appeared by the millions, lines of text typed by trembling fingers, fueled by decades of indoctrinated fear and generations of loss, each post celebrating slaughter as if it were salvation.
Some even livestreamed themselves drinking to the destruction, singing hymns for the purification of the stars, as banners depicting the Righteous Faction emblem flashed behind them in holographic light.
Not one of them spoke of the children buried under the ash, nor the innocent Cult civilians who never even held a weapon in their life.
To the masses, Juxta had not been a planet, it had been a symbol of Cult defiance, and hence they felt no remorse for its obliteration even though the Code Of War had been broken.
"Death to the cultists."
"That's right, I support Commander Raymond's decision to not follow the code of war! The Code is for humane people, not terrorists who attack students in public arenas. Those who criticize him should first look at the family members of the sky god arena tragedy eye to eye."
"You don't cure disease by talking to it. You burn it out."
"A few billion corpses for a pure galaxy? Sounds like a good trade to me."
Each line hit the feed like hammer blows, echoing across galaxies and clan borders, as hatred snowballed into worship, and genocide became something worth applauding.
There were, of course, a few voices of dissent — faint, isolated whispers buried beneath the tide of celebration.
One user, posting under the tag @OrdinaryHistorian, wrote quietly:
"War crimes are outlawed for a reason. If we commit them ourselves, can we really cry foul when the Cult does the same? What happens if tomorrow they destroy one of our planets without giving our civilians a chance to run? What then?"
It was a simple message, unembellished, and yet within moments it was buried beneath a storm of replies.
"Shut up, Cult Sympathizer."
"Go join your Cockless Cult buddies if you love them so much."
"I'm telling you right now, I'll hire a hacker and find out where you live and who you are, and then, I'll break your nose!"
"People like you are why we keep losing our sons!"
"The Evil Cult destroys everything they touch, and now that they've tasted their own medicine, you cry justice?"
"Ban this traitor already!"
In less than five minutes, the comment was flagged for sedition and anti-Righteous sentiment by thousands of users, until the post vanished entirely, deleted by the system's automated ethics filter.
By then, the crowd had already moved on — cheering, praising, demanding statues and medals for Commander Raymond, and singing songs in the streets of the Core Worlds.
On planet Rodova, the markets surged to all-time highs as propaganda broadcasts declared the win on Juxta as 'The End of the Evil Cult's Era,' while fireworks painted the night sky with artificial brilliance.
Yet amidst all the celebration, none stopped to think about what had truly happened.
No one asked how a single planet of billions could vanish in one order.
No one questioned how many of the dead had even carried weapons.
For they had long since learned to see the civilians of the Cult not as people, but as parasites who were less than human and hence unworthy of their empathy or mourning.
And thus, humanity did what it always did best— it celebrated its own cruelty beneath the guise of righteousness.
The victors sang of justice, never realizing that in their triumph, they had become the very evil they believed they destroyed.
And yet, that was the greatest irony of them all..... that evil, in its purest form, had never truly perished.
It had simply changed sides.
The same hatred that once fueled the Cult now burned in the hearts of the so-called righteous, dressed in finer words and cleaner uniforms, but no less savage beneath the surface.
They believed themselves liberated, enlightened, victorious, when in truth, they had merely traded one tyranny for another.
For every bomb that fell upon Juxta, another chain was forged upon their own conscience; and while they called it justice, the universe quietly marked it as hypocrisy.
The stars above bore witness to it all, a billion suns watching as humanity once again mistook slaughter for salvation, and called the ruin they wrought as 'peace'.
For what they did not understand today, was that with Charles's death, the last chain holding Leo's morality had been snapped.
And that with the Righteous Faction breaking the code of war first, there was no longer a reason for him to observe it anymore either.
(More chapters in Buyers club for TMT)