Outside General Vargas's lavish tent, the Sixth Legion's encampment was not engaged in the conventional military preparations of sharpening spears or honing swords, the Imperial war machine was baring its most advanced and lethal technological and magical fangs. Vargas had not reached his position by relying on guesswork or luck; in his military lexicon, ignorance of enemy terrain was the first step toward defeat. Therefore, before a single soldier's foot crossed the cursed borders of Falus Forest, he ordered the activation of his most important strategic weapon, the weapon that had cost the Imperial treasury an immense fortune.
Vargas ordered the army's sorcerer unit to begin immediately. This unit represented the elite, men and women who had abandoned academic life in the capital's towers to become living instruments of destruction and espionage. They wore dark blue robes woven from the silk of spirit-spiders, embroidered with golden threads forming protective talismans against counter-attacks.
"Activate the Grand Falcon's Eye Array!" Vargas's voice thundered across the courtyard designated for the sorcerers, his gaze fixed on the dense forest whose mist seemed to breathe with contemptuous mockery. "I refuse to enter that forest blind. I want every tree, every trench, and every rat hiding in the dark to appear on my display."
Twenty advanced-rank sorcerers aligned themselves in a geometrically perfect circle fifty metres in diameter. At the centre of the circle, a black stone platform had been erected, bearing an enormous crystal the size of a grown man, pure and transparent as a frozen water droplet, known as the Eye of Aether. The sorcerers began chanting ancient incantations in the language of the First Empire, their voices interweaving and rising in a hypnotic and dreadful rhythm. With every syllable they pronounced, they poured massive surges of pure mana from their bodies and magical staves toward the central crystal.
The earth began to tremble slowly in response to the spiritual pressure. Complex geometric magical circles appeared in the open air above the encampment, glowing with a celestial blue light. These circles rotated at varying speeds and interlocked across multiple tiers, forming a colossal structure resembling a wakeful eye suspended in the sky. The air around the array became charged with static electricity, and the winds began churning violently around the sorcerers.
Then suddenly, with a sound resembling the tearing of the sky's very fabric, a dense, blazing blue beam of light launched from the centre of the celestial array. The beam pierced the accumulated clouds and fell vertically with crushing force onto the heart of Falus Forest. This was no ordinary light; it was a wave of detection mana that displaced the white magical mist as though it were nothing but frail cobwebs. The beam swept vast areas in seconds, penetrating the canopies of the colossal trees, plunging between rocks and valleys, analysing the soil and what lay beneath it, transmitting millions of encrypted data points in a single instant.
Inside the field tent, Vargas stood before a stone table on which a crystal orb had been placed, connected to the parent array. The orb displayed a detailed three-dimensional holographic map of the entirety of Falus Forest. The Falcon's Eye technology was capable of rendering a thermal map, a kinetic map, and most crucially, a magical map that captured any abnormal fluctuation in enemy mana or concealed traps.
But as the blue beam swept through the forest's depths, the holographic image before Vargas began to tremble. The blue and green colours representing the forest's natural state and the Dark Elf began distorting into violent and sudden flashes of red and gold.
"My Lord General…" the chief sorcerer called from outside the tent, entering with stumbling steps. His face was pale as a corpse and his eyes were wide with an incomprehensible terror. Cold sweat poured in rivulets from his brow, and his hands gripping his staff trembled from the immense effort of maintaining the array's stability. "There is… there is a very strange and violent interference striking the array."
Vargas furrowed his thick brows and brought his scar-covered face close to the crystal orb. The image was growing more distorted and the red flashes multiplying across the map like a fiery rash. "What is this nonsense?" he asked in a low voice carrying a thinly veiled threat. "Are these rabble using high-tier concealment magic? Where would common brigands get resources like this?"
The sorcerer swallowed with difficulty, struggling to control the trembling in his voice. "No, my Lord. The array is indeed capturing thousands of small magical signatures scattered throughout the lower levels, it appears to be a complex network of ordinary magical traps. But… the problem is not there." The sorcerer paused for a moment, as though fearful of pronouncing the words that followed. "There is something else entirely. Something that belongs neither to the forest's natural environment nor to Elf magic."
The sorcerer pointed with a trembling hand toward dark red patches blazing fiercely at specific strategic points on the map. "Abnormal heat, pure, concentrated mana emanating from these points. The heat is extraordinarily focused and carries an immense destructive quality. It bears no resemblance to ordinary fire magic. It is as though there is a small dormant volcano beneath the tree roots, waiting for the moment of eruption. The array is nearly burning from within simply from reading the signature of this energy."
The Imperial sorcerers had no way of knowing the truth. This was no ordinary magic, these were the latent signatures of the great Phoenix Fire, terrifying traps that Dex had planted with meticulous care. To them, the Phoenix was a legendary creature extinct for thousands of years, mere mythology in the pages of ancient history books, and it had never occurred to them that this divine fire had returned to blaze within Falus Forest.
Vargas was silent for several seconds, contemplating the glowing red patches. Then, unexpectedly, his lips parted in a hard and arrogant smile. He laughed with a hoarse, booming sound that echoed through the tent.
"A dormant volcano? Terrifying heat? Ha!" Vargas scoffed, slapping the trembling sorcerer's shoulder with a force that nearly shattered his bones. "You are overestimating them, sorcerer. This is no volcano, it is fear. It is the fear of that rebel Okonnor boiling and festering. They have clearly gathered every cheap fire crystal they own and are perhaps attempting to dig fire trenches to burn the entire forest in a desperate ploy to stop our advance and force us to retreat."
Vargas turned away, no longer paying attention to the red points, dismissing them as nothing more than a suicidal tactic from a desperate enemy. He gestured with his powerful hand toward the infantry and artillery commanders who stood awaiting his orders.
"Prepare to march at the first thread of dawn!" Vargas roared his decisive commands. "We will use the Sacred Torches to dispel whatever remains of this tiresome mist. I care nothing if they set the entire forest ablaze, and I care nothing for their juvenile traps. Our armour will withstand their fires, and our resolve will crush their despair. I want to see their faces when they realise their cheap tricks are worthless before the Imperial war machine. The heavy cannons will carve us a path through the burning trees, and the swords will finish the task and harvest the heads. Let tomorrow be a day written in blood!"