Chapter 657
As the 16 scouts close in on my location, I think about how easy it would be to kill them all before they even take their next breaths. With only two days left until the abyss completely recedes and I have to face their leaders anyway, expediting the process and antagonizing them to come to the Dark Continent early would be the worst move I can make right now.
I crush a teleport crystal and find myself back inside the shielded bunker below the city, letting out a unique aura once I'm inside.
I imbue strong true core divine threads into my mana while activating my master of illusion buff, creating an identical image of what they scanned the last time they were here.
It now appears like there is nothing more powerful than newly awakened orange cores among us—other than Ember. I make my own presence nonexistent, concealing my core behind my purple barrier and using stealth to disappear. However, I change the perceived image of Ember's core to be identical to the bronze dragon I faced when I first met Raven.
It's an easy feat, as the pure yellow divine energy inside it now is equivalent in thread contents to that bronze dragon; the only oddity is that it's still expanding in size and hasn't collapsed yet. Ember's yellow core is twice the size mine was when I collapsed it. His has golden and silver strands of divine energy that keep it stable while simultaneously forcing it from collapsing while he stacks more yellow threads inside.
I believe if the scouts get a proper reading on whatever is taking place here now, it will be even more suspicious than if I simply changed the scene to portray Ember as an already awakened True Core.
After seeing Redgrave's divine flames for myself, I'm confident that even this high level of power will not make them bat an eye. At the same time, it will quell their suspicions from the faulty reading before.
—
I stay still, holding my breath while the scouts perform their scans.