The Author's POV

347 Planting the seed of chaos[1]

[Inferno, Duergar council.]

Sitting in his seat, Orion, one of the duergar elders, looked around him and asked the rest of the elders present, "How is Karl doing?"

"He is currently working on disabling the third beacon."

Durara answered from her seat. She sounded very pleased with Karl's work.

"Do you have any idea when he will get it done? If we get one or two more beacons disabled, we should be able to completely destroy the barrier of the city."

"That…I'm not too sure myself. He's just got done with the second beacon, so I reckon it would be done within the week."

Durara replied with a tight frown on her face.

Because Karl requested for him to not be monitored or bothered while he was working, no one actually knew how far he was in the project.

Since he had proven himself by deactivating the first and second beacons, the elders had no qualms with the fact that they couldn't monitor him.

Furthermore, Karl's request wasn't strange. Many of the duergars present were engineers, and they all knew just how important keeping their blueprints and projects a secret was.

It was their life's work. No one would like it for their work to be seen by others.

All that mattered to them was that he deactivated the beacons.

Having already inspected his strength, they weren't worried about Karl running away as they had set up multiple guards way above his rank to monitor him.

"From what I heard, Karl said that the process of deactivation differs per beacon. That is why it is taking time for him to fully extract the memories from Jomnuk and process them in time."

"I see…looks like that bastard was a thorough one."

With both hands on the table, Orion mumbled to himself.

"…If he manages to get it done by the end of the week, we should start getting ready."

Turning to face one of the duergars standing on the other side of the hall, Orion decided to give out orders.

"Send a message to all members."

Orion stood up and clenched both of his fists.

"Within a week, when the barrier is finally breached, I want them to be ready to assault Henolur from the inside."

A colorless hue mixed with black threads of energy expanded from his body as his cold voice rang throughout the room.

"…It's time we finally got rid of those bastards."

Bang—

But just as his words faded, with a loud bang, a duergar rushed into the room.

Before the elders could say anything about the rude intrusion, the duergar shouted in wild panic.

"We've got an urgent report! The artifact testing facilities have been breached!"

"The artifact testing facilities?"

Orion's brow raised in surprise. He seemed relaxed despite hearing of an intruder in the artifact testing area.

"Who's the idiot trying to breach the artifact testing facilities?"

That place was like a prison. The moment it was breached, although no one could go in, no one could also go out.

To Orion, whoever was trying to breach the place seemed to be an idiot. Thus, he was completely relaxed.

It was also because of this that he started to glare at the duergar that had so rudely barged into the room.

"Why have you barged into this place to report such a small matter?"

His cold voice entered the ears of the duergar. The latter froze on the spot.

His pupils instantly dilated and a sense of death washed over his body as he fumbled on his words, struggling to form a sentence.

K-Karl is there,

"…"

using all of his

faded, a palpitating, almost terrifying chill spread throughout the whole room as the countenances of all the elders present changed

you

who immediately stood

say that Karl was

"Y…yea."

the duergar could only helplessly nod

"Oh no…"

confirmation from the duergar, Durara turned her head and looked at the other elders

Bang—

told what to do, one of the elders

door of the

a grave and solemn atmosphere permeated

did those bastards manage

fist against the table, Orion

around Karl? How in the

a figure Karl was, there was no way they would just let him go

testing facility should've been filled with loyal duergars. Given how

after a tough screening. For an incident to have happened there out of

one of us

had as he scanned the room. It was

"You all—huh?!"

was about to voice out his concerns, out of nowhere, the base's defensive

Di! Ding—

"What's going on?"

"What is happening?!"

activated, everyone grew even

the table in front of him, one of the duergars swiped his hand and a large holographic

be? We're

up in unison

system and warn everyone

kind of situation they were in, instead of panicking, they all calmly

who remained in the hall was Orion, whose eyes remained glued on the energy blast headed for

long, the energy blast connected with

BOOOOM—

explosion sounded and the whole

steady on the ground, Orion's face sank as he darkly

"…How dare you."

***

WHIIII— WHIIII—

was the sound of

of the

footsteps halted right as she

should we

"We wait."

I softly replied.

head to the side. Confused by my

"Wait?"

for Waylan to come to

there, my brows suddenly knit in thought as

I hope

other room, I made sure to leave behind a note on the

instructions that Waylan had to follow. Alongside it was the location of

there was also a small map marked with a few important places like the surveillance room, where the dampening system was, and finally, the location of where the

was to have all three of those facilities destroyed. Once those three systems were down, it would essentially be

comes to pick us up, the real struggle starts. So, try your best to recover as much as possible. Although you can probably fight against ranked duergars with your bloodline suppression, it's best if you're