“Alright, we’re done.” Nero watched as the last prana jade settled into the cart and clapped his hands. “Come on, let’s pack up this place and head back home. Gibbous Moon’s only a day away, and—”

Dia felt a chilly blast of power surge from the north, and the evening sky clouded over with pure darkness. The world shook a moment later as Nero flung out his arm, erected a gigantic dome that covered everything around him.

The initial wave of shadows washed over the dome, which blazed with an intense light in response. A moment later, Dia and the others whipped out a bunch of artefacts, which reinforced Nero’s failing shield.

A heartbeat later, the first wave of darkness dissipated, revealing a shadow-stained land as far as Dia could see.

“What the heck wa—”

Another tsunami of shadow surged out from the north again, and this time, spears of shadow fell like rain. Their barriers were instantly perforated, but for some reason, nothing had happened to Dia and the others. Before she could point that out, however, the field of spears detonated with black light, engulfing everyone present.

“Nothing’s…happening to us.” Dia looked around in shock. “What’s going on?”

Schwarz touched his face. “I’m alive…”

“It seems like the great Dark is launching indiscriminate attacks on something,” Nero muttered. “But it’s not having an effect on us because we don’t fit the criteria to be struck by that attack.”

Dia flinched as a vast field of black lightning crashed down on everyone, but once again, the entire phenomenon was muted, as if there wasn’t any sound at all. The field of lightning vanished a moment later as an infinite expanse of tri-coloured light settled upon the world, bringing with it a chilling peace.

The Moons had acted in response to the Dark’s action, but what was all that in reaction to in the first place?

Shivering, Dia looked up at the sky once more, which had returned to the orange light of the setting sun. The rising Moons, however, were now wavering, illusory, and Dia rubbed her eyes.

“Uh, is it me, or are the Moons…odd?” Dia asked.

Everyone looked at the rising Moons — all three of them — and Nero made a sound in his throat. “Yeah, they’re definitely off.”

“We should go back right now.” Risti picked up her artefacts. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah.” Farah grimaced. “If I’m not wrong, the Moons are about to magically transition in phase, and they’ll descend today. I mean, it shouldn’t affect us, but I think we better hurry back and get home before any untoward changes happen towards the Umbr—Istrel Sovereignty. For one, the great Dark was triggered enough to actually expend energy to launch an all-out assault on something for nine or so seconds. I don’t think this is a good sign.”

“You had time to count?” Nero asked, a touch of disbelief in his words. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Well, I was thinking about any potential damage to Farah County,” the countess replied. “Don’t blame me. If those things were real—”

“You wouldn’t need to think about all this,” Nero cut in. “You’d be dead, along with me and everyone else here. Your county won’t be suffering damages — it would have been completely annihilated. To be honest, I’m not sure what the Moons are doing; how did they not stop this indiscriminate, world-wide attack instantly?”

Schwarz leaned on the cart of prana jades. “Not a comforting thought.”

“It isn’t, but you can tell that neither side is willing to off us like this. If they really wanted us dead, this world would have been long destroyed,” Risti replied. “They’re holding themselves back for our sake!”

“I’m supposed to be happy with that?” Nero muttered. “Ridiculous.”

Clicking his teeth, he let out a small groan and ambled over to the small convoy. “I’ll be relying on you guys to protect me today. I’m all out of mana.”

“Wait.” Schwarz raised his hand. “Rather than going back now of all times, I have a different suggestion. We only filled our carts. Our base is still very much standing. Therefore, instead of going back to Licencia now, I propose that we stay here and resume our mining operations. This time, however, we’ll feed our gains to Nero directly, and maybe break down these prana jades into lifestones.”

“Here?” Risti asked. “Right outside the ancient battlefield? And we’re going to continue operations?”

“Yeah. It sounds insane—”

“—I’m glad you’re aware of that—”

“—but it’s the safest method we have for now,” Schwarz completed his sentence. “Look, if I’m not wrong, what happened during Half Moon is going to repeat itself in a few hours’ time. Gibbous Moon would be brought forward, and looking at how the great Dark just unleashed a slew of attacks for some insane reason…”

“You think that staying here is a better idea?” Nero asked.

“Yeap.” The bartender nodded. “I get a feeling that the Moon Emissary might just decide to conscript us if we show our faces there in two weeks’ time. Rather than that, I would prefer if we just hunkered down here instead. There are two boons to this particular course of action.”

He paused. “As far as I can think of, anyway.”

“Go on,” Dia prompted, the others nodding along with her. “What boons are there?”

“For one, if they’re going out here to conscript us, they definitely really need us. We can raise the premium on our services, and we can buy even more time for ourselves by citing the need to go back and rearm,” Schwarz replied. “Secondly, by the time they actually realise that they need us, we would have harvested enough prana jades and broke down enough lifestones for us all to advance significantly in building our mana circuits.”

“That I can get behind,” Dia muttered, referring to the second benefit.

“True.” Risti looked at the two carts of prana jade. “We can’t advance much during our journey back, that’s for sure. But if we just hunker down here and focus our efforts on doing so…”

“Exactly. Like it or not, I don’t think we can say no to the Moon Emissary, but we sure can make it hard for them to make us say yes,” Schwarz replied. “And more importantly, we’ll have time to improve our strength further. With the Moons descending, they’re likely to push back the battlefront and force it into the middle of Nihila once more. The other battlefields in the other continents should be experiencing the same thing too. They’ll be short of good combat power.”

Nero mulled for a moment. “I don’t like it, to be honest. There’s still a certain personage skulking around.”

“With the Moons’ descent, I doubt that person can hang around this place for any longer,” Schwarz reasoned.

“I suppose Count Nightfall will be fretting over our absence, though,” Risti muttered. “What a shame for him, but your idea actually makes more sense. I support staying here and raising our strength.”

“Me too,” Farah added.

Everyone turned to Dia, who immediately nodded. “This is definitely a more viable course of action. Besides, if the Moon Emissary really needed us on the frontlines, I’m sure the Emissary will send us back to Licencia directly after conscripting us, and then do the same in bringing us to the frontlines. This means that we won’t need to waste time travelling back, right?”

“…You sneaky little fellow,” Schwarz muttered, before turning to Nero. “So? We’ve presented our arguments. Since you’re still the main core of our harvesting plan, we’ll still need your agreement on this, although we can just stop the harvesting part and skip to the strengthening part.”

Nero pondered for a moment. “For now, you guys should focus on growing stronger first. We can do the harvesting later.”

“Later, huh?”

“Yeah.” Nero narrowed his eyes, and then smirked. “After all, we can delay even further by wanting full carts of prana jade before we go back, right?”

“…Damn.”

Dia didn’t resort to such coarse language, but she did find that particular word to be quite representative of her feelings too.

“And that’s not all,” Nero added. “If an Emissary really does come for us, and is really adamant that we leave immediately, said Emissary might just fill up that cart for us out of its own pocket.”

“Schwarz’s little suggestion has so many merits, in other words,” Risti summarised. “Alright, we’re going to stay here then. We’ll breakdown those prana jades and strengthen ourselves over and over again, and then harvest even more.”

“Until the Moon Emissary comes for us,” Schwarz added. “And even then, we can pull off some delays here and there too.”

“Thereby maximising our chances at surviving.” Farah nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Claud’s going to approve of this,” Schwarz replied. “Speaking of Claud and Lily, though…I wonder if they’re alright.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dia asked.

“Well, either they’re outside the Istrel Sovereignty, which is dangerous given what happened just now, or they’re inside here, which means they could be conscripted at any time.” Schwarz shrugged. “I don’t envy their position, to be honest.”

“Nero grimaced. “Yeah. The best we can do is to grow stronger first, though. Come! Let us break down those prana jades!”