Chapter 446: Anchor Built, Formal Beginning

"Aaaaaah!"

The raging orc warrior roared, swinging his battle-axe toward the lone enemy before him. Looking out, this battlefield—once a cacophony of endless slaughter—was now littered with corpses, the earth stained deep with blood.

The ancestral spirits, too, had been thinned by the mutual carnage, scattered in the corners of the field, barely visible. The war had reached its endgame; once the last visible enemy was slain, the orc warrior would find his rage spent, his victory secured.

"Clang!"

Yet, the axe that descended—striking before his enemy could—did not bite into flesh. Instead, it passed through the foe like a phantom image, slamming into the ground and striking the shield held by a corpse, ringing out with a hollow, metallic thud.

"Swish!"

The enemy’s longsword pierced his chest at the same moment, but the orc felt no pain. Just as he had passed through the foe, the blade became a dreamlike mirage, sliding through his torso without leaving a wound.

"Ugh, aah..."

With a confused, agonizing groan, the orc warrior’s knees buckled. His rage dissipated, and the exhaustion and pain of the high-intensity battle, no longer suppressed, rushed in like a tide, rendering him unable to move as his senses returned to normal.

With the rage gone, the orc perceived no more enemies. The phantom body his axe had passed through truly ceased to exist. He lifted his head, his eyes filled with a mix of shock and bewilderment amidst the agony.

Where the enemy had stood, the ground seemed to liquefy, and spire-like structures broke through the surface—or rather, rose from beneath as if emerging from water.

Just two or three steps away, an invisible boundary appeared, separating his enemy and those structures into one realm, while he remained in another, neither able to interfere with the other.

"Who... won?"

The orc muttered to himself. He did not understand what was happening, but he knew why he had fought until this moment: for victory, for a place for his tribe within the Bloodtooth Empire, to rebel and claim what they needed—a utopia, imperfect perhaps, but the one he had hoped for.

"We..."

Across the boundary, the orc who should have been his enemy seemed to hear his dazed question. His lips moved, but no sound crossed the divide. Relying on his meager knowledge of lip-reading, the warrior instinctively knew the first word was "we."

"What?"

Watching the other’s eyes and movements, the orc realized that while he couldn't grasp the phenomenon, the enemy before him was no longer the same person. The consciousness within that body had nothing to do with the original orc.

"Pat..."

A pair of hands rested on his shoulders. The orc warrior turned sharply, the lingering tension of battle making him want to strike back, but the weakness following his rage left him unable to do anything but twist his neck.

"We won. Look at what lies before us. Be patient; this will be our utopia. Those who were once our enemies will be enemies no more."

Only then did the warrior realize the speaker was a shaman. Not the one from his own small tribe, but one from the rebel ranks—a stranger, yet clearly an ally.

"Utopia...?"

He chewed on the word, a concept he had memorized well before the battle. He remained dazed. Was it really this simple—the battle won, and the goal achieved?

"It will take some time, but it is coming soon."

The shaman spoke with calm, unshakable certainty. The warrior felt a strange unease; orc shamans rarely possessed such a demeanor. The consciousness within this shaman was likely not its original owner.

"Who are you?"

The warrior asked the question naturally.

"Just another soul striving for the utopia, like you. Good, it is here. The final step can now be completed. The first anchor is about to fall."

The shaman replied faintly. In the distance, the earth trembled. Something immense was charging toward them, its colossal, skeletal form becoming clear. The giant skull it bore revealed its identity.

"The scale of the battlefield is sufficient, the death toll has reached the threshold. The Ossuary—it has arrived."

The white-haired youth stood outside the walls of the Bloodtooth Empire’s capital, sensing the distant event. The spires rising from the earth were linked to him; he shared their perception.

The scale of these spires was staggering. Across the Bloodtooth Empire—in hills, plains, basins, and mountains—they had pierced the phantom surface, standing tall to fulfill their preordained purpose.

These spires could not have been buried underground; even the orc empire would have noticed such construction. They had come from one place: the Void.

Using the existing spires as fulcrums, they projected power to drag these structures from the depths of the Void into the material world. But one step remained to make these phantom entities truly manifest.

"Shatter the barrier of estrangement. I still don't fully understand what the Ossuary is, but it is a tool we can use."

The youth murmured, waiting for the massive skeletal "creature" to arrive. It moved like a python or a train, crushing everything in its path, drawn by the countless deaths on the battlefield.

The giant body reached the field, its skeletal arms gathering the mountains of corpses, stripping them of flesh, and piling their bones onto its mountain-like frame.

As it moved, the corpses vanished, absorbed into this ancient, powerful entity, making the eternal skeletal train grow ever larger.

It reached a specific point—the boundary wall separating the spire-realm from the rest of the world.

The wall could not stop the Ossuary. Upon impact, the barrier—the estrangement that kept the Void spires from the material world—shattered.

In an instant, the spires were fully manifested, becoming true, physical objects.

Simultaneously, as the Ossuary continued its harvest, the spires began to function.

A web of power projected from them, covering the Bloodtooth Kingdom and striking downward—not into the earth, but into the Void from which they emerged, anchoring themselves firmly like a ship dropping anchor.

"Well, can you feel the change?"

The youth asked the orc "Bassaka," who wore the guise of the Bloodtooth King, his tone filled with satisfaction.

"Yes."

Bassaka looked at the space around them. To the naked eye, nothing had changed, but with his spiritual perception, he could clearly feel the shift.

"The first node is set. It is time to contact our old friends. Their progress should be smooth. Those who stand in the way of our utopia will fall. This is the inevitable trend."

The youth spread his arms, a bright, unhidden smile on his face, looking toward the sky now covered by the power of the spires.

The aura of the Void began to permeate the empire—not as an invasion rejected by the world, but as a gentle, harmonious fusion.

"Welcome back. This era still requires our collective effort. For now, let us help these new companions understand what must be done."

He turned to the orcs who had followed the "King." They were no longer who they had been; the souls within them had been replaced by the old acquaintances the youth had welcomed.

...

"Emon has lost contact? The prayer network can't reach him either? Damn it, why wouldn't he listen? To jump into the Bloodtooth Empire while it's in chaos—of course something went wrong. Is there a way in? I can't just watch. The situation there is strange? What exactly is happening?"

In the prayer network, Elliott, a leader of the Nightfall Church’s merchant guild, spoke rapidly. His former employee and dear friend, Emon, had vanished, leaving Elliott restless and deeply unsettled by the reports he received.

This was not an isolated case. Intelligence agents from every kingdom had been watching the orc rebellion, but just moments ago, all contact with those inside the Bloodtooth Empire had been severed without warning. Even the backup feedback tools had remained silent.

This sudden, massive change seemed to announce that a process had begun to accelerate uncontrollably, a turmoil that would soon engulf every being on the continent.