2108 The True Enemy (Part 2)

It had been an amazing victory, but no one rejoiced for it. The conquering army had now to deal with a city filled with traitors who couldn't be executed or imprisoned without reducing Zehnma to an empty shell.

The inhabitants of the city, instead, were afraid of the punishment the Crown would inflict upon them for siding with the Mad Queen. They had no care for the brilliant strategies that had been employed or Lith's white robe.

The only thing that mattered for them was that Thrud wouldn't let go of Zehnma so easily and she would try to recapture it before the Kingdom fortified it again. For them, the war had just started.

***

Duchy of Essagor, Vastor's Manor, Inside his underground lab.

Lith's assumptions about the absence of the Abominations from the battlefield were only in part correct. They were indeed fighting the Undead Courts and keeping themselves away from Vastor, but there was much more to that.

The Organization was the reason the Kingdom never lacked the funds necessary to keep the war machine going despite its defeats. The leaders of the criminal organizations and the black market were all underlings of the Master.

It was per his order that they had accepted to cooperate with the Kingdom, providing it money and food in exchange for a truce until the war was over.

As for the Abominations, they had been mobilized to look for intel. Both hybrids and Eldritches were looking for a way to end the War of the Griffons for good. They knew that as long as the lost academy stood, there could be no victory.

They had faced the Mad Queen more than once and while on her own she was nothing much even with her Guardian-crafted equipment, there was no beating her as soon as she retreated to the Golden Griffon.

The cursed object would grant her more power, troops, and arrays capable of channeling every ounce of world energy that came out of the mana geyser. Nandi had proven to be incapable of overtaking the geyser while Theseus had discovered the hard way that even his Meneos rejuvenation failed him.

Headmaster Hystar had such fine control over the world energy nearby Huryole to disable all bloodline abilities, robbing the Divine Beasts of their greatest assets.

Chaos magic would be negated by a simple darkness sealing arrays and the Abominations had no access to Spirit Magic, making them sitting ducks against Thrud's generals.

"This is bullshit!" Orulm said, slamming his black fist on the table after failing to kill Thrud despite having cornered her.

He was one of the oldest Eldritches of the Organization, second only to Tezka, and the strongest among the pure Abominations.

He had yet to find a suitable monster core in order to become a hybrid and the idea that the Suneater had surpassed his strength pissed him off no less than his latest defeat.

"We are the most ancient and some of the most powerful creatures on Mogar. Each one of us has faced bright white cores and lived to tell the tale if not even killed a few of those runts. How can we be helpless against a bunch of stones and mortar?"

By achieving the white core, an Awakened would reach a physical and magical state close to perfection, yet their minds were still susceptible to the effects of prolonged isolation and the madness it caused.

All the white cores predating Baba Yaga had either committed suicide by stopping using their breathing techniques or gone mad, forcing the Council or the Guardians to kill them.

Abominations, instead, were plagued by an insatiable hunger caused by their black cores that overwhelmed every other emotion. Their constant craving for life and the burning desire to get rid of it allowed them to never lose themselves to despair.

They still suffered from isolation and madness but their constant state of pain kept them focused. On top of that, the fact that Abominations were beings of pure energy made them incapable of self-harm since mana could never hurt its master.

The only way they had to vent their fury was to take it on others.

Eldritches were apex predators even among Abominations and some of them predated the Guardians. To become their match, a white-cored Awakened had to be lucky enough to never meet an Eldritch before mastering their powers.

"Calm down, Orulm." The Master said. "I didn't call for this meeting to listen to your rantings, but to find a solution to our problem. As you said, in this room there are some of the most ancient and powerful creatures on Mogar, correct?"

The Eldritch took a deep breath to regain his cool and nodded in reply.

"Let's pool our knowledge, then. How many of you have faced or destroyed a cursed item in the past?" Vastor asked, making the room plunge into silence.

"I think I'm speaking for everyone here when I say that aside from clashing with the Horsemen from time to time, the answer is no one." Abthot the Eldritch said. "Normal cursed objects can't stray from their energy source so they are easy to avoid.

"On top of that, destroying one always causes a fallout that would kill even one of us. Mogar is big and full of food that can be easily plucked without putting our lives on the line. There was no gain or reason to do such a thing."

"My point exactly." The Master looked at him like a dumb child. "You are ancient, but you have no knowledge or experience about our current enemy. You are powerful, but only against living things whereas the Golden Griffon's artifact half is immune to your best weapons.

"To make matters worse, ever since you've become Abominations, you've lost the ability to practice Forgemastering so you have no clue about how much the art of crafting has progressed.

"In this regard, you're even weaker than the Royal Forgemasters."

"Well, maybe if you were competent enough to turn us into hybrids as well, we wouldn't be facing this hurdle." Orulm replied with a snarl, making the entire room burst into an uproar.

Vastor's Chosen went this close from jumping at his neck and so did most of the other Abominations.

"I've tried to match your black core with all the monster's species you've brought me and even a few rare ones that the Kingdom bestowed upon me as study subjects but your tissues never took root." Vastor's calm voice roared like thunder above the chaos in the room.

"I did the same for the rest of the members of the Organization as well and even though I failed, I know that I did my best. If you think you can do better, I'll gladly pass the leadership to you."

"You know that I don't have access to healing magic and that my Forgemastering knowledge is outdated for centuries.

"Even if I had no such problems, with my body made of Chaos, I would destroy your delicate equipment at the first touch." Orulm hated to admit how helpless he was and hated himself even more for having put himself into a corner.

"Then stop throwing your tantrums, old fossil. Otherwise I'll make you." Nandi the Minotaur-Orc said while conjuring his equipment out of his dimensional amulet.