***

  The fighting continued. On the surface, the armies continued to approach no matter what ETG forces did to try to stop their advance. They were successful in slowing them down, but that was it.

  Below the ground, the fight of the dungeons was going in ETG’s favor. He had pushed the 21 dungeons back so far that their somewhat unified tunnels and territories that were next to each other no longer were.

  That's not to say that everything was going smoothly along that front. It didn’t take long for the 21 dungeons and their masters to decide to collapse the side tunnels. This meant that a lot of the fighting force ETG was using to push the dungeon territories back could no longer be used, as none of these creatures could join the main tunnels because of the elementals and their wide-ranging constant attacks.

  Some of the dungeons even merged their main tunnels to slow down a few elementals' advances, as different elemental types couldn’t interact without fighting each other unintentionally. It took them some time, but they were constantly learning about their new enemies.

  On the surface of the world, there simply wasn’t enough mana, especially of certain elemental types, for elementals to gather enough of it to reach anywhere near diamond rank. And when those elementals went on a killing spree, usually in gold or platinum rank, which could help them rank up faster, they were quickly put down.

  But fighting a platinum-rank elemental versus a diamond-rank elemental were two different things. While platinum-rank elementals still fought with what you would call natural spells—which meant that they could be fought against with other spells, especially ones that disrupted the nature of spells—diamond-rank elementals were a force of nature. Their damage was no longer in spell form but instead a natural phenomenon, supercharged with mana.

  Over the weeks of constant retreat and fighting with new methods, the 21 dungeons slowly started to understand what type of skills and monsters would do best against this type of attack. Their approach was simple but something that would eventually work, as they were making new monsters constantly, trying out different combinations to see what worked and what didn’t.

  The problem was that they were not just fighting diamond-ranked elementals. Those natural phenomena that they powered also contained platinum-ranked elementals that were using spells to power their own elemental attacks. So, to fight effectively against that, they would need to be able to create monsters that could handle both types of attacks, which was really hard to do.

  Eventually, the right skills were made, and combinations of monsters were found that were able to start fighting the elementals and finally slow their progress. Yet, time was short. Even though the surface armies were slowed, they were only about a month away. Meanwhile, the dungeons had lost ground for nearly two months, and getting back to ETG’s proper territory was not going to be easy.

  During all this time, the four great powers had been keeping an eye on the world itself as best as they could. They had expected the small pattern to have been released and to already see the consequences. Yet, nothing was detected, because unknown to them, ETG had yet to release it.

  The fact that none of them had detected anything wrong with the population boosted the Pixies' position that ETG had been lying. But even they didn’t actually believe it and didn’t truly understand what was going on.

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  Many of ETG’s advisers were confused and didn’t understand why the small pattern had not been released, but ETG had decided to change the plan a little bit. Their spies were now once again properly inside the four great powers, and just before ETG launched his offensive against the 21 dungeons, they learned of a particularly annoying fact.

  While even the Pixies actually didn’t want the small pattern to be released, that was because even their population was against that scale of destruction, even if their leadership actually wanted it. If they were to state it out loud, it would fracture their society. They managed to convince the rest of the Pixies and the other great powers by simple facts that could be seen as true.

  The small pattern was a truly world-ending threat, but they assured everyone that they could fight against it. This was, once again, true—they could, but not on a large scale. They simply didn’t have the manpower. What was also true was that this threat would always be hanging over them. They simply couldn’t allow a dungeon capable of such destruction to be left alone.

  Once again, this was technically true, although ETG truly wouldn’t care about the rest of the world if they would just leave him alone. In the end, however, everything came down to ETG just being too good, and none of the great powers—especially the Pixies—could take the risk of ETG triggering the Making.

  The great powers were going to let the small pattern do its thing while trying to fight it wherever they found it, just to satisfy their own population and the world, showing that they were the good guys.

  ETG didn’t want the world destroyed—he wasn’t that cruel—but just releasing it seemed to be playing into the hands of the four great powers, especially those bastard Pixies, as ETG had come to refer to them.

  During all of this, ETG had been cooking up a different version of the small pattern. If he were an adventurer, he would definitely resemble a mad alchemist right now, constantly cackling evilly. The original, undetectable version was still waiting to be released by 1,000 creatures, but now, finally, a new 10,000 creatures were in place—and just in time.

  The world’s weather had been in flux for quite a while now, with constant rainstorms and seemingly more creatures starting to show mana mutations. The constant fight for territory had already left its scars, but all over the world, at ETG’s signal, almost 10,000 creatures opened up their packages and were happily consumed by the small pattern inside, giving it a solid base to spread from.

  This was the modified version of a modified version, but this one was extra special. To normal human eyes, they would see nothing. The small pattern was undetectable—only when it started to change life into undead would they realize what was happening.

  For those who had reached higher ranks, they saw something different. Silver ranks would need to be especially good at sensing to notice anything within a radius of about 100 meters. If they were really close, even they could tell where the small pattern was.

  Gold ranks were only slightly better but could sense it through rock or anything else for a few kilometers. Platinum ranks could easily detect it and could not not notice the small pattern hundreds of kilometers away. As for diamond ranks, all who had reached this rank started to notice things far away, like their own souls that shined like bright diamonds.

  This glow, however, was dark red and ominous, and with every passing second, more and more clusters seemed to appear all over the world.

  ETG had purposely made it so that this small pattern would be detectable—and quite easily so. ETG wished that he could see the Pixies' faces when they realized what had happened. They actually wanted the small pattern to be released, but the main reason they couldn’t fight it properly, nor put enough manpower into eliminating it, was because it had been undetectable before it had spread enough to make stopping it easy.

  Now, however, they could all see the 10,000 starting points of this small pattern, which would rapidly begin to spread. Yet, even this small pattern would take some time to get going—enough time that, if they were to send enough people out, they could stamp out every single instance of it. Many of the diamond ranks immediately went to ask if they could quickly rush to stamp out these fires before they spread too much.

  While the leadership didn’t want this to happen, they would lose so much morale as they continued to march towards the dungeon because now basically everyone could see how the world would be destroyed if they didn’t do anything to stop it.

  So the armies stopped marching, huge portions of the diamond ranks left, and all over the world, anyone who could track down the small patterns that was so easy to see started to fight against it—most of the time simply using fire to burn everything. Since they could all see where even the tiniest bit of the small pattern was, they could successfully eliminate all of it.

  ETG had gotten the time he needed while keeping the forces of the four great powers far enough away to finish the 74th-floor expansion and prepare for a breakthrough. With the surface armies depleted and enough ground made against the 21 dungeons, this breakthrough was going to be safe enough.

  ETG still worried about the next one, as there was no hiding what floor he was at then and the fact that he was going to reach diamond rank. But even for that, he had a plan, and he needed this skill he was going to make to work exactly how he needed it; otherwise, he would be in trouble during the next breakthrough.