Chapter 314 - 314: The Inferno
The revelation that we possessed the backdoor coordinates to a rival planet felt like finding a loaded gun in a sandbox.
"Such an error is unfathomably unlikely within the Prime System," Kasian theorized, floating beside the War Room's main holographic projector. "But the Spire networks are ancient, pre-dating the current understanding of Essence. It could be that the System simply blanket-quarantined the primary macro-functions but missed a micro-tunnel running through an obsolete dimensional layer. A digital loose thread."
"Let's yank it and see what unravels," I said, leaning over the table.
The inner circle was gathered. The atmosphere was sharply analytical. The growing relief of stabilizing Ferra was abruptly replaced by the cold reality of impending neighbors.
"You should not be going in there personally," Anna stated, her voice flat, leaving absolutely no room for debate. Her hand rested on [Final Word], her aura simmering with defensive chrono-mana. "If this is a trap, or if the Prime System detects the unauthorized 'crossing', they could do something to make sure the quarantine holds. You are not an expendable scout, Eren. You are the structural anchor of this planet."
"I know it's a risk," I agreed, raising my hands in surrender. "That's why we're sending a disposable battery with an attitude problem."
One of the Clones was constantly grinding from Tower to Tower which I intended to maintain. Which is exactly why I needed a second one. I took two hours in the Sanctum, dedicating half my immense mana pool to crafting a highly customized [Echo of the Ashen Sovereign].
I wove spatial-compression sigils densely into the construct's faux-biology. I overloaded it with concentrated [Void] essence specifically tailored for maximum sustain of the [Nullifying Veil], ensuring its passive stealth would rival an Ascendant's active camouflage.
"Echo One is holding the fortress," I told the assembled team, gesturing to the first clone currently decimating a floor 90 boss in the projected feed. "Echo Two will be taking the trip. My main body will remain here, in the Sanctum. I will manually pilot Null via the quantum tether. If it gets atomized, I get a headache, not a funeral."
"Ensure your mental shielding is absolute, Master," Jeeves warned. "The psychic feedback from a cross-planar tether termination could be… detrimental."
"Leoric whipped up an alchemy cocktail specifically to numb the tether recoil if the connection is violently severed," Eliza added, patting a pouch of vials.
"Let's light the candle."
I ascended to the Spire terminal initiating the transfer. Not for myself, but for the dark, heavily runic-inscribed Echo Null.
"Inputting target designation: Quinary Faction Node — 'Ignis-7'," I commanded, feeding the corrupted packet Kasian found directly into the ancient artifact.
The Spire didn't glow its usual, soothing violet. The rings ground together, emitting a screeching sound of forced calibration, as if it were experiencing some sort of 'turbulence'. The light that eventually erupted wasn't the usual crack either; it looked like tearing scabs. A harsh, rusty red tear in reality opened.
"Got it," I breathed, dropping into a deep lotus position on the floor, shifting most of my active consciousness into the clone.
The physical transition felt like being shoved through a meat grinder backwards. The 'stealth jump' completely bypassed the System's smooth transit protocols, relying instead on raw, tearing Void.
When my perspective snapped fully into the Echo on the other side, the first sensory input was pure, overwhelming hostility.
I immediately slammed the [Nullifying Veil] over the Echo to its maximum setting, dropping my signature to an absolute void before taking stock.
Ignis-7 was not a world. It was a functioning forge.
I materialized on a jagged cliff overlooking an apocalyptic vista. The sky was an angry, swirling canvas of thick black soot and heavy, glowing ember-clouds. The sun was obscured entirely, providing no light, only ambient, oppressive heat.
The smell of sulfur and boiling rock was so physically dense the Echo's mana enhanced pseudo-lungs strained to process it.
I engaged my [Void Perception].
The 'Lattice' of this planet was weeping. The underlying, foundational strings of reality were actively, aggressively burning, colored in angry, violent shades of crimson and diseased black.
I looked down into the vast basin below the cliff.
It was a continent-wide industrial operation dedicated purely to geological torture.
Massive, titanic drills — not made of steel or mana-constructs, but seemingly carved from dark, sentient obsidian and dripping with magma — were driven deep into the planet's crust. They throbbed with a sickly, rhythmic pulse, forcefully extracting oceans of molten essence and pumping it through open, blazing canals across the shattered terrain.
Volcanoes erupted continually, but not naturally. I watched through the Veil as specialized groups of beings hovered near the calderas, literally conducting the eruptions with complex, brutal magic, channeling the flow of magma to form crude, massive walls and fortresses.
"Kharonus," I projected the thought back across the tether to my true body sitting in Ferra. "Tell me I'm not crazy. I'm looking at your cousins, aren't I?"
In the containment crystal on my desk, the Demon lord scoffed, the feeling transmitting across the void. "My kin, Lord? That implies equality. Those are lesser spawn. Ash-fiends. Magma-shapers. Thralls of a disorganized, brutish lineage. They smell of cheap sulfur and stolen fire."
I ignored the demonic elitism. "They're transforming the planet. Literally bleeding its core to re-shape the surface into a volcanic hellscape."
The beings below — thousands of them — varied wildly. Some were hulking brutes with skin made of cracked, cooling lava holding massive picks and hammers. Others were sleek, multi-armed horrors moving with liquid, fiery grace.
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What deeply chilled my [Void-Star] wasn't their appearance. It was their density.
A sweeping scan of a standard work-camp directly below my cliff revealed a terrifying statistic. Out of perhaps five hundred demonic entities visible, the absolute weakest individual registered as a high Tier 4. The vast majority were solidly, confidently Tier 5.
The overseers shouting orders from hovering obsidian platforms were Tier 6s.
"Jeeves," I murmured, keeping my mental voice extremely quiet despite the security of the tether. "I've found the locals of Ignis-7."
"Master."
"It's an active demonic beachhead. An invasion force. This isn't a native integration like Ferra. I'm guessing an external empire like the Kyorians successfully conquered this node during the chaos of the System Integration phase, crushed the indigenous population, and established themselves as the 'Dominant Faction' to reap the rewards."
My gaze caught movement in the shadow of one of the massive magma-canals.
It wasn't another demon-like being.
It was a line of frail, weeping figures chained together with heavy, glowing irons. They looked humanoid, perhaps avian originally, but their features were blurred by starvation and severe burns. They were manually hauling carts of dense, crystallized soot under the brutal lashes of a minor magma-demon.
The indigenous people. Enslaved. Ignis-7's brutal landscape was a solemn reminder of what Ferra's fate could have been.
"This heavily escalates the threat profile," Kasian's voice noted gravely in the link. "If a recognized Faction belonging to the 'Newcomer' Integration wave is actually merely a puppet or a heavily funded forward operating base for an established, ancient Empire operating from outside the Quarantine… the resources and Ascendant-tier backing they possess might circumvent the intended constraints of the Great Crucible."
"If they can casually field thousands of Tier 4 grunts to move rocks…" I muttered, watching a heavy Overseer casually vaporize a stumbling slave for holding up the line. "What the hell does their Planetary Lord's stat sheet look like? I need hard intel. And names."
And so, I spent the next week operating purely as a ghost.
The [Nullifying Veil], bolstered by the sigils I designed on Sylvaris, proved its worth flawlessly. I [Void Walked] invisibly across the burning continent, navigating the incredibly harsh environmental factors that would easily kill an average Tier 4, while mapping their logistical layouts.
My physical body in Bastion handled routine administrative and academic duties, checked on the booming agricultural yields, and actively spent two hours a day acting as the surprisingly patient combat instructor for the 'Depths Vanguard' students, keeping them aggressively progressing towards their potential, all while roughly three quarters of my brain's processing power managed my infiltrating spy-camera on the edge of the universe.
Finding usable intelligence was agonizingly slow. The lower-tier demons didn't possess dataslates; they functioned purely on primal hierarchy and screamed orders.
I needed a quiet room and a chatty commander.
On the sixth day, I located a regional staging camp entirely removed from the volcanic drilling.
I bypassed their passive thermal wards by keeping the Echo's internal temperature perfectly synced to absolute zero, blending conceptually with a deep patch of magical shadow cast by a hovering fortress.
A lone, heavily-armored Demon Commander — a brutal, eight-foot-tall horror with ram-horns and an aura radiating high Tier 6 malevolence — strode aggressively out of a communication bunker. He barked orders to a frightened imp before turning toward a private transport platform.
I didn't use [Glimpse of a Path] immediately. The dense concentration of demonic, destructive energy here significantly hampered its efficiency, risking discovery by an overwatch if I used it repeatedly, even against the Tier 6s.
I dropped an invisible, micro-targeted zone of my Domain explicitly isolating the two of us physically from reality, muting the entire area with localized [Authority], then cast the simulation.
[Glimpse of a Path.]
Inside the subjective time loop, I materialized the Echo directly behind the massive commander, slipping out of the Void instantly.
Before he could roar or flare his blistering aura, I plunged a highly concentrated [Void-Blade] smoothly through his spine, actively commanding the blade's [Hunger] not to consume, but to aggressively scramble his mana-circulation network entirely.
The massive demon stiffened, paralyzed perfectly in place, choking on silence.
"You are not going to die today if you are quiet," my Echo spoke directly into his mind via a forced telepathic link, leveraging my Domain's higher [Authority]. "But your pain receptors are entirely mine for the next three minutes. What is the name of the Faction or Lord that holds the primary node here?"
The demon snarled internally. "Fleshling insect! You think your little dagger—"
I dialed the [Hunger] precisely to actively target the sensation of 'comfort'. His entire body was abruptly engulfed in absolute, conceptual agony that bypassed biology and struck the Soul instantly.
In the real world, the simulation lasted a microsecond.
Inside the Glimpse, it took four long minutes of calculated, ruthless torment to break the fanatical bravado of a Tier 6 general who had never encountered pure, unadulterated [Void].
"The… The Cinder Throne!" he finally mentally sobbed, completely broken, dropping his mental shields entirely.
"Who holds the Crown?"
"Malacor! Sovereign of Ash! High Commander of the Infernal Crusade!"
"Is he indigenous?" I pressed, analyzing his fleeting thoughts rapidly as the Glimpse timer strained. "Did his Empire sponsor this Integration forcibly from the outside, utilizing a loophole in the Prime System?"
The Commander's thoughts rippled with profound terror mixed directly with absolute zealotry. "Sponsor? We do not beg! Our Overlords simply shattered the flimsy, new boundary with the Great Engines during the chaos! We staked the claim forcefully to strip-mine the core for fuel before the integration finalized. Ignis-7 is a colony. The crucible will be an execution for the rest of you. Our supply lines to the Core Worlds are already re-establishing. They will rain hellfire through the final gate…"
"Location of Malacor," I demanded.
"The Capital... Core-Blight... beneath the Great Vent... He awaits the final... Integration command..."
The simulation snapped abruptly. I aborted the loop heavily before my cover was blown.
I slumped back against a ruined stone pillar in the real world of Ignis-7, invisible, panting softly as the sheer mental stress of forcing compliance from a powerful mind while manipulating complex illusions within the simulated void subsided.
"A colonial staging ground established by force during the planetary merger," I briefed the shocked brain-trust waiting eagerly for an update back in Bastion. "It wasn't an 'Apex clear' for survival. An incredibly powerful demonic empire violently shattered their way inside a newly integrated world right as it spawned, massacred the native defenders, parked an overwhelmingly massive military force on top of the nexus towers, hit Floor 100 with borrowed imperial artillery, and simply waited to automatically acquire 'Leading Faction' status before turning the world into an industrial pump station. The Great Crucible to them is basically an expansion target they got for free. These aren't terrified survivors grabbing swords for the first time. They're a standing, disciplined, incredibly well-funded invasion force waiting behind an opening gate, supported directly by forces potentially outside the Integration Quarantine."
"The first world we scout and they're already breaking the rules," Lucas summarized tightly, furious. "And just like our Kyorian friends, they are literally harvesting planets."
"I'm heading to their Capital," I whispered, staring aggressively out at the ash-covered nightmare, adjusting my invisible posture. "If they intend to participate in the upcoming Crucible relying entirely on the logistical, unending support of an outside, established empire... we need to drastically recalculate our entire geopolitical threat posture. I need to get visual confirmation on the scale of 'Malacor'."
I moved purposefully. The scouting phase was over. It was finally time to meet the neighbors holding a loaded, planet-killing gun.