Free Web NovelChapter 612: Chapter 612 - Accelerate
The next day, reports arrived from the shadows before dawn.
[East Continent.]
[Fragment-lost factions mobilizing.]
[Multiple Eternal-level participants confirmed.]
[Objective likely recovery of stolen Origin Core fragments.]
Lucien read the lines once.
Then again.
The ordinary witnesses had done their part.
Hunters had reported black-robed Eternals entering forbidden valleys.
The factions whose Origin Core fragments had been stolen were not stupid.
Greedy, cruel, arrogant, and soaked in old sins, perhaps.
But not stupid.
They had looked at the witness reports.
They had compared routes.
They had remembered the black-robed figures who had taken their fragments.
Then they had reached the same conclusion everyone careful was beginning to reach.
The thieves were not Lootwell.
They were hiding behind the old powers.
The factions had not gone separately.
That was the first interesting point.
They had joined forces.
Eternals from several damaged factions gathered in secret, each carrying their own hatred, weapons, formations, escape methods, and private schemes. None of them trusted one another. All of them wanted the same thing.
Their fragments.
Some came to recover what was stolen.
Some came to take more than that.
Some came because if they did nothing, their enemies would laugh at them for the next thousand years.
Lucien understood all three reasons.
He sent one command.
[Follow. Do not interfere. Record everything.]
The shadows obeyed.
They passed information from shadow to shadow, relay to relay, reflected surface to reflected surface, until the eastern route unfolded before Lucien like ink spreading through water.
Lucien watched.
The next Grace Quest was already prepared.
He did not release it yet.
Evidence before announcement.
Witness before judgment.
That was the order.
•••
The eastern factions reached the suspected site near evening.
It was a valley covered in black pines and pale mist.
The witness reports had described it as a place no living being should enter.
That had been the old warning.
But the factions did not hesitate for long.
People who came prepared to steal back stolen Origin Core fragments rarely turned around because a valley looked unfriendly.
They spread out.
Formation flags sank into the ground.
Killing arrays folded into the mist.
Several Eternals hid their true bodies behind substitutes.
One elderly woman swallowed a black pill and exhaled poison that could make laws sluggish.
A elder laughed quietly and took out an axe made from ancestral bone.
An Eternal placed his palm against his chest and activated a life-saving mark hidden near his heart. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
They were wicked people.
They were also not weak.
That was the tragedy of the Thousand Races. Evil did not prevent talent.
Then the valley answered.
Three black-robed figures appeared at the mouth of the hidden slope.
Their faces were covered.
Their pressure was calm. That calm was more frightening than anger.
The center figure spoke.
"This area is protected."
His voice did not echo.
"Leave."
The faction Eternals did not move.
The black-robed figure continued.
"The region is unstable. Your presence risks disturbing buried danger. If you advance, we will retaliate."
The words were familiar.
The same language that had filled the summit halls now stood in a valley with no public broadcast.
The elderly woman smiled with poisonous sweetness.
"You stole from us and now speak of protection?"
The center figure did not answer.
That silence decided everything.
The factions attacked first.
The valley split open.
•••
A battle between Eternals did not look like mortal war.
There were no neat lines.
No shouted charges.
No orderly exchange of techniques.
The first clash broke the mist into thousands of silver threads.
One Eternal’s Law of Weight fell over the valley, making every pine bend as if mountains had been hung from their branches.
The black-robed Keeper raised one hand.
The weight stopped.
The Eternal’s face changed.
His own law, the law he had practiced for centuries, trembled as if it had heard an older command.
Then it folded back toward him.
The shadows recorded the moment.
The second clash was worse.
The elderly woman released the law of Venom.
The black-robed woman on the left looked at the cloud.
Then she spoke one word the shadows could not hear clearly.
The poison stilled.
For an instant, the law itself looked confused.
Then it thinned into harmless gray smoke and drifted aside.
The elder’s smile vanished.
The third Keeper moved through a spatial cut and appeared behind the other elder before the elder’s axe completed its swing.
The axe carried a severing law.
It should have cut flesh, aura, and defense at once.
Instead, the Keeper placed two fingers on the axe blade.
The severing law dimmed.
The elder roared and tried to pull back.
The Keeper broke his wrist.
Then his shoulder.
Then his chest.
The shadows kept recording.
Lucien’s face turned ugly.
Not because the evil factions were dying.
Because of how they were dying.
The Keepers were not merely stronger.
They were exercising priority.
When they faced an Eternal using the same law, their authority pressed from above.
That was not normal Eternal suppression.
That was Primordial-style hierarchy.
Lucien understood what he was seeing.
The Keepers were not Primordials. But the authority behind them had the same shape.
That meant the Primordial Incarnations had not only left servants. They had left inheritance chains.
That would be difficult.
Very difficult.
•••
The faction Eternals realized it too late.
Their traps activated.
The valley became a slaughterhouse made of old grudges and bad decisions.
The first elder crushed his own heart before the Keeper’s hand reached him.
His body collapsed.
His spirit flashed away through a prepared life-saving vessel hidden far from the valley.
The elderly woman laughed once, then swallowed her own poison and dissolved into smoke before the Keeper could seal her law.
The other Eternal tried to flee through an ancestral escape tunnel.
But... the tunnel closed around him.
His scream lasted less than a breath.
Some died completely.
Some escaped by killing themselves first.
A few fled badly wounded, dragging broken laws and shattered pride behind them.
The Keepers did not pursue far.
Their faces remained hidden, but their silence had changed.
Before the battle, they had been confident.
After the battle, they were aware.
The valley was no longer only a hidden site.
It was a place witnesses had pointed toward.
A place stolen-fragment factions had found.
A place where Eternals had fought black-robed guardians and some had escaped to speak.
The Keepers had won the battle.
They had lost the quiet.
The center figure turned toward the hidden slope.
"Accelerate transfer."
The shadows caught the words.
Then the relay dimmed as the valley formations tightened.
The shadows withdrew before the net closed.
That was enough.
Lucien had what he needed.
•••
The next morning, the survivors spoke.
They flooded the public channels with rage, grief, humiliation, and accusation.
At first, many people did not believe them.
That was understandable.
These factions had never been loved.
They had used captives, sold poison, robbed travelers, twisted debt, and called many crimes tradition.
The public response was harsh.
[So thieves fought thieves?]
[You only care now because they stole from you.]
[Where is your proof?]
[Did the black-robed Eternals also force you to bring killing arrays?]
The surviving factions howled louder.
Louder did not mean more believable.
Then the second Grace Quest appeared.
Not to the survivors.
To ordinary witnesses.
[Grace Quest Available.]
[Assist Public Verification.]
[Objective: Submit verified sightings, records, aftermath traces, or local testimony related to the eastern valley conflict and black-robed Eternal movements.]
[Do not enter unstable zones.]
[Do not fabricate evidence.]
[Reward: 3-Star Skill Seed.]
The response came faster this time.
People had learned.
The world looked at the ordinary witnesses.
Then at the wounded Eternals.
Then at the old powers’ previous warnings.
Then at the Obsidian Collegium’s records.
Then at the Silent Monastery’s stretched sacred boundaries.
The pieces clicked.
The public channels shifted again.
This time, suspicion became a shape.
[Why were black-robed Eternals guarding that valley?]
[Why did old-power witnesses say the region was dangerous but never mention guards?]
[Why did stolen fragments lead there?]
[Why did they kill instead of allowing neutral inspection?]
[Why are the same patterns appearing in every continent?]
The Thousand Races had argued for days.
Now they began connecting things for themselves.
That was harder to stop.
•••
The Keepers were cornered.
They had underestimated the Thousand Races.
They had underestimated how quickly people could learn to distrust private whispers and demand seals.
Most of all, they had underestimated the communication network Lootwell had given the world.
A secret could survive many things.
It struggled to survive becoming searchable.
...
By afternoon, reports began multiplying.
Origin Core fragments were stolen openly across several regions.
The enemy had stopped choosing only dirty targets.
That was the clearest sign.
They were accelerating.
Lucien watched the stolen fragment markers move across the map.
One.
Three.
Seven.
More.
The hidden array pulsed more frequently.
The machine beneath the world was being fed.
The Keepers had lost time in public.
So they were trying to buy time with stolen authority.
Lucien stood.
Everyone in the shrine looked at him.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he looked at the five-continent map.
"The correction period is over."
No one smiled.
No one cheered.
They all understood.
Public separation had done its work.
The clueless allies were fleeing.
The witnesses had spoken.
The old powers’ shield had cracked.
The Keepers had chosen acceleration.
That meant waiting would no longer protect the world.
Lucien’s voice was calm.
"Let’s prepare for full counterattack."
The map answered.
Across Lootwell, branches woke.
Shadows moved.
Records opened.
Formation plates lit one by one.
And beneath the world, the hidden array pulsed again, as if something old had heard him and begun to breathe faster.
