Global Lords: Building the Strongest Civilization with SSS Rank Talent-Chapter 139: Collecting All Fragments, Backfire

"Elian!" Red barked into the mind of his human priest. "Mobilize the docks immediately. I want human sailors, Mud-Skippers, Ash-kin shock troops, standard Shell-kin, and Treants on the galleons right now. Sail them to the glacial drop-off where the ice meets the sea."

"Lord?" Elian’s voice clearly startled by the sudden screaming. "The fleet is ready, but the waters there are freezing—"

"We already have the facility for that treatment. " Red roared, his eyes tracking the slowly creeping static in the north. "Deploy the Mud-skippers. Tell the amphibious units to dive to the absolute bottom of the trench and find a black stone. Go!"

Down in the physical realm, the port city erupted into chaotic motion. Massive wooden galleons detached from the docks. The mixed vanguard of humans and monsters sailed directly into the freezing northern waters.

Red watched their blips cross the interface. Dozens of Mud-skippers dove over the railings, plunging into the pitch-black depths of the icy ocean.

"Lord Spiral, We have it!" Elian informed. "The skippers hauled it up in a fishing net. The stone is burning their hands, Lord."

"Bring it to the Bastion," Red ordered.

"The wind is dead," Elian reported, panic bleeding into his tone. "Rowing this galleon against the current will take six hours."

Red looked at the northern map. With its current speed, the Void-Eater would consume almost 12 regions in six hours.

He could not use [Modular Geography] to simply lift the galleon across the continent. The game engine strictly restricted direct terrain manipulation on occupied grids to prevent Architects from instantly smashing enemy armies into the sky. If he lifted the ship, the system would immediately cancel the action and drop the vessel back into the ocean. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Throw the fragment overboard," Red commanded.

"Huh?"

"Throw it into the Serpent River!" Red slammed his fist on the console. "Drop it in the water right now!"

Elian relayed the order. The crew heaved the dark, rune-scarred stone over the railing. It splashed into the mouth of the massive river that connected the northern sea directly to the Bastion.

Red ripped open his Architect toolkit. He highlighted the entire three-hundred-mile stretch of the Serpent River. Bypassing the restricted grid of the ship entirely, he targeted the empty riverbed ahead of the sinking stone.

He violently dragged his hand downward.

The continental crust groaned. Red angled the entire subterranean geography of the riverbed into a massive, unnatural slope. He created a sheer, gravity-fed trench spanning across the hemisphere.

The water instantly accelerated, violently rushing down the newly formed chasm. The dark stone caught the torrential current and became a subterranean torpedo, rocketing downstream at terrifying speeds.

Of course, it was damaging the surrounding infrastructure, but the damage was better than entirely losing everything.

Red tracked the blip as it shot across the central plains in minutes.

"Old-Shell! Treants!" Red projected his voice to the Bastion courtyard. "To the riverbanks!"

The colossal, Shell-kin and a dozen Treants charged out of the fortress gates. They reached the edge of the rushing water just as the black stone violently ejected from the rapids.

Old-Shell snapped his massive jaws and caught the heavy stone mid-air. The Pre-Calamity radiation instantly burned against the reptile’s mouth. The massive beast ignored the pain, turned his hulking body, and sprinted directly toward the deadlands quarantine zone.

Old-Shell violently spat the fifth fragment directly into the center of the isolation grid. The dark stone slammed into the dirt next to the other four pieces, immediately absorbing the ambient light of the barren swamp.

Up in the Void, Red gripped the edges of his console. He dragged his cursor over the newly arrived physical asset and forced the game engine to scan the cluster.

[ OBJECT DETECTED: ??? ]

[ SCANNING... ]

[ ERROR: DIVINE SIGNATURE UNRECOGNIZED ]

[ ERA: PRE-CALAMITY ]

Red engaged his Translation Matrix. He linked the final piece of corrupted code to the existing database and slammed his palm onto the sync command.

The primary interface violently glitched. Cascades of crimson error prompts bled across the monitors as the system fought the ancient linguistics. A massive spike of pure energy surged through the terminal before the screen finally stabilized into a complete, pristine data block.

[ ITEM: FRAGMENT OF THE FORGOTTEN (5/5) ]

[ TRANSLATION MATRIX: COMPLETED ]

[ ...THE HUNGER... THE VOID BETWEEN STARS... HE WHO EATS THE LIGHT... ]

[ ...THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH WERE FED THE SHARDS TO CONTAIN THE PLAGUE... ]

[ ...THE HYDRA GUARDED THE FIRST... ]

[ ...THE LEVIATHAN SWALLOWED THE SECOND LOCK... ]

[ ...THE ASH-DRAKE BURIED THE THIRD DEEP WITHIN THE WOMB OF THE WORLD... ]

[ ...THE ARACHNID SPUN THE FOURTH INTO THE CANYON OF MADNESS... ]

[ ...THE ABYSSAL TERROR DROWNED THE FIFTH BENEATH THE FREEZING TIDE... ]

[ ...THE LOCKS ARE GATHERED... ]

[ ...THE QUARANTINE PROTOCOL INITIATES... ]

Red stared at the completed text. Down on the physical map, a blinding flash of black plasma erupted from the deadlands.

The five fragments physically snapped together in the center of the swamp. A blinding flash of black plasma erupted across the deadlands. The violent shockwave flattened the surrounding dead trees and kicked up a massive cloud of ash.

Up in the Void, Red leaned over his console. He dragged his eyes to the northern grid. The terrifying, continent-eating wall of violet static froze entirely. The apocalyptic glitch stopped creeping across the map. A second later, the massive anomaly violently collapsed in on itself.

It vanished from the northern horizon completely, leaving behind a pristine, uncorrupted grid.

Red stared at the empty map. "It worked."

The six-legged fox sitting on his throne let out a vicious, high-pitched hiss. The infant Void-Weaver ignored the northern grid entirely.

It stared directly at the camera feed displaying the Bastion’s southern border.

"What’s wrong?" he asked the pet, although he knew he wouldn’t get a response.

Suddenly, an emergency klaxon blared through the terminal.

The sky directly above the deadlands violently tore open. Massive fissures of violet static bled into the physical world.

The assembled monolith had acted as a homing beacon.

It bypassed the geographical distance and pulled the world-ending anomaly directly to its location.

"You have got to be kidding me...."