Global Lords: Building the Strongest Civilization with SSS Rank Talent-Chapter 147: How to Deal with Sylara?

Red stared at the dark, unmapped sector on the holographic map.

His fingers paused over the command console. He had just calculated the logistics of a full-scale invasion, but a sudden realization halted his hand.

’She gave me the Omni-web spore,’ he thought, pulling up the resource logs from the early days of his expansion. ’And the Aegis spore right before the siege.’

Without those two assets, the physical vanguard would have shattered. The continental war would have ended with his complete deletion. The root network provided the necessary lines across the continent, and the Aegis spore kept his troops at their 100% condition by continuously healing them.

He owed his victory to a recluse hiding in a forest.

Red crossed his arms.

Was she actually an ally?

He tapped the screen, attempting to pull up her faction details. The system interface returned a blank error. Zero data. He knew absolutely nothing about her specific traits, her combat capabilities, or her actual follower count. He possessed no metrics on what a Rank 17 entity could do in a direct confrontation.

If she decided to march out of that canopy tomorrow, she could potentially wipe out his Bastion, bypass his defenses, and claim the entire continent for herself.

Red opened the historical growth charts for the Omni-web.

’She gave me the seeds, but she didn’t conquer this map.’

The base items were useful, but they hadn’t won the war on their own. The only reason the roots stretched across the entire hemisphere was his SSS-rank trait. He had pumped multiplied Divine Points into the network. The same applied to the Aegis spore. Without his hundred-fold multiplier, the healing effect would never have scaled fast enough or be as effective as it was.

Red leaned back against the obsidian throne.

She had handed him a shovel, but he was the one who dug the trenches.

A new, highly calculated theory formed in his mind. Giving him those items might just be her way of forcing a systemic debt, keeping him on a leash through favors.

Or worse.

Red narrowed his gaze at the dark forest on the monitor. Farming lower-tier players was a standard server strategy. She could simply be letting him do all the heavy lifting.

Let the newcomer conquer the wasteland. Let him unify the pantheons, spend millions of points developing the infrastructure, and build a massive, stable empire.

Then, once the continent was fully developed and ripe for the taking, the Rank 17 deity could step out of the shadows and harvest the final product.

"Maybe... just maybe... this is how she reached rank 17?" Red wondered.

Red dragged a finger across the casualty reports from the continental war. The lower-tier pantheons had bled out trying to hold the Vanguard line against the summit warlords.

However, a Rank 17 entity could have flattened the invasion force in a matter of hours.

The Mycelium Queen never mobilized a single unit. She claimed to despise conflict, yet her absence forced millions of his citizens to the brink of erasure.

The cursor drifted back to the dark canopy of the eastern forest.

She hadn’t offered a weapon when the sky broke, but she also hadn’t drawn one when his defenses dropped.

The tactical window for an assassination had opened wide during the war when his army of Vanguard lay completely exhausted in the dirt after the warlords fell. And purging the glitch from the deadlands had drained his own reserves to the breaking point.

A strike during his physical descent would have been lethal. Anticipating a sudden ambush from the fungal hive-mind was the exact reason he had delayed stepping onto the battlefield until the final possible second.

If she wanted the throne, she had missed three perfect opportunities to take it.

Fingers drumming against the obsidian armrest, Red stared at the unmapped sector. The conflicting data formed a jagged puzzle. Erasing a massive, unknown variable secured the empire’s future. Yet, launching a full-scale invasion against a neighbor capable of composting mountain ranges.

Especially the one who also possessed a habit of handing out mythic-level gifts risked shattering the very foundation he just spent a year building.

SIGH!

"I have never been so conflicted in my life..." he muttered to himself.

Red dragged a finger across the projected casualty reports. Waging war against a Rank 17 entity required sacrificing a massive portion of his newly acquired vassals. The resulting death toll would inevitably trigger a severe backlash from the surviving pantheons, potentially fracturing his empire before the new infrastructure even stabilized.

Leaving the fungal hive-mind unchecked carried its own lethal risks. Her previous gifts such as the Omni-web and Aegis spores lacked a clear, transactional motive. That missing variable made the entire situation highly volatile. No one on the server handed out continental lifelines for free.

If she truly operated as an ally, standing down secured the map. If her generosity served as a farming tactic, doing nothing basically handed her the keys to his Empire.

Suddenly, a sharp, melodic chime shattered the silence of the sanctuary.

The primary monitor flashed bright green, forcing the territorial map to collapse into the background. A massive incoming transmission prompt overwrote the screen.

[ SYSTEM: INCOMING DIRECT TRANSMISSION ]

[ CALLER: SYLARA (RANK 17) - THE MYCELIUM QUEEN ]

Red stopped tapping the console and locked his gaze onto the blinking text.

She was someone who avoided contacts and communication at all costs. No matter how urgent the matter was and how big of a deal it was. At most, she only communicated through texts.

She hadn’t reached out during the fourteen-day siege. She remained completely silent during the Null-Engine’s true awakening. Initiating a direct line of communication at the exact moment he began calculating her deletion pushed the situation far beyond simple coincidence.

’Is she listening to me somehow? Nah... that’s impossible.’ Red dismissed the thought as soon as he had it.

He rested his hand on the terminal and pressed the acceptance rune.

The digital static cleared instantly.

A delicate figure materialized on the glass display, her form constructed entirely of translucent mushrooms and softly glowing spores. Hundreds of living white silk-moths clung together to weave the fabric of her dress, their wings fluttering in a slow pulse around her shoulders.

She kept her head tilted downward, actively avoiding direct eye contact with the visual feed. Her pale fingers wrung together tightly within the folds of the moth-woven silk.

Red leaned back into the shadows of the obsidian throne, waiting in complete silence.

"Rubedo," a quiet, echoing voice drifted through the sanctuary speakers, carrying the faint sound of rustling leaves beneath the syllables. She shifted her weight, pulling the edges of her living dress closer to her form.