Chương 309: Chapter 7-307 – Events on the World Stage

It was quite a fight, as it seemed Mok Fan had slaughtered quite a few of the Association's Sages before taking up the fight against the Dragon, and now things were flipped on their head. It was the Dragon going up against the Sage, and the Archangel and Mok Fan dealing with the remaining minions of the Virulent Heavens Sage.

And dealt with them they did, killing one older man after another with power and skill, Mok Fan's Demon Element providing him all the power he needed to overwhelm their greater age and Sage Magicks, seven active Elements giving him the Mana needed to pull it off. It was when Mok Fan obliterated the Virulent Heaven Sage's right-hand man that the Sage knew he wasn't going to win, and unleashed a spell that could only have come right from the Netherworld itself.

A river of dark energy poured down from the sky, grabbing up all the combatants outside, even the Dragon and the Sage himself, leaving only the unaligned mages in the Association towers looking on behind their Wards. It washed down into Dubai, sweeping through the streets, homes, and offices, snatching up every man, woman, and child it came across, before plunging into a gaping Portal into the Underworld.

I Burned the stuff away from me before it could touch me and catch me up, but temporal dilation around the effect had it resolving before I could Interdict to stop it or anything else. It probably looked like minutes of struggle to those inside it, but to those outside, it took merely seconds to sweep the air clean and suck everyone fighting, as well as tens of thousands of innocent Dubai natives, into the underworld and be gone from sight.

The Seal about the city faltered and collapsed the instant the Sage who had established it was gone, all of his strongest supporters dead and control over the Association now up for grabs. Tens of thousands of innocents of the city had been caught up and sent to the Netherworld after his mad suicide move, and there was no doubt the local fallout for what had happened here today was going to be tremendous.

A Dragon Low Emperor, an Archangel, a mad Sage, and possibly the most Talented young mage in the world were all sent to the Netherworld. I opened my phone and dialed Mu Xuehua. She picked up on the first ring.

"Healer Fae here, Xuehua. Mok Fan has been swept into the Netherworld with a Sage-level spell cast by the Virulent Heaven Sage, the President of the Asian Mage Association. I do not know his fate down there, and I have no resources or reach in that area. He is not dead, and he may not even be killed, given he is also a Dark Mage with a Shadow Compact and the Demon Element... but I do not know what is happening there." She took a deep breath on the other end.

"We... may have some means of finding out what is going on there," she said carefully.

"Will... this affect our agreement?" she asked carefully.

"Our agreement was complicit upon our working together, not on the presence of Mok Fan," I reminded her calmly.

"Do you believe you are going to need additional help?"

"I... do not know," she confessed after a moment of deliberation.

"Mok Fan's reputation as a belligerent and vengeful mage did a lot to discourage certain parties from taking action against us, contenting themselves with sending cat's-paws and manipulating deeds and events around us. If they believe he is dead..."

"I can most certainly confirm whether or not he is dead or alive," I told her, "And he's not dead yet." She exhaled in relief.

"Then we shall do what we can from our end!"

"I wish you the best of luck, Xuehua!" I said sincerely, received her thanks, and hung up my phone. My eyes narrowed thoughtfully. It was just after the horrible Nether River spell, the area was in chaos... and the twat still had tons of loyalists around who were going to make trouble in one form or another. Sending them after their master wouldn't be too difficult for a late contribution... -Sama, I need your files on twats in the Asian Magic Association, - I /requested of her smoothly.

-Only if I can help, - she /purred back. -Dubai could use a little of the Sama touch, - I /conceded promptly. A deluge of files descended upon my Visual File as Sama headed for a Portal out of the Broom Closet, probably signaling some operatives she had in the area or ready for fun as she did so.

I was going to verify who was alive, where they were, the state they were in, and in the madness, despair, grief, and confusion of this incident, they were going to join most of their conspirators and superiors in the Netherworld, one way or another.

Several days later... Mu Xuehua eyed the stack of papers sitting in the middle of her desk, which had been quite clean when she left it yesterday, and no one should have entered since. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. There was no magic upon them, no surprises, so she glided around her desk to look at the top one. The face of a man, possibly Middle Eastern in origin, and the name Dihal Koman. There was a faint stamp across it, and information below that stamp.

Her eyes fell upon Affiliations: Asian Magic Association Central Tower; Virulent Heavens Faction. That faint reddish stamp was a human skull. At the very bottom of the profile page was a hand-written addition: Cause of Death: Impalement by Mok Fan against Association Tower for being an asshole. A small smile started to form on her lips, and she began to go through the pages, one by one.

Almost all were men, only a couple women, most of them with bloody histories behind them, and all of them had an affiliation with the Asian Magic Association Tower and Virulent Heavens Faction. Many of them had ornamental deaths, and a fair number were attributed to Mok Fan for so doing.

'Screaming for his momma as he was burned alive by enraged Fire Belle' was particularly amusing. The others didn't have any person attributed to them at all, but the causes of death were no less succinct. Insertion of sharp instrument into cerebral cortex. Detachment of head from neck. Heart no longer present in torso. Abrupt division into seven approximately equal pieces. Head now less than one inch thick. Brain serving as charcoal. Extreme exsanguination. Dissolution and dispersion into local sewers...

Coralost had a very sterling reputation when dealing with its business partners in an above-board manner. Mu Xuehua was quite pleased to see that it was no less sharp in dealing with those who acted in a below-board manner against its partners. It would not be wise for people outside of Cold Rice to see the pages, Mu Xuehua considered calmly, picking them up. Mok Fan's kills were likely noticed by the spectators, but the others had probably died afterwards. She would have to remove those pages...

but there were those she trusted who should see them, and what kind of allies they had made here. Mok Fan would probably find them interesting reading, too, when he finally returned. Now, she needed to talk to Mu Fuxian, who should have an idea on how to proceed from here...

A good Diviner is very, very sneaky about how they go about collecting information they don't want other people to know they know, just like any good spy. There were plenty of ways to stop Divinatory magic from doing what it did, but like any defenses, they were tedious, they had to be maintained, you had to know what they were, and you had to think you needed them. This world with all its super-powerful magic only had scarce amounts of Divination magic around, and it tended to be specialized by Element.

Training and enhancing your own magical Awareness, which all Casters and Beasts here had by default, was the way to go. That was rather stupid to me, since there were a number of ways to thwart Awareness, too, and not many ways to punch through those methods. Regardless, I was a Sage, I DID have access to the Divination Element that these people did not, and I had the spells from Valence to Cast and the Mana to enhance them to ridiculous levels of power and subtlety.

Case in point, finding out just what in the Hell had happened to Mok Fan and the others caught up in the River to the Netherworld. Cross-planar scrying wasn't easy, but I had the Mana, the focus, and the Caster Level to do the job without a great deal of issues. I was also very familiar with the openings into the Netherworld after taking out a Pharaonic Pyramid, and so had no problem locating a planar breach into the place.

If I didn't use that one, I could have breached the one into the Beast Realm to do the same thing. Not being sensed was naturally 'difficult', but again, the Netherworlders didn't actually know what to look for, and as long as I could suppress, conceal, or use imitation on my own Presence, they wouldn't even be looking for me.

So, naturally I did all of the above, effectively eliminating my own Presence and subbing in that of a vaguely-interested flicker of attention from the Realm Lord who had entered the Beast Realm. If the real one showed up, its arrival would simply overwhelm the one I was putting out, and anyone who had actually felt my spell would simply think whatever was going on had suddenly gained the Realm Lord's greater attention, while the magic faded into the background. It was the best I could do, and it was pretty good.

I didn't actually know any other powerful Shadow or Undead Auras I could play with, as the owners of such were either dead or not powerful enough to dare want to be involved in what was going on.

There were tons of temporal instabilities around what was happening, irregularities between the two Realms that meant my Scrying was basically constantly playing catch-up, or things were moving so slowly it was like nothing happened at all. Thus, this was something I had to do from day to day, picking up where I left off the day before and watching what was happening through a Scrying Mirror.

Well, technically it was a Scrying POOL, one filled with Aether Void Mercury, a substance which probably didn't exist anywhere else on the planet, and even Flowing Silver Emperor had not seen before. The Runes winding about it were at the Eternal Level, carved down to the molecular level and filled with Chronal Osmium and Spatial Iridium bonded to them alchemically.

It was the most powerful Scrying Device I had any memories of seeing anywhere, be it Ael's or my own, and fully worthy of being called an Artifact of sorts. Seeing backwards in time to Read the Past was simplicity itself, and shifting across the Veil between adjacent worlds also not difficult at all. I was able to survey what was happening and track what was going on as the Black River to the Underworld did its task, delivering tens of thousands of hapless mortals directly into the Underworld.

Many of the people were slaughtered on the journey down, picked out by the spirits who rose from the muck and preyed on victims who could not fight back. That was much less of a problem for those who were spellcasters, but it effectively wiped out half the Humans who were caught up in the spell of the mad Sage through no fault of their own, every weak man, woman, and child heartlessly slaughtered to be used as raw essence for the Underworld.

The survivors washed ashore on the banks of the Underworld, and there found themselves caught up in the domain of the Realm Lord there, doubtless the master of whoever had made a Compact with the Virulent Heavens Sage. Delivering tens of thousands of mortal souls to His realm had obviously attracted His attention, and His domain, dozens of times larger than that of any Emperor, swept out to encircle them all and bind them up in a personal playground of His Will.