Reverse Analysis

“If the plan succeeds, it will deal a fatal blow to the enemy. Perhaps we can completely eliminate the troublesome high wall and the enemy god's servants even before the elves attack.”

In the eyes of Lin Miao, who had been watching the entire time, Calian's resolve and Celia's negotiation were major variables capable of altering everyone's destiny.

The Silver Twilight Secret Society was a core facility built by Astaroth in the safest location, condensing the very essence of his civilization.

Once that place was destroyed, all the technology, talent, and resources they had accumulated would vanish into thin air.

And it would be impossible to ever rebuild, for the Great Devourer would not give them the chance.

By then, the Northern Legion stationed at the high wall would also be forced to abandon the high wall and retreat due to a lack of supplies.

Lin Miao was certain that the high wall would become their grave.

Pincer-attacked from above and below by the ant colony, they were destined to be defeated and pay the price for it.

“Your Majesty, are you truly going to do as that witch said?”

“Things have already come to this point; there is no turning back. Besides, hasn't she already done something to my body?”

On the screen Lin Miao was watching, Calian and his butler Raum, who had hurriedly returned to their quarters, were shown.

No scouts were currently monitoring them.

But the reason Lin Miao could see and hear everything they did was because the Gene Stealer parasitizing Calian's body had already become a part of the colony.

Naturally, Elise, the Queen of the colony, also knew everything Lin Miao saw and heard.

“I only know that it is near Tobaro Town. To find out its exact location, I must go there myself.”

“W-What if you are discovered...”

In order to obtain a more precise location, Calian decided to personally propose to Schuber that he wanted to visit the Silver Twilight Secret Society.

Raum was terrified by Calian's bold decision, but ever since his secret meeting with Celia and making this massive gamble, Calian had become fearless.

Already overwhelmed with problems, Schuber sneered upon receiving the message that Calian wanted to visit the Silver Twilight Secret Society. “That brat is always coming up with useless nonsense.”

His trusted Minister of Foreign Affairs, standing nearby, suggested refusing. “What should we do? Even though he is the Emperor, rejecting him outright might not look good. Right now, things are incredibly busy over there. Distracting them to entertain the Emperor will only delay official business.”

But Schuber shook his head. “...No, approve his visit. Let him see the sheer grandeur of the place. Perhaps it will make his arrogant nature quiet down for a while.”

A powerless brat couldn't possibly stir up any significant trouble.

“We'll be getting rid of him soon anyway. He is still of imperial blood and has served as Emperor, so we should at least show him this last bit of courtesy.”

There was also a trace of negligible pity.

Schuber quickly put Calian out of his mind. The fierce offensive of the Great Devourer in the north left him with absolutely no spare energy to think about anything else.

“So this is...”

Shedding his worn-out stealth clothes and changing into his formal imperial robes, Calian finally arrived at his destination after receiving a ceremonially appropriate welcome.

Following the terrorist attack launched by Celia, the security and facilities of the Empire's secret magical research institute—the Silver Twilight Secret Society—had been further reinforced. It was built beneath a small town named Tobaro near the imperial capital.

The town itself was ordinary, but the massive underground facility, expanded from a former military base, was extraordinarily vast.

“This is where the most advanced magic in the world is researched for the Empire's great magical civilization, Your Majesty.”

Even before the Emperor, the director of the research institute remained haughty, proudly introducing the facilities and achievements.

Calian showed an expression of pure awe and curiosity, but beneath this facade, he bit his lip tightly.

Calian already knew the truth.

The advanced scholarship and inventions born here, and the brilliant talents working here and praising magic—

the one they ultimately swore allegiance to was not him, the Emperor, but that unknown will.

“Seeing it in person, it truly lives up to its reputation. Thanks to all of you, the imperial family and the Empire can stand firm in this crisis and become even greater.”

Calian forced a smile, expressing his admiration with eyes full of innocence.

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

Seeing this, the director of the institute smiled meaningfully and nodded.

【Elise has acquired all necessary information】

However, the director, who was inwardly mocking Calian's naivety, had no idea.

Deep within Calian's green eyes, another will was already mobilizing its massive army.

“What? A massive swarm of monsters has appeared in the south?”

The ant colony launched attacks on both the northern and southern fronts simultaneously.

Just as the northern ant colony was relentlessly storming the high wall as usual.

The infiltration colony led by Celia ceased all expansion activities, suddenly massed together, and began to march.

“Oh no! Our forces deployed in the south are all scattered to prevent them from nesting!”

“We've been tricked! They have been gathering for so long, yet why didn't we receive any news at all??”

Marquis Hermann, who had been dispatched to the south to prevent the Great Devourer's expansion, burn its nests, and manage the refugees, lamented with a pale face.

They had always assumed the ant colony would only disperse to carry out invasive nesting and erosion, so they had completely failed to notice that they were secretly massing.

“They've broken through the defensive line!”

“It's over... the central region is going to fall!”

As a result, the ant colony easily broke through the stretched and weakened defense line, driving straight in and flooding into the central Empire, which had never been attacked before.

If the Great Devourer attacked villages, destroyed farmland, and carried out invasive nesting like they did in the south, it would once again cause massive casualties.

“No, wait... that's not their target!”

However, the Great Devourer's actions caught everyone off guard.

Instead of dispersing to nest, they continued forward at full speed, heading straight for the Tobaro Town region where the Silver Twilight Secret Society was located.

Seeing this, the god Astaroth was even more terrified than his servants.

The Great Devourer actually knew this secret that they absolutely should not and could not have known.

“Quickly activate all defensive spells! We must hold out until reinforcements arrive!”

“This is the center of our great magical civilization! We absolutely cannot let those monsters destroy this place!”

The mages did their utmost to block the ant colony. They deployed all pre-prepared spells and weapons, determined to defend the place to the death until reinforcements arrived.

This was the most important place in the Empire.

To them, this place was even more important than the imperial palace; they could never abandon it.

In fact, even the high wall defenders, who were locked in fierce combat with the ant colony in the north, had already begun to redeploy troops and equipment to rush to their aid.

Arriving alongside tens of thousands of insects, Celia marvelled as she looked at the colossal barrier enveloping the entire town.

This was a large-scale barrier that wove multiple sturdy shields together, maximizing defensive power through resonance. It was an advanced magic capable of completely isolating the interior from the exterior.

It was the crystallization of high-tier civilization knowledge taught by Astaroth, and its protective capability had long since surpassed the realm of ordinary barriers.

Although constructing it consumed a massive amount of resources, such an investment was well worth it to protect their most vital facility.

【Elise orders the entire army to charge】

But the ant colony had already found a way to crack this magic.

Based on what the research director had bragged about in front of Calian, Celia had already grasped enough information. She indicated that as long as the ant colony could provide the necessary data, she would be able to dismantle the barrier.

“We cannot give them any time.”

Lin Miao whispered as he watched the massive spherical barrier enveloping the entire town, constantly crackling with electrical sparks.

At this moment, Astaroth, driven into a corner, was frantically sending him abusive private messages.

Regardless of whether Lin Miao replied or not, those private messages, sent purely to vent anger, were filled with Astaroth's bluster, claiming that all of this was meaningless and that he could rebuild his foundation at any time.

But even if it was just bluster, he could not afford to let his guard down.

He had to wrap this up quickly and resolve it completely before the enemy could come up with any other tricks.

“What on earth are those things doing?”

The mages inside the barrier watched nervously as the Great Devourer swarmed in from all directions.

In their common sense, it was absolutely impossible for the Great Devourer to breach the barrier they had constructed.

Although they couldn't launch attacks from the inside, they were waiting for reinforcements anyway, so that did not matter.

It was impossible to break the barrier with brute force. Even if the Great Devourer hammered at it relentlessly, this barrier could easily hold out for more than a week.

“Stay sharp, everyone. Do not let your guard down.”

“But Captain, you know how it is. Although it consumes a lot of magic power and takes a long time to construct, once it's up, it is absolutely impregnable.”

One of the mages who had participated in building the barrier chuckled, attempting to ease the tense, rigid atmosphere.

If brute force could not break it, then the only way was to reverse-engineer and dismantle it from its structure.

But this not only required profound magical knowledge, but also a massive amount of information-processing capability that the human brain simply could not handle.

“Ugh... how disgusting...”

A female mage spoke in disgust as she watched the Great Devourer slowly crawling up the barrier.

Not only the ants crawling up from the ground, but also the mutated variants flying up with unfolded wings landed on the top of the barrier one after another.

Countless legs and wriggling bodies gradually blanketed the entire barrier, blocking out the sunlight.

The nervous mages, and even the residents in the town, stared up at the sky, their mouths agape in shock.

Contrary to the expectation that they would violently crash into the barrier, the ant colony instead blanketed the dome-shaped town barrier with their bodies in an almost careful, delicate manner.

It was an extremely terrifying sight, but at the same time, it was a bizarre and mysterious spectacle that one might never witness again in a lifetime.

Even the top scholars of this massive Empire, and indeed this entire world, could not comprehend the ant colony's behavior with their existing knowledge and common sense.

“Combining biological capabilities with magical knowledge to crack higher-tier magic.”

There were very few who could understand this.

And one of them, Lin Miao, the master of the Great Devourer, clicked his tongue as he looked at the barrier completely blanketed by a dense mass of ants.

The mages did not know that the moment the Great Devourer completely covered the barrier, their defeat was sealed.

【Elise shares all gathered information】

“Received. Beginning reverse analysis.”

Celia, wearing her mask, raised her staff as she looked at the barrier completely covered by the wriggling black tide.

Having awakened as vassals, the Great Devourer's perception of magic power and other internal energies had become extremely acute. Clinging to the barrier, they used all of their senses to gather every single magic rune of the barrier, sharing them with everyone through the hive mind.

Elise mobilized tens of thousands of ants to recombine the countless fragments of information collected, constructing the complete structural formula of the barrier within the hive mind.

Subsequently, Celia found the method to reverse-engineer and crack it from this formula.

This was a method that transcended the limits of knowledge, something the mages would not have dared to even imagine.

“Shatter.”

A sharp gleam flashed in Celia's eyes, and she shot a bolt of lightning from the tip of her staff.

Simultaneously, the tiger hornet ants precisely positioned at various nodes unfurled their wings at the same time, drawing power from their magic hearts to unleash a frantic resonance against the barrier.

“The barrier is collapsing! The structure has been breached!”

Amplified infinitely through the resonance of the Tyrants, Celia's lightning instantly dismantled every part of the tightly knit barrier.

“Ugh, aaaah!”

As the barrier vanished, the Great Devourer covering it rained down toward the ground.

The countless massive mutated variants falling from the sky threw everyone on the ground into extreme panic, eliciting blood-curdling screams.