"Ugh...haah!”

In the dimly lit underground laboratory, a small storage room. A person was struggling, drenched in sweat. With a will as strong as steel and fueled by rage, Reina rubbed her face against her arm. She had been confined until now, but she finally managed to remove the gag from her mouth.

"Rozes...Orne!”

She gnashed her teeth at the names of the Vice President and the Director of the Research Institute, who had committed such a terrible act and even attacked her. She had no idea what she had been subjected to. The once vibrant Reina struggled with her body hanging like a piece of meat. Her hands were cuffed and tied to the wall above her. There was only one way to get out of this.

Barely managing to stand upright, she grabbed the chain, swung herself around like climbing a rope, planted her feet on the ceiling, and wedged the chain around her knee. In that precarious situation, she began to twist the bolt of the handcuff connection with her teeth. The rusty bolt of the poorly maintained handcuffs soon began to rattle and shake.

"Ah!”

The moment the handcuffs were released, she fell to the stone floor with a thud as her strength gave out. Reina, who had been writhing, barely managed to get up. The flow of mana, which had been blocked by the mana-sealing handcuffs, began to flow again. She stretched out her hand, shot a fireball, and blasted the locked storage room door to get outside.

‘'What on earth is happening?-’

Her eyes flickered. She couldn’t sense any signs of life. She knew something had happened. She had heard faint screams and loud noises from the surface when she woke up from the electric shock. But she couldn’t figure out what was going on. Who would dare to attack the mansion of the Director of the Research Institute? Thieves? Or some kind of group harboring resentment against the Institute?

"Haha...”

But Reina, staggering to the surface, denied all those possibilities. Neither thieves nor rebel groups could have created the scene unfolding before her eyes. She slumped down, drained of energy. The bright sunlight was illuminating the interior of the mansion, which was in a state of chaos. Considering that this mansion was a three-story mansion, there were only a limited number of people who could create such a devastating ruin.

"This is...!”

Suddenly, a surge of potent mana tingled through her body, carried on a faint breeze. She quickly rose, scanned her surroundings, and scrambled up the debris of the shattered roof.

‘A Wizard’s Eye...! And such a large one at that!’

Something was visible in the distant sky. Four glowing blue eyes of magic were rolling around, scanning the surroundings. She knew about that magic. To cast it on such a scale, literally, an ‘’army’ had to be mobilized.

‘'What on earth is happening?’

Her face turned pale as she hurriedly drank the rainwater that had pooled on the ground. She had no idea that the world had turned upside down in the two days she had been knocked out and confined.

"Let’s go.”

She slapped her own cheek and started to move. She had already decided where to go. If the Director’s mansion was attacked, the city of Rehelm next door couldn’t be safe. She

didn’t know what had happened, but she had an instinctive intuition that she should head towards where those eyes were."Communication orb...!”

As she was about to leave the mansion, she picked up a crystal orb. But she soon bowed her head. She tried to contact all the identification numbers she knew through the crystal

orb, but there was no one to answer. Reina just moved on, stumbling along.

*

"What are they up to now...”

"A new group has emerged from the northeast!”

"Keep an eye on them. Can’t we get a clearer view?!”

Reina, having discovered the Wizard’s Eye, was in the heart of the garrison, racing towards her destination. The 10,000 troops hastily assembled there lacked the courage to march out and seize the enemy’s base.

"We have too many. We should divide the army and defend each area first!”

The reason was the enemies spreading out in all directions, burrowing deeper inland as if they had identified their weaknesses. The majority of the 10,000 troops gathered here hailed from this region. They couldn’t simply obey the central command’s directive to attack the enemy while leaving their hometowns and homes vulnerable to assault.

"Damn it. But we don’t know their purpose, their exact numbers, or their identity. If we delay, there’s no telling what might happen!”

The person appointed as the commander-in-chief was a wizard from the Continental Council, garbed in a robe embellished with gold threads. According to the agreement to dispatch troops in a crisis, each wizard society had sent wizards, but they were not compliant with the orders of the commander-in-chief, who was gradually amassing power.

"What are you worrying about! We’re detecting all their movements anyway. Send a message to set up defenses, and divide and conquer is the answer!”

Among them, the one who was particularly frothing at the mouth was Rozes, the Vice President of the Blackl Society. That night, after knocking Reina unconscious and leaving the Director’s mansion, he miraculously escaped the attack.

The news of the attack on a nearby village had taken him by surprise. He was on the verge of fleeing, but instead, he found himself reluctantly joining the gathered troops, forced by orders from above.

"What in the world? Black monsters, Destroyers? Weren’t the Destroyers already extinct?”

Rozes furrowed his brow, still unable to shake off his confusion.

He had a gut feeling. The desperate cry for help from a boy he had mercilessly crushed underfoot. If the monsters currently causing chaos in the world were the same ones who had slaughtered the Moonlight Elves and escaped from that labyrinth...

"I must keep this a secret. Anyway, there are no survivors from Rehelm, they’re all dead.”

He gulped nervously. The reality that an entire segment of society had been obliterated, that the world was teetering on the brink of disaster, meant nothing to him. His own safety was his top priority."Quickly calculate and report. Where is the most critical area right now, and is defense truly impossible?”

The commander-in-chief finally accepted some of the wizards’ opinions. He issued an order to detach a part of the army and dispatch it to areas where defense was difficult.

"We can know all their movements and their scale. We can also communicate in real-time. If we move organically, it’s entirely possible. Meanwhile, the main force will attack those bug’s nest.”

"I, I will lead that separate force!”

Rozes quickly volunteered. Those unaware of his intentions admired him. They thought it was much more dangerous to move separately from the main force.

"Then, Rozes Leblanc of Blackl, you go where you are directed from here, block the enemies and save the citizens.”

The commander-in-chief handed him a crystal ball, a direct line of communication, along with a force of 2,000 soldiers.

The humans had taken a gamble, attempting to catch two rabbits with one throw, a move that could potentially lead to their downfall. Their confidence lay in their superior information gathering and transmission system. They believed it gave them an edge, allowing them to monitor enemy movements in real-time and react accordingly.

[It’s a bit disappointing. They did split as intended, but not a big chunk fell off, just 2,000 out of 8,000.]

"It doesn’t matter.”

However, they had not considered one fact at all. Eve sat on the throne she had made in the nest, her eyes sparkling. The legion’s eyes were currently capturing all their movements. The scouts that the legion had scattered, such as leisurely flying birds and crawling insects, were no less than the eyes of the wizards.

And even if they were all watching each other’s movements, no communication device in this world could beat the hive consciousness of the legion.

"Oh... this is insane.”

"Wh, why are you suddenly like this, Thomson!?”

"Am I really seeing this?”

The main force, unaware that the enemy was also watching them, continued to march. Of course, the eyes of the wizards, which served as a sort of watchtower, were constantly rotating.

However, Thomson, one of the wizards maintaining the wizard’s eye, was horrified by the sight seen through the wizard’s eye linked to his optic nerve.

"Terrible... a terrible nest.”

"We, we’ve already reported that! A strange and eerie nest that seems to be their base...”

"It’s not at that level!”

"Ah, ahh!”

"What is that?!”

With Thomson’s shout, the other wizards who were maintaining the wizard’s eye also screamed in surprise or shock. What they saw after advancing to a certain extent was no longer just a base nest.

A huge and vast nest that swallowed up all the blue mountain grass and dyed it black. Everyone was speechless at the sight of the sticky slime pits where the legion’s omnipotent cells were infinitely cultured, and the rotten-looking trees growing to the size worthy of a World Tree.