I wasn't gone for a long time actually, and so the current situation was the same. But right now I had to establish a safe place for these people to work in.
And so it took me a few hours to clear enough space for them, mobilising lots of forces to safeguard against anything these Valkyries would try.
At this point, I didn't want to see anything going wrong. I was this close from crushing the deadliest weapon of the enemy, and then I'd be free to crush the rest of flies filling the entire world.
In other words… The moment I'd deal with this cave and whatever lies within, I'd win this entire battle.
I moved the people from the research department to work there. I didn't stand idle, and kept fighting the Valkyries all over this region. I wanted to make this zone totally safe, void of any trees, weird clouds, and the ferocious Valkyries, a guard against anything that might go south or something.
And in the middle of doing all this, I kept checking on the current status of the digging team. They were doing just fine, digging an area of tens of miles in radius. They weren't just digging a small hole or a tunnel, it felt like they were going to penetrate the entire planet with their machines!
Just as I was busy doing all this, something bad did really happen. And it came from someone that I didn't see for a long time, that mysterious dude who could travel back in time!
He kept trying, sending clone after clone, trying to mess up all of my plans. But eventually he vanished, and I thought he lost hope about doing whatever he wanted to do. It never crossed my mind that he was lying in wait, anticipating the moment when things would be quite dangerous to land his strike!
He started to appear on continents where my forces were scattered and weak. Just like how Karoline did, he also came with huge armies, monster armies, and managed to kill lots of my forces on many continents.
But unlike Karoline, he didn't stand in his place and occupy continents. He just kept moving from one continent to another, spreading his monster armies everywhere he went.
I didn't know how he could move the monsters with him. But I could guess he either used portals or had a way to mobilise and summon new monster armies.
He aimed at the continents where my forces were struggling against the various races. He didn't touch a single race but my humans. And when I got the news, I asked Lily to start regrouping my forces, so the situation wouldn't end in a much worse state.
She asked to counter that jerk and send lots of armies there. But our forces were already struggling and stretched thin in the first place. She wanted to send the forces we withdrew from the continents surrounding the ones of Karoline. And I rejected such a suggestion at once.
It wasn't wise to open new battlefronts at this moment. The top priority now was to get rid of that impending threat of the cave and the bombs underground.
So I asked her to just move the new forces to fortify the continents we already controlled. Also she had to rearrange the forces fighting separately at other places, so we would limit our losses.
Then I shifted my attention towards the digging process here.
Damn him! If not that he was a clone and killing him wouldn't make any difference, then I'd be happy to get rid of him once and for all.
His real body wasn't here, not in my timeline at least. I even didn't know if he came from the same universe or not, if he came from a parallel universe or something.
But that didn't matter. Right now, that annoying enemy of mine appeared just after one week.
During that time, the digging team managed to reach deep depths, taking out tons of rocks and dirt. At some point, they even hit a lava river, ending up releasing a scary fountain of deadly lava that had me intervene to contain it.
Many machines got damaged in the process. And the research department requested to take these back to get repaired. I didn't refuse such a request, after all they got lots of machines to replace those damaged ones.
I got the situation under my control. Valkyries kept trying to stop me, but they were all killed with tons of force on my side.
When I saw this, I felt relieved that I did my preparations before. If not, then I'd be under immense pressure right now.
From time to time I'd go into the mirror world, take a look at the underground cave. Of course the enemies lying down their noticed my activity on the surface. And so I started to notice many weird lights shining brighter than before, filling the entire cave underground with a myriad of lights.
That meant one thing… The forces down below were trying to activate these bombs. So it ended up to be a race, a race against time. Whoever finishes first, reaching their goal faster, would end up winning this clash.
So when I saw this, I returned to the real world and started giving orders for the research department to send more machines. They didn't get enough time to make much, but they indeed sent lots of new gear.
I even took out my glaive and started to activate its skills in succession. At some point, I even gathered my fallen gods, and let them release their deadly attacks combined.
All was for one goal, to deepen the hole that the research department was working on. In the end, we reached a very deep point, where there was just little space between me and the forces down below.
"Scatter around, dig horizontally, expand this place to cover hundreds of miles!"
Against what logic would dictate, I didn't order my digging team to keep digging downwards. Instead, I asked them to dig around, expanding the area here to be enough for a grand army to be present.
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om