Chapter 166: The Deep Map

Deep beneath the Iron Estate, the air was entirely void of warmth.

The subterranean dungeons were dark, damp, and completely soundproof. Captain Kaelen of the Holy Empire hung from the ceiling by heavy starmetal chains.

His pristine white armor had been completely stripped away. He was bruised, bleeding, and trembling in the cold.

Silas Vane sat perfectly composed in a velvet chair across from the captive. The Chief Inquisitor slowly exhaled a thick cloud of cigar smoke. He let the silence completely stretch the Paladin’s frayed nerves.

"Your god is quiet today, Captain," Silas spoke, his voice dangerously smooth.

"You prayed for three hours. No angels came. No holy light shattered my walls. It seems the divine has completely abandoned you to the dirt."

"Heretic," Kaelen spat weakly, his voice hoarse. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"You sink us with cowardly magic. But the Pope will cleanse this entire continent. The Lightbringer will burn your Sovereign to ash."

Silas smiled. It was a cold, empty expression that did not reach his eyes. He stood up, smoothing the lapels of his sharp suit.

He walked over to a small iron table and picked up a sleek, heavily refined Mana Steel piston. The metal hummed with pure kinetic energy.

"Cowardly magic," Silas mused, holding the glowing blue metal in front of the Paladin’s face.

"You thought you were sailing to a land of mud and sticks, Captain. You thought you were hunting mindless beasts. But this is not magic. This is physics. This is engineering. Your glorious, invincible fleet was not destroyed by a spell. It was vaporized by an industrialized torpedo fired from a three hundred foot iron submarine."

Kaelen stared at the perfectly machined metal. His eyes widened as the horrifying reality finally set in.

"We are not savages," Silas whispered, leaning in close.

"We are an empire. And your wooden boats are already obsolete."

Kaelen began to hyperventilate. The absolute foundation of his faith was cracking. He squeezed his eyes shut, desperately clinging to his last shred of hope.

"The Lightbringer is Level 80! He is a god among men! He will save us!"

"Psychological pressure works perfectly on men who fear death," Silas sighed, dropping the piston back onto the table.

"But fanatics are terribly boring. They refuse to break completely. So, I will just take what I need."

Silas reached into his coat and pulled out a jagged, glowing purple crystal. It was a restricted mind-ripping artifact looted from the deepest vaults of the Zenith Academy.

Kaelen’s eyes widened in sudden, absolute terror.

Silas stepped forward and violently plunged the jagged purple crystal directly into the center of the Paladin’s forehead.

Kaelen let out a bloodcurdling scream. The crystal flared with blinding light, forcefully latching onto his neural pathways.

Silas closed his eyes. He channeled his own mana into the artifact, physically downloading the captain’s memories, maps, and military secrets directly into his own mind.

Silas saw the Human Continent.

It was not a single, unified landmass like the Paladins claimed. It was divided into five distinct, massive countries.

The Mageocratic State ruled the frozen north. The Desert Caliphate controlled the southern dunes.

The Merchant Republic dominated the western shores, and the sprawling Central Kingdom acted as a buffer in the middle.

But dominating the entire Eastern coast, heavily fortified and brutally militaristic, was the Holy Empire. They possessed the absolute monopoly on Otherworlder summoning.

Silas dug deeper into the Paladin’s mind. He searched for the Lightbringer.

A memory violently flashed into Silas’s vision. He saw a young human male with glowing golden eyes and a halo of pure, blinding holy magic.

The Hero was an Otherworlder from Earth, but he was completely corrupted by his own power.

He stood on a grand balcony in the Holy Capital, looking down at thousands of kneeling citizens with an expression of pure, arrogant disgust.

He was a self-righteous zealot who genuinely believed his Level 80 status made him a literal god.

Silas ripped the crystal out of the Paladin’s skull. Kaelen instantly went limp, his mind completely shattered by the violent extraction.

Silas wiped a single drop of blood from his own nose. He did not wait for the guards. He sprinted up the dungeon stairs, moving with uncharacteristic urgency.

An hour later, the heavy iron doors of my private war room slammed open.

I was standing over the central obsidian table with Ramona. The Level 90 Half-Dragon was tracing her slender fingers over a map of our coastal defenses.

When Silas burst into the room, Kaelith and Lysandra immediately stepped out of the shadows, their weapons half-drawn.

"Sovereign," Silas gasped, slamming a hastily drawn map onto the table.

"Report," I commanded, sensing the raw tension in the High Elf’s aura.

"The Paladin was a scout," Silas explained rapidly, tapping the newly drawn Eastern coast of the Human Continent.

"The humans are divided into five nations. The Holy Empire controls the east. They have dozens of summoned Heroes. But one of them is leading the Crusade fleet toward our shores."

I leaned over the table, my glowing red visor locking onto the map.

"Give me his profile."

"He is a male Otherworlder," Silas breathed, his sharp eyes meeting my visor.

"Summoned three years ago. The Pope locked him in their holy dungeons and force-fed him experience points until he became a living weapon. He is a Level 80 Lightbringer. He is completely arrogant, demanding absolute worship from his own people. He wields the concept of Divine Wrath."

I stared at the map. A Level 80 Otherworlder. He was sent to eradicate my empire and burn my Pack to ash.

A dark, jagged smile formed behind my helmet.

Deep inside my core, the newly awakened white and pink Flame of Life shifted back into the pitch-black and molten gold Flame of Death. My massive core rumbled with sheer, predatory anticipation.

"He is not a god," I chuckled, my baritone voice vibrating through the war room.

"He is just a massive, walking pool of experience points. Let the arrogant whore come to my shores. I will devour his holy magic and use his core to break Level 60."

"Do not underestimate the divine light, Husband," Ramona warned softly.

The ancient Half-Dragon stepped forward.

Her molten gold eyes were fixed on the map of the Human Continent, but her expression was entirely distant.

She was pulling from a well of knowledge that predated the Zenith Academy by millennia.

"The Holy Empire did not invent that magic," Ramona explained, her reptilian tail swishing slowly behind her.

"They merely inherited it. Thousands of years ago, before the humans ever learned how to summon Otherworlders from the stars, the ancient progenitors of that empire waged a very different war."

Ramona looked up at me, her eyes filled with ancient, heavy sorrow.

"I am not native to this continent, Grik," she revealed. The war room went completely silent. Kaelith and Silas exchanged a stunned look.

"There is a third landmass," Ramona continued, placing her hand gently over my heavy brass gauntlet.

"Far to the north, completely hidden by the eternal mists. The Dragon Continent. It is a realm of absolute nightmares and ancient scales. I was born there. But the ancient Holy Vanguard feared my Calamity core. They could not kill me, so they dragged me across the ocean and sealed me in the abyssal depths of Strata 6 to rot."

I turned my hand over, interlocking my massive, armored fingers with her soft hand.

"They built the Great Iron Labyrinth as a prison," I deduced, my Sovereign intellect piecing the ancient history together.

"And the Zenith Academy built their city on top of it to siphon your leaking mana."

"Yes," Ramona nodded firmly.

"The Lightbringer wields the same arrogant magic that locked me in the dark. He will not show you mercy. He will try to blind you with his righteousness."

I pulled Ramona flush against my heavy chest plate. My Domination Aura flared, filling the war room with absolute, suffocating authority.

"Then I will tear his halo from his skull," I growled, looking out over my War Council.

"The Holy Empire thinks they are sending a god to crush a goblin. We are going to bleed their Crusade in the ocean. And when the Lightbringer finally steps onto our beaches, we will show him the absolute terror of the Forge."