One day later—
The wild mushrooms bloomed.
They spread like a living stain in atmosphere.
Like spores drifting before a storm.
Like rot growing beneath polished stone.
Like tension fermenting inside a silent crowd.
The city began to change subtly.
People walked faster.
Merchants hesitated before accepting certain coins.
Guards lingered longer at checkpoints, hands resting closer to their hilts.
Conversations stopped when unfamiliar footsteps approached.
No one could point to the cause.
Wolf noticed it immediately.
He stood by the tall window of Moritz's residence, one hand resting against the cold glass, eyes half-lidded as he observed the streets below.
Carriages moved.
Vendors shouted.
Children ran.
Everything looked normal.
And yet—
Nothing was.
"...So it's starting," he murmured.
His voice was soft.
Almost thoughtful.
Like a scholar witnessing the opening of a long-predicted disaster.
House Ferrante and House Vento had not moved openly.
Yet Wolf was certain—
Plans were already unfolding or had already begun.
They were never idle.
Moritz's side was progressing.
Encrypted letters arrived through obscure routes.
Messengers who never gave names.
Rebels who never met twice in the same place.
Some were cautious. Some were frightened. Some were burning with hatred.
Moritz read every report personally.
Sometimes twice. Sometimes until dawn.
His once-relaxed posture had grown tense, his shoulders carrying invisible weight.
Yet his eyes—
They were clearer than ever.
Solina, meanwhile, was transforming.
After studying the kingdom's armament systems with Wolf and Zenji—supply lines, enchantment frameworks, maintenance protocols—she had begun rebuilding them from the inside by understanding.
She spent nights surrounded by diagrams and dismantled mechanisms.
Ink-stained fingers. Uncombed hair.
Eyes glowing with quiet obsession.
Wolf rarely interfered. He only offered fragments when he had time to spare.
"Here."
"Look at this."
"You overdepend on this resonance."
Solina listened.
Absorbed and adapted.
Zenji's men trained without rest.
Sweat darkened stone floors. Bruises layered over scars.
Controlled stumbling.
Flowing steps. Silent impact.
Their movements no longer looked human.
They looked… inevitable.
At the same time, they gathered intelligence, transported materials, and protected Solina's works.
They were becoming more than soldiers.
They were becoming infrastructure.
And Varsh—
Varsh was gone.
Sent across borders.
His passive skill allowed him to bend distance itself.
To disappear and reappear. To cross territories in moments.
But it came at a cost.
His muscles trembled after each jump.
His breathing shattered.
So he leaped.
Stopped.
Rested.
Then leaped again.
Like a man crossing an ocean on fragments of broken glass.
Wolf respected that.
He never said it.
Two week passed.
The spores worsened.
Now, even animals became hosts.
Rumors multiplied. Conflicting stories spread.
Fear fermented. Hope twisted.
Protests began forming in small numbers.
Then larger ones.
Religious groups started interpreting signs.
Merchants hoarded supplies.
Wolf adjusted his schedule, shortened deadlines and compressed phases.
Accelerated pressure points.
The inertia is increasing.
House Ferrante—
Deep within the mining valley.
From above, it looked like nothing more than jagged stone and scarred cliffs.
But hidden in the rock face was a colossal Gate—layered with runes and reinforced alloys.
A fortress masquerading as geology.
Within—
The Lord's Study.
The chamber was vast, carved directly into bedrock. Veins of crystal glimmered faintly in the walls.
A massive desk stood at its center, surrounded by adaptive furniture that shifted in response to force and posture.
A hand slammed down.
Boom!
The table sank half an inch, mechanisms humming as it absorbed the impact.
A figure in purple stood there.
Her cloak—woven from some exotic material—contained tens of thousands of folds, unfolding and refolding like origami wings with every breath.
Her porcelain face remained flawless but her eyes—
They were storming.
"Useless!" she snapped. "All of it! Completely useless!"
Her pale gray eyes burned with the ruthless weight of decades.
Rage. Frustration. Humiliation.
They locked onto the man before her.
Seated calmly.
Orion Ferrante.
Broad-shouldered. Thick-necked. A body carved by labor and command. His dark brown eyes were unmoved, like iron submerged in water.
"Watch your manner, Zepherina," he said evenly, voice striking like a hammer on steel.
She sneered. "You watch your tone, Orion!"
Her voice was shrill, slicing through the chamber like a blade.
"All of our plans failed!" she snapped. "They're too far gone in that delusion! We have to use force!"
Orion raised a hand.
Two fingers.
Stopping her words mid-flight.
"You're being paranoid," he replied coldly. "Like a miner who hears one crack and thinks the whole cave will collapse."
Silence followed.
Then—
Memory.
Zepherina's spies.
Shadow agents sent to infiltrate Wolf, Solina, and Moritz.
All had failed.
There were no personal army to penetrate. No loose retainers. No bribable gatekeepers.
Moritz's people were loyal to the bone.
So she changed tactics.
Character assassination.
Rumors.
"Solina isn't real."
"Wolf's a demon."
"He's a fraud."
"She's a puppet."
It worked barely.
Only among the foolish.
Meanwhile, Orion—
Ignored her warnings.
He had doubled security. Paraded soldiers. Fortified trade routes.
Flexed his military muscle.
And when civilians protested—
He escalated.
Crushed merchants. Threatened small houses. Invoked obscure laws. Purged supporters.
Anyone who supplied Armani was branded a traitor.
Each act—
Added fuel.
"...You've gone too far," Zepherina said finally, her voice dropping into icy sharpness.
Her fury condensed into something more dangerous.
"You crushed civilians. Bullied merchants. You turned sympathy into hatred."
"You've sealed our image!"
He didn't deny it.
"You can't turn back now. You have to shut them down. Quickly."
Orion said nothing.
She turned sharply.
Cloak flaring.
"I'll deal with the walls ahead," she said coldly.
And left.
The door sealed behind her.
The walls she spoke of—
Civilians. Rebels. Terrorists.
A living barricade forming against them.
Against history.
Against power.
Against their legacy.
Against their rule.
As Zepherina walked through the corridors, her nails dug into her palms.
In her mind, curses spilled endlessly—
Words so venomous they would have shocked even demons.
And yet—
None of them could tear down what was coming.
The wild mushrooms had already spread.
And once they did—
No governments ever escaped unscathed.
four weeks passed.
The wild mushrooms no longer felt like rumors.
They felt like weather.
Like the pressure before a storm.
Like the metallic taste in the air before lightning split the sky.
Something invisible was spreading through the kingdom—quietly, relentlessly—seeping into conversations, habits, fears, and instincts.
Wolf moved first without ever revealing his hand.
Fragments of truth began to circulate.
Not as official statements.
Not as open accusations.
But as whispers.
As anonymous letters slipped beneath doors.
As unsigned columns in obscure newsletters.
As half-burned notes found in abandoned alleys.
Ten years ago, House Armani did not fall because of a failed experiment.
And someone paid for it with blood.
The story appeared in pieces and never complete.
Never fully confirmed.
But enough to poison certainty.
Just enough to make people wonder.
Alongside it came another more personal, more poisonous.
Wolf fed the public a second narrative.
Corruption, trade manipulation, bribed inspectors, falsified safety reports, secret monopolies, private militias disguised as guards.
Things civilians understood.
Things they had suffered from.
Wolf understood that people could endure poverty.
They could endure even fear.
But they could not endure them when it came from those they once trusted.
The betrayal.
So he made the betrayal visible.
He did not tell them what to think.
He only showed them what had been done.
Day by day. Name by name. Hint by hint.
And slowly—
Confidence cracked. Foundations loosened. Trust evaporated.
The city changed its rhythm.
People stopped meeting each other's eyes.
In marketplaces, conversations broke apart mid-sentence when strangers approached.
Neighbors who had lived together for decades now nodded stiffly and hurried past.
Every smile felt rehearsed. Every greeting felt interrogated.
Was he watching me?
Is she reporting me?
Is that shopkeeper loyal—or paid?
No one knew.
And no one dared to ask.
The bell towers still rang but they no longer sounded like time.
They sounded like warning.
Like sirens. Like funeral drums.
When the bells rang—
Doors slammed. Windows shuttered.
Lanterns dimmed.
Families gathered in silence.
Mothers pressed children to their chests. Men checked locks twice.
Sometimes three times.
As if sound itself might summon disaster.
House Ferrante began hoarding.
Grain convoys redirected.
Warehouses sealed, medicine stockpiled, fuel restricted.
Prices doubled.
Then tripled.
Shops emptied and lines grew longer.
Arguments broke out over scraps.
Old men collapsed in queues.
Mothers diluted soup until it was little more than warm water.
And slowly, a question spread.
Why are we starving?
Why do they eat while we beg?
Why are we treated like animals?
No one answered.
But everyone remembered.
At night, symbols appeared.
Silver and turquoise sprayed across walls.
Bridges.
Checkpoints.
Government buildings.
A six-pronged gear.
A spinning windmill.
Wrapped in wind.
House Armani.
By morning, soldiers erased them.
By night, they returned.
Bigger. Sharper. More defiant.
Some people pretended not to see.
Others touched the paint briefly, as if drawing strength from it.
House Ferrante responded with force.
With armored patrols.
Checkpoints, curfews, random searches, arbitrary arrests.
A state of shadow martial law, never officially announced, yet enforced everywhere.
Boots replaced footsteps.
Orders replaced conversation.
Fear replaced routine.
Wolf observed it all.
From hidden rooms. From rooftops. From intercepted reports.
Maps covered his desk.
Routes crossed.
Timelines overlapped.
Pens moved every hour.
Sometimes every minute.
He adjusted constantly.
Delays. Accelerations. Diversions. Provocations. De-escalations.
He slept little to none.
When he did, it was light.
At night, he trained.
Alone.
Punches against reinforced posts.
Footwork along narrow beams.
Sweat soaked into stone.
Breath controlled.
Mind sharp.
Moritz's network expanded.
Cells merged.
Supply chains stabilized.
Safehouses multiplied.
Weapons and medicine flowed.
Most of his time was spent coordinating logistics now.
Sometimes he stared at reports until his vision blurred, whispering to himself:
"…How did we get here?"
But he never stopped.
Solina finished half of her counter-armament systems.
She distributed them personally.
Watching trembling hands turn steady.
Watching fear turn into resolve.
Her face remained calm, her eyes hardened.
Zenji moved.
Squad Three was dispatched far beyond the borders.
Risky but necessary.
When he questioned it, Wolf only said:
"Attention is currency."
"We're buying time."
Zenji noded.
The city trembled.
The nobles panicked.
The people sharpened.
And Wolf stood at the center of it all, calm, precise, watching the storm he had engineered gather mass.
He knew exactly where it was going.
And he intended to be standing when it finally struck.
Three weeks bled into the next.
And Wolf did not slow it down.
He stretched it.
He prolonged it.
Like a surgeon who refused to close a wound, knowing that infection would spread deeper if the flesh remained exposed.
He wanted the unrest to ferment.
To mature.
To rot into something irreversible.
He loosened his grip at calculated moments—allowing rumors to contradict each other, allowing fear to sharpen into paranoia, allowing desperation to twist into violence.
Food shortages were allowed to worsen before relief was leaked.
Patrol routes were exposed just long enough for civilians to test them.
Underground pamphlets appeared with instructions disguised as poetry. Codes hidden in sermons. Signals embedded in market chants.
Ordinary people began changing.
Quiet vendors learned how to pass messages.
Clerks learned how to smuggle data.
Teachers learned how to hide weapons.
Mothers learned how to lie convincingly.
Pain taught them quickly.
Fear refined them.
Soon, rebels, terrorists, infiltrators were no longer outsiders.
They were neighbors. They were relatives.
They were the people who used to bow their heads and endure.
Now they burned.
And Wolf watched.
From balconies. From cracked windows. From hidden observation posts.
He saw bodies carried away at dawn, blood washed into gutters, fires reflected in shattered glass.
He heard screams carried by the wind at night.
He smelled smoke mixed with rot and sewage.
He recorded every incident.
Every reaction. Every consequence.
And none of it slowed him.
He never flinched.
Never turned away.
Never whispered apologies to the dead.
To him, casualties were metrics.
Graves were milestones.
If anything, the chaos pleased him.
Because it meant the system was breaking.
Solina felt it differently.
She walked through refugee districts with her hood drawn low, hands clenched inside her sleeves, boots crunching on broken ceramics and dried blood.
Children stared at her with hollow eyes.
Old women begged without words, their palms open, their pride long dissolved.
She distributed equipment and supplies with mechanical precision, her voice steady, her posture unshaken—but every night, she washed her hands until they were raw.
She understood.
She truly did.
She knew why it had to happen.
She knew that no corrupt government ever fell without drowning first.
Yet knowing did not stop the ache.
In empty rooms, she sometimes knelt.
Pressed her forehead to cold floors and whispered prayers to no god in particular.
"For them," she murmured.
"For the ones who didn't choose this."
"For the ones who will never see tomorrow."
All she had ever wanted was restoration.
Not even revenge.
Just the return of her family's name.
Its dignity.
Its place in history.
She had been willing to let go.
To forgive.
To rebuild quietly.
She had been an ant.
And even then, Ferrante and Vento would have stepped on her again.
Over and over.
Blocking every attempt.
Sabotaging every effort.
Stripping every remnant.
Laughing behind closed doors.
So her forgiveness withered.
Her patience decayed. Her restraint dissolved.
Hatred took its place.
A cold, silent hatred.
One that did not scream. One that did not rage.
One that waited.
In the deepest parts of her heart, she began wishing for their disappearance.
Moritz saw the same streets and felt nothing new.
He had walked through ruins before.
He had heard similar screams in other cities.
Other wars. Other regimes.
When he read reports of casualties, he only adjusted his postures and marked routes.
When he saw starving crowds, he calculated distribution failures.
When he heard accusations, he measured propaganda impact.
Once, alone in his office, he muttered:
"This is always how it goes."
"There is no clean road forward."
"Someone must be crushed."
He had learned long ago.
If it is not your corpse beneath the boots,
Then it will be someone else's.
Progress was paved with bodies.
Always had been.
Wolf understood this instinctively.
To conquer the jungle, one must become more vicious than its predators.
Mercy was for victors.
Not for challengers.
And among all his followers, only Varsh truly saw him.
Not the symbol. Not the commander. Not the strategist.
The thing beneath.
Varsh often stood on rooftops after missions, watching smoke drift over the city. His hands rested loosely on his weapons. His eyes followed fleeing civilians and charging soldiers alike.
Sometimes he sighed softly.
"Poor things," he murmured.
But he never stepped in.
Never interfered. Never sabotaged orders.
He felt pity.
He felt remorse.
But he felt no regret.
Because he recognized the hypocrisy.
He had seen it before.
"Ferrante… Vento…" he once said quietly to Zenji, leaning against a railing.
"They preach virtue."
"They wrap their crimes in law and ceremony."
"They kill while smiling."
"And Wolf?"
Varsh chuckled harshly.
"He doesn't pretend; instead, he burns openly, admitting that he is a monster."
"They are all evil."
"The only difference is vocabulary."
And yet, he stayed.
Followed and served him
In this world and the old world.
Why?
He had answered that question for himself long ago.
Evil was inevitable, conflict demanded it, balance required it.
But only necessary evil deserved existence.
Everything else was excess.
For those, he would judge.
Someday.
All of them.
Including Wolf, if necessary.
Zenji listened in silence most of the time.
He had seen too much.
Children with weapons in their hands.
Hospitals turned into bunkers.
Schools into execution sites.
He understood, like Moritz did.
This was the price of ambition.
But unlike Moritz, he still hoped quietly and stubbornly.
That this would be the last time.
That someday, they would not have to do this again.
That someday, he could lay down his weapons and mean it.
Sometimes, at night, he stared at his hands.
Flexed his fingers.
And whispered:
"Please… let this be enough."
"Let this be the end."
And so the storm continued to grow.
Layer by layer.
Body by body.
Lie by lie.
Until the kingdom itself began to crack beneath the weight.
And no one—least of all Wolf—intended to stop it.
A month passed, then another half.
No one noticed the precise moment when pressure stopped accumulating and began to crush.
It did not arrive with an explosion or a proclamation, but with a subtle change in breathing, in posture,in the way resignation dissolved into something sharper.
By the time anyone realized it, the foundation had already fractured.
Civilians no longer trusted proclamations.
They no longer believed speeches. They no longer waited for permission.
They had learned, through empty bowls and cold nights, that the system they had once worshipped was devouring them alive.
The laws meant nothing. The seals meant nothing.
Only survival did.
People who had once bowed now clenched their fists.
People who had once avoided conflict now sharpened weapons and whispered strategies in alleys.
Mothers memorized patrol schedules.
Fathers taught sons how to fight.
Fear did not vanish.
It transformed.
It became courage born from starvation.
Ferrante's forces were the first to fracture.
At first, it was invisible: patrols arriving late, guards pretending not to notice contraband, officers overlooking small acts of defiance. Then letters began to arrive from home, speaking of sick parents, dying siblings, and children wasting away while warehouses remained sealed.
Soldiers began to ask themselves why they guarded food they could not eat.
Why they protected some merchants who never missed a meal.
Why they obeyed men who had never known hunger.
Hesitation crept into their movements. Resentment seeped into their voices.
Units split into silent factions. Some remained loyal. Some defected quietly. Some sold information. Some vanished into the night.
The army became unstable, a powder keg waiting for a spark.
Late in Month 3, on day 42, year 3310.
House Ferrante and House Vento made their decision.
They abandoned subtlety, discarded patience, and chose annihilation.
Orders were issued at dawn.
Army was positioned by noon. By dusk, streets had become rivers of blood.
Mages incinerated entire blocks. Marksmen fired from rooftops.
Those who resisted, or even fled, were executed.
Hospitals collapsed under spells. Markets burned. Shelters became traps.
Tens of thousands died in a single day, their blood soaking into stone, their screams dissolving into one endless roar of terror.
It was power throwing a tantrum, authority choosing massacre over reform.
At that brief moment, even Wolf was caught off guard—not by the violence itself, but by its timing.
Reports flooded his mind, and his eyes narrowed slightly.
So soon...
His understanding followed immediately.
Ferrante and Vento knew delay favored him.
They knew prolonged chaos strengthened Armani.
They knew every starving day created more enemies. Dragging it out meant losing.
So they gambled everything, burned the board, crushed resistance through terror, and tried to reset the game with blood.
It was desperate, brutal, and entirely logical.
Fine, Wolf murmured to himself.
Then we settle it now.
He activated hidden signals and contingency channels, and within minutes acknowledgments returned.
Moritz, Solina, Zenji, Varsh, all the rebels and people mobilized.
Through underground routes, rooftops, and forgotten tunnels, they converged with terrifying speed, assembling not as an army but as a storm.
That day, the sky itself seemed ashamed.
Ashen clouds drifted heavily across the horizon like funeral shrouds, and the sunlight that pierced through them was bruised orange, like blood diluted in water.
The wind howled violently, carrying ash, grit, and the metallic scent of steel.
Every breath tasted of soil and iron. Grass outside the city lay flattened in submission, and the wind's moan through broken stone sounded like a dirge for souls not yet lost.
From an elevated ruin, Wolf stood silently, his coat whipping in the gale, dust clinging to his boots, smoke curling around him like spectral hands. Below him stretched chaos—explosions, running figures, collapsing walls, burning homes, flashes of magic, and bodies falling like broken dolls.
The sight awakened memories.
France. Germany.
Trenches. Barbed wire. Shell craters filled with corpses.
Soldiers begging for mothers as they bled out. The stench of rot and gunpowder.
Past and present overlapped, fused into a single battlefield in his mind.
He smelled fresh blood.
Fresh.
Hot.
Thick.
He heard frantic heartbeats.
Rapid.
Irregular.
Panicked.
He sensed countless thoughts screaming for survival.
I want to live.
I don't want to die.
Please!
Not yet.
Let me breathe again.
It thrilled him. His lungs expanded as he inhaled deeply.
A faint, living smile curved his lips.
Then he began to sing—not loudly nor softly, but perfectly. His voice was strong, smooth and clear.
It cut through explosions and screams like a blade through silk.
It echoed across ruins and smoke.
Across shattered streets and burning towers.
"The sound of cannons yesterday, or the clash of swords today, are all the same song… a song of loss.
Ferrante offered death because he feared the silence. Vento dug her own grave because she thought it was a fortress.
The people awakened not because of intellect, but hunger. When death loomed, the mask of the law crumbled. They took up arms, not for heroes, but for the next warm breath of life.
Ah… people, behold this world twisted by ambition! Is it not the smell of blood that makes our hearts beat? Is it not the smell of smoke that reminds us that we are still alive?
My smile embraces this world, so faithful in its cruelty. Let the kingdom crumble, for in the ashes, only life truly deserves to be buried there, not the husks."
His voice lingered.
Carried by wind.
Stained by smoke.
Absorbed by fire.
His eyes shone.
With clarity.
With purpose.
And Wolf kept smiling as he remained standing there.