Chapter 1245: Follow
"Follow…"
Ogras swore upon seeing Zac collapse on the floor, only to be hurled into a wall by a powerful jolt. Too much was happening all at once. Something extraordinary had clearly just happened to their captain, overloading his mind. The physical dangers were more manageable. Getting knocked around wouldn't do anything to that brute, and people were already moving to assist.
There were bigger fish to fry, and it wasn't the collapsing tin can around them. A critical opportunity had presented itself, and he needed to capitalize on it. Ogras had kept his eyes on the bomb throughout the nerve-wracking journey in the Threaded Hell, both hoping and fearing the netherblasted threads would do it in.
It turned out the high-grade contraption had resisted the threads even better than the sealbearers, and he'd noticed how Kator's watch grew more lax by the minute. Ogras had also given up hope, but their sudden exit had thrown everything on its head. They needed to act fast.
'Do it!'
There was no sign of Janos hearing his command, nor were there any fluctuations of Energy or Dao. He remained all but forgotten in his corner on the bridge, which just so happened to be right behind the glowering Izh'Rak Reaver.
A small piece of augmented reality fused with truth under the guise of beeping alarms and nerve-wracking heaves as the Yphelion was thrown to and fro. Only Ogras was equipped to truly appreciate the genius of the method and how hard Janos had worked to bring it to fruition. Their plan was over a month in the making, where Janos had spent every waking moment gradually incorporating the Yphelion with his Illusory World.
The illusionist's presence had grown fainter by the day as Ogras and Janos worked in concert to erase him from the mind of the crew. Even Zac seemed to have mostly forgotten about his existence by the time they'd passed the storm curtain. Kator was a much easier mark, even if his series of victories over Zac had failed to lower his guard. It came down to strength. Only a handful could enter his eyes. The rest were so far beneath him that they were irrelevant, where his strength was all the safeguard he needed.
Zac remained oblivious to their plotting throughout. Such was the way of things. For the Emperor to stand in the sun, someone had to move in the shadows. Threats and problems needed to be cut down as they sprouted, lest they become towering trees that blotted out the sky.