"What does the Sacred Knights leader want from you? He has already been waiting for half an hour, and he has yet to speak a single word…." Mathias told Nial in a quiet voice the moment his friend finished absorbing mana.
'/if Silvian is waiting for me, something is definitely wrong…'
Nial didn't like this conclusion, and he could only frown deeply.
During the last few days, the groups of the other shelters had gotten to work as well. Despite coming in too late, they worked hard, and didn't complain when the Originals of the Liondra group took it easy.
All of them worked hard, and soon most dungeons had been cleared. The mana they released had dispersed in the wind, the ground and to the other dungeon portals.
Currently, less than 70 permanent dungeons were left, including one semi-permanent dungeon.
The Abyssal ranked dungeon had been cleared more than 10 times, the breakout state had been solved, and it would soon disappear completely.
Semi-permanent dungeons existed as long as they were not conquered a specific amount of times. From the looks of it, the Abyssal ranked dungeon required only 10 more clears before it would disappear.
Many things had changed during the last few days, and the teleportation circle had also been repaired. It was already possible for them to return to the large hall where all the teleportation circles had been located.
With their use, it would only require a few more days to travel through the wilderness before they would be back at their shelter of choice.
It wouldn't be long before Nial and Mathias were to be allowed to return because they had been enlisted in the military for the sole purpose of reclaiming Juna.
And this state would be attained the moment all dungeons, and beasts had been taken care of.
'Please, don't bring any bad news…' Nial was just praying as he emerged from their small tent, and found Silvian right in front of him.
"Greetings, respected Sacred Knights leader, how may I help you?" Nial asked in an exaggeratingly polite way.
Many Originals had gotten wind of the fact that Silvian had been waiting in front of Nial and Mathias' tent for half an hour.
A small crowd had formed around them because everyone wanted to know what was going on, and why the Sacred Knights leader was so interested in Nial.
The rumors about Nial and the Sacred Knights leader having spoken at length earlier had reached everyone's ears as well, and there was not a single Original, who didn't know about it.
Even the Originals of the other groups had learned about it.
That was also why Nial acted overly polite in front of the Sacred Knights leader, who looked at him with squinted eyes.
'He really acts like a lowly human, sucking up to his superior… that's disgusting.' Silvian just thought, his expression souring before he nonchalantly ordered,
"Come with me."
Nial did as told and followed Silvian back to his tent. However, what he didn't expect to happen was his Mana sense to detect Kirlia, the veiled woman, Silvian's subordinate at the Prometheus rank, and a few other powerhouses within Silvian's tent.
'Is there really some trouble? What the hell?!' Nial felt like beating someone up. He wanted to have a few days of peace.
However, peace was not compatible with the life of the God of Darkness, and neither with Nial's fate.
That was something he should have long since realized, but Nial stubbornly disregarded everything he had encountered until now, believing that it was just a mere coincidence.
But it was not as if it was easy to accept that one's fate was bound to be filled with trouble, with chaos and death coldly breathing down your neck at every step?
"Why is this youngling here? I doubt that he is your disciple, and neither does he hail from big families…" A hoarse voice reverberated through the tent.
The voice belonged to a bulky man, whose height easily exceeded 2.3 meters. He looked down on Nial's tiny, yet, well-trained body.
"He needs to be here, period," Silvian replied in a clipped tone before sitting down on the closest chair. There were more than 10 people in the room that were seated around a round table, and only two seats were vacant.
"Well, whatever. Can we continue? You just left to take a look at the location I mentioned before and came with this…youngling."
'What location?' Nial immediately thought upon hearing the words of the tall and bulky man. Nial had a premonition and he simply sat down on the empty chair, Silvian had pulled back.
There was no need for the Sacred Knights leader to say anything. The tension in the room was more than enough to show that something big was about to happen.
But Nial didn't expect things to be THAT serious. When the situation was explained in a rough manner, Nial felt as if his head had been dumped in a bucket full of poison.
His brain felt like it had been mashed just now, and he didn't want to believe what he had just heard.
"Wait, are you for real?!" Nial asked, jumping up from his chair, and toppling it over. With a loud thump, the chair landed on the ground, and everyone looked at Nial, most of them with contempt.
'Can't this nobody keep his mouth shut? It's already weird for him to attend such an important meeting, to begin with. Pay attention to the hierarchy, weakling!!' One of the powerhouses from Titure, the 5th shelter, thought in displeasure.
He felt like beating the crap out of Nial but held back because it looked like the Sacred Knights leader thought highly of the blind Original.
Contrary to everyone else, who merely looked at Nial with various emotions, Silvian nodded his head and sighed deeply.
"Yes, we are for real. I have already taken a look at the area where the changes have begun. Apparently, the region near Juna is decaying. However, that is not all because the decayed location is replaced with a different environment.
For now, only four square meters around Juna have decayed, and merely one square meter is replaced with a completely different environment. A bush has manifested out of nowhere when I took a look. The mana density of that one square meter is also several times higher than everywhere around or within Juna." Silvian said, his eyes flicking to Nial.
He revealed new information to everyone, but his attention was only on Nial. It was almost as if he wanted to catch even the slightest reaction in Nial's facial expression after he was bombarded with the new piece of news.
"So you mean this 'decay' destroys the surrounding area, only for it to be completely replaced by flourishing nature? And the mana density is even higher than in Juna? Isn't that great?" This time, it was Kirlia, who spoke.
She had remained silent for the whole time because everyone else was considered a higher authority than her.
In the end, the Prometheus Originals of the Heaven's Gates organization had died. Thus, Kirlia was the next highest authority to represent her organization.
But even if she represented her organization, there were still many things she didn't know simply because her authority hadn't been high enough in the Heaven's Gates.
That was also why she felt that the current happenings might be quite advantageous for them.
However, only Kirlia thought like this, and many Prometheus Originals could only roll their eyes.
'How foolish can someone be?!'
While many felt that Kirlia was definitely the wrong person to be here right now, Nial's mind was in a total mess.
'Wait, Wait, wait a fucking damn moment?!' He nearly shouted out.
Right now, Nial wanted nothing more than to speak with Silvian alone, and not have the other powerhouses around them.
The God of Saints and Devils felt the same because only he and Nial knew what was going on.
In the end, it was not necessary to speak with each other to clear their facts because it was quite obvious what was going on.
However, both felt a little bit bothered and they hoped that the other party would reassure them that nothing wrong would happen.
For Silvian, the current situation was troublesome because he could tell that all his meticulously worked out plans were about to crumble. This frustrated him and it was the reason for him to have pulled Nial to the meeting of the biggest organizations and highest authorities present.
'The plateau of a race was about to descend on Jundra, replacing the third shelter and its surrounding completely.'
That was what Nial concluded. He had seen this a few times in Damian's memories, wherein he had done the same on other planets.
At first, a part of the land that possessed enough mana would be disintegrated, and turned in the purest form of mana before a separated dimension that was created especially for the purpose of descending somewhere specific would be transported to the said landmark.
And that was currently happening.
'But how?!' Nial wondered.
He knew that it required tremendous amounts of mana for an Isolated Plateau to descend somewhere.
"Jundra shouldn't possess enough mana for that to happen…." Nial accidentally mumbled aloud without realizing it.
His voice hadn't been loud but because everyone had gone silent, even his low voice could be heard from everywhere.
"What do you mean?" All of a sudden, the sonorous voice of the veiled woman reached him, even before Nial realized that he had spoken out loud.
'Huh?' Nial was confused. He didn't know that he had spoken out loud. Fortunately, Silvian was also there to answer the veiled woman's question.
"What he means is that the mana density of Juna shouldn't allow the destruction of the area, only for it to be replaced by something that harbors three to four times more mana than the surrounding area of Juna with the richest mana reserve," Silvian explained, knowing that it might be a little bit confusing for others to understand.
But he didn't intend to start explaining everything in detail as it would take too long.
"So you mean the dungeon portals could have nourished the surrounding area upon being cleared, which results in excessive mana that was utilized by someone to cause the current happenings?" The bulky man asked, looking deep into Silvian's eyes.
From a few reliable sources, they had already gotten to know that other existences had created the dungeon portals. Until now, there hadn't been detailed information because their informants had been powerhouses, whose Innate ability had shared some memories with them.
This was also the reason why it had only been a theory that others created the dungeon portals, possibly to conquer Jundra, and eradicate the human race, or for other reasons.
But now the theory seemed to turn into reality because Silvian was not able to answer without revealing more information.
"If someone else is causing this descending of some sort of plateau, did this someone also control the powerful Minotaur?"
It was the subordinate of the Sacred Knights leader, who asked this question. He looked at his boss expectantly, his eyes filled with sincerity and confusion.
'Could both the Mutant Minotaur and the descending Plateau be the doings of the same person? If so, this God, or whoever did everything, must have used a big majority of his accumulated Divinity to create and control everything precisely.' Nial thought.
If the bulky man's words were really correct, it was necessary for all the dungeons to have been cleared in a matter of days. This meant that it was not possible for enough mana to be generated if too many humans were in the vicinity and that the dungeons were cleared in a bigger timespan!
"Well, if the Minotaur was also a part of this someone's plan, he or she must have created the Abyssal ranked dungeon as well.
Otherwise, the shelter wouldn't have been abandoned. Consequently, it would have never been possible for more than a thousand dungeon portals to be located at and near the shelter for such a long time, let alone cleared them in a period of five days." Silvian said, his expression souring visibly.
'So everything I did here was just to help someone else?! This fucking bullshit!!' Silvian was enraged. He could hardly control himself.
Meanwhile, Nial was not sure what to think about the given situation.
'Looks like we won't get Juna back now that a plateau is descending…but more importantly, we need to know whether the descending plateau inhabits hostile or friendly beings… a little bit of luck would be great, you know…'
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