Chapter 93: Developments, Mega Event

They left the Warlord’s own scorched territory behind them a while after sunrise, the ash and blackened trees slowly giving way to greener ground as they walked.

"Feels good to stretch my legs properly." Alice rolled one shoulder, bow resting easy across her back. "Where to next?"

"West, I think." Logan checked the terrain against what little the map actually showed them. "There’s a ridge out that way we haven’t touched yet."

They walked in comfortable quiet for a while after that, Solveig’s clones trailing a short distance behind, the two of them trading the occasional comment about nothing in particular, the weather, the strange color of the local birds, whether the fruit growing wild along the path was actually safe to eat.

It was Alice who spotted it first.

"Hold on." She slowed, squinting toward a low ridge ahead of them. "Does that look like a collapsed section to you?"

Logan followed her line of sight. Part of the hillside had caved in at some point, stone and packed earth slumped inward around a narrow, dark gap that hadn’t been visible from any further away.

"Could be nothing." He said it, already walking toward it anyway.

"Could also be everything." Alice grinned, quickening her own pace to match his.

Up close, the gap turned out to be more than just a collapse. The stone around its edges had been shaped once, smoothed and squared off in a way natural rock didn’t usually manage on its own.

"Someone built this." Alice ran her fingers along one smoothed edge. "A long time ago, from the look of it."

"Only one way to find out how long." Logan crouched at the opening and peered into the dark beyond it.

Cool air drifted out to meet them, carrying a faint mineral smell that reminded Logan of rain on stone.

"After you." He gestured toward the gap.

"Such a gentleman," Alice smirked, and slipped through first anyway.

The crack widened fast once they were both inside, narrow stone giving way within a dozen steps to a proper cavern, tall enough that Logan didn’t need to duck and wide enough that their own footsteps echoed faintly off walls he could barely make out in the gloom.

Then the light started.

Veins of pale blue crystal ran through the stone on every side, faint at first, brightening the deeper they walked, until the whole cavern glowed soft enough to see by without needing anything else at all.

"Okay." Alice’s voice had dropped to something closer to reverent. "That’s beautiful."

Logan reached out and touched one vein carefully, the crystal cool and faintly humming under his own fingers.

```

[ Luminous Aether Crystal ]

Tier-4 | Rare

```

"Good find on its own." He kept walking, the tunnel curving gently downward. "Let’s see how deep this actually goes."

It went deeper than either of them expected, the crystal veins thickening the further in they traveled, until the walls themselves seemed to be made more of light than stone. The air grew warmer too, carrying a mineral tang that caught in the back of Logan’s throat.

"There." Alice pointed ahead, where the tunnel finally opened out into something much larger.

The chamber beyond stretched wide, its floor scattered with loose ore deposits catching the crystal light in a hundred different glints, entire clusters of raw material sitting untouched and waiting.

"Resource zone." Alice grinned, already crouching to examine the nearest deposit. "We’re the first ones here."

They weren’t, quite.

Two figures crouched near the far wall, digging through a shallow deposit with tools that looked barely up to the task. Both of them froze the instant Logan and Alice’s own presence registered, turning slowly to find a pair of Mythic-rank gear sets and a small cluster of Mythic units standing in the cave mouth behind them.

Both faces fell in perfect unison.

"I told you we had to play it safe if we wanted to survive longer and hoard a better score!" The taller one hissed it at his own partner, voice cracking with something close to despair.

Neither of them tried to run. Neither of them tried to fight. There wasn’t a version of either option that ended well against what was currently standing in the entrance, and both of them clearly understood that immediately.

Facing players with Mythic Units and Mythic Gears while they didn’t have anything beyond Epic-rank in their arsenal? No thanks.

’SURRENDER!’

’SURRENDER!’

Both vanished within the same breath, leaving the cave quiet and empty except for Logan, Alice, and the glittering resources nobody else was left to claim.

"Well." Alice crouched beside the nearest deposit, already gathering samples. "That was efficient."

A match-wide notification rang out a moment later, cutting across whatever else either of them had been about to say.

```

[ Five Warlords eliminated. The remaining 95 Warlords are 5% stronger, and their badge awards 10% more Tier Points. ]

```

Logan’s eyebrows rose. "Guess we’re not the only team making progress out there."

"And it only gets harder from here." Alice grinned, something eager sparking behind the words. "Good. I was starting to worry this would get boring."

---

The next ten hours passed in a steady, satisfying rhythm neither of them ever quite got tired of.

Xairon’s Chaos PsyDogs had already marked a dozen different locations across the island before Logan and Alice ever caught up to them, each mark opening a portal straight back to wherever the fortune or danger actually sat waiting.

A crushed vein of raw crystal here. A half-collapsed shrine there, still humming faintly with old magic nobody had claimed yet.

A pocket of rare herbs growing wild in a valley neither of them would have found on foot in a week of searching.

They portaled from site to site without ever wasting a step on empty travel, Molten Core Vulkarn’s Ore Grubs swarming ahead of them to strip every vein bare, Verdant Bloom Thessaris cataloging every plant worth keeping, Tideglass Flow Maren surfacing periodically with whatever the surrounding ocean had turned up on her own sweep.

No more Warlords showed up anywhere on the island, not one, and by the time the last portal closed behind them, both Logan and Alice had settled comfortably into the conclusion that whatever remained of Ashen Reach’s own territory had already given up everything it had to offer.

"We’ll have to travel further for the rest." Alice stretched, satisfied. "But that’s a problem for after we’ve actually rested."

They returned to their own island as the light outside started fading toward evening, and found it waiting for them noticeably larger than they’d left it.

```

[ Territory radius: 220 meters. ]

```

---

Building the courtyard took the better part of an hour, mostly because every single unit involved had strong opinions about exactly where their own section should go.

"I want a spot with a view." Billy insisted, already dragging driftwood into a rough frame near the water’s edge.

"You don’t sleep." Sonic pointed out. "You don’t need a view."

"I want one anyway."

Molten Core Vulkarn claimed the section closest to the forge he’d already half-built out of scavenged stones from Warlord’s base, coals glowing steady and content the moment his own pavilion took shape around him.

Verdant Bloom Thessaris planted an actual garden around hers within minutes, vines curling up the support posts like they’d been growing there for years already. She also planted all the plant-like resources to keep them fresh, but Xairon would come every now and then and take one.

Xairon tried to claim three different spots in a row before Billy finally cornered him and pointed at one specific, much smaller corner.

"There. That one’s yours."

Xairon’s whole form drooped, chaos energy dimming slightly, before he slunk off toward the assigned spot without further argument.

"You’re mean to him." Alice laughed, watching the whole exchange unfold.

"He tried to build his section directly on top of mine." Billy crossed his arms. "Twice."

Logan and Alice claimed the largest pavilion at the courtyard’s center, simple and open on all sides, close enough to everyone else that the whole arrangement felt less like a fortress and more like an actual home.

With the Tower Points still sitting comfortably in reserve, Logan summoned another batch that evening, shorter this time, aiming for something specific rather than raw quantity.

One result stood out from the rest, sleek and root-woven, seed pods hanging heavy from every limb.

```

[ Wanderroot Seed Courier ]

Rank: Mythic | Tier-4

Talent: Teleport Beans - Crushing one of its seed pods instantly teleports the user to the location that pod was originally keyed to. Each pod can be keyed to a single location and used exactly once.

```

Logan tested it immediately, crushing one pod keyed to their own island while standing a short distance away, and found himself back at the courtyard’s edge in the space of a blink.

"That’s going to save us a lot of walking." He grinned, already picturing the possibilities.

---

Night settled fully over the island sometime later, the sky above clear enough to show every star it actually had to offer, no moon competing for attention, nothing but endless dark scattered with light.

A new Mythic chef from this merge had cooked up a feast with all the fish and marine animals that Maren caught while exploring the ocean.

Everyone ate to the fullest. Even the three Tower Minions who came default at the game start ate, despite there being no work and only fun for them, thanks to the Mythic units and their capability of building the base with all their abilities to utilise the resources.

One of the newer production units had woven a bed of impossibly soft cushions into Logan and Alice’s pavilion sometime during the evening, plush enough that Logan sank into it the second he sat down.

Alice settled in beside him, close enough that her shoulder pressed warm against his own.

"Today was a good day." She said it quietly, eyes fixed on the stars overhead.

"It was." Logan turned his head toward her instead of the sky.

Alice smiled, turning to meet his own gaze.

Neither of them said anything else for a long moment.

Then Logan reached over, fingers finding hers in the space between them, and she laced them together without any hesitation at all.

"Hey." Her voice had gone soft. "I want to kiss."

"Me too."

She leaned in first, and he met her halfway, the kiss slow and unhurried in a way neither of them had gotten to enjoy since this whole match started. Her free hand found the side of his face, and he pulled her just a little closer, the rest of the world narrowing down to exactly this for as long as either of them wanted it to last.

When they finally broke apart, Alice rested her forehead against his, breathless and grinning.

"We should do that more often."

"Working on it." Logan grinned back, brushing one more kiss against her temple before settling back against the cushions, her hand still held tight in his.

And soon, both of them drifted into sleep.

Which lasted very little, as they regained their energy in four hours and woke up.

Just as the duo checked out the new inventions Xairon made for the base defense, and the developments by other mythics, a surprise rang out all over the match for the players.

[Player TigerGod has triggered a 100-player Mega Event — Dark Fall Conquest. Once the 100 players are gathered within the event area radius, it will start. Current players: 2/100]