Silas’s mind raced to make sense of the System’s message. Someone or something had already reached D rank? How? Even Dahlia was only level 90. Darting his gaze across the people in the room, the answer came to him when he looked at the prophet. During one of their early conversations, the prophet had let slip that there were beasts higher levelled than Dahlia on Idroa - it had to be one of them which had gone over level 100 now.

All members associated with the Ratkin Conglomerate will be removed from planet 7042-189-E at once.

All remaining organisms have two weeks to ascend to Sovereignty. You can still gain Sovereignty afterwards, however, you will not have an influence over choosing the initial ruling method of planet 7042-189-E. To encourage ascension, planet 7042-189-E’s danger level has been raised to D3. Good luck.

Sovereigns

Name l Race l Method used to ascend

Svobald the Scourge - Dragon - Passing level 100

Well, this proved it then. Looking about, Silas saw that while some people were reading the messages, others showed no sign of having seen it. The prophet was one, and this made sense since Silas knew this was but one of the prophet’s bodies; it seemed that only the true body had received the System message. However, the other person in the room who appeared not to have received the message was a far more curious case. Conan, too, was glancing around, and when the prophet saw this, a strange look coloured his fungal face.

The prophet turned to Silas with a confused expression, wordlessly asking the Duellist if he knew what was going on. Silas didn’t, but this admission of ignorance by the prophet was enough to push his suspicions of Conan to another level, a level which had a spinning, flashing red light which blared in his ears. Either the Druid was hiding something from the visitors who had just arrived from Riverside, or, equally likely, the Druid was hiding something from everyone in this room.

Whichever one it was, there were too many questions now for Silas to simply avoid the matter for any longer. He stood and strode to Conan, both Mia and Elisha snapping their heads up and watching his actions with bewildered frowns. Conan himself wore an inquisitive one with a single eyebrow arched curiously.

“Why didn’t you get that message just now?” Silas asked, addressing the matter head-on. He didn’t want to burn the bridges behind him in case this all turned out to be a misunderstanding.

“Oh, I did,” Conan replied.

Silas shook his head, baffled. “No, you didn’t. I’ve been watching this room from the corner of my eyes this entire time. And I know for sure that he didn’t get the message,” Silas said, pointing at the prophet, “and that you didn’t.”

Conan appealed to Elisha, raising his palms at Silas as if gesturing what the hell is going on?

The Primal Healer was quick to come to the defence of her companion. “Listen, Silas, I’ve shown you respect as a host, so I expect some back as a guest. What you can’t do is browbeat Conan just because you made some mistake.”

“Then tell me why he didn’t get the System message,” Silas demanded of the aged woman, his voice gaining volume instead of losing steam. “I can tell you why the prophet didn’t; this is a clone here, not his real body. Is that the same for Conan? Is that why he’s so much weaker than he really should be at his level?”

“What are you on about?” Elisha asked in a high-strung tone, her face twisted with disgust. “I will not have you acting like a menace in my house. Get the hell…”

She was interrupted when Conan suddenly made a lunge for the open window some metres away. Unfortunately for him, the Duellist was standing ready and possessed a speed which only a few on Idroa could match. Silas’s hand snaked forward and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. When Conan realised his only avenue of escape had disappeared, he snarled and suddenly shattered, his entire body turning into an explosion of shards of glass. As if things couldn’t get stranger, these shards went through their surroundings without causing any damage, rapidly growing fainter and fainter until they fully vanished. It was like Conan had never existed in the first place.

Gobsmacked, Silas turned and regarded the room, his mouth hanging open. “What…”

Mia and Elisha weren’t any better off than him, both wide-eyed and gaping. Only the prophet appeared thoughtful, slowly stroking his chin. “I see.”

“What?” Silas asked him.

“Check your classes leaderboard,” the fungal satyr replied.

When all the humans obliged, they saw Conan Hughes, the Druid, was nowhere to be seen. There was a tense silence between them, the type which could grind rock and snap string. Only after they had soaked this silence for a moment did the prophet explain, “He shattered himself to hide his true identity. Silas, you must have spoken too many truths for him to be comfortable in our midsts any longer.”

“You’re telling me someone killed Conan and masqueraded as him for god knows how long?” Elisha asked. “They were wearing his skin this entire time?” Silas should have felt some pride at being right over his suspicions, but her voice was so wracked by grief that he felt nothing but pity for the aged lady.

“Nothing so macabre. They simply painted his appearance over their clone.”

“How do you know?” Mia asked. Then the realisation came to her as she continued in an accusatory tone. “You know who it did it, don’t you?”

“Quite so,” the prophet said. “They may have wanted to hide their identity, but it was already too late by the time Silas lay open his charges against them. The shattering of their body only further proved it. You see, there are very few individuals on Idroa who can create such skilful illusions as to deceive myself and Elisha in such a brazen manner. Of them, there is only one who uses clones made of light. That is Laila Samra, the Mirage, and more importantly, a captain of Brightmoor.” He gave some seconds for the true meaning of his words to sink in. “It appears, Elisha, that Lucian has been spying on you for a while now.”

Elisha gulped, her gaze boring into the carpet on the floor. “Why?” she asked under her breath.

“Must you really ask such a question?” the prophet asked back. “You, the highest classed human, are in such close association with drakkar and stingtails. We all know Lucian’s attitude to other races, so it is a given he would be interested in your circumstances.”

“But to kill someone for that, another top classer at that,” Mia said with a fraught shake of her head. “I thought he was a hero, a defender of humanity and so on.”

Mia’s words particularly affected Silas who found himself terribly troubled by this revelation. He had really liked Lucian: he liked the Warlord’s charisma, the kindness he had shown Silas, and the great, secure city he had founded for tens of thousands of humans. Silas almost felt bad at outing Laila now, although he knew this was an irrational feeling; she had been spying on them to get dirt on them, no doubt, and now she most likely had it as well.

“And you,” Elisha finally said, raising her gaze to meet the prophet’s. “He’s now seen me agreeing to help you.”

The prophet hummed in agreement. “Lucian is not terribly fond of me, that is true.” There was a pause as he considered his thoughts. “It is for the best we put our plan to take down Kuraim aside, for the moment. I am not sure of what Idroa’s danger level increasing means for us, but I doubt it will be a favourable outcome. And you should explicitly close your teleporters to Brightmoor.”

“We can’t,” Silas said, simultaneously shocked and defensive. “That’s the global city, you know, the main connection between all of us. Shutting ourselves from Brightmoor is no different from shooting ourselves in the foot.”

While Mia agreed with this sentiment, both Elisha and the prophet looked at him with coldness. “There is a reason he earned his moniker as the Warlord,” Elisha said stiffly. “To such an extent that even the System recognised it.”

“He wouldn’t wage war on us for something like this,” Silas replied, although lacking the confidence from before. “We’ve literally just talked here, that’s it.”

“Listen, we should return to Riverside,” the prophet said. “I will explain the situation to Elise and allow her to decide for you all. That is her role as mayor, after all.”

****

Perhaps to no surprise, Elise was easily convinced by the prophet and chose to close their teleporter to Brightmoor at once. In addition, she assigned four extra squadrons to the area in case Lucian tried to enter through a different settlement teleporter to bypass the ban.

Silas was disgruntled with this decision, chiefly because he thought it was an overreaction on their part, but then again he wasn’t too certain of his position either. With all the fear others were showing of Lucian, perhaps they did have a point, but he still felt it was wrong.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to think about it overly much as Idroa’s danger increase was nothing to laugh about. The random monster spawns around Riverside were like constant mini-hordes, hundreds of frenzied monsters spawning through portals which blinked in and out of reality. Because of Silas’s power and speed, it made more sense for him to go solo at this point since it allowed him to clear far more camps than with others. While he wouldn’t have otherwise pushed himself so hard, this case was different as his very ideal life and everyone he cared about was under threat.

It was this set of circumstances which led to Silas scanning from a cliffside, his eyes drifting randomly before it sensed a disturbance directly below him. A portal with a faint golden glow split open the space, and he waited for monsters to surge out. The golden glow was already unusual, hinting at something special this time. For a minute, the portal stayed actionless, hovering with no beasts spawning out, and he was about to go closer to investigate when it finally burst into life.

A gaggle of red-skinned, winged bipedals charged out and swiftly considered their surroundings. For someone as perceptive to auras as Silas was, it was clear to him from a single glance that these beasts were unlike anything he had faced before: these were D rank beasts.