Sometimes I wonder if he can see the future. How else could he be this precise?
She murmured to herself as she watched the four Overlord-Class Tacet Discords the Threnodian had summoned, marveling at the strange calm that had settled over her. Not just calm. Something close to excitement.
The enemy was stronger than ever.
The crisis had escalated.
And yet a smile came easily.
Why wouldn't it? Everything unfolding before her had already been predicted, written down in neat handwriting on a sheet of paper that read more like a strategy guide than battlefield intelligence. How could she feel any anxiety over a situation that was firmly in his hands?
She thought back to what he'd written.
"In its first phase, all Ovathrax can do is generate an endless Tacet Discord Tide through the Retroact Rain, but it's limited to Common and Elite Class. If possible, stall it in phase one until I get back. But if things go south and it enters phase two, it'll construct a massive statue and start summoning higher-tier Tacet Discords. You have to hold it at that stage. As for how..."
The answer had been beautifully simple.
"...just crush them head-on."
That was it. No clever trick, no elaborate plan.
Overlord-Class Tacet Discords were a genuine threat. A single one of them rivaled an entire legion in raw destructive power, far more dangerous than any horde of lesser creatures. If these Threnodian-spawned Overlords reached the defensive line, the casualties would be catastrophic.
But that assumed Jinzhou had nothing to match them. That assumed the Midnight Rangers and Black Shores operatives would have to throw their lives away holding the line.
They had something to match them.
"Impermanence Heron. Thundering Mephis. Tempest Mephis. Go!"
Three roars split the air in unison.
At her command, the Impermanence Heron, Thundering Mephis, and Tempest Mephis surged forward, howling fury at the perfect copies of themselves that the Threnodian had conjured through the Retroact Rain.
So what if the enemy had Overlord-Class Tacet Discords?
Her Echoes were Overlord-Class too.
Mirror matches across the board, and her side still had the Lampylumen Myriad and Feilian Beringal to spare. No reason for panic.
If anything, this was an opportunity.
"Oh, right. He told me that if you devour the Frequencies of those knockoffs, you'll get stronger."
Three pairs of eyes lit up.
The Echo army had its own pecking order. As Overlord-Class entities, these three had no rivals left to measure themselves against except each other. The promise of power tipped their battle-hunger into overdrive. The Impermanence Heron, Tempest Mephis, and Thundering Mephis locked onto their counterparts with singular intent: destroy the fakes.
Nearby, Baizhi froze mid-thought, then her eyes widened with recognition.
"She's right. This could trigger an Echo evolution."
When these creatures had been Tacet Discords, they'd grown stronger by consuming the Frequencies of the living. A simple analogy: layering melodies on top of melodies without structure produced nothing but noise, and that chaos was exactly what made Tacet Discords so destructive and disordered.
But Echoes were different.
Once defeated, their Frequencies were captured intact by the Pangu Terminal, recorded, preserved, stabilized. The chaos was tamed. Uncontrollable Tacet Discords became controllable Echoes.
Baizhi's research had shown that Echoes freed from chaotic Frequency could develop a kind of rudimentary awareness. Given enough time bonded to a human, they could become something like loyal pets. The tradeoff was that Echoes lost the ability to grow stronger through consumption. Devouring another creature's Frequency would corrupt them back into a Tacet Discord. Wisdom for power. A fair exchange.
But this was the exception.
Ovathrax had used the Retroact Rain to create Tacet Discords with Frequencies identical to the Rovers' Echoes. Perfectly matched. Consuming them wouldn't introduce chaos at all.
Instead, the overlapping Frequencies would reinforce each other.
Become something greater.
These Overlord-Class copies were, in essence, experience packs for the Impermanence Heron and its peers. Premium-grade Sonance Caskets, served up on a platter. A chance to break through to the next level.
"And I suppose I should thank Ovathrax for dragging you back out too."
She drew the Emerald of Genesis with a grin.
One step forward, and she blinked across the gap, materializing directly in front of the Crownless.
The skeletal knight barely registered her presence before a spinning kick cratered its torso and launched it dozens of meters backward. Every jaw on the battlefield dropped as the Overlord-Class Tacet Discord embedded itself in a cliff face with a sickening crunch of stone.
She wasn't the same Rover who'd struggled against it once. The gap between them had become a chasm.
"You were the first Echo he ever wanted to collect. His Data Dock wasn't high enough to absorb you back then, but things have changed. Be a good little Discord and let me turn you into an Echo."
The Crownless stared at her, lance trembling.
Wait. I'm the prey?
What followed was a battle worthy of Jinzhou's history books. Overlord-Class Echoes clashed against their Tacet Discord twins across the field while the Midnight Rangers and Black Shores operatives watched with tingling scalps. Both sides wielded the power of entire legions, and the resulting spectacle looked less like combat and more like natural disasters going to war: tornadoes slamming into tsunamis, earthquakes wrestling earthquakes.
Then they saw her. One woman, one blade, dismantling the Crownless like it was made of tissue paper. A one-woman army that moved like a goddess of war.
Every voice on the field went silent.
Jiyan drove his dragon lance into the ground, the impact snapping everyone back to attention. "Eyes forward! The Overlord-Class Discords are Rover's problem. Ours is everything else!"
"Yes, sir!" The response came from every throat at once.
The Midnight Rangers and Black Shores forces threw themselves back into the fight against the oncoming tide, and the morale that had already been running high surged to heights none of them had ever felt before.
Jiyan watched with satisfaction, but his expression hardened as his gaze drifted to the Threnodian's statue looming in the distance.
Thanks to Rover, our losses are a fraction of what I'd feared. Morale is the highest it's ever been. But Ovathrax hasn't been cornered. It looks like we're winning, but this war continues as long as the Threnodian wills it. Our strength will run out eventually. We need the piece that breaks the stalemate. And that piece... rests with the Magistrate and the female Rover.
Not long before.
After leaving the Norfall Barrens, Rover and Jinhsi had traveled without pause to the Jinzhou port known as Dragon Mountain Crossing.
Across the water stretched a vast landmass dominated by a single mountain, carved into the shape of a dragon. Even from a hundred miles away, the sheer presence of it was unmistakable.
He turned to the blue butterfly perched on his shoulder.
"Thanks, Shorey. We never would've made it this fast without your teleport."
"Sh-Shorey..." The Shorekeeper shifted from butterfly back to human form, cheeks flushing pink at the nickname he'd carried over from his past life as a player. Flustered. Pleased. "You're welcome. If I can help you, that's all that matters."
Jinhsi thanked her as well. Their destination, Mount Firmament, the domain of the Sentinel, sat at the opposite end of the Jinzhou map from the Norfall Barrens. Without the Second Instance's spatial Authority, the trip would have taken over two hours, and the front line couldn't afford that kind of pressure.
Once they were underway, Jinhsi finally heard Rover's plan for saving Jué, and her expression shifted to something between shock and awe.
"Second Awakening?"
"That's the only way."
He nodded.
Sentinel Jué had been gravely wounded in her ancient battle against the Threnodian Ovathrax. She and Rover's other half had managed to defeat it, forcing it into dormancy, but the cost had left the Sentinel crippled. Years of intermittent hibernation followed as Jué struggled to recuperate, and Fractsidus had exploited one of those healing cycles, paying an enormous price to trap the weakened Sentinel through some arcane method.
Now Rover and Jinhsi were going to free her.
But freedom alone wouldn't be enough. A weakened Sentinel couldn't face Ovathrax.
They needed to heal her injuries too.
"Second Awakening," he explained. "The specific method is to have the Sentinel engage in combat with a Resonator who shares her Temporal Mandate. The power unleashed during that fight will push the Resonator to a massive breakthrough. Then, by channeling that power back into the Sentinel..."
Jué's wounds would heal at extraordinary speed.
It was a proven method. In version 2.0, Cantarella, head of the Fisalia family, had done exactly this with Imperator, and the resulting surge of power had allowed Imperator to defeat the Threnodian Leviathan in the span of ten hours.
"I see." Jinhsi's silver eyes widened with understanding. "So that's what it means."
She'd never told anyone, but among the intelligence extracted from Scar's interrogation was a prophecy Sentinel Jué had made: that one day, the Sentinel would fight her own Resonator.
And Jué's Resonator was Jinhsi.
It would be a battle with her life on the line. Failure meant annihilation. Success meant Jinzhou's salvation.
"It's fine." Her voice was steady. "I'm ready."
"Hm? Ready for what?"
He blinked at the silver-haired woman beside him, who had gone suddenly steely with resolve, as though she'd made peace with some terrible fate. Something in her expression told him she'd misunderstood, but...
Better to let her keep that misunderstanding for now. Makes things easier. Good thing the female Rover didn't figure out what this mission actually involves.
Because she would never have let him come.
Compared to fighting Ovathrax, what waited on this side of the map was, in a certain sense, far more dangerous.
And the truth was... he'd prepared two plans.
If the female Rover had insisted on coming to save the Sentinel, he would have given her the safe method. But since he was the one going, there was no reason to hold back. He would push for maximum effect.
Even if that meant ignoring a small amount of risk.
Or perhaps not so small.
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