My Goblin System : Levelling up with my SSS Class Devouring skill

Chapter 541: Chapter 541

Author Note: Please Read Last Chapter , i made some few changes

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The silence stretched for another moment.

Volcanus leaned forward and put his massive elbows on the table. The heat radiating from him made the air shimmer.

"I want to know how," he said, looking at Satou directly. Not hostile. Genuinely curious in the blunt way that Volcanus expressed curiosity. "How can a goblin emit such an aura."

"Later," Loki said pleasantly. "We’re here for the Grand Summons, Volcanus. Protocol before gossip."

"Who said anything about gossip," Volcanus rumbled, but he sat back.

Grimfang leaned toward Nexus, voice low. "You knew, didn’t you."

Nexus’s five hundred eyes blinked in staggered sequence. "I knew something had changed," he said, without specifying how. He never specified how.

"He is stronger than when I last assessed him," Thalassian said quietly, to no one in particular. His starlight form very still. "Significantly. The pattern is... familiar. I have seen it before."

"When?" Grimfang asked.

"Not recently," Thalassian said.

The conversation was private — low voices at the far end of the table. But Satou caught it. Filed it.

Malakor’s hollow gaze swept to Loki.

"So," the First Seat said. "What did you bring this urgent meeting for."

The weight of the Grand Summons protocols sat in the room. The understanding that invoking it carried responsibility. That the reason had better be genuine.

Loki didn’t gesture or perform. He turned and looked at the Tenth Seat.

The empty seat.

Every eye in the room followed his gaze. The empty chair where Chronus should have been sitting.

"Chronus was summoned," Malakor said. Flat. Factual.

"He was," Loki confirmed. "He didn’t come." He paused. "Which is itself information."

He straightened and addressed the full council with the measured delivery of someone who had prepared this carefully.

"Three weeks ago, Chronus’s border patrols stopped. Not reduced — stopped entirely. I sent reconnaissance. What they found was this."

He described it the way Cassius had described it — precise, sequenced, without exaggeration. The empty gatehouse. The empty settlements. The gates of Tempra standing open. The city of eighty thousand people intact and completely abandoned, mid-task, with full food stores and duty rosters still on the walls. The temporal absorption signatures.

The council listened.

When he finished he said: "Chronus has moved his entire population to an unmapped location outside the demon realm’s known boundaries. He’s been planning this for three months, beginning approximately six weeks after Richard Clay’s death. The city was not evacuated. The people were absorbed using temporal magic and relocated to an unknown destination. He is not in his territory. He is not in the demon realm as we know it. And he did not respond to the Grand Summons."

The silence that followed was different from the silence after Satou’s entrance.

More thinking in it.

Then Grimfang spoke.

The Eighth Seat leaned back in his chair, yellow predatory eyes fixed on Loki with the flat assessment of someone who had been at this table long enough to have seen every political maneuver attempted.

"You and Chronus have been enemies for centuries," he said. His voice was blunt. Not hostile toward Loki specifically — just direct in the way Grimfang was always direct. "Everyone at this table knows it. The question I want answered before I give this weight is simple: is what you’re describing an actual threat to the realm, or is this Loki using the Grand Summons to force council attention on his personal war?"

Loki’s pleasant expression thinned. "I invoked the Grand Summons because the threshold was met — not for personal reasons."

"You’ve had personal reasons to want Chronus dealt with for a long time," Grimfang said, unmoved. "An empty city is unusual. Strange. Concerning, even." His yellow eyes were steady. "It is not, by itself, a world-ending event. And the Grand Summons requires world-ending threshold."

Nyxara’s voice emerged from the shadows behind her seat — multi-directional, as it always was, coming from every angle at once.

"Grimfang’s question is valid," she said. Not hostile. Purely analytical. "An absent demon lord and an empty city could mean many things. Chronus is the Time Lord. He operates on timelines none of us fully understand. This council has committed resources to crises before that resolved themselves. Before we treat this as the threshold event you’re claiming — what evidence do you have that this is preparation for something catastrophic rather than Chronus doing what Chronus does?"

Azshara’s water sphere rippled as she spoke. "She has a point," the Second Seat said carefully. "I remember the last time someone invoked the Grand Summons over what turned out to be a misread situation. The consequences of that misuse took thirty years to repair politically." Her black eyes moved from Loki to the empty seat. "What you’re describing concerns me. But I want the full picture before I decide what it means."

Loki’s expression had gone very controlled. Something behind his eyes was running cold.

"I’ve known Loki for years" Volcanus said, looking directly at him. "He’s theatrical. He plays long games. He’s capable of using council mechanisms for his own purposes when he believes the end justifies it." He paused. "But I’ve also seen him when he’s genuinely concerned rather than performing concern. And right now—" He studied Loki for a moment. "Right now he looks like a demon lord who found something that actually worried him."

He looked around the table. "So. What am I missing? Because an empty city and a missing Tenth Seat alone wouldn’t have made him invoke the Summons."

"There’s more," Loki said. "But I wasn’t the only one who found it."

He looked at Satou.

"Can I say something," Satou said.

It wasn’t a question.

The shift in the room was immediate — the way attention moved toward him with the particular quality of beings who had just heard something in a voice that didn’t match the face it came from. Who expected provisional deference and had received something else entirely.

Grimfang’s eyes moved to Satou. "The Seventh Seat is new to this council."