novel-bin Chapter 625 - Move
Chapter 625 - Move
Lucien finally decided to move.On the projected map, the two hidden faction territories pulsed at the same time.
Marie and the others had thinned the western support web. Skittles had stabilized enough leyline flow to make several locks loosen. The major factions had pressed the Keepers from outside.
The array should have been weakening.
Instead, the two hidden faction points suddenly brightened.
Their rhythm sharpened. Then synchronized with distant lines across the other continents.
Lucien’s eyes narrowed.
They were trying to accelerate the array.
The Keepers had realized the outer layers were being cut away, so the hidden factions were burning what remained before Lootwell could dismantle it properly.
People dying outside became pressure.
Broken souls became sparks.
Every casualty near the ritual grounds risked becoming fuel.
The Reincarnation Disc turned beside Lucien.
Lucien’s expression cooled.
"That is enough."
The words were quiet.
Lucien pointed at the first hidden faction.
"Seran."
A reflection opened on the edge of the map.
Seran appeared, blood on one sleeve, smile already gone.
"I see it."
"Go inside. Skip the battlefield. Stop the ritual."
Seran’s reflection rippled.
"With pleasure."
Lucien’s gaze shifted to the second hidden faction.
"I will take the other."
For one breath, several channels fell silent.
Lucien placed one hand over the Reincarnation Disc.
The Disc did not disappear.
It followed.
Lucien would not abandon the map completely.
He was Eternal now.
He did not need to choose between moving and seeing.
He stepped forward.
Space folded.
The Shrine remained behind him.
The West appeared beneath his feet.
•••
Seran arrived first.
The first hidden faction had built its ritual hall beneath a mountain that was not on any public map.
Outside, the battlefield roared.
Inside, the mountain was hollow.
Black pillars circled a deep pit filled with red light. Around the pit, faction elders knelt with their foreheads pressed against stone. Their blood ran into carved grooves. Their voices rose in a single chant, not prayer, but instruction.
Prepare.
Recognize.
Return.
The words were old.
The devotion was newer.
At the center of the hall, an Origin Core fragment floated above the sect master’s chest. It was bound by black threads to the ritual pit, and beneath the pit, the leyline screamed without sound.
Twelve Keepers stood around the hall.
They turned the moment Seran stepped out of a polished bronze plate.
Seran looked around.
"Twelve of you."
His gaze dropped to the ritual.
"Very dramatic. Terrible taste."
The Keepers moved.
Five sealed the exits.
Three reinforced the ritual.
Four attacked him directly.
Seran’s body split into reflections.
Then the reflections split again.
The Keepers had prepared suppression fields.
They had black mirrors facing the wrong way.
They had law seals tuned to Reflection.
They had learned.
Seran approved of that.
It made it more insulting when he stepped through the shadow of a kneeling elder’s blood and appeared beside the ritual core.
The nearest Keeper reacted instantly.
Seran smiled.
"There you are."
His hand pierced through a reflection that had not existed until the Keeper looked at him.
The Keeper’s chest cracked inward.
The ritual hall shook.
Outside the mountain, the faction’s defenders felt something go wrong and screamed for reinforcements.
They could not enter.
The people outside did not let them.
•••
Lucien arrived in the second hidden faction without sound.
One moment, the ritual hall was intact.
The next, every lamp flame leaned toward him.
Above ground, allied forces fought through broken streets. Below ground, the hidden faction lived in black stone, sealed chambers, and a central hall built around a fragment-bearing throne.
The throne was occupied.
The sect master sat there with both arms open, eyes rolled white, mouth moving with the ritual.
The Origin Core fragment was now embedded in his sternum.
Black threads stretched from his body into the walls, into the floor, into the leyline below.
Around him, faction members chanted until their throats bled.
Twelve Keepers also stood in the hall.
The air was already layered with traps.
Space-lock formations. Law-priority fields. A death field hidden beneath the ritual grooves.
Lucien looked at them.
"You learned the wrong lesson."
One Keeper raised his hand.
All twelve moved.
The hall vanished beneath black authority.
A Keeper of Binding reached for Lucien’s movement.
A Keeper of Severing cut toward his soul.
Another tried to seize the fragment’s rhythm and drive it deeper into the sect master’s body.
Lucien did not dodge first.
He looked.
The Binding Keeper’s authority touched him.
Then failed to decide what part of him was supposed to be bound.
Living Creation flowed through Lucien’s body, making every motion a living answer instead of a static path.
The Severing Keeper’s blade reached his soul.
The Reincarnation Disc turned.
The blade slowed for a fraction.
That fraction was enough.
Lucien caught the edge between two fingers.
The Keeper’s eyes widened.
Lucien broke the blade.
Then he punched the Keeper once.
The Keeper crossed half the hall, struck a black pillar, and cracked it from base to crown.
The ritual stuttered.
Another Keeper tried to turn the ritual flame into a killing field.
Lucien raised his other hand.
The flame changed.
Living Creation entered it, and the fire suddenly remembered it could warm before it killed.
The killing field collapsed into harmless light.
The faction members chanting below froze.
For the first time, doubt touched their faces.
Lucien ignored them.
A Hollow Cut opened behind him.
He stepped backward into it.
The Keeper who created it realized too late that Lucien had not been swallowed.
He had used the wound as a doorway.
Lucien appeared behind him and pressed one palm against the Keeper’s back.
"Sleep."
Structural Insight activated and he struck the Keeper’s Pillar String.
The Keeper dropped.
Lucien did not waste resources.
He needed batteries.
The Keepers had built themselves as instruments.
Lootwell had places for instruments.
The remaining Keepers burned their essence.
Their black robes cracked.
Their authority sharpened.
Their bodies began to collapse around their mission.
That was when Lucien understood them better.
They were not brave.
They were not loyal in the way people were loyal.
They were manufactured toward purpose.
Dying for the mission was not sacrifice to them.
It was function.
One Keeper spoke through bleeding lips.
"Human."
The word carried disbelief, resentment, almost grief.
Lucien looked at him.
The Keeper laughed once, a harsh sound.
"Slimes. Beasts. Lunarians. And now humans again."
His body burned brighter.
"How many things must return?"
Lucien answered by moving.
This time, he did not hold back.
The hall filled with afterimages, but none were illusions.
Perfect Calculation chose routes.
Spatial Intuition opened angles.
Living Creation turned each strike into something that adapted at contact.
Death and Life balanced at the edge of his fingers.
When a Keeper tried to seize a matching law, Lucien changed the law before the seizure completed.
When another tried to cut his space, Lucien folded the cut into a harmless loop.
When a third tried to bind his soul, Starlit Codex moved.
That hand vanished.
Then the arm.
Then the Keeper.
He killed four.
He put three to sleep.
He crippled two and sealed their law channels.
One detonated his own authority before Lucien could preserve him.
Lucien’s eyes hardened.
The Reincarnation Disc caught nothing from that one.
Self-erasure.
A death with no road.
The last two Keepers tried to retreat into the ritual.
Lucien appeared between them and the sect master.
"No."
One died.
The other dropped under a Pillar String strike and lay motionless at Lucien’s feet.
The entire exchange lasted less than the time the ritual needed to complete one chant cycle.
The hidden faction fell silent.
Then the sect master laughed.
He laughed with blood running from his eyes.
The Origin Core fragment in his chest pulsed violently.
The faction members below the throne looked up at him as if he were divine.
The sect master’s voice cracked.
"Too late."
Lucien turned toward him.
"You have not looked outside."
The sect master’s smile widened.
"We do not need outside. We only need the return."
The word made the ritual pit brighten.
Return.
Around the hall, faction members began chanting again.
Some had tears on their faces.
Some smiled.
Some trembled in religious ecstasy.
Some clawed open their own palms and pressed blood into the grooves.
They were not soldiers anymore.
They were believers.
That made them more dangerous in a different way.
Lucien looked at them and, absurdly, thought of Clara.
If he did not regulate her properly, one day she might accidentally create something that looked far too similar.
The thought was unfair.
Clara at least healed people.
Mostly.
The sect master cursed him.
The elders cursed him.
Disciples cursed him.
They called him thief, blasphemer, false lord, enemy of return, child of stolen fate.
Their hatred filled the hall.
Lucien listened for a moment.
Then stopped caring.
He had heard the final breaths of people who died protecting others.
He had felt souls torn apart by black spikes.
The curses of willing accomplices did not weigh the same.
His gaze locked onto the Origin Core fragment in the sect master’s chest.
The fragment was not naturally fused.
It was held by command threads, blood oath anchors, and ritual pressure.
Lucien raised his hand.
Auto-Collect answered.
The sect master’s laughter stopped.
The fragment vanished from his chest.
It appeared inside Lucien’s Divine Energy Core.
The merged Origin Core pulsed from far away through the connection.
One western point dimmed.
The ritual collapsed.