vampire s slice of life
A week later.
Qing Mei Sect.
*Staareee~*
Fanny was giving her mother weird glances as she sat beside her around a round table, drinking tea.
Joining them were Qingshan, Wang Wei, Fei, Sylvia, and the three supreme ancestors of the Qing Mei Sect—Jiang Yi, Wu Yan, and Xuan Lan.
Lith sat between Qingshan and Sylvia and was discussing a few important matters related to the ongoing war.
'Why does it look like something major has happened…'
Fanny thought to herself while blatantly staring at her mother's pristine face.
Keith could feel her gaze, and she knew she was guilty of charge, but she maintained composure and talked to the third redhead beside them, giving one-line responses as usual.
She talked about Qingshan's role in stopping the rebellions and finding out the spies in concise statements that Yi had to work hard to decipher and decode.
Her one line had many meanings, but thanks to being a Legendary Rank, she could comprehend everything easily.
"…the Evure God Clan has been weakened to a good degree by the Asuras. They've eaten them from the inside like termites." Qingshan reported.
"There's a similar situation going on in the Asura God Clan, however they've yet to find out who's the one responsible for it." Fei stated.
"Good." Lith said and unfurled a map on the table. It had a holographic projection of the star system and was enclosed within a rectangular area.
Swiping his hand, the star system got divided into three regions.
On the left and right side of the rectangular map, flaf pyramid-shaped outlines pointed inwardly. These two areas were the territories of the Asura God Clan and Evure God Clan.
Between them, whatever area was left belonged to the rest of Shen Ze's population, that is, the central alliance.
At the very center of them all was Qing Mei Sect, in a circular area surrounded by their allies, far from the reach of the two major powerhouses.
Or one could say, the three major clans of Shen Ze stayed at a proper distance from each other to avoid any conflicts and meaningless power struggle.
Lith swiped his hand again and the Asura territory's outline got colored in red, while the EGC's got colored in blue.
In the middle, the Qing Mei Sect was colored pink while the allies were colored green.
All the ladies turned their attention to this map, and momentarily, Fanny placed the topic regarding her mother to the back of her mind, making her heave a sigh of relief internally.
"Originally, it was like this, yes?" Lith asked the ladies.
"That's right, Master." Jiang Yi answered.
Lith nodded and snapped his fingers.
From within the pink territory, pink dots rushed out and charged at the edges of the blue territory, making a hole in the outline, and getting fixed there.
Then, from the red territory, red dots rushed out and flowed inside the blue territory via the pink spot. They spread like infection and made their place at multiple spots within the blue area like fungal spores.
Next, from the pink territory, more pink dots emerged and this time they rushed to the red territory, making tiny holes at multiple places on the outline.
From the central area, some green dots entered the red area and fixed themselves in a few places.
When they were in place, the pink dots broke free and went back to the pink territory.
After a monetary standstill, blue dots from the blue territory made their way to the red territory through the green spots. They spread inside like spores too, and covered roughly one-sixth of the area.
"This is the present situation." Lith said. "The Evure God Clan is damaged by roughly 25% while the Asuras are at around 17%."
The ladies nodded in unison.
Lith extended his hand and tapped on the pink territory in the center.
"We now have two options. It's either this…"
Pink dots spread out with the green and red dots, then slowly ate away the blue triangular territory.
"…or this…"
A reset occurred and this time, the pink dots spread both directions along with the green dots.
The rate at which they ate up the two territories was slower than the previous version.
"Master, many lives would be lost in this process." Fei commented. "A repeat of what occurred in your own world would occur here. You would gain immense bad karma and have a karmic halo on your head again."
Fei wasn't wrong about this and Lith didn't deny her words.
"Yes, you're right. And that's why, I'm thinking of a different strategy. We reject both these options and go for a third one."
"Third?" Keith asked. Her one word meant: 'What third option are you talking about?'
Lith tapped in a corner at the Asura red region. "This place…"
He pinched the map from the corner and slowly pulled it in a diagonal direction up.
"…the spies of the sect have found out about a secret dimension present between the two territories that connect them like this…"
The Asura corner was rolled and attached to the corner of the Evure God Clan.
The whole projections became enclosed due to the sudden change and the Asura and Evure God Clan territories were closer than ever before.
"…a dimension that both of them are aware about yet never dare touch."
The ladies were fascinated by the sudden change in events and listened to Lith's explanation with even more focus.
Space and Time weren't linear like a sheet of paper. They were twisted and folded in weird ways like crumpled paper, the understanding of which was something only Legendary level Space and Time Path experts had.
It was due to such property that the two distant places were so easily connected, and also the reason why gates or portals existed.
This information was not known to even the high ranking officials of the two clans and was deeply guarded.
Lith was able to find it out because of Roy. His sister was apparently one of the Three Greats, and had given this information to him for some secret task.
Roy wouldn't have exposed such a big thing, but he did so in exchange for his, his sister's, and Jacqueline's lives.
The Qing Mei Sect spies then went ahead to cross check the information and indeed found the existence of such a dimension.
When Lith said all of this, Fanny interrupted and asked, "Why's this risky then? It's just a dimensional gate, what could pose a threat in this?"
Lith smiled. "I'm glad you asked."
The dimension was where the whole risk was at.
It was a chaotic space filled with unknown, uncharted realms. There were lots of wild creatures and bizarre natural phenomena that could be used to their advantage.
"The third strategy is where two groups will attack both the parties, and one group will go through this dimension and unleash its chaos onto the two. When they're engaged in suppressing these things, we'll move to destroy their territories, and then attack them again."
The ladies frowned at the plan, and noticing their looks, Lith shook his head and said, "That's why I said it's much riskier. We could do it the normal way but it would take decades and endless resources. Remember, if there's a battle of attrition, there will be no winner or loser as everyone will slowly be depleted and eroded, incurring mutual losses."
His words made sense, however…
Staring at the folded map, the usually quiet blue-haired ice beauty, Xuan Lan, asked,
"What if we aren't able to harness the phenomena and unleash it on the two?"