Chapter : 927
"Outmatched in a direct confrontation, perhaps," Jager conceded with a dismissive wave of his hand. "And only a fool, or a man like you, Kael, would choose a direct confrontation. We are not soldiers. We are artists. Our dium is not steel, but fear. Our canvas is not the battlefield, but the mind of our target." He picked up a silver coin from the table, spinning it idly between his long, slender fingers. The tal seed to flow like liquid rcury.
"Our intelligence was flawed, I grant you that," Jager continued, his voice a hypnotic purr. "We were sent to hunt a fox and have found a dragon. A very young, very arrogant dragon, but a dragon nonetheless. But even dragons have vulnerabilities. They have pride. They have attachnts. And, most importantly, they travel on roads built by lesser n." He flicked the coin, catching it perfectly on his thumbnail. "Our thods must now escalate. We must abandon the subtle, elegant traps of the hunter and adopt the overwhelming, decisive tools of the executioner."
He leaned back in his chair, a look of profound, predatory contemplation on his face. He was no longer just a hunter; he was a composer, orchestrating a symphony of death. "The carriage is reinforced. The guardians are powerful. Therefore, we must attack the environnt itself. We must create a scenario of such overwhelming chaos that even their power cannot contain it. A mont of perfect, catastrophic distraction."
His gaze beca distant, his mind already painting the scene. "There is a pass in the Crimson Peaks, two days' ride from here. A natural kill-box. We will not set a simple deadfall trap. We will… reshape the landscape."
Kael leaned forward, his fear slowly being replaced by a grim, brutal curiosity. "Reshape it how?"
"With alchemical charges," Jager explained, his smile a thing of terrible beauty. "Enough to bring down the entire mountain face. Our target’s carriage will be at the epicenter of a man-made avalanche. A thousand tons of rock and earth moving at terminal velocity. No spiritual shield can withstand that. No guardian, no matter how powerful, can hold back a falling mountain." Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn novel※fire
Kael’s eyes widened, the sheer, beautiful, and absolute violence of the plan finally penetrating his thick skull. This was not a fight. This was an act of God. But a flicker of doubt remained. "And if they survive?" he pressed, the images of Ken's demonic form and Habiba's Sandworm still burned into his mind. "If, by so miracle, they survive the avalanche? We would still have to face them, wounded or not."
Jager's smile turned from triumphant to sothing far colder, far more dangerous. He saw the lingering terror in his partner's eyes and knew he had to play his final, most absolute card. "That, my dear Kael, is where the art truly begins. The avalanche is not the killing blow. It is the overture. It is the beautiful, noisy, and glorious distraction that will force our targets to reveal their full power, to expend their energy, to focus their entire being on simple, crude survival."
He reached into the deepest pocket of his robes and produced a small, lead-lined box. He did not open it. He simply placed it on the table between them. The box was cold, ancient, and seed to absorb the very light and warmth of the tavern, radiating an aura of profound, soul-deep wrongness.
"What is that?" Kael whispered, an instinctual, primal dread creeping back into his voice.
"That," Jager said, his voice dropping to a reverent, almost religious hush, "is our guarantee. It is our final act. It is the reason this mission cannot fail." He tapped a single, long finger on the lead box. "Our benefactor, in his infinite wisdom, and anticipating the… possibility of complications… has granted us access to a tool of the Old War. A forbidden artifact of the highest, most blasphemous order."
He leaned forward, his pale grey eyes gleaming with a fanatical, unholy light. "It is a Soul Catcher."
The na landed in the grimy tavern with the force of a physical blow. Kael flinched as if struck, his face going pale. He knew the na. Every spirit user knew the na. It was a boogeyman, a ghost story whispered by masters to frighten their apprentices. A weapon so terrible, so fundantally an insult to the gods and the very laws of their world, that its use had been forbidden for a thousand years under penalty of not just death, but the erasure of one's entire lineage.
"A Soul Catcher," Kael breathed, the words a horrified, disbelieving hiss. "Jager, that is… that is a myth. A madness."
Chapter : 928
"It is a reality," Jager corrected him, his voice a silken, hypnotic whisper. "And it is our checkmate. While they are reeling from the avalanche, while they are wounded and disoriented, we will activate it. It creates a perfect, absolute, and inescapable cage. A bubble of anti-reality. And within that bubble…" he paused, letting the beautiful, terrible truth of it sink in, "within that bubble, the bond between a master and their spirit is simply… erased. Their gods are silenced. Their power is torn from them. They are rendered as helpless as newborn kittens."
He leaned back, his own confidence now absolute, unshakeable. He had seen the terror in Kael’s eyes, and he had replaced it with the far more potent, and far more useful, emotion of awe.
"So you see, my dear, simple Kael," Jager concluded, his voice filled with the triumphant certainty of a master artist who has just unveiled his magnum opus. "We will not be fighting a King-Level demon and a legendary Sand Heroine. We will be executing a disard butler and a very frightened, very powerless little girl. The avalanche is our art. The Soul Catcher is our science. It is a perfect, beautiful, and utterly, completely, and absolutely foolproof plan." He stood up, his slender fra radiating an aura of absolute, unshakeable confidence. "Now, let us go and prepare our canvas."
The world outside the carriage remained a wash of grey and green, the rain a constant, percussive rhythm against the roof. Inside, the atmosphere had shifted. The intense storm of strategic planning had subsided, leaving a quiet, comfortable calm. Lloyd and Amina had exhausted their initial flood of ideas and now sat in a companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts, the air between them no longer charged with the energy of a negotiation but with the easy familiarity of a shared purpose.
Outside, the dynamic had also found its equilibrium. Ken remained the silent, vigilant driver, a pillar of immovable focus. Habiba, having delivered her offering, had retreated back inside the cabin, her duty as a ssenger complete. She now sat in her corner, her eyes closed, though Lloyd knew she was not sleeping. She was in a state of deep, ditative awareness, her senses extended, a silent partner to Ken’s external watch. They were the twin guardians of this small, mobile fortress, one facing outward, one inward, a perfect sphere of protection.
Lloyd found his mind drifting, not to the assassins or the Lilith Stones, but to the profound, almost comical complexity of his life. A few short months ago, his greatest challenge had been feigning interest in business ledgers and surviving breakfast with his father. Now, he was a revolutionary industrialist, a secret warrior commanding mythic beasts, a professor at the academy that had expelled him, and the accidental fiancé of a foreign princess who was also his most brilliant and dangerous ally. The absurdity of it all was so imnse that a small, genuine smile touched his lips.
It was this mont of peace, this fleeting instant of quiet contemplation, that the world chose to shatter.
The attack ca without warning. It was not a sound or a sight, but a feeling—a violent, subterranean lurch. The entire carriage was thrown upwards as if swatted by a giant, unseen hand. The ground beneath them did not just shake; it erupted.
From her ditative state, Habiba reacted with the speed of pure instinct. A single word, sharp and guttural, escaped her lips—a command in a language as old as the sand itself. In response to her will, the earth directly beneath the carriage obeyed. A massive, fifty-foot-long pillar of compressed sand and rock shot upwards, forming a solid, stable platform that caught the carriage mid-air, preventing it from being overturned.
Simultaneously, a monstrous form burst from the churning soil beside them. It was a colossal, armored leviathan, a creature forged from the very essence of the deep earth. Its body was a hundred feet of interlocking, sandstone-colored plates, and its head was a nightmare of grinding, circular mandibles, each one the size of a wagon wheel. It was Habiba’s spirit, the legendary Sandworm of the Great Desert, and it had surfaced instinctively to intercept the subterranean attack that had been aid at them.
But the attack was not just from below.
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