Inside the Spider Tower's capital within the Virtual World.
Within this monochrome tableau of black and white, the jagged, misshapen Knowledge Creatures rapidly transformed into uniform Spider Tower soldiers once equipped with unit forms. Yet under the constraints of the Static Zone, they were nothing more than stagnant shades of gray. Without the protection of the capital city or the nourishment of the River of Flowing Gold, taking even a single step forward would force them to drain every last drop of time within themselves.
Only primordial Knowledge Creatures could move freely within the Static Zone. Armed units were not recognized by the Virtual World. It's as though the Virtual World was declaring to the beasts, "You are not allowed to take the form of a sorcerer! Revert immediately! Refuse, and you will be frozen in time!"
Aside from the Spider Tower, no other faction armed their units in the Static Zone. There was a limit to how long creatures could sustain their unit form, and their movement speed was generally inferior to that of raw Knowledge Creatures. Thus, most commanders adhered to a simple principle, which was to travel in base form and only arm before battle.
The Spider Tower, of course, was no exception to this rule.
So when they chose to arm their units within the Static Zone, it could only mean one thing. The Spider Tower army was about to charge out of frozen time and directly invade another faction's territory.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Countless threads descended from the white web canopy in the sky, latching onto the Spider Tower soldiers. They cocooned the troops and hoisted them up into the web. At a glance, the sight looked like a portrait woven from equal parts heavenly ascension and infernal fall.
In the next instant, countless cocoons manifested within the webs outside the fortress. The silk rapidly tightened, fusing into armor. As the Spider Tower soldiers stepped back into the flow of time, color bled back into them, and their consciousness instantly reconnected to their commander's nexus. Like venom, they corroded the land; like bayonets, they pierced straight toward the enemy's capital. Nothing described the sudden assault better than the phrase "swift as thunder, elusive as shadow."
This was the Spider Tower's method of war, and also their Divine Miracle.
Denzel watched as the Spider Tower forces, having finally breached the fortress walls, now found themselves bogged down in brutal street fighting. By this point, the giant wooded fortress had fully mobilized. The Legion of Heroes outside had rushed back to reinforce, and all internal garrison forces had completed their armament. The spider legion struggled as though mired in a swamp, unable to fully unleash its strength.
She couldn't help but sigh. "If this were a fully realized web, the fortress would already have fallen."
The Spiderweb was a Divine Miracle that the Omniscient Weaver had left behind for the Spider Tower to use in war.
By conventional understanding, only Divine Lords could unleash Divine Miracles, with Angels being the bare minimum threshold. Yet on the Continent of Time, commanders only possessed combat power at the Two-Winged level. Expecting them to wield Divine Miracles was like asking a paper anime character to step out of your phone screen and marry you. It was simply out of their league.
In a sense, the Continent of Time resembled a sealed kindergarten. No matter how earth-shattering the battles of the Legion of Heroes appeared, to a Divine Lord, it was nothing more than children throwing tantrums. The problem was that the Divine Lords couldn't step in to fight on the children's behalf. So instead, they smuggled heavily regulated weapons into the kindergarten through indirect means.
To that end, the Omniscient Weaver had created a special system by dispersing Divine Miracles across the Gospel Kingdom and allowing the Spider Tower to reclaim and reweave them over time. It sounded simple, but in reality, the mechanism was extraordinarily complex and required an immense investment of time, with a minimum threshold of fifty years.
The Grand Investiture of the Six Nations occurred once every fifty years for precisely this reason. Every faction required half a century to prepare its strategic Miracles. This was not a balance achieved overnight, but one forged over a millennium of constant adjustment. When Denzel had first become a commander, the cycle was once every hundred years. But as all factions accelerated their arms race to hasten the restoration of their strategic Miracles, the cycle had stabilized at fifty years over the past few centuries.
With each successive war game, commanders grew more elite, faction units more formidable, and strategic Miracles more refined.
And what if the enemy attacked before your strategic Miracle was complete?
Then you run, roam, and retreat! You preserve your effective strength and withdraw from this Investiture War without hesitation.
Over her long career as a Hero, Denzel had both crushed those whose strategic Miracles lagged behind the current era and been beaten down by those who had optimized theirs ahead of the curve. From it all, she drew two conclusions. Firstly, strategic Miracles were entirely decisive in victory and defeat. Secondly, in a situation of certain loss, one must never stake their hopes on a strategic Miracle.
Losing a conceptual incarnation was enough for Denzel to know that the Spider Tower had little hope of placing in the top three this time. In that case, they might as well trigger the Investiture War early, drag every faction into the mire, and force their strategic Miracles to detonate ahead of schedule. By leveling the playing field, they might just snatch victory from chaos.
It was simple in theory, but impossible in practice if they tried to charge other factions head-on along the White Ox's route. The other factions weren't fools. The moment they detected a large-scale Spider Tower incursion, they would immediately pull their main forces back to their capitals or even lay ambushes around them. The instant the Spider Tower attacked, they would be surrounded from all sides, turning a surprise raid into a grueling war of attrition. And to fight a total war on someone else's turn, on their land, outside their capital? Only a fool would squander troops like that.
So, when Denzel realized Ashe's group had a way to cross the River of Flowing Gold and that recovering the Incarnation of Secrets was essentially off the table, she leaked the method of locating that incarnation to every faction.
Firstly, even if the incarnation were destroyed, it could eventually be reborn. But if Ashe brought it into the Distant Sky Domain, the Spider Tower would lose it forever. Secondly, Denzel loathed people who refused both to die and to submit. She took particular pleasure in actions that harmed others, even at her own expense. Thirdly, she wanted to gamble on the chance that Ashe and his group would enter a capital city.
And she won.
She picked up on what made Ashe and his group different. Ordinary sorcerers stood no chance of getting near the capital, but she knew these three were a whole different story. The fact that they could form a cohesive party and possessed a vehicle far faster than ordinary Knowledge Creatures bolstered her confidence that they might actually have the capability to break into a capital city.
By spreading the word that Ashe carried the Incarnation of Secrets, she intended to provoke the other factions into targeting him. That would draw out capital forces and keep Ashe on a constant run, raising the likelihood that he would blunder directly into a capital. In the best-case scenario, they would be driven to rage by the pursuit and storm the capital city themselves.
Of course, Denzel hadn't expected much. It was a small gamble for amusement, nothing more. At most, she had idly cursed them to take the bait. Yet she never imagined that before the White Ox had even completed a full round, the sorcerers would stage the exact scene she had hoped for. They had entered the capital city with the conceptual incarnation.
The moment the purple began staining the green expanse, Denzel immediately applied to activate the Divine Miracle, Spiderweb, and requested supreme command authority.
[Spiderweb]
- Basic Effects
1. Weaving: Secondary web teleport nodes manifest within areas coated by the purple concept. Forces stationed in the capital city can consume spider silk to instantly transfer from the primary web to these nodes.
2. Entangle: Upon consuming spider silk, units gain three additional layers of armor and the Entangle enhancement. Enemies attacking an entangled unit suffer a continuous debuff, reducing their speed by 30% and slowing their cognition by 30%. When an entangled unit's armor shatters, it splashes three layers of venom onto all targets within a three-meter radius. Venom stacks infinitely and inflicts continuous damage.
3. Corrode: Secondary webs expand outward at a rate of three meters every ten seconds. Any enemy stepping onto them is restrained, has all unit skills disabled, and loses three layers of armor every ten seconds.
- Passive Effects
1. Omniscient Veil: Spider Tower commanders gain the ability to ignore the Ascending Golden Rain, granting them a maximum observation range of 300 meters.
2. Curtain of Traps: Within the capital area covered by the Spiderweb, the Weaving, Entangle, and Corrode effects remain permanently active.
- Ultimate Weapon
1. Fate Weaving (Incomplete): Sever the threads of fate of all enemy units within a designated area, erasing their existence and preventing revival. Simultaneously, restore the fate threads of all allied units, resetting their armor to its original state and instantly reviving any units that perished this turn.
Note: This skill consumes all active Spiderweb structures and can only be triggered when Spiderweb coverage exceeds 50%.
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