Clouds of dense black smoke bellowed over the center of Necron. The constant ringing of bells masked people’s hysterical screams and shouts—Toby increased his pace and charged down the Eshnar toll road, which had come to a standstill. Some merchants prepared to return and escape the chaos, while others tried to push to the front of the long queue.

As Toby thundered past like an escaped rhino, horses tried to jolt back, causing their owners to shout with rage as they attempted to relax their skittish stallions. Toby didn’t care for the merchant’s displeasure—something terrible had happened in Necron.

Approaching the gate, a single goblin stood on a raised platform and yelled for the merchants to stay back. Unfortunately, the usual ogres under Toby’s control were nowhere to be found to assist the goblin in holding back the restless merchants. So Toby used the undead mental network to locate his men. They were around three streets away…near the fire.

The ground trembled as the One-Eyed Demon King barreled down the congested roads, taking two steps at a time. Terrified people flung themselves aside to avoid being squashed by the giant who didn’t stop for anything. One, two, and finally, three streets flew by. Toby skidded around a street corner and caught sight of the scene. Pinned to the ground by two ogres was a man. He was dressed in standard merchant robes, but if one looked closely, he seemed a little too muscular and well-shaven to be a mere merchant…

Turning his enormous head, Toby appraised the damage with his one eye darting left and right. A large warehouse, situated behind three large wooden inns, was ablaze, and he could feel the heat. The inns had also started catching fire, with their back walls cracking as they burned. Thick smoke bellowed out as the thatched roof finally caught fire, sealing the fate of the three inns.

“Shit. That warehouse holds half of our food supply!” Toby started panicking. Necron had grown tremendously over the last month and had about five thousand people staying in the many inns every day and another three hundred permanent residents that worked in the inns and shops.

Since food had to be imported, other than rice and wheat, the rest of the food, like fruits and vegetables, went off too quickly, so they only kept a few days’ supplies at any given time.

But that was no longer a concern. The majority of buildings in Necron were constructed out of wood. So how could he stop the fire before it spread any further? In other cities like Eshnar and the Empire, they had trained mages blessed by the goddess of oceans and even some fire mages trained to handle situations like this…

“But we only have undead,” Toby muttered as he desperately looked around for a solution. He could obliterate anything with his eye laser, smash castle walls, and tank anything. But to put out a city fire? Impossible. It was out of his skill set. Over the link, he quickly ordered the goblins in the mine he had passed earlier to somehow bring water from the lake to Necron. They have buckets filled with mined stone but are weaved of wood and have holes…not to mention the lake is a ten- to thirty-minute walk away.

Another solution was the wells. Toby had memorized most of Necron, so he quickly dashed down a street and found a well in the middle of a small garden. His enormous hands struggled to spin the wheel to bring the bucket up. After thirty seconds, Toby stared at the tiny wooden bucket in the palm of his hand that was no bigger than the tip of his thumb.

He took the bucket anyway and returned to the fire. It had spread, and now all three inns were burning alongside the massive warehouse. Feeling stupid holding the tiny bucket of water while standing before the blaze, he threw the water at the fire and then turned to the still pinned-down man.

“You did this?” Toby leaned in with a snarl. “Why?”

The man had a bloody grin and a smashed-up nose, but he laughed manically. “Corrupted bastards deserve nothing.” The man spat to the side, and a bloodied tooth rolled on the floor.

Before Toby could open his mouth, another explosion went off, this time in the east of the city, close to the Empire-facing gate. His face hardened—this was no one-off accident. It was an attack. Then another explosion, this time closer to Andrew’s palace.

“The Empire will conquer this place!” the man that was still pinned to the floor shouted. “Everything belongs to us!” Toby strolled over and placed his foot over the man, who suddenly shut up and stared at his impending doom with wide eyes. “No…please…”

Toby didn’t waste a second and brought his foot down. Blood splashed outward around his lowered foot, and he felt something stuck between his toes. But that wasn’t important right now. He needed to get Necron under control.

***

After traversing hundreds of islands, Victor noticed something.

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“They are going up.” Which was an odd concept because he was sure they were heading down.

Genus looked behind them and noted that the island they had just left was slightly lower than the one they currently stood on. He then looked forward and pointed out that the next island in the distant void seemed on par with theirs, just like all the others. “Mhm…it seems space is relative here.”

That was a crazy thought, but it checked out. All the islands behind them seemed lower and lower like a staircase, whereas all the following islands appeared on the same plane of existence as them.

“So…” Alice looked around the molten wasteland of an island they found themselves on. “Are we going up or down?”

Honestly, Victor had no clue. He had slaughtered every monster they had come across and turned them into more undead. He then directed them to explore other islands to expand his reach and influence. Since going toward the area with the greatest mana isn’t feasible, if I visit every single island in this void, I will find something eventually. There was a certain air of mystery and finality to this floor. It did not behave like the other floors, and for how diverse and extreme some of the many biomes they had passed were, this floor was way past its mana limit.

Unless each island is an individual floor? Or perhaps each layer of islands? It was a brain ache to think about, and Victor was out of options. All he could do was soldier on and hope his undead either stumbled upon something or he would find it. Find what? He wasn’t quite sure. The previous floors had towers that led down, but was there even a down when all that lay below them was the endless void?

“Master…” A voice sounded in the back of Victor’s head. It was loud and held a certain gravity—a startling change because he usually heard Andrew through the network.

“Toby?” he replied. “Is that you? What’s the problem?”

Toby was head of security for Necron and had little input on daily affairs. So if Toby was contacting him, something terrible must have happened.

“Necron’s on fire. We have no way to put it out.” Toby’s anxious tone made Victor immediately stop what he was doing and peer through his subordinate’s eyes. Sure enough, as Toby had said, there were clouds of smoke blocking out the sky and many burning buildings.

“Quick. Approach each building. I can stop the fires.” Victor watched as Toby lumbered closer to the fire. “Raise your hand. I will use an ice spell.” He had no water or fire spells, but he did have Freezing Cone, which would help suffocate the fires.

Toby did as instructed, and ice shot out his hands like a flamethrower. As a result, the burning buildings were flash-frozen, and the fires were snuffed out. With the fire stopped, Toby began to run toward the next source of smoke.

“There’s more?” Victor felt pain wasting many stat points to save a few cheap buildings. If not for the fact that fire could spread quickly and destroy the entire town, there’s no way he would bother with such a thing.

“Yes,” Toby said as he practically parkoured around stranded merchant convoys as their horses had run off in the chaos or were refusing to move. “There are three so far. I believe the people who started the fires to be working for the Empire.”

Victor knew some nobles planned to send an army sometime soon…but he never expected a terrorist attack from them. Smart…very smart. I should have seen this coming. He had complete confidence in Toby’s ability to face an army alone, but what was the point if the town was destroyed in the process? Unfortunately, it seemed the nobles had figured that out as well. Toby was known as the Demon King of Necron, few had seen him fight, but his presence alone gave him such a title.

For some reason, Victor had expected the nobles to turn up outside Necron’s gate on horseback, send a runner to declare war, and from then on, they would have a fair battle. Did this world have no honor? Due to him assuming this way of war would be the case, he neglected to keep tight security in Necron, such as searching bags or caravans for dangerous items or stationing more guards in the streets.

I was no city planner or tactician back on Earth, Victor thought as he saw the destruction through Toby’s eyes. This is a good lesson, if nothing else. Necron was more a personal project than his end goal and therefore lacked his attention. Especially after seeing ten floors’ worth of gems, the importance on obtaining wealth through Necron had greatly diminished.

Should I even bother saving it? Victor thought as Toby reached the second fire near Andrew’s palace. Toby saw Andrew peeking through a window with wide eyes at the flames surrounding his white stone palace. His beautiful garden, which Toby knew Andrew had invested much time and money into, was now a barren wasteland of ash.

Maybe I should save it. Victor hated seeing his subordinate’s hard work go up in flames. But, on the other hand, even if Necron was ultimately pointless in the grand scheme of things, he had hundreds of millions of lifeforce to spare, so spending a million on saving Necron due to his ignorance seemed fair enough.

As Toby ran around putting out the fires, a thought crossed the void creature’s mind. Has the attack from the nobles already begun?