Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 192: Ch190. Moves...

Chapter 192: Ch190. Moves...

Mara stood at the edge of the table, no alarms, no panic, no obvious threat at the moment. Just that unnatural stillness, the kind that followed a scream no one else had heard.

Mara exhaled through her nose and turned from the table.

Behind her, Tristan was already waiting. He stood with perfect posture, arms behind his back, the glow from the nearby arcane lamps catching the silver trim on his coat.

"You’ve been out for a while."

"I know."

He didn’t press. That’s why she trusted him, not for his paperwork, not for his discipline, not even for his loyalty, although all of those mattered. She trusted him because he knew how to shut up when silence was doing the talking.

She got up and bowed slightly to the two figures that appeared from the shimmering gate that she built for convenience and practicality.

Victor, the Guildmaster of Shooting Star, and Shen, the Guildmaster of Argent Mirror.

Victor leaned back in one of the chairs, sharp-eyed and lounging like a cat with claws hidden beneath velvet. Shen stood by the window, tall and severe, the lines of his long coat dusted with rain from the journey.

"Mara." Shen said coolly. "I’m surprised you called for the full Circle."

"I’m not interested in political drama." Mara said. "But we’re going to face enemies from all sides if we don’t rally under one single banner in these next three months." She moved to the head of the table, and the maps shifted to her presence, displaying a multicolored overlay of dungeons, threat levels, and mana surges.

One by one, the council members arrived, taking their respective seats at the long table.

Each arrival brought a shift in pressure, like the air thickened with anticipation. Mara tracked their entrances with precise, impassive nods, cataloging everything. Posture, entourage, readiness.

There was no room for sloppiness, not with the war declared.

Guildmaster Lira of Veilstone arrived next. She was draped in opalescent fabric that shimmered with ambient illusion, always unreadable, always elegant. Her guild thrived on secrets, on subtle control of information and blackmail, but today her mask seemed thinner than usual.

The shimmer around her left sleeve jittered, just once, revealing a hidden brace or burn. Mara didn’t comment on it, though.

Then came Flint, the warlord of Bastion Rise, his plate armor polished to a dull bronze. He didn’t sit, because he never did, choosing to remain standing behind the chair marked for his seat, like a silent judgment.

His presence was weight, muscle, a wall that could not be ignored.

Others followed, lesser-known guild leaders, regional heads, city-states clinging to relevance by trade routes or artifact caches. By the time the final member took their place, the Circle of Nine was full with the arrival of Nadia, headmaster of the Seers, her violet-glowing eyes appearing to see everything in and out of the hall.

Mara let the silence stretch a moment too long.

They needed to feel the weight, but when she finally spoke, her voice was even and low.

"All of you know, but I’ll state it one more time. We have three months to the Dungeon War." She said without ceremony or hesitation.

"And why did you call us here?" Victor leaned forward, one hand idly spinning a crystal ring on his finger.

Tristan stood at her back, like a quiet sentinel. Mara motioned, and he tapped a few sigils on the console behind her.

The floating map above the table shifted.

A pulsing black-and-red glyph blinked at the edge of the known, and unknown territories. A very well-known identification mark among at least a few of the guild masters there.

The [Dark Forest].

"Impossible." Guildmaster Dren of Ironwood Vale gasped with wide eyes. He was the oldest in the room, his beard threaded with silver runes and his voice gnarled like tree roots. "There’s no dungeon gate there anymore."

"And if it’s not just one front?" Flint spoke next, arms crossed.

"It probably won’t be." Mara nodded. "You all have checked your own data, but you, Victor, are the most knowledgeable on it, am I wrong?" She pointed at the Shooting Star guild master.

"Yes." The guild master nodded. "One of my rookie teams barely came back alive from that Dungeon, reporting that there are anomalous monster activities in there, and a Dungeon Boss that was far stronger than a tier 2 Dungeon supposedly allowed to."

"And there are reasons for me to believe that this isn’t just an effect of the system’s causality, but of someone tempering with the Dungeons." Mara added. "Someone who has a lot to gain from the war that looms in the horizon."

Now there were murmurs.

"You mean its level is artificially increasing?" Shen narrowed his eyes. "But who would even have the power to do that?"

"You know who..." Mara let the statement linger for a moment, and then, a few pairs of eyes widened in realization.

"But he has made no move ever since the [Mouth of the Abyss]!" Lira flared her nostrils. "Why now?"

"Because, like Mara said," Flint rebuked, "he is probably the one who has the most to profit from the [Dungeon War], since it’s going to be an event of conquest and resources. And we’ve been so busy trying to wrap our heads on what’s going on, because let’s be honest here, none of us really know what’s happening, except for the leader of Union, that we even discarded the possibility of Shinji making a comeback."

As soon as Flint was done speaking, the entire hall fell silent.

Not only the guild masters and their entourage, but also the glyphs in the walls, and the protective barriers that Mara has placed around the council room.

It almost felt like the magic around them was listening, but it was not that.

Mara understood it, Flint and Lira noticed it too, and some of the other masters got it.

There was an infinitesimal moment that preceded the faint buzz, a silent, almost imperceptible humming of pure, raw magic that caused a chain reaction through all magic within the council room, and then...

Everything exploded.