Chapter 916
Was it an accidental bleed of divine energy from the artifact itself? Or was there a deeper, invisible current running beneath the surface, one that suggested the game wasn’t as simple as a careless mistake, and that someone, or something, had deliberately baited the hook?
The stylus slipped from his fingers, clattering softly against the desk. The cold sweat of paranoia, which he had thought exorcised by the logic of their bargain, began to prickle at his skin once more.
The more Tyrion replayed the scene in his mind, the more a deeply uncomfortable sensation began to knot in his chest. A much more immediate and disturbing question shoved the mystery of the pull aside, Why on earth had he even considered Tide an ally?
He sat frozen in the dim light of his study, turning the thought over and over again. Mid-conversation, faced with a deity who had moments earlier looked down on him with open mockery, Tyrion had somehow pivoted. He had willingly bartered away half of his own intrinsic law shard, rationalizing that they were bound together by a greater, unseen hand, and actively painting a god of trade as a partner in a grand scheme.
Was it something Tide had actually said? Or had he been subtly, invisibly influenced?
Tyrion’s jaw tightened as he mentally retraced every second of the encounter, searching his spiritual core for the phantom tethers of mental tampering or emotional manipulation. But as he probed his own consciousness, he found nothing. No foreign residue, no tangled wires of compulsion, and no lingering spellwork. If a higher power had tampered with his mind, his Luminous Logic sensitive to the very core of conceptual interference would have screamed an alarm.
He hadn’t been magically compelled.
Scratched out as a paranoid illusion, the unsettling truth left only one alternative, it had all been Tide.
It was the god’s calculated words, the brilliant framing of mutual misery, and the confusion like he was unaware of what was going on. Tide may have played him like a master artisan, wrapping him in a shroud of false camaraderie so smoothly that Tyrion in his desperation leaned into it.
Tyrion rubbed his aching temples, letting out a long, shuddering breath that rattled in the quiet room.
Stop it.
He forced his hands flat against the wooden desk, pressing down until his knuckles turned white. He was doing it again, spinning webs of paranoia in the dark, hunting for phantoms and grand conspiracies where there were likely none.
For months, he had been cooped up in this sanctuary, completely isolated with his own racing thoughts. The crushing secrecy of the tome, the paralyzing terror of being hunted down by forces beyond his control, and the constant, suffocating fear of losing everything he had worked so hard to build had warped his perspective. It had turned him into a paranoid wreck, constantly second-guessing every interaction and reading hidden machinations into plain sight.
Was Tide really some master manipulator who had hypnotized him with charismatic framing? Or was it simply the raw reality that even with his status as a paragon, he still was being looked down upon.
The fear of being exposed, the terror of having his hard-earned sanctuary stripped away, and the relentless isolation of carrying a secret too heavy for a mortal world, it was all getting to him. It was making him paranoid, fragile, and entirely too ready to see enemies where there is none.
Straightening his posture, Tyrion uncurled his fists and reached for his inscription stylus once more. The air in the room felt lighter, the suffocating weight of his endless overthinking finally beginning to fracture and drift away.
He didn’t need to chase phantom strings or worry about invisible hands anymore. The trade was made, the ring was on his desk, and the path forward was clear. It was time to stop drowning in "what ifs" and simply do what he did best, learn, build, and reclaim his standing.
At the northern continent, the war escalated into an new era of bloodshed and strategy with the sudden entry of the wolflings. Having barely finished settling their newly claimed territories, Lunara wasted no time deploying her people onto the stage, seeking to harvest war medals and carve out undeniable prestige for her future plans.
The wolfings entrance did not merely shift the momentum, it fundamentally broke the established rules of engagement.
Prior to the wolflings arrival, warfare against the Björn’s followed a predictable, terrifying rhythm. The Björn relied heavily on a psychological contagion known as the red mist, a battlefield aura driven by berserker rage that induced blind bloodlust in their foes. Once enemies lost their composure, the Björn tore through their ranks with impunity, reducing even the most disciplined armies to chaotic, panicking prey.
Even the Björn themselves were prone to forgoing complex formations in favor of this intoxicating frenzy. However, that reckless mindset was shattered the exact moment they clashed with Lunara’s vanguard.
The wolflings possessed an innate heritage and a unique spiritual power system that completely neutralized the Björn’s greatest psychological weapon.
Some of the wolflings participating in the campaign carried a star constellation connection that gave them a metaphysical alignment of spirit and soul that acted as an anchor for the psyche.
These inner constellations steadied and shielded the wolflings minds, rendering them utterly immune to outside psychological influences, emotional manipulation, and the intoxicating madness of the red mist.
Where other armies descended into screaming chaos, the wolflings advanced with cold precision. Unshakable and coordinated, they moved through the raging ranks of the Björn. For the first time in generations, the Björn found themselves forced to abandon their reliance on blind fury and try applying tactics.
The intervention of the wolflings grew from a localized shock into an institutional nightmare for the Björn armies. These constellations were not merely rare, individual phenomena, they could be linked across squads of elite soldiers, establishing a shared network of mental clarity that allowed entire units to execute orders without the distraction of the redmist.
Compounding this mental fortification was their gear. The wolflings wore equipment of exceptional craftsmanship, armor so dense and resilient that most conventional weapons could not pierce it. It was only capable of being dented or scratched only by ranked weapons forged with great craftmanship.
Realizing that ordinary warriors were entirely outmatched, the true elites of the Björn could no longer afford to sit back and observe. They took up arms in person, marching to the frontline to stem the tide.
Despite their overwhelming advantages, the wolflings carried a fatal flaw, arrogance born of isolation.
Convinced that their superiority rendered them untouchable, the wolflings operated under strict individualism on the battlefield. Beyond their passive collective constellations, they saw no tactical need to coordinate with one another, nor did they integrate with the forces of the Silver Kingdom.
Working alongside Silver Kingdom soldiers was deemed an active liability. Not only did their combat styles clash violently, but the sheer disparity in power would have severely undermined the morale of the human troops, who were unaccustomed to fighting alongside such apex beings.
Recognizing this fatal disconnect, the Björn elites set a calculated trap tailored to exploit the wolflings’ solitary overconfidence.
Caught completely off guard by a coordinated ambush, two fifth-tier wolfling goldings met their end. Even in death, they extracted a heavy toll, they did not fall easily, and the Björn suffered devastating casualties of their own just to extinguish those two formidable lives.
The cost of the death of the two fifth-tier wolfling goldings, rather than instilling fear or caution in the Björn, produced the exact opposite effect. The Björn’s fueld by Björns blessing and divinity understood that the longer a war raged and the more blood was spilled, the stronger every participant grew.
The fall of the wolflings flooded the battlefield with a massive feedback of strength, invigorating the Björn and turning their bloodlust into a feverish hunger. Overnight, the wolflings eclipsed the elite soldiers of the Silver Kingdom as the ultimate, most coveted target on the battlefield.
For the wolflings, the loss of two comrades came as shock that shattered their invulnerability complex. Blinded by grief and rage, they immediately sought brutal retaliation, preparing to rouse the raw elements to wreak havoc across the battlefield.
Their plan was to summon a thick, heavy snow and ice storm capable of shifting the geography of the entire battlefield and burying the Björn army alive.
But before the elements could be unleashed and they could act on their anger, a sharp command from Lunara’s assigned commander halted their advance and cut through their fury.
The commander issued a stark reality check of the situation, when the natural elements are roused to such a destructive scale, they do not discriminate between friend and foe.
While the wolflings possessed the gear and heritage to survive the raging blizzard, their human allies in the Silver Kingdom forces did not. Unleashing the storm would wipe out their own side, turning a tactical retaliation into an unmitigated disaster for their broader campaign and would not look good on Lunara goal.