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,

"…"

with shaking legs, using all of his willpower, the

soon as his words faded, a palpitating, almost terrifying chill spread throughout the whole room

you just

who

you just say that Karl was inside of the artifact

"Y…yea."

to Durara's terrifying glare, the duergar could only helplessly nod his

"Oh no…"

head and looked at the

Bang—

needing to be told what to do, one of the elders disappeared

loud banging noise resounded as the door of the

left, a grave and solemn atmosphere permeated the

how did those bastards manage to get to

the table, Orion raised

the security around Karl? How in the world

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

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

duergars that had been selected after a tough screening. For an incident to have

of us

the first thought that Orion had as he scanned the room. It was the most

"You all—huh?!"

he was about to voice out his

Di! Ding—

"What's going on?"

"What is happening?!"

defensive system activated,

him, one of the duergars swiped his hand and a large holographic image of the outside of the

be? We're

up in unison and stared at

system and

they were in, instead of panicking, they all calmly gave out orders and

Orion, whose eyes remained glued on the energy blast

long, the energy blast connected with

BOOOOM—

and

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

"…How dare you."

***

WHIIII— WHIIII—

the explosion was the sound of alarms

at the sensor of the room, I glanced

Angelica's footsteps halted right as she was a few

we

"We wait."

I softly replied.

cocked her head to

"Wait?"

Waylan to

suddenly knit in thought as I muttered

hope he got my

made sure to leave behind a note on

that Waylan had to follow. Alongside it was the location of the artifact testing facility that I was currently

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

those facilities destroyed. Once those three systems were down, it would essentially be equal to crippling Inferno and thus helping us ensure

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