After the Demon Eye IV left the airspace above his territory, it trailed a signal relay chain composed of ten Demon Eye IIIs.
It left one behind every 100 kiloters. Like a string of invisible beads, they relayed the high-altitude intelligence data back to the workshop.
The signal inevitably weakened slightly as the distance increased, but thanks to a redundancy check chanism, the visual feed remained clear.
There were no surprises for the first five hundred kiloters. The desolate Black Stone Gobi stretched westward, occasionally interrupted by a few extinct volcanoes. The ground was covered in cracked rock, and thermal radiation signals were sparse, showing only scattered traces of Magical Beast activity.
A group of lizard-like Magical Beasts lay beside a geothermal fissure, resembling a pile of gray stones.
Further west, at the foot of a mine, densely packed black carapaces sward in and out of the entrance.
Crystal Shell Giant Scorpions. A rough estimate put their numbers in the thousands, several tis more than the nest he had encountered in Three-way Canyon.
The Demon Eye recorded the information and transmitted it back before moving on.
Seven hundred kiloters, eight hundred kiloters.
The terrain began to change. The gobi disappeared, replaced by vast plains of scorched black lava, and the surface temperature rose sharply. In the distance, several active volcanoes spewed dark red plus of smoke.
Nine hundred kiloters.
The Demon Eye’s observation sensor module detected an anomaly.
The ground was shaking.
It wasn’t the intermittent tremor of volcanic activity, but a continuous, low-frequency resonance, like sothing marching.
The source of the tremor was even further west.
Back in the workshop, Allen set down his Rune Carving Knife upon receiving the report. A Craftsman’s Hand floated over, carrying a glass of chilled fruit juice.
’Vibrations?’
He switched his focus to the Demon Eye’s perspective.
The Demon Eye continued flying west, constantly transmitting the information it gathered.
"Warning: Massive Magic Power fluctuations detected!"
The Craftsman’s Hand holding the chilled fruit juice froze perfectly still in midair.
The pale blue liquid in the glass didn’t even ripple, but his deep blue pupils contracted to pinpricks in an instant.
The Magic Power scan had a wider range. The Demon Eye IV’s Composite Magic Power scanning lens had already detected a vast, anomalous fluctuation ahead.
It was a biological torrent stretching for tens of kiloters, moving slowly. Under the dual filters of thermal imaging and Magic Power waves, the area glowed from red to violet, and from violet to black, like a colossal, squirming bruise that covered the western horizon where the sky and earth t.
[Massive biological congregation detected.]
[Preliminary quantity estimate: Over one hundred thousand units.]
[Multiple high-risk Magic Power sources detected within the group. Energy levels range from First-level to Second-level Wizard class.]
[First-level combat units (standard Magic Power fluctuation 1000-2999): Estimated quantity over three thousand.]
[Second-level combat units (standard Magic Power fluctuation 3000-6000): Quantity ninety-four.]
[Direction of advance: Due east.]
[Estimated speed of advance: Forty to fifty kiloters per day.]
[Trajectory projection: At the current route, they will reach the western border of Zones 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 in approximately twenty to twenty-five days.]
One hundred thousand.
Ninety-four Second-Levels.
Three thousand First-Levels.
Allen slowly set the glass down. Its base clinked sharply against the tal tabletop.
’Fear? Panic?’
None of it.
The mont he saw the data, Allen’s brain automatically severed all useless emotional interference. His chanical Mind had taken over, turning him into a precision machine that ran on pure logic.
"Establish an independent threat model. Codena: Black Tide."
"Jarvis, halt all infrastructure construction. The workshop is to imdiately enter a state of maximum combat readiness. All Golems are to perform self-diagnostics. Add two new ammunition production lines. The remaining four production lines are to imdiately begin producing parts for the sixth Golem Legion."
The commands were issued one after another in an orderly fashion.
After making these initial preparations, Allen’s gaze was once again fixed on the screen.
"The distance is too great, optical resolution is insufficient." Allen’s fingers tapped rapidly on the console. "Demon Eye IV, descend. Drop from twenty thousand ters to eight thousand."
[Warning: Descending to eight thousand ters will exit the safe zone. Risk of being shot down by Flying Magical Beasts.]
"Execute," Allen said without the slightest hesitation.
The black sphere slowly descended. It pierced through the fierce winds of the troposphere and stopped at an altitude of eight thousand ters.
At this altitude, the optical lens could make out more details on the ground.
The dense black tide covered the entire landscape.
It was a grand army of Magical Beasts, composed of many different species.
Leading the charge were tens of thousands of Crystal Shell Giant Scorpions. Their energy-refracting carapaces ford a shimring black sea, and the trampling of their countless legs on the gravel created a deafening roar.
On the flanks of the scorpion phalanx was a large group of massive Rock Armor Earth Dragons. Their enormous bodies were like giant war chariots, and every footstep made the earth tremble.
Further back were the Molten Core Lizards, which should have been living near lava lakes. They had left the high-temperature environnt they depended on for survival. The magma on their skin had cooled into dark red, hardened shells, but they still marched eastward with heavy steps.
Mixed in among these Magical Beasts was a large number of pure Fire Elental Creatures. They looked like moving bonfires, leaving a trail of scorched earth in their wake.
The sky was just as turbulent. Swarms of bats, wyverns, and many other Flying Magical Beasts that Allen couldn’t na blotted out the sky, completely blocking the starlight.
A quick scan revealed that this torrent contained at least a dozen distinct species of Magical Beasts.
"This isn’t a beast tide," Allen muttered to himself.
"Beast tides" usually have three causes: territorial expansion by a high-level Magical Beast leader, forced migration due to resource depletion from drastic environntal changes, or the collective frenzy of a specific species during mating season.
But regardless of the cause, beast tides followed an ironclad rule—they were typically the actions of a single species.
Magical Beasts are extrely territorial and exclusionary. When different species et, they fight to the death. If Crystal Shell Giant Scorpions and Rock Armor Earth Dragons encountered each other, they would absolutely fight until their brains were splattered on the ground over territory, to say nothing of elental creatures with conflicting attributes.
But now, the scene on the screen completely defied common sense.
These dozen or so species of Magical Beasts maintained an eerie "distance" from one another.
The scorpions didn’t attack the earth dragons next to them.
The Molten Core Lizards didn’t devour the flying creatures that fell from the sky.
They were like a well-trained army, maintaining their respective formations and advancing in the sa direction at a uniform speed.
"Mark the high-risk Magic Power sources," Allen ordered.
The image zood in again.
In the center of each species’ formation, the Demon Eye’s lens captured a colossal figure far larger than its kin.
A Crystal Shell Giant Scorpion king, over twenty ters long, its stinger flashing with a venomous, ethereal blue light.
A massive Rock Armor Earth Dragon, surrounded by a visible distortion in gravity.
A giant elental commander nearly thirty ters tall, composed entirely of incandescent fla and surrounded by countless spirits of flowing fire.
Each one emanated a terrifying pressure that warped the very space around it. This was genuine Second-level Wizard-class power. Ninety-four such monsters were scattered throughout the hundred-thousand-strong army, acting like unshakable pillars to suppress the entire beast tide’s agitation.
They didn’t attack each other, either.
They simply marched east, silent and resolute.
Allen leaned back in his chair, his fingers unconsciously stroking the armrest.
"This isn’t a migration, it’s a military march!"
Only one kind of power could make mutually hostile Magical Beast species set aside their instinctual hatred and march in formation like an army.
Absolute hierarchical suppression.
Above these ninety-four Second-Level Magical Beasts, behind this army of one hundred thousand, there had to be a higher-level will. It had subjugated all life in this no-man’s-land, forging them into a single, sharp blade.
’Morning Star?’
Allen didn’t know.
He only knew that at this speed and on this course, that blade would strike the defense lines of Zone 18 in twenty days.
Ninety-four Second-Level Magical Beasts.
To kill a single Rock Armor Earth Dragon leader, he had deployed six Freedom Gundams and even dropped an expensive "Big Boy" on it.
And now, there were a full ninety-four of them, plus one hundred thousand cannon fodder. Even if only a fraction of them reached Zone 18, his defenses wouldn’t hold.
His existing Golem Legion, even if they emptied the entire armory, could never withstand being crushed by a force of this magnitude. This was beyond the scope of zone developnt; this was a localized, planar-level war.
[Continue close-range reconnaissance?] Jarvis’s voice broke the dead silence.
"Increase altitude to fifteen thousand ters. Maintain tracking and surveillance. Do not be detected."
Allen stood up.
He didn’t look at the sand table showing the mines and workshops that represented his life’s work. In the face of such power, all that infrastructure was nothing but a sandcastle on a beach.
"Jarvis."
"Connect to the Forged Fire Fortress." Allen straightened his collar. "I need to speak directly with my ntor."
When the rules are overturned, when a disaster exceeds all calculated limits,
one must borrow power from a higher dinsion.
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