Ro stayed where the battle fire raged most blazingly, acting as a human vanguard while Panther orchestrated the movents of the masters behind her.
Even though Panther was a formidable master in his own right, he lacked the "William factor." He hadn’t witnessed the guild master’s miracles firsthand, nor had he experienced the combat training the others had undergone.
Consequently, Ro’s area progress was the slowest of the five. If not for the five terrifying monsters on their side holding the flank, and if not for Panther’s unique Ti Elent—which allowed him to anticipate disastrous locations before losses would happen—they would have lost ten tis the n they had already buried.
Despite the varying speeds and levels of success, the five elite forces of the Fox Guild were eventually closing in on their respective monster gates. The race was nearing its conclusion.
The first to successfully anchor and control a gate was Fang, followed closely by Becky. Anjie took the third spot through sheer, rage-fueled determination, with Lara following in her wake. Lastly, through Panther’s help, Ro’s force finally secured the fifth gate.
As they began the monuntal task of laying down dense layers of defensive formations and mass-producing the specialised spears, the rest of the world was ushered into an age of fire and ruins.
The initial outbreak, which had been limited to a dozen locations, had escalated violently over the past week. Monster gates were now popping up like black sores across the face of the entire world. Spirit masters everywhere—from the frozen north to the tropical south—started to feel it in their very bones: the end was near.
News of the Fox Guild’s tactics spread like wildfire. The secret of the special spears was now common knowledge thanks to the deliberate efforts of the guild’s ssengers.
At first, many distant nations had dismissed the news as the bad luck of a single continent. But as the bears erged in colossal numbers, everyone realised the truth. This wasn’t a localised phenonon or a simple monster tide; it was a planetary extinction event.
Once the hamr fell globally, the world began to follow the Fox Guild’s blueprint. Every forge was lit, every blacksmith was drafted, and every master was ordered to make as many spears as possible. Strongholds were reinforced, and the primary goal shifted from "victory" to "survival"—saving as many humans as could be gathered behind walls.
The forces that stood the best chance were the ones already possessing a rigid structure: the spirit master academies, the royal capitals, and the imperial cities.
These locations were backed by centuries of defensive architecture, ancient formations, and deep reservoirs of master-level power. They had fought tough wars before, and their foundations were built to withstand the pressure.
The worst tragedies, however, erupted in the decentralised regions. Clans, small towns, and remote villages were being wiped off the map in a matter of days. Large clans with deep history found it easier to defend, but the smaller, independent ones were being consud by the tide.
Those with ties to the great academies fared better, receiving early warnings and shipnts of spears, while the independent clans were left to fight and die in the dark.
The pressure on the world’s spirit masters reached an agonising fever pitch. Every dawn brought fresh, harrowing reports of the destruction of many forces, the annihilation of clans, and the total collapse of towns.
The fall of the Novice Kingdom and the neighbouring kingdoms had rely been the preamble to a global symphony of slaughter.
As the days bled into a week of constant siege, the global population finally grasped the terrifying truth the Fox Guild had tried to warn them about: without the specialised spears, they were rely lambs awaiting the knife.
The news of this worldwide collapse trickled into the Fox Guild’s command headquarters, reaching the ears of William’s closest friends. They listened to the casualty reports with heavy hearts, but they were pinned by the weight of their own survival.
They had been generous with their knowledge, disseminating the blueprints for the spears, sharing tactical manoeuvres for countering the Scarlet Bears’ montum, and offering survival tips to any force that would listen before the tide beca a global ocean.
However, they were at their absolute limit. They had no spare masters to send as reinforcents, and the spears they were producing at a frantic, round-the-clock pace were barely sufficient to sustain the grinding attrition at their own many fronts.
The tragedy was personal for each of them. Anjie knew the suffocating grief of watching a kingdom fall. Berry knew what it ant to watch your clan burn. Sara could easily imagine how devastating it was to watch your academy get destroyed.
Lara stood on the literal ruins of her flourishing city, and Ro understood better than anyone the precarious fate of small towns caught in the path of a monster tide.
They were all related to part of the grim news in one way or another. Yet, in these turbulent tis, when the darkness lood close enough to taste, they were united by a single, unwavering conviction.
There was only one light left that could truly push back the night, one person whose vision transcended the current carnage: William.
To them, he wasn’t just a guild master; he was the world’s last and sole hope of survival. They had to do everything, sacrifice everything, to ensure he succeeded in his gamble within the dium World.
William, however, remained blissfully unaware of the global chaos. Isolated in the strange atmosphere of the dium realm, he was a man transford into a machine.
He had spent an entire week in a state of deep, ditative labour, mass-producing the needles and the long spears until his hands moved with the rhythm of a heartbeat. He had lost count of the number of items he had forged, his focus solely on the quality of making them.
Finally, the fires of his ovens died down. He stood in the centre of a cleared plateau, surrounded by mounds of discarded slag and rows of shimring weapons.
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