Chapter 372: Were You Talking About Me?

The Elders hurried to open the report. Cries of disbelief broke out around Sylvara.

"How is that possible?"

"Could Briallen have made a mistake?"

"Her Eye of Insight has reached Lesser Perfection. General Briallen would not mistake something like this."

Sylvara could only watch their changing expressions. As a Hero, she no longer belonged to the native Lords’ Channel. Whatever they were reading, she could not see it.

"What happened?" she asked urgently.

Maereth looked up, excitement shining in her eyes.

"Your Majesty, General Briallen reports that the high-ranking Orc Lords have lost all their office bonuses. Their strength has fallen sharply!"

Briallen was Pandora’s foremost Ranger General. Her powers of observation were exceptional, and she moved through the forest with a speed and stealth few could match. If she had confirmed the change, they could trust it.

"It must be my lord!"

Sylvara rose, her eyes bright with delight.

"The Royal Palace has been destroyed. Even Vargul will need several days to rebuild it. This is our chance."

"If Pandora survives this invasion, we will owe it to Lord Cassian," Maereth said. "Now we can only hope he escapes the Beast Emperor’s pursuit."

Sylvara still had faith in him.

"He must still be inside the Silence zone. I can’t reach him." She looked around the gathering. "But we know what we need to do. Before Vargul can act again, we counterattack and cut down his strongest forces. We cannot let my lord’s efforts go to waste."

The Elders rose together.

"We will defend Pandora to the death!"

Sylvara nodded and began to chant.

Ancient, mysterious words flowed through the clearing. Within a kilometer of her, the old trees began to crack and shift. Branches thickened into arms. Earth heaved as great roots pulled free, twisted together, and became legs.

In moments, more than ten thousand Treants stood before the gathering. Even the weakest were Rare.

Maereth drew a sharp breath.

"Your Majesty... Forest Animation has reached Transcendence?"

"It has."

With Enlightenment Tea freely available to her and so much time spent studying beneath the Ancient Tree of Life, Sylvara’s nature magic had advanced rapidly. Recently, Forest Animation had reached Greater Perfection. She had then used a fresh leaf’s first infusion for its final, one-time increase.

The Elders exchanged complicated looks. Then they put their feelings aside and began to work. Call of the Wild drew beasts out of the forest. More trees stirred beneath Forest Animation.

Here, the Elves were fighting on their own ground.

More than ten thousand kilometers inside Pandora Forest, the horns of a counterattack sounded. Billions of Treants and wild beasts formed its vanguard.

Elven archers moved between the enormous trunks, pouring dense clouds of arrows into the invaders. Bear Druids, Huntresses, and Elven Bladesmen slipped through the forest and struck wherever the Orc formations exposed a weakness.

For years, the Bloodmaw Court’s office system had given it its greatest advantage over Pandora. Now those bonuses were gone. Caught off guard in unfamiliar terrain, the Orcs suffered an early setback.

They were still a formidable army. Before long, their formations steadied.

"Filthy Elves! You wait until His Majesty leaves to launch an attack!"

A Beast King Lord ten meters tall swung his mace through the Treants before him. Dozens shattered beneath the blow.

"Kill everything in front of us!"

The silence over the Bloodmaw Region still held, and the War God Statue was no longer there to open a passage. News of what had happened inside had yet to reach the army.

——

Apart from the Elves, no one welcomed the counterattack more than the Lords of the thirteen Crown Provinces.

[They’re fighting back! The Elves have finally stopped retreating!]

[Thank goodness. A few more days like that, and the Orcs would have reached my Domain.]

[No wonder Lord Cassian was so confident. It really was all part of his plan!]

Nerissa’s reply arrived almost at once.

[Nerissa Vaust: Keep dreaming. The Elves cannot stand against the Orc army.]

The foreign hunting settlements on the steppe had just been swept away. Black Banner, Western Beacon, and Jade Court Lords had suffered terrible losses, and their survivors had fled. Now the Elves were counterattacking too.

Nerissa was close to exploding.

Darian obligingly gave her another push.

[Darian Frost: I hear the Black Banner lost quite a few Lords. Your survivors also say the Bloodmaw Royal Palace was destroyed. Is that true?]

[Nerissa Vaust: So what if it is?]

[Nerissa Vaust: The Orcs were fools. They neglected the defenses of their own Royal Palace and gave you an opening.]

[Nerissa Vaust: But Cassian never expected Vargul to break through a spatial seal and return to the capital. Against that kind of strength, his little schemes mean nothing. Wait for the news of his death.]

[Nerissa Vaust: Once the Beast Emperor returns to the front, none of you will escape either.]

Worry spread among Divine Province’s Lords.

Cassian had Mythic troops and several Mythic items. He had even cleared the twenty-seventh stage of the Thousandfold Labyrinth. But Vargul was a Level-115 Mythic Lord. Even Cassian’s Level-95 troops faced a twenty-Level gap.

None of them imagined he might have killed the emperor in open battle. They, too, assumed he had caught the palace’s defenders unprepared.

"I can’t reach Cassian."

Nessa stared at her unanswered messages. Anxiety filled her face. At last, she clenched her teeth.

"We can’t get there to help him. But we can reinforce Pandora’s front line. That should take some pressure off him."

Darian and Elara exchanged a look, then nodded.

They immediately began gathering several hundred of the thirteen Provinces’ strongest War Lords for a march to the front.

Before they could leave the Channel behind, another message appeared.

[Cassian Vale: Were you talking about me?]

After more than an hour on the march, he had finally brought his army beyond the seals blocking space and communication.

For a moment, the Channel fell silent.

Then the Crown Lords erupted.

[I knew it! I said Lord Cassian would be all right!]

[Boss, Vargul has returned to the Grimward Steppe. Find an area without a spatial seal and open a Gate out of there!]

Nerissa and the others stared at his message with dark expressions.

In wartime, armies sealed one area after another to control movement. Finding a gap through which to open a Gate could be difficult.

For Cassian, it was simple enough.

Vargul was dead. As far as he was concerned, the Grimward Steppe might as well have been his own back garden.

He spent a few minutes catching up on the situation at the main battlefield.

"The Elves get their information quickly. They’ve already started their counterattack."

It was good news, but he could see the problem.

"Even without Vargul and the Royal Palace, the Orc army is still stronger."

Pandora was a native power. Through Sylvara, however, it might become a force he could put to use. Helping it now was worth the effort.

Besides, all those Orc troops meant an enormous amount of Battle Essence and loot.

With that thought, Cassian started a video conference in Divine Province’s management group.