The Empty-Faced Burning Monarch arrived at the entrance zone even faster than Saine had anticipated.
Unlike the Crystal Tide Wrath Beast, it did not barrel forward in the most brutal fashion, sweeping the Destruction Crystal Tide along with it. Its advance was silent, with hardly any unnecessary movement, yet with every step it took, the Destruction Rules around the entrance zone automatically parted before it, then closed together again behind it.
Rather than a Homeland Being of the Destruction Time-Space, it felt more like an executor sent forth by the deep rules of the Destruction Time-Space.
Phantoms of dark spires appeared in the starry sky above the entrance zone.
Those spires were not physical entities, yet they echoed the Black Flame Spire Cluster deep within the Destruction Time-Space from afar. Each time a spire phantom rose, the alarms within the three mechanical War Fortresses climbed another notch.
The Final Silence Gray Mark Array began to destabilize.
The gray halo had originally been able to suppress the activity of the local Destruction Crystal Tide, but when the Empty-Faced Burning Monarch's aura arrived, the edges of those gray halos began to ripple visibly, as though scorched by black flames.
More troubling still, these dark spire phantoms were not merely Rule Anomalies.
They were like Destruction conduits driven into the entrance-zone battlefield, drawing the deeper Destruction Crystal Tide toward the front lines bit by bit.
The freshly repaired outer armor of the First War Fortress was riddled with broad cracks by dark-gold crystal fragments again in just a few breaths.
A miniature observation tower on the outskirts of the Second War Fortress was grazed by a dark spire phantom, turning into black ash along with the thousands of Mechanical Lifeforms inside it.
The Third War Fortress reacted the fastest, immediately retracting its outer