The Augurey Tribal Nation had made tremendous sacrifices for the Alliance—perhaps one day, this sentence would become a concluding passage in some history book, a test point on some exam, five points that kept some student from entering the Imperial Academy. Yet here and now, at this very moment, it was a fact unfolding upon that land, the present and future of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, living across the Ancestor Plains and all of Augurey.
Through the advanced communications systems of today, Gawain had witnessed everything happening at the sacred mountain firsthand. He had seen the sensor tower foundations spread across the plains, the steel-and-concrete framework covering the entire mountain, and the energy geysers crisscrossing the sky. He had also seen engineering convoys and groups of mages moving between the city outskirts, rural villages, and wilderness. Calling such a sight "spectacular" and "thrilling" would not have been an exaggeration, but such inspiring propaganda was meant for ordinary people. To players like Gawain and the Five Kings of Augurey, what they saw was the reality behind it all—
Augurey had lost its sacred mountain forever. The mountain had already been torn open by dozens of fissures from the energy geysers. Nearly two-thirds of its structure was undergoing slow yet unwavering reconstruction under the orders issued by the Observer's Chamber. In the future, several more peaks would be leveled, ravines sealed shut, and the Alliance's vast engineering force would clad it in a shell of steel and concrete for the installation of one energy station and data-processing node after another. The sacred pilgrims' caverns would become symbols in history books, while the thousand-year-old pilgrimage trails had already been melted away by the flowing Azure Ley Lines...
Even if winter ended one day, the natural disasters vanished, and people no longer