After warming up near the flame, Ubel waited for the next reliever to take his place to watch the fire. He became somewhat dry before another person took over allowing him to head into the cave and get changed into some dry clothes.

He went into the changing room the earth mages had made and stripped out of his military clothes into basic clothing. He then placed his clothes into a basket and would leave them here for water mage Qrtia to dry. Finished changing he got out of the room and headed over to where Urist currently lay. He continued walking down the hallway, and arrived at the civilization room then took a right for a bit before turning left. Down this path, he came to a small carved out room laced with oxygen crystals that made the room brightly lit.

Inside the magically hardened room were three individuals. The two kneeling were Uria who had had a cloth bandage covering her eyes and medicine maker Briana currently reading a book. In the middle of the room lay the shallow breathing Urist.

Looking at Urist one could see that he had changed vastly over the last few days. His hair that had gone from pure white was peppered with scarlet hair. Opening his eyes it revealed that one eye had turned blood red and the other milky white.

That wasn’t all, looking lower one could see that the once hairless chin had grown a lush wild beard. And when they removed his clothes to check for injuries they noticed that his once toneless body had gained muscle definition. Although it didn’t hold a candle to a regular male dwarfs buff body it was a start in the right direction.

The two girls had already noticed Ubel’s footsteps and Briana had already looked up from her book with a bored expression plastered on her face.

“What do you want Ubel?”

“I wanted to check and see if you noticed any change in his condition.” 

Scratching her cheek Briana responded, “A little bit ago his body started twitching so he might wake up soon. Other than that he’s in stable condition, now get out of here. I’ll give you a shout when something changes.”

Seeing the annoyed expression plastered on her face Ubel decided to leave and decided to not talk with Uria. Ever since losing her eyes and finding out Urist had gone into a coma she hadn’t spoken much to him. But he knew she was a dangerous person that controlled origin flames and was extremely loyal to Urist. Although blind she could easily fill the hallways full of flames and kill everyone except maybe the earth mages.

He also knew about her outburst as she initially tried to kill her fellow dwarfs for leaving Urist to fight by himself. 

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A dangerous person. She must somehow be killed outside of the base or I’ll have to get an earth mage to seal the room and have her die from the lack of oxygen.

Such thoughts passed Ubel mind as he inspected around the base seeing how everyone was doing. As time passed by he was inwardly planning the order of how to kill the faction leaders. He talked with each dwarf he came across and felt them out to see if they were useful in his planned coup. He had marked twenty that he was certain would support him and thirty more on the fence with the rest he marked as loyalists to Urist.

With his rounds done he found a place to rest and started planning out his coup. The easiest method he could think of was grabbing the poison the medical girls had gathered and spiking the food given to the targets. Those that didn’t die would have their throats slit and he could also buy berserker potions and add them to the soup. 

Such a combination should easily deal with the targets the only flaws he had were a few. One was needing the cook to be on his side; the second being to make sure no one else ate the poisoned soup until the targets had finished theirs. And the third that all of them ate at the same time to be none the wiser the soup was spiked.

Having so many holes in the plan Ubel threw it away without a second thought and moved onto the next.

What about killing them in their sleep? No that won’t work we all sleep in dorms.

I could maybe kill them off one by one with different methods. No wouldn’t work since new dwarfs come every day and they might shift the power balance. Using such a plan would make it hard to cement my leadership.

How about...

And so Ubel sat in deep thought thinking about what was the best way to take command with the least amount of risks. When there was only one hour left of his time limit he had decided on a plan which was simply.

Wait.

He had gone through countless scenarios and each one had a flaw and a good chance of failing. The reason being his power alone counted for nothing and could be easily taken away from him. And factors that he had no support in taking leadership his options of assassination were limited to himself carrying it out. Coming to this conclusion made him frustrated with his uselessness.

I do need to gather a trusted force huh. It’s going to be a chaotic but if I play my cards right I’ll--

“Guys! Guys! The boss is awake! He’s Awake!”

“The boss is awake? About damn time.”

“Man how long was he planning to laze around. We can finally work on something interesting again.”

Hearing the various happy replies throughout the tunnels Ubel leaned back his head and sighed in relief.

That bastard really had to cut it close. Still...

Even though Urist had woke up this thinking had deeply affected Ubel.

I need to get stronger and have people under my control.

After this scare, he knew that something like this could happen again and the next time Urist might not just end up in a coma.

He could die and cause a chaotic chain reaction.

Now the question became who could he control and he knew right away the right person to start with.

That hunter should be a fine start.