One month and fifteen days later.
In these forty-five days, many things have changed. Apart from the clans and organizations licking their wounds from the massive failure of an attack on the Gaja clan, the Mari Clan and Gaja clan underwent some serious preparations.
Many people from the Divine league that are usually hidden are also showing up and they moved openly.
Everyone understood that things are going to get heated once again and this cold period is just the incubation period of the whole thing.
In these forty-five days, the Mari clan moved all of their resources. Many spies that were hiding in the clans moved out and went back with all the resources and information they stole. The same thing happened with the Divine league.
They also moved out of their holes and went back to the Divine league’s headquarters after years.
Within the first fifteen days, these movements are at least subtle. The clans and organizations understood something big is happening, but they didn’t know what exactly.
But after the first fifteen days, the next fifteen were extremely chaotic.
Gail, Gamin and Yuvana unleashed themselves on the Mari clan.
They didn’t just go after the people this time. In fact, they didn’t even bother to go after the Grand Elders, they just went straight for the resource point.
Sam who guessed what Sivan might be making to come against the Gaja clan, gave the information about what resources, he would be needing in the near future.
With that information, the trio went on and started destroying one resource point after another.
They destroyed spirit stone mines, Metal mines, special resource mines, herbs. They didn’t leave anything.
Of course, the Mari clan didn’t stay put. They retaliated. In fact, they retaliated dearly with their own grand elders. They sent people to destroy the resource points of the Gaja clan.
But they were not as successful as the Gaja clan though.
It is mostly because most of the known resources of the Gaja clan were already lost. They are taken over by many other organizations.
In fact, some are taken over just by the Mari clan itself. The rest are all secret resource points that are under Giyon and Grivon mostly which are not even known to the new authorities of the clans.
It is almost impossible for the Mari clan to find them.
After fifteen days of trials, the Mari clan actually lost more of their resource points. Gail, Gamin and Yuvana just increased the intensity of the attack.
This made the Mari clan more and more incensed, so they decided to go with another route. They directly declared an official war on the Gaja clan and since they are the ones that initiated the attack, they are openly declaring the war.
And to everyone’s surprise, the Divine league agreed with them and showed their support. They directly asked that the Gaja clan should be apologizing to the Mari clan and if they do not open up the talks, they will be supporting the Mari clan.
The rest of the organization understood what is happening. They suddenly wanted to go and support the Mari clan and the Divine league.
Even though the Star eye sect gathered around a dozen forces, they are still more reassured if the Mari clan and Divine league are the ones that are initiating the attack.
They wanted to find a side and stick to it. But to their surprise, neither the Mari clan nor the Divine league agreed to any of these allegiances. They just rejected them as if they are not even worthy of any mention.
So, they were curious about what is going to happen.
In the third batch of fifteen days, they got a glimpse of it.
The two more Grey circle members of the Mari clan. The people that are on par with Gamin and Yuvana arrived at the Mari clan at the start of the clash and they clashed with Gamin and Yuvana.
They battled for a day, but the winner was not decided. But from the word that got out, Gamin and Yuvana got the best of the other two since the home ground belonged to the Mari clan and they had some advantage of ambush.
During that battle, one of the resource points and the factory of the Mari clan was destroyed completely.
This is the enhanced weapon factory, Sivan made with the help of Sam’s designs. One of the valuable assets of the Mari clan at the moment right before the war.
On their way back, because of the anger that Gamin and Yuvana were not able to kill their opponents, they took a three-day detour launched an attack on another grand elder of the Mari clan. Nobody knew where they found him, but the man barely managed to escape with his arms chopped off.
The Mari clan retaliated, but the Gaja clan is already shelled inside the city and the Mari clan doesn’t want prematurely attack, but this time, they managed to find out one of the organizations under the secret control of Giyon.
They destroyed it completely.
Like that, those fifteen days passed.
Now there are still fifteen days left for the two months time period to be over.
Sam definitely knows that since they said it is two months, it is not going to be exactly two months. The attacks that happened all this while will just gradually escalate until it becomes a full-blown war.
So, he started making the final checks on all the things that are being made.
Meanwhile, within the Mari clan, the atmosphere is the same.
Sivan and his artisan team are also making the final checks and demonstrations of their weapons. In fact, they are even a step ahead and are ready to launch their first attack.
Within the stray realm where most of the manufacturing is happening, Sivan held a meeting as they discussed the plan for their first attack.
“The Gaja clan already backed completely up into their city and estate, so there is no point in thinking of attacking any of the other areas, we can directly go after them.
And I have the perfect thing for the first attacks we are about to launch.
We are going to use the Lava Worms.
They are large scale puppets that could be driven by a few Astral Plane transcendent stage cultivators.
I will not waste your time explaining the whole thing. Let me just give you a quick demonstration.”
After that, they walked toward a large snake-like metallic puppet. It looked a bit like a snake and a bit like an earthworm. Many people wearing special suits and breathing devices climbed onto the massive worm and entered it through the vents.
The vents closed after that and the worm suddenly got activated.
The head of the worm that looked like a normal earthworm changed a bit and it started drilling into the earth. The worm disappeared before long and they could feel the earth vibrating.
After some time, the vibrations slowly disappeared. Sivan looked at the Grand elders who are trying to look for the Worm with their massive ranged spiritual sense.
But they couldn’t.
“You wouldn’t be able to find it. It will be out of your range and it also merges with the surrounding earth. You wouldn’t be able to differentiate it, unless you focus on the energy difference instead of the massive object itself.”
As he explained, the grand elders nodded in realization and tried to find out. But while it was happening, they recognized something else. A bit far away from them, the earth is changing a bit.
It started smoking. The earth is completely drying up and cracks appeared on top of it.
The vegetation started drying up as well and they died at a rapid pace.
“The Lava worms convert the spiritual energy of fire element into a crude essence of fire elemental energy and forcefully merge with the soil under the ground.
They use a special technique to corrupt the soil with fire elemental energy. With a good enough time spent there and a bit of sneaky and regulated action, the whole soil will be corrupted with fire elemental energy, turning into a fire elemental energy zone.
Since the Gaja clan is trapped, we will smoke their hole. Let’s make it difficult for them to stay there.”
“Really? Is that it? Is that all this massive Lava worm can do?”
Sivan just smiled and said.
“Of course not, this is just the initial demonstration to showcase what would happen at a rapid pace. I already planned the demonstration for a while.
There is another patch of land, that has been infected by another lava worm for a week now. Let’s go there.”
They went there and Sivan took out a communication token to send a message.
“Activate.”
As soon as he said that, the grand elders felt the ground go wild, all of a sudden the whole area turned from a normal place to a burning hell before the soil under their feet started morphing into earthen lava golems.
