In the Forest of the Elves, within the royal palace.
"Your Highness, the Mist has come ashore, and this time it bears down far more fiercely. Lord Eko feels the forest needs to make some preparations of its own, and hopes to discuss the matter with you."
"Understood. Ask Eko to wait for me in the council hall."
Urgent business had come up, and Galadriel, who had been in the garden, now had no choice but to cut short her daily early-morning pet walk. She gave her instructions, then tied the leash in her hand to the branch of a nearby ancient tree.
She crouched down and gave a gentle squeeze to the trussed-up Sword Saint Puchi, wrapped head to toe in every kind of sealing implement and able to move only as the leash led him. "Airaven, looks like there won't be time for a walk today. Just wait here for me a while. I'll be back before noon."
As she spoke, she shifted the Sword Saint Puchi, who couldn't sense a thing of his surroundings, onto a small patch of fungal mat to top up his magic. Then she left.
The nine seals on Airaven left her entirely unworried that he could escape again, unless someone helped him.
But this was her own private garden inside the royal palace. Who could possibly break in here and carry off this Puchi?
What she didn't know was that after she left, the fungal mat beneath the Sword Saint Puchi's backside suddenly came alive. The mycelium, once just a small patch, wove and spread, swiftly blanketing the open ground around him. Then a temporary teleportation array was traced out upon the mat.
A violent surge of magic flashed and was gone. By the time the elf guards rushed over following the palace's defensive alarm, all that remained on the spot was half a sealing-leash still tied to the tree trunk.
The Sword Saint Puchi slowly woke. His senses spread outward, and everything around him surfaced in his mind.
The feeling of seeing daylight again. Wonderful!
"You're awake? I've already pieced your body back together for you, nothing out of place." Two Puchis at his side helped the Sword Saint up.
Airaven worked his two short legs. This time neither had been put on backward.
Another Puchi came running over from a distance and shoved four swords, coiled in its tentacles, all at once into Airaven's arms. "Only two are skill weapons. The other two are just good ordinary blades. It's an emergency, so make do."
Hanging the weapons on himself, Airaven asked, "What's happened? Enough that you'd actually remember me?"
"What are you saying, Sword Saint? I simply hadn't wanted to intrude on your private life before." The Puchi beside him handed the Sword Saint a few vials of Water of Life. "The Mist has gone berserk. For some reason it's come surging in from the Empire's direction. The situation is urgent. Barely ten li behind you lies a city, and the duty of holding back the Mist and protecting it can only be left to you now, Sword Saint."
"The Mist's gone berserk? Understood."
Hearing that it really was serious business, Airaven turned grave at once.
After a quick briefing, Lin Jun used the fungal mat to break down all the Puchis, so as not to cast any unknown influence over the Sword Saint's illusion.
That done, Lin Jun immediately shifted his attention to the other regions about to take the brunt of the Mist, and set about arranging defenses.
The Mist had come slanting in from the Empire's direction, and it really had caught Lin Jun off guard.
Lin Jun strongly suspected this was all the work of a certain evil slime.
After all, if the Empire were so useless it couldn't hold back the Mist in the slightest and had been wiped out, then the Mist should have spread slowly from south to north, not sprayed in at a slant from the southwest toward the northeast like this.
Supposing this really was the slime Demon King's doing, then putting himself in the other's shoes, the Demon King surely wouldn't expect the Mist alone to defeat or cripple the Mushroom Fortress. He had to have some other measure in hand.
So, on top of organizing the defense against the Mist, Lin Jun had Little Pig mobilize the Mushroom Fortress's main army to hold the various passes and strongholds along the Empire's possible invasion routes.
He then generated several high-tier scout Puchis, meaning to skirt around the Mist and fly into Empire territory to see what was actually going on.
But before the scout Puchis could set out, Lin Jun discovered an anomaly through the fungal mat.
This time, though, the anomaly wasn't in the south. It was in the region where the east met the Mountains.
The border between the Northern Territory and the Mountains.
Here the fungal mat linked into one unbroken sheet, blanketing hill and dale.
No matter how hard the dwarves worked to clear the fungal mat, in a region this close to the Northern Territory there was simply nothing they could do about it.
Through that fungal mat, Lin Jun saw a sight he couldn't make sense of.
At the end of the mountain road, a black line was slowly advancing, like an iron python.
That was a dwarven army, and the most elite of all at that: the Blacksteel Clan's heavy-armor phalanx.
At the very front marched the shield warriors, their tower shields as tall as their bodies, the shield faces thick and unadorned, their frames clad besides in heavy full plate. They could fairly be called moving blocks of iron.
Behind the shield wall came axemen, spearmen, crossbowmen.
At the rear of the column were several large rune ballistae, along with a few unknown weapons housed in iron coffins.
And besides this Blacksteel Clan legion, Lin Jun had spotted a Firebeard Clan legion in another direction.
A great army bearing down on him. What were the dwarves trying to do? Start a war? At a time like this?
Lin Jun was well aware of the anti-parasitism wave sweeping the Mountains, and he'd even guessed the Empire was stirring the pot behind it. But those measures, in the end, could only slow his infiltration of the Mountains a little. They couldn't change the larger picture. So dealing with this matter had ranked below the Mist, the Ancient Dragon Path, Qisi, and the other weighty affairs.
Only now...
Were the dwarves out of their minds?! Their greatest enemy, the Empire, still wasn't dealt with, and they were in such a hurry to turn on him?
It was a good thing the fungal mat had learned of the enemy's movements in advance. There was still enough time for the Mushroom Fortress to redeploy its forces.
But moving troops to the eastern line would inevitably thin the southern defenses, and it was hard to say this wasn't exactly what that bastard Demon King had counted on.
All Lin Jun could do was give up part of the occupied territory in the south, leaving a buffer zone, enough at least to guard against a sneak attack from the Empire exploiting the opening.
It was a loss, handing over those key chokepoints that commanded the terrain. But to Lin Jun, population was the most precious resource of all.
At the same time, once the dwarven army stepped onto the fungal mat, although he couldn't find anything wrong on their status panels, Lin Jun sensed a certain strangeness.
After picking it apart carefully... "A psychic field?"
Lin Jun couldn't confirm it directly. This was something that needed a true expert to verify.
With that thought, the Yellow Codex was teleported straight to the front line.
[Aah! It's going to crack! It's going to craaaack!]
The Puchi coiled the Yellow Codex up and turned it over for a look. It hadn't cracked at all. There were merely a few ordinary scratches on the cover, slowly healing over.
"Quit howling, and hurry up and look across the way. Isn't there a psychic field like yours over there?"
[Aaah!]
Lin Jun set the now-thick Yellow Codex back onto the fungal mat. The teleportation array was traced out once more, the target spot just five meters away.
[Wait!] Neat, bold characters surfaced in the most conspicuous spot on the page.
[Boss, I feel a lot better now.]
[Mm. There really is a psychic field over there, though it seems a little different from mine. As for exactly how it differs, I'll have to find a way to get deep inside the field to sense it.]
Good. At least it was now certain the slime was behind it.
(End of Chapter)
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