Chapter 650 Our Transports Shall Block Out the Sun!

Chapter 650 Our Transports Shall Block Out the Sun!

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[E/D: the remainder of the missed chapters will be released late today or tomorrow.]

“Since the foundation of the empire, We have taken pride in our track record of promises made, promises kept. And today, We are here to deliver on one another of those promises: Our thousandth fortress city.” Aron stood at a podium addressing the public in one of the new fortress city’s government squares, a space about as big as an American football stadium. The entire area was filled to the brim with citizens who had nothing but smiles on their faces as they listened to his address.

The people watching Aron’s address live would be among the first to finally receive keys to their new living spaces in the fortress city Aron was currently using as a venue for his speech. They had been anticipating the day they would finally become property owners in the empire ever since their interior designs had been approved.

Over the past six months, fortress city after fortress city had been coming online and filling with residents in an orderly fashion. There was something to be said for the organizational skills of AIs, after all.

The release of homes to those who had bought them, subsidized or not, had also been a great boost to the morale of the empire at large. Most of the new homeowners were of the millennial generation, and had been most afraid of never owning property of their own and always being subject to the whims of landlords. For them, it was a brilliant plan on the empire’s part and they were practically shouting with glee after receiving their own little piece of permanence.

“And with that, We hereby declare this fortress city officially open,” Aron concluded as he cut a golden ribbon with comically oversized scissors. The city’s official mayor aided him by holding half of the scissors as they snipped through the ribbon. Some traditions were timeless, and ribbon-cutting ceremonies were one of them.

The people in the audience wildly cheered as Aron shook the mayor’s hand and stepped down from the temporary stage that had been erected for his speech. He walked through the crowd, “shaking hands and kissing babies”, as the saying went, until he finally made it to the other end where he met with his two aegis shadows and began an unofficial tour of the rest of the city, leaving the mayor to handle the rest of the administrivia involved in opening the fortress cities.

Having walked for miles, he ended up in one of the many large playgrounds scattered throughout the city. He sat down to rest on one of the benches and a group of children ran up to him, showing no fear of the most powerful human in the species and chattering at him like a flock of magpies. They had seen him on TV and heard enough about him from their parents to know that he was powerful, but children have a strange idea of power and often mix it up with physical strength, something that Aron didn’t appear to possess much of.

The media and most of his emperor’s aegis escort were quite a distance from him, at his personal request. The reporters were focused on his interaction with the children, while his aegis escort was busy maintaining a security perimeter around the edges of the park space.

Aron squatted down so that he was at eye level with the “leader” of the children and began, “So, what’s your drea—”

But before he could finish his question, his expression grew serious and he rose to his feet. The two emperor’s aegis near him, alerted by his behavior, were only half a heartbeat slower than him in turning on their “combat mode”, so to speak. Aegis teams, and especially the emperor’s aegis, were never entirely lax, but the current threat level had been deemed as minimal, so they were as relaxed as they ever were.

“Protect the kids,” Aron ordered his two close guards, then stepped away from the gaggle of children.