Chapter 778 - The Receding Barrier

Chapter 778: Chapter 778 - The Receding Barrier

Lucien expected the change to accelerate.

Thankfully, it did not.

The barrier continued withdrawing at a measured pace.

An hour passed.

Then another.

The world eventually stopped trembling, but the Black Mass did not stop moving.

Lucien watched long enough to realize that the darkness was not simply disappearing.

It was condensing.

The vast boundary seemed to be drawing itself inward, compressing toward the corrupted territory as though something deeper within it were gathering what had once been spread across an enormous area.

That bothered Lucien more than a simple collapse would have.

A barrier failing could be understood.

A barrier deliberately withdrawing implied purpose.

As more of it retreated, parts of the supercontinent that had remained hidden for years became visible.

Dead mountain ranges emerged first.

Then plains corrupted beyond recognition.

Ruined cities appeared along distant horizons.

Forests whose trees looked more like twisted silhouettes than living things returned beneath the open sky.

And among them, things moved.

Lucien’s expression darkened.

Corrupted monsters stood across the newly exposed territory.

There were too many to count from a single observation.

Some gathered on mountain ridges, while others moved through the plains beneath them. Flying monsters circled above regions that had been sealed away for years.

Among the masses, Lucien could already sense the presence of Monster Emperors.

What disturbed him most was that none of them charged outward.

They waited.

The Black Mass withdrew a little farther.

The monsters still waited.

Lucien would almost have preferred an immediate attack.

•••

Only then did the larger consequence become impossible to ignore.

The boundary had restricted the corrupted monsters living within its territory.

There had been ways for some of them to emerge before. Origin Core fragments had created openings.

But unrestricted movement had never existed.

Now every portion of the retreating barrier exposed more open territory.

Soon, the monsters would not need an Origin Core fragment to create a passage.

They would not need to wait for some temporary spatial opening.

Once the barrier retreated far enough, they could simply leave.

Lucien looked across the exposed land and imagined the distance between that supercontinent and the nearest inhabited regions.

Land could be crossed.

Seas could be crossed.

The skies offered no barrier at all to creatures capable of flight.

For years, the corrupted supercontinent had functioned like a sealed prison.

The door was opening.

•••

The public understood that implication almost as quickly.

At first, confusion dominated the communication channels.

People wanted to know whether the barrier had broken, whether something had attacked the Black Mass, or whether the shaking meant the entire Big World was becoming unstable.

Then the observation projections spread.

People saw the darkness retreating.

They saw the exposed supercontinent.

They saw the monsters waiting beyond the shrinking boundary.

And the rumors that had circulated for months suddenly stopped feeling like rumors.

People had argued endlessly about whether another major conflict was truly coming.

Some believed the void attacks were isolated expansion.

Others thought the Black Mass monsters was simply testing the Thousand Races.

Many preferred to believe that the worst predictions were exaggerated by people who had lived through too many crises.

That afternoon changed the argument.

Nobody could pretend nothing was happening anymore.

Fear spread quickly, but it did not spread evenly.

Some people immediately tried to return home.

Others went toward training grounds instead.

Families checked the emergency arrangements they had prepared months earlier and made sure everyone still remembered where to go if local administrations issued evacuation orders.

Formation masters who had inspected defenses only days earlier began checking them again because suddenly nobody trusted a report written before the world shook.

Young practitioners who had spent months joking about emergency drills stopped joking.

The five continents did not collapse into panic.

But the unease was everywhere.

It settled into conversations.

It emptied certain roads.

It filled chapels.

It made people look toward distant horizons even when they knew they could not possibly see the corrupted supercontinent from where they stood.

Lucien watched all of it through the Grace System.

Fear was spreading faster than facts.

So Lootwell released a statement.

•••

The message was deliberately brief.

The Black Mass boundary was receding.

Lootwell and the major factions were monitoring the process.

No large-scale invasion had begun.

People were instructed to remain where they were unless their local authorities issued different orders.

Lucien refused to say more.

He had learned long ago that reassurance became dangerous when it was built on things nobody actually knew.

He could have told everyone that the five continents were prepared.

That was true.

He could have promised that Lootwell would protect them.

He intended to.

But he could not promise that nobody would die.

He could not promise that the Black Mass would stop retreating.

He could not even tell them what the transformation would become once the process finished.

So he said only what was certain.

Oddly enough, that helped.

The rumors did not disappear, but they lost some of their momentum.

People had grown accustomed to Lootwell refusing to dramatize problems.

If Lucien said an invasion had not begun, then most believed him.

More importantly, Lootwell itself had not changed posture dramatically.

No desperate evacuation began.

No emergency conscription swept the streets.

No ancient beasts suddenly abandoned their posts.

The administration continued functioning.

That steadiness became something people could hold onto.

•••

As evening approached, the first terror gradually changed into a heavier, quieter kind of fear.

People remembered how much preparation had already happened.

The Grand Intercontinental Competition no longer seemed like some extravagant event from another time. Many of those training facilities had remained active afterward, and thousands had already experienced controlled versions of battlefield pressure, retreat, extraction, formation collapse, and authority suppression.

Voidwatch still guarded the conquered worlds.

The hidden weaknesses discovered during Vorren’s inspections had been corrected wherever possible.

Major factions had spent months adjusting emergency plans and learning how to cooperate instead of waiting for Lootwell to solve every problem.

Even the traitorous groups that might have broken the Thousand Races from within had been discovered before they could complete their negotiations with the enemy.

People were afraid.

But they also knew they had prepared.

That knowledge changed everything.

Cities did not descend into riots.

Supply warehouses remained guarded instead of being torn apart by frightened crowds.

Healers reported to the places they had been assigned months earlier.

Formation masters inspected defensive arrays instead of fleeing with their families.

Young fighters quietly checked their equipment.

Parents held their children longer than usual before sending older sons and daughters toward mobilization centers.

Those who had faith prayed.

Those who preferred training trained.

Those who had nothing useful to do tried very hard not to invent something foolish.

Across public channels, nervous humor eventually appeared.

One message complained that the Black Mass had terrible timing because people had only just started enjoying normal life again.

Another asked whether Lootwell could send the enemy an official request to postpone the apocalypse until after the weekend.

Lucien read that one twice.

He did not smile much.

But he did smile.

•••

Vorren remained with him longer than usual.

Lucien eventually glanced at him.

"How does it feel now?"

Vorren looked toward the exposed territory.

His unease had clearly not disappeared.

If anything, it had become easier for him to recognize now that the disturbance had finally shown itself.

"Bad."

Lucien waited.

Vorren frowned, searching for the right way to explain it.

"Very bad. But strangely... still far."

Lucien’s expression shifted.

Vorren pressed a hand against his chest again.

"The danger is clearer now, but it doesn’t feel like it’s already here. It’s more like something distant has finally started moving."

That matched what Lucien had been seeing.

The barrier was receding.

The corrupted monsters were gathering near the exposed regions.

But none of them had crossed.

Whatever Aurelia had foreseen had begun, yet the actual calamity still seemed to be approaching rather than arriving all at once.

Vorren looked unsettled by that realization.

"I don’t feel like I need to run yet."

Lucien studied him for a moment.

The word yet mattered.

So did the fact that Vorren was still standing beside him.

His instincts were warning him that something enormous was coming, but not that death was already descending upon the five continents.

For Lucien, that was useful information.

The transformation had started.

The danger had not fully arrived.

There was still time.

How much remained was another question entirely.

•••

Night eventually covered the five continents.

The Black Mass continued receding.

More corrupted territory became visible beneath the distant darkness.

The monsters had begun moving closer to the exposed edges by then, but still they did not cross.

Tidewatch tracked every major concentration it could detect.

Lootwell’s observation arrays compared movement patterns.

The major factions established secure communication channels and raised readiness gradually rather than throwing every force toward the borders at once.

Lucien agreed with that decision.

Nobody knew how long the transformation would take.

If they mobilized everything immediately and kept everyone under maximum pressure for weeks, exhaustion would become another enemy before the first real battle even began.

So the world tightened without overreacting.

Reserve forces were notified.

Emergency teleportation routes were cleared.

Medical organizations moved onto partial readiness.

Voidwatch remained active in the conquered worlds instead of being abandoned in panic.

The Thousand Races prepared to move without spending all of their strength before they knew where that movement would be needed.

Lucien watched the process with quiet satisfaction.

Years ago, an event like this might have caused half the world to start shouting contradictory orders.

Now the structure held.

That did not make the danger smaller.

It meant the danger would have to work harder.