At Blin’s command, everyone moved.
Merc shifted back into his Stone-Man form and left the grotto with Little White.
They walked together for a while, then Little White veered northwest, striding hard away from Maple Valley.
In three hours Maple Valley would see dawn. Daylight made hiding far harder than night, so she had to get beyond the base’s patrol perimeter fast, reach the skimmer parked in the safe zone, then detour through Gwarsong and fly back to Aurora Plateau.
After they split, Bit started sealing the grotto. Eyes had been planted all around the mountain; his job now was to help Merc track patrol routes and keep comms clean.
At the same time, Blin led Ollie and Ofer into the tunnel.
The tunnel was only 1.2 meters high, 9.7 kilometers long, slanting downward in a straight line to Maple Valley Base’s core. The two boys could stand upright. For this mission, Blin had commissioned a smaller body—he only needed to hunch slightly to move freely.
The inner walls had been coated with waterproof sealant. Outside, rain hammered down; inside, not a drop pooled. The tunnel also had lighting and wired comm lines, so their signals couldn’t be intercepted.
Forty minutes later, they reached the end. The tunnel widened into a ring-shaped chamber, circling an irregular mass about three meters across.
The untouched core of rock wrapped around the cooling conduits that ran to Phantom Forge’s mainframe. When the mechanical sandworms had bored this far, they’d deliberately left extra strata intact—so they wouldn’t crack or vibrate the cooling shaft during excavation. The final work had been left to follow-up units.
All three stepped lighter the moment they entered. Directly above them was the base’s center. Directly below lay Phantom Forge’s mainframe. This chamber sat exactly between—an absurdly dangerous place. Without the chance created by Phantom Forge digging its river channels through the base, punching a tunnel to this point would’ve been a fantasy.
Two small digging bots—only sixty centimeters tall—were shaving stone away from the cooling pipes, millimeter by millimeter. Now that the channels were finished, any loud noise or vibration would trip Phantom Forge’s sensors. So the heavy work had stopped; the fine work was left to delicate hands. Two Observers hovered nearby, monitoring both surface and sub-surface movement.
They were nearly done. Two cooling lines had already been exposed.
Blin took one look—and froze.
Right beside the two pipes, there was a third.
The cooling lines, insulation included, were about half a meter wide. This extra pipe was even thicker—thicker than the other two placed side by side.
What the hell…?
Blin looked at Ollie and Ofer. The boys just shook their heads.
“Bit? Merc?” Blin asked over the private channel. “Edean’s intel said how many lines?”
“Two,” Bit said at once.
“Two. Why?” Merc asked.
“Because I’m staring at three,” Blin said. “And I’ve got no idea what the hell I’m looking at. Cha-cha-cha…”
He pushed his view to the channel.
Bit went silent for a beat. “Why is there an extra one? And why is it so thick?”
“Could it be a pillar?” Merc asked.
Blin pressed his palm to the metal and tapped gently. “No. It’s hollow.”
“I told you,” Bit snapped. “Those Edean bastards played us.”
“Not necessarily,” Blin said. “This pipe doesn’t match the other two. Different age. Phantom Forge might’ve added it later.”
“What for?” Merc asked.
Blin snorted. “Does it look like it has an instruction manual etched on it?”
“So which one are you sending them through?” Bit asked.
Ollie and Ofer asked the same question with their eyes.
Blin didn’t hesitate. “We stick to the plan. Who knows where that third pipe leads? Could be a chimney for all we know.”
“Then the furnace is at the bottom,” Bit muttered.
“Hold up,” Merc cut in. “Something’s happening at the base.”
Blin’s spine tightened. “The gates? Are they draining the channels?”
“No. Warships are assembling overhead.”
Merc shared his mountaintop feed. Above Maple Valley Base, three Leviathan cruisers hovered in a loose stack, along with two carriers and more than a dozen escorts. Several heavy transports—big enough to hold thousands—were lifting out of the base as well. And some of those transports hung huge, gyroscope-shaped devices from steel cables, each one larger than an escort ship.
Borers.
The kind of massive drill rigs designed to crack underground fortifications. Phantom Forge had used them during the assault on Doomsday Fortress. Seeing them here did not feel like a coincidence.
Over the next ten minutes, the ships finished forming up—thirty-four vessels in total. Then their engines flared in unison and the fleet slid north in neat formation.
“Where are they going?” Bit asked.
Blin’s answer came instantly. “North only means one thing.”
Bit swallowed. “Five-Color Fortress…”
“But that doesn’t add up,” Merc said. “Five-Color Fortress isn’t underground. Why bring borers?”
Blin didn’t reply. He didn’t have one.
***
An hour earlier, Phantom Forge had posted a major mission in Maple Valley.
White Harbor had received the same mission even earlier.
Mission Brief:
Operation Codename: “Blood-Red Aurora”
Mission Grade: Campaign-level
Participating Units:
White Harbor: 9,680 independent units
Maple Valley: 7,642 independent units
Area of Operations: Aurora Plateau (28.318, 74.669)
Objectives:
1) Destroy the Tower Clan stronghold Five-Color Fortress and all auxiliary defense facilities.
2) Seize the human cave shelter and purge all humans inside.
3) Locate and rescue CST.
***
While Blin’s team prepared to strike, a vast Prando fleet—led by the flagship Sky Shield—crossed Storm Bay and reached the coastline of Aurora Plateau. The ships opened fire at once, pounding the coastal defense installations into scrap.
What happened next was… wrong.
There was no furious counterfire like before. No point-defense cannons, no surface-to-air missiles, no prism towers—nothing fired a single shot. The defenses simply sat there and died one by one, as if they were targets on a range. Not a single warship or fighter rose to meet them.
After a brief pause, the Prando fleet ignored the silent shoreline and continued on—flowing in a glittering stream toward Edean.