NABC Chapter 634 - Stabilizing the Continents
Chapter 634 - Stabilizing the Continents
Days passed.The kind of days where victory was measured by fewer alarms, slower tremors, and reports that used words like stable instead of catastrophic.
In the West, Marie, Kaia, Sylra, Marina, Skittles, and the slime teams worked through damaged leyline routes one by one.
Skittles described the work as fixing an ugly song.
Marie described it as preventing a continent from limping itself into collapse.
Both were accurate.
The slimes became the quiet heroes of the restoration.
They flattened themselves along leyline flow, listened to the rhythm beneath stone, and pulsed back in careful patterns until false beats loosened and natural movement returned.
Skittles led them with solemn authority that lasted until someone praised him.
Then he became unbearable.
Across the other continents, the slime teams worked just as well.
Oreo stabilized several corrupted flow points where light and darkness had been forced out of balance. It let both rhythms meet again without devouring each other.
Nyxis worked through broken routes where space folded too sharply and time lagged behind the world’s natural beat. It moved through those distortions carefully, smoothing twisted distances and loosening moments that had been caught in the array’s rhythm.
Sprayn and Drayn worked together where the damage touched vitality and death. Sprayn restored flow to places where life had thinned too much, while Drayn quieted the places where death energy had gathered too heavily. The twin slimes did not oppose each other. They balanced the wound from both sides.
The Nihility Slimes were assigned where the damage was worst, where false rhythm had sunk so deeply that ordinary correction could no longer reach it. Their work left even veteran formation masters silent for a while afterward, because they did not simply push the corruption away. They made the false parts irrelevant.
Little by little, the world’s rhythm returned.
The West stabilized first.
When that report came, Skittles insisted on announcing it personally.
"West song less ugly."
Marie’s voice followed a moment later.
"The West’s primary leyline rhythm is stable."
Lucien accepted both reports.
"Good work."
Skittles hummed with pride.
"Sage work."
"Yes," Lucien said. "Sage work."
No one in the command room argued.
Not after what the slimes had done.
Across the other continents, the work continued.
The remaining Keepers were also dealt with one by one.
Those who fought were killed.
Those who could be sealed were captured.
Those who had become empty after the mission broke were restrained anyway, because empty did not mean safe.
The captured ones were transported to Lootwell under layered containment.
There, they were not placed near citizens, branch halls, or any structure that could be compromised by command residue.
Lucien created a dedicated battery division and assigned the captured Keepers to its care.
The division received them with the solemnity of priests receiving relics.
The Keepers would be used.
Carefully.
Their remaining essence would be useful to upgrade Lootwell’s facilities.
It was not mercy.
It was not revenge.
It was Lootwell.
...
The Origin Core fragments recovered from the other continents arrived more slowly.
Each fragment entered Lootwell custody permanently because the world had finally seen what happened when pieces of its own origin became trophies.
Witnesses recorded the transfers.
The fragments were secured.
The work continued.
•••
Lucien also made another decision.
Those who had stood for the Big World would not be allowed to return home empty.
Not after losing disciples, elders, beasts, ships, formations, archives, limbs, sleep, and years of safety that could never be restored.
Lootwell began issuing preferential support.
Kael saw the first draft and stared at the numbers.
Then he stared at Lucien.
Then at the numbers again.
"This is expensive."
"Yes."
"This is extremely expensive."
"Yes."
"This is the kind of expensive that makes accountants develop religious experiences."
"Will Lootwell survive it?"
Kael’s expression became offended.
"Of course Lootwell will survive it. I am complaining as a professional, not surrendering as a coward."
"Then approve it."
"I already did."
Lucien looked at him.
Kael lifted the document.
"I came here to complain after approving it. There is a process."
Lucien signed.
The support went out.
The reaction across the world was not simple gratitude.
Some wept.
Some refused at first, then accepted when healers looked at their wounded.
Some old factions tried to calculate what Lootwell wanted in return and became uncomfortable when the answer was responsibility.
Some young disciples looked at their repaired swords, their surviving friends, their elders’ funeral tablets, and understood that the war had not ended with glory.
It had ended with debts.
To the dead.
To the living.
To the world that had not yet fallen.
Lucien wanted to cultivate those people.
Not in the ordinary sense alone.
He wanted to cultivate the instinct that made them stand when standing was costly.
The Big World would need that instinct again.
Soon.
•••
But Lucien did not force everyone to move immediately.
For the first time in many days, he allowed grief to have space.
Funeral bells rang across five continents.
The Reincarnation Disc remained with him.
Full of endings.
Lucien had felt too many final moments.
Lucien remembered them.
He stood alone for a while in one of Lootwell’s quieter halls, eyes closed, one hand resting near the Disc.
He did not know how to guide them onward yet.
Not truly.
For now, he could only hold them.
•••
As for the drops, the battlefield had not been empty.
The Keepers Lucien killed, the enemies his pets killed, and the enemies slain by those bound to him through concord pacts had all produced loot.
The slimes, ever perceptive, brought them back through Slime Storage.
They did not return to Lootwell empty-handed.
They returned carrying the battlefield’s rewards.
Lucien had not opened them yet.
The cube drops were stacked inside his private chamber, waiting for a quieter hour.
It would have felt strange to be happy now.
After witnessing the final moments of so many people, Lucien could not bring himself to open the drops and celebrate alone.
The rewards could wait.
The dead deserved silence first.
•••
As for the seas, there were no significant changes yet.
The reports remained within expectation. The waters stirred more often. Some coastal regions felt pressure beneath the tides.
But nothing had surfaced. Nothing had crossed the sealed waters.
Lucien did not relax.
The absence of disaster today did not promise safety tomorrow.
So he prepared.
While the slimes stabilized the continents, Lucien began drafting plans again.
He had to find a way to strengthen the world quickly before the next disaster arrived.
Reports continued to reach him.
Some came from shadows.
Some came from allies.
Some came from the people closest to him.
None of his most important people had died.
That should have been a relief.
It was.
But it was not enough to erase the names on the casualty lists.
Many Lootwell forces had still fallen.
People who had trusted his orders.
People who had marched under his banner.
People whose final moments he had felt through the Reincarnation Disc.
Lucien would have to lead the procession.
He would have to mourn them properly.
Then he would have to make sure the living became stronger.
He closed his eyes and sighed.
The Grace System would matter more now.
After a war like this, many people would cling to faith, religion, protection, and meaning. Clara would understand how to reach them better than most.
Lucien did not like thinking of grief as an opportunity.
But refusing to use the moment would not make him noble.
It would only make him wasteful.
He had to do this.
He wanted the Grace System spread widely enough to make future commands easier, warnings faster, and protection more reliable.
But he could not give it blindly.
Faith could protect people.
It could also become a leash if handled carelessly.
Lucien had seen enough false devotion in this war to know the difference mattered.