Chapter 959: A Miscalculated Compromise

“Come on, let’s move. Those two are back in the fight!”

Just as Ursa and Tarn were getting lost in their discussion of the Tribe’s future, Gort’s sharp reminder cut through.

Rolan and Steelblade were already getting distant. The three veterans spurred their mounts, chasing after them.

At the center of the battlefield, Lorelia and Delilah sat enthroned on the back of the massive abyssal dragon, Xalathar. Beside them, Saelen rode on a hulking spider sentry.

Saelen was not of the stoneheart horde, and Xalathar would never allow an outsider to ride on its back as it did its mistresses. The arrangement, while practical, created a scene that felt subtly exclusionary.

“Hehe, aren’t I amazing, Sister Delilah?” Lorelia chirped, perched on the dragon’s head. She was humming a tuneless little song, periodically turning to show off to Delilah, who sat further back.

For Lorelia, who had seen much larger and more chaotic battles, this was child’s play. And now that she had advanced to the Legendary level, her control over her little spiders was flawless.

“You’re much stronger than before, Lorelia,” Delilah said with a smile.

It was placating praise, delivered because she knew the little girl thrived on it. In truth, Delilah had no idea what specific feat Lorelia was so proud of, but that didn’t stop Lorelia from basking in the compliment.

The reality was, some of her accomplishments were things only Lorelia herself could perceive. Her boast was justified. Across the entire battlefield, the cave spiders moved with perfect coordination. In the sector Lorelia was responsible for, the situation was completely under her control. Wherever the cave spiders passed, the enemy was either devoured or captured.

Before, Lorelia had commanded her spiders using her raw mental power, a method that was incredibly draining. During the war against the Silver-Eyed, for example, directing her forces that way had left her totally gassed, causing her to collapse unconscious on the battlefield.

But things were different now. She had awakened a Dreamscape series transcendent power.

Commanding her spiders was now effortless. She simply had to pull all of them into her Dreamscape collectively. With the enhancement of her Legendary level mental fortitude and her Dreamscape abilities, the thousands of spiders scattered across the battlefield were, in her eyes, as simple to command as watching two colonies of ants fight.

Any change in the battle, any gap in the defenses, any flank that needed support—a single glance told her everything she needed to know. As a result, wherever her cave spiders swarmed, they left nothing standing. And most importantly, the casualty rate for her spiders was lower than it had ever been.

Delilah and Saelen remained oblivious to this nuance. From their perspective, with a lord-tier broodmother, an abyssal dragon, and a blood elf archer working in concert, this level of dominance was to be expected. They assumed the enemy was simply being crushed by a show of overwhelming force.

They couldn’t see the true genius of Lorelia’s invisible hand at work. Delilah’s own mental power wasn’t strong enough to cover the entire battlefield, and Saelen was a warrior, not a strategist.

“Hehehe… I’m the strongest! Next, I’m going to lead my little spiders and conquer a huge stretch of land for my master!” Lorelia declared. “Wherever I go, the flag of our stoneheart horde will…”

BOOM!

Before she could finish, a thunderous crack echoed from the heavens.

It was the sound of arch lords clashing.

Just from the aftershock, Lorelia knew that power signature. An arch lord had entered the battle. She ducked instinctively, teleporting from Xalathar’s head to its back and hiding behind Delilah.

“Lorelia, you are the mighty Warden of our stoneheart horde!” Delilah said, surprised.

Lorelia’s sudden movement gave her a strange sense of deja vu, as if the powerful young woman the horde had raised was still the timid little broodmother from years ago.

Hearing Delilah’s teasing, yet reminding, tone, Lorelia remembered herself. She was a Warden, a being more powerful than Delilah. She was supposed to be Delilah’s shield! How could the great Warden Lorelia hide behind the person she was protecting?

“Hehe… Sister Delilah, I just came back here to protect you,” she giggled, recovering quickly. She wrapped her arms around Delilah’s waist. “Hold on to me. I’m the strongest shield you’ll ever need!”

In truth, she’d snapped out of it. Her master’s arch lord avatar was hidden with her; even if an enemy arch lord came for her, she had nothing to fear. It was just an instinctive reaction. A primal response to sensing a high-tier threat.

“The war is about to go wide,” Saelen said, her voice tense.

She and Delilah looked up, trying to see the clash in the sky, but all they could make out were roiling clouds and blinding flashes of light.

“They’re starting to fight over there, too!” Lorelia pointed towards the heart of the battlefield, where the chaotic energy of a dozen Legendary level combatants was flaring up.

At her warning, Xalathar and Saelen also sensed the distant commotion.

“Big guy, forward! Let’s go check out the front lines!” Lorelia commanded. She teleported back to her spot on the abyssal dragon’s head and raised a small hand like a true battlefield commander.

ROAR!

Xalathar responded with a deep bellow. A thick fog of Abyssal energy began to pour from its body, its Mist Domain. Within this fog, the abyssal dragon was in its element. It could hold off several enemies of the same level without breaking a sweat.

“Let’s go, let’s go! Time to slaughter the enemy!” Lorelia’s excited shrieks echoed from within the swirling dark mist.

CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

Xalathar’s massive footsteps shook the earth as it lumbered towards the area where the lord-level battles had erupted.

High in the sky above, two colossal domain will phantoms stood in opposition after a cataclysmic clash.

“Your Excellency, where are you truly from?” a voice boomed. “If you withdraw your forces to the north now, I can let what has happened be forgotten.”

The speaker was the human Saint Noel. After realizing he couldn’t defeat his opponent without revealing his own trump cards, Noel had decided to seek a compromise.

This wasn’t a true surrender on behalf of the human kingdom, but a strategic concession. By pushing the invaders further north, it would give both sides space to coexist peacefully. It was a de facto admission of the Avengerarmies’ existence and status, which should, in theory, resolve the conflict.

As for the slain Grand Duke William and the two earldoms, they were an acceptable loss in the face of the human kingdom’s overall security. Their deaths could be treated as water under the bridge.

Unfortunately for Saint Noel, he had gravely miscalculated.