Gulp. Gulp.
They swallowed again, but the nature of the sound was entirely different. The first time, it was driven by awe and terror. This time, it was pure, unadulterated fanaticism.
"Thresh, ask Orion," Kaidric said, suddenly leaning in and throwing an arm around the mander’s shoulders, a sleazy, ingratiating smile plastered on his face. "Ask him if his harem is running light. Succubi? Banshees? Fallen Angels? Hell, if he wants Calithra—the most beautiful Sovereign in the Abyssal World—I’ll kidnap her for him myself."
"As long as he agrees..." Kaidric practically purred. "My friend, you’ll help me secure a Divine Mantle, right?"
The mander gave Kaidric a withering look, leaving him to figure out the answer for himself.
"Hehehe... Let me tell you," Kaidric rambled, his excitement spiking. "If I send this intel back to the clan, our Chieftain will march here himself. Those rotting, ancient fossils in our elder council will lose their minds."
"They’ll double down. They’ll pour everything they have into this investment."
"..."
Kaidric kept babbling, growing more feverish by the second.
The mander remained silent, his eyes narrowed as he stared into the distance, his mind quiet.
Deputy mander Edward, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, looked from Kaidric to his mander. He recognized this tactic.
Is the mander playing him?
No. The lure of a Divine Mantle is absolute for any demigod. Kaidric and the Death-Soul Race simply cannot resist the temptation.
I see it now, Edward realized with sudden clarity. The connection between the Mirage Void and the Titanion Realm looks like a crisis for us. But in reality, the exposure of the twelve Divine Mantles makes the Mirage Void the true prey.
The mander wasn’t just sharing intel; he was recruiting allies for Orion. He was filtering them.
The mad scramble for the twelve Divine Mantles of the Mirage Void would drive countless factions insane. They would eagerly hand Orion their blades. They would arm Orion and Blackstone City to the teeth just for a seat at the table.
Another unprecedented storm is brewing.
"You’re wrong. The storm isn’t brewing. It’s already here."
The mander snapped from his reverie. His pupils contracted, radiating an intense, suffocating pressure.
"Far from here, the battle has already begun."
Through his expanded senses, the mander felt countless aberrations stirring. They were converging directly on Blackstone City’s coordinates. The scouts he had personally deployed had already engaged the vanguard. A fierce skirmish was underway.
The mander turned to Kaidric, his gaze dead serious. "Can you activate this bronze city now?"
"To bring it online immediately, we’ll have to dump a massive amount of resources into it. Once the core arrays absorb enough World Essence, it will reach equilibrium and sustain itself."
Even as he explained, Kaidric remotely triggered the bronze city’s core arrays. Brilliant lights flared across the ancient fortress. Deep within, massive Great Grinders groaned to life, churning out war slaves.
Seeing the bronze city operational, the mander barked an order to Deputy mander Edward. "Keep channeling the anchoring array. Pull my battle fortress through before the enemy arrives."
He didn’t know the exact strength of the Mirage Void’s opening gambit, but underestimating it was a death sentence. One misstep, and the city would be wiped out.
"Understood." Edward returned to the central magic circle, manipulating the temporal tethers.
Before fully immersing himself in the array, Edward paused and sent a telepathic message to Thresh. "mander, shouldn’t we inform Hulk?"
"He already knows."
"The Wishing Tree’s roots have already saturated the earth beneath our feet. Fused with the tree, Hulk’s sensory range easily rivals my own."
The mander understood the true nature of Orion and the Wishing Tree. He never underestimated their bined potential. The Wishing Tree was the crystallized lifeblood of an Ascendant Plane, deployed to the frontlines of a planar war for a very specific strategic purpose.
"Besides, that demigod broodmother beneath the city is unique. The spiderlings she scattered will relay intelligence back soon enough."
Truthfully, this was the first time Lorelia had formally entered the mander’s radar. He had seen countless broodmothers of various breeds across the realms. However, a dream-attribute broodmother dragged into the Mirage Void and bound to a Wishing Tree? That was entirely unprecedented.
To the mander’s senses, the subterranean depths of Blackstone City were a terrifying enigma. Even his sight could not pierce the veil entirely; he could only discern dense, infinite threads weaving through the bedrock.
It wasn’t a lack of power that stopped him from forcefully prying into its secrets. It was restraint. Doing so would shatter the subterranean hive’s layout, alarming Lorelia, Orion, and the Wishing Tree.
The mander believed Blackstone City needed its own secrets. In a planar war, lacking hidden trump cards was a guaranteed death sentence.
Deep underground. The Endless Hive.
Sensing the arrival of the mander, Kaidric, and Edward, Lorelia had immediately gone into hiding. Even knowing these powerful intruders were allies, she had zero intention of emerging to introduce herself.
Since being the master of the Endless Hive, Lorelia fully understood her role. As long as she existed, Blackstone City could endlessly produce dream spiders, providing the foundation needed to secure a foothold in the Mirage Void.
If she fell, it all crumbled.
Lorelia, the Wishing Tree, Blackstone City, and Orion formed a bizarre quadripartite entity. Removing a single piece would cause the invasion of reality into the void to collapse.
"Master is in deep slumber. Why won’t these guys just leave?" Lorelia muttered under her breath, continuously incubating new spiderlings.
Blackstone City was riddled with her eyes. She didn’t even need to look up to know exactly what was happening on the surface. Besides, staring directly at entities like the mander would easily invite their counter-surveillance.
Lorelia refused to let outsiders uncover the secrets of the underground. She simply wanted these strangers out of her territory.
"I need to teach Kaelen a lesson," she grumbled. "As the new Lord of Blackstone City, he should be stepping up to chase away irrelevant intruders, not waiting for me and Master to handle it."
"Why should the great Lorelia have to waste her energy on such trivial matters?"
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