A wizard with black hair and a close-fitting garment spoke with a serious look, “There won’t be much to find from a piece of desert, I’m afraid.”
“Not quite.” The respondent was an old woman wearing a showy golden robe. She had a pair of crimson ear studs that looked like two drops of blood. “So many people came to ‘plunder’ for a reason. Besides, this is the biggest plane fusion we’ve witnessed in thousands of years. The first two stages took an entire week to finish... We can only wonder how enormous the other world truly is.”
Several wizards yelled in awe when they saw a large sandworm inside the reflection, who gave them a scornful glare and dived back into the sand.
“That thing’s huge!”
“A wizard-level monster. It must be.”
“How strong is it? Can we tame it?”
“I want to know if its skin and blood are of any use!”
The old woman glanced at the black-haired man she talked to. “See that? The only question is whether you look carefully enough. The prolonged plane fusion meant that the foreign plane is a stable world with well-established laws and systems. This means we will find valuables from it.”
“I don’t think that worm lives alone. Maybe we’re expecting a group of them who can stir up deadly sandstorms. Just look at the terrible weather.”
“A group of wizard-level monsters. You know what this means to us, right, Saipan?”
“But Lady Danae, we can’t hunt down multiple wizard-level monsters fast enough. Somebody will find us and try to take a bite off our prey.”
Saipan glanced in another direction. Among another group of wizards, a charming, barefoot woman was smirking at him under her adorable red parasol.
She blew Saipan a kiss and winked.
“That filthy b*tch!” Saipan spat furiously. “We failed to get a single Fragment of Eternity because of them, meddlesome Flora and Rein Mute. Now she’s happy, huh?!”
Danae grimaced. “Phantom Island is now our enemy. We’re too close to Brute Cavern right now. We should have expected them to bother us.”
Danae’s organization, Gravity Forest, just recently offended Sunders in the Abyss. Of course Brute Cavern was not happy about it.
“Then we just watch them sh*t on our heads?!” Saipan’s pale face turned red in rage.
Danae looked away. “Yes. We bide.”
“Damn them all! It was Sunders and Flora who took all of our fragments from Boko and made their own garden which should be ours! They know no shame!”
The wizarding world was never a place where shame and justice worked. Strength meant everything.
Danae stopped Saipan from further protesting. “Remember, Brute Cavern is not our target. Our real enemy is still in the Abyss.”
Gravity Forest never intended to go hostile against Brute Cavern in the first place because they would get nothing out of it. What they were planning was to seize Sunders’ Gravity Garden. Gravity Forest had a weaker Gravity Garden that urgently needed “supplement” right now.
Saipan looked unconvinced. “But we failed last time. Do we have to go to the Abyss again?”
Danae glanced at “God of Seas” Flunza and where Song of the Deep was stationed.
“You forgot? We have another trick up our sleeves. Emmagan.”
Saipan grew quiet upon hearing this name.
Emmagan was a member of Song of the Deep and a very capable fighter. But compared to his strength, people were more concerned about his origin.
Rumors had it that Emmagan was a “vessel” who belonged to a deadly individual from a foreign plane. For this reason, the Supreme Cult was constantly monitoring Emmagan’s moves. Though the cult never managed to actually do anything because Emmagan was always well-protected by Song of the Deep.
The truth was, the Supreme Cult was already suspicious of Song of the Deep for many reasons. By now, Song of the Deep had shown many shady connections with foreign invaders.
“We-we are cooperating with Emmagan?” Saipan wasn’t sure whether this was a good idea.
Danae slightly shook her head. “Dealing with the devil to gain strength has always been a common practice in this world. Wizards go after profit. If a devil gives us enough profit, we’ll accept it.”
Saipan closed his eyes.
“Once the tunnel becomes available, we enter the other plane and immediately leave the mob,” said Danae, “especially away from Brute Cavern.”
“Noted.” Saipan nodded.
“Heh. Prophets told us that the final location of the tunnel will not remain at Parmigi Highlands. That’s when we’ll see Brute Cavern cry over their misfortune.”
If the Parmigi Highlands served as an entrance to the foreign plane, in the long run, Brute Cavern would be able to use the advantage to exploit the new territory however they liked. Rein Mute even considered migrating the HQ of Brute Cavern—the mirror world—into the foreign plane if the Parmigi Highlands was endangered by parasites.
Of course Gravity Forest was delighted to see their rival losing such a great opportunity.
“Speaking of Prophets, ‘Innocence’ Seurat mentioned that a great destiny here will be claimed by a certain individual. But we don’t see that happening yet. Will someone find some kind of big treasure in the foreign plane and take it away when no one’s looking?” asked Saipan.
Most wizards had heard about Seurat’s claim. Apart from waiting for the “Time of Plunder”, they were also thinking about how to seize the “great destiny” should they find it.
The mirage in the sky was growing clearer by the second, while all the wizards prepared their various tricks in order to move faster and get the upper hand during the feast.
Following several eager people who flew higher to get closer to the reflection, the other organizations, including Brute Cavern and Song of the Deep, told their men to move as well.
Lady Danae also commanded her members, “Prepare yourselves. The plane fusion is ending soon.”
Everyone held their breaths and waited for the decisive moment.
One minute. Two. Ten...
Several wizards lost patience and landed back on the ground.
The finale of the plane fusion did not occur, which also prevented the Time of Plunder from happening.
More importantly, the reflection in the sky was getting blurry for some reason.
Danae and Saipan exchanged a surprised look as they both remembered seeing something similar several years ago. When they were looking at the plane fusion at Devil’s Water, the fusion also halted in the same manner.
Ka-boom!
The stressful wizards were startled by a thunderous explosion that appeared out of nowhere.
“Huh? Thunder? But it’s not raining—”
The clear sky was almost instantly covered behind rain clouds.
“What’s happening?!”
A plane fusion was not exactly a rare occurrence in the wizarding world. Every wizard who lived long enough tended to see several of them during their career.
Yet nobody could understand the strange sight they were looking at. A plane fusion would usually summon the power of the world’s consciousness that would cause harmful disasters during the early stages, but not unusual rainwater.
Was the plane fusion going to fail again, just like several years ago? But why? Was the southern wizarding region unable to incorporate more appendage planes?
Plop, plop...
Several drops of rain were soon followed by a terrible downpour.