Chapter 679: Wrong Assumption, Mission Complete
Jaskrit Kezinos searched the mainland for a full day and found nothing.
He started from the assumption that made the most sense. The three missing Suryax-Regalon powerhouses had X-rank potential and powerful decks, and they had skipped the most important event in the warfare. People did not skip something that mattered unless they were chasing something that mattered more. The only place worth chasing on this continent was the mainland itself, the dominion of the Doom Monarch, which no participating force had explored beyond the Mountain’s plateau.
So that was where Jaskrit looked.
He moved fast and alone, sweeping wide arcs across the inland territory beyond the Mountain. He searched the dead zones where the Doom Army marshaled. He searched the ridges and the broken valleys and the strange, twisted forests that grew under the red sky. He searched the ruins of whatever civilization had stood here before the Doom Monarch took the continent. He pushed his senses to their limit and covered ground that would have taken a fleet a week to cross.
He found Doom Army staging grounds. He found resource veins the event had not announced. He found the slow, patient movement of the Doom Monarch’s deeper forces.
He did not find Almond, Lily, or Ainen.
Because they were not there.
By the end of the day, Jaskrit had to accept that his first assumption was wrong. The three were not on the mainland. He had searched it as thoroughly as one person could, and there was no trace of them anywhere on the continent.
He returned to the Mountain.
---
In his absence, two things had happened.
The first was that Virexion-Kezryx had dropped from second place to third.
Jaskrit’s personal combat power had been a significant part of his alliance’s contribution. Without him on the field, the Virexion-Kezryx counter had slowed, and Celestara-Dravokh, fighting with everything they had left, had climbed past them into second. The Kezryx commander who had run the line in Jaskrit’s absence looked deeply unhappy about it.
The second was more interesting.
Suryax-Regalon was still in fourth place. But the gap had stopped growing.
Jaskrit studied the leaderboard for a long moment when he returned, and then he studied the southeastern arc, and what he saw there made him narrow his eyes.
The Suryax-Regalon line had changed.
It was not stronger, exactly. The same forces were on the field. But they had become ruthlessly efficient. Rudra and the field commanders had spent the waves Jaskrit was gone refining their formation into something close to a machine. Every unit had a place. Every kill fed the next. The 100,000 Regalon troops that the alliance had crafted before entering the warfare event had grown over the engagement, their synergies sharpening with each wave, and they now fought as a single coordinated body that did not waste a single motion.
And they took no casualties.
That was the part that caught Jaskrit’s attention. Every other alliance on the field had lost soldiers. Thalmyr had lost soldiers. Virexion had lost soldiers. Celestara had bled badly. But the Suryax-Regalon line had not lost a single unit across multiple waves. Their defensive coordination was so tight that the Doom Army could not find a gap to exploit. They were not topping the leaderboard, but they were holding their position with a cleanliness that none of the other alliances could match.
Natalia ran the predictive layer. Kayla ran the threads. Aryan ran the tactical assignments. Rudra anchored the whole thing. Ainen held the right flank. Together, they had built a battlefield where the Doom Army’s attacks were intercepted before they fully formed, where every soldier knew where the next threat would come from before it arrived, where the line bent and recovered without ever breaking.
It was, in its own quiet way, more impressive than topping the leaderboard would have been.
Jaskrit recognized it for what it was.
"That is not a recovering mid-tier alliance," he said quietly.
The Kezryx commander beside him glanced over. "Milord?"
"A recovering mid-tier alliance loses soldiers. It cannot help it. That line down there has not lost one." Jaskrit watched the southeastern arc for a moment longer. "They are stronger than they are letting the leaderboard show. And three of their strongest are still missing."
"Then where are they?"
"That," Jaskrit said, "is the question."
He had searched the mainland. The mainland was clean.
That left the ocean.
He turned and vanished again.
---
Jaskrit went to the depths first.
It was the obvious place to look. The depths held the Tier-100 assets, and an alliance that had escaped four powers with a Tier-100 blueprint two months earlier might well be back in the depths chasing more.
He descended into the Virexion depth, because it was his own, and because if anyone had been tampering with it, he would know.
He found nothing.
The depth was exactly as it should be. The Tier-100 storm monsters patrolled their territory undisturbed. The blueprint chamber was sealed and intact. The blueprint floated at its center in its sphere of ambient lightning, exactly where it had always been.
Jaskrit looked at it for a long moment.
Something about it bothered him.
He could not say what. The chamber was undisturbed. The seals were intact. The monsters showed no sign of recent disruption. By every measure he could apply, nothing had happened here. And yet the feeling would not leave him, a low itch at the back of his awareness, the sense of a room that had been entered and left without disturbing a single object.
But a feeling was not evidence.
He scanned the blueprint directly. It read as genuine. Tier-100. Storm-aligned. The resonance was perfect.
Of course it read as genuine. By the time Jaskrit reached the chamber, the blueprint sitting in it was the one Ainen’s origin flame had built to wear the original’s exact signature, and Big D’s deck had given it a vessel that held form under handling and survived a scan. It was a forgery, but it was a forgery designed by people who had built their entire scheme around exactly this moment, the moment an enemy would come to check.
Jaskrit could not tell.
He pulled back from the chamber, still uneasy, and surfaced.
He turned his attention to the Suryax-Regalon island next.
From a safe distance, he studied it. The island had been transformed since the warfare event began. He had known that. Everyone had known that. But seeing it up close, he understood the scale of it for the first time. The defensive dome. The layered walls. The Mega Dreadship fleet, half of which was here at home while the other half fought at the Mountain. The towers. The army stationed across the island. The whole thing was a fortress built to hold against a far stronger enemy, and Jaskrit was one person.
He could not invade it alone. Even if the three missing powerhouses were inside, even if everything he suspected was true, there was nothing he could do about it by himself. An attack would require his full alliance, and his full alliance was committed to the Mountain.
He had a feeling. He had an island he could not enter. He had a blueprint that read genuine and an instinct that said otherwise.
He had nothing he could act on.
Jaskrit stared at the fortified island for a while longer, and then he made the only decision available to him.
He returned to the Mountain.
The fourth wave was coming, and an event he could not afford to lose was happening in front of him while he chased a feeling he could not prove. The Doom Monarch was the immediate threat. The Suryax-Regalon suspicions could wait until he had evidence, or until the event ended and he could bring his full strength to bear.
He went back to defending waves.
---
Beneath the Suryax island, the work continued without pause.
Almond and the team had finished acquiring all five blueprints. The Oblivion original they had held for two months. The Suryax, Virexion, Thalmyr, and Celestara originals they had taken on the dives. All five genuine blueprints were in Almond’s vault.
Now came the forging.
This was the slowest part of the entire operation, and it could not be rushed. Each forgery had to be perfect. Ainen’s origin flame studied each genuine blueprint in turn, learning its exact resonance, its exact signature, the precise feel of its power. Big D’s deck built each vessel to hold that signature under handling and scanning. Vorth’s team verified each forgery against the original until the two were indistinguishable by every test they could devise.
They worked non-stop for two days.
Ainen did not sleep. His flame moved from one blueprint to the next, capturing each signature with the same care he gave to his cooking. Big D built vessel after vessel. Vorth’s team ran verification pass after verification pass. The lab beneath the palace ran on no schedule but completion.
By the end of the second day, all five forgeries were finished.
