Although the King of a Thousand Curses had personally appeared and given the goatfolk a genuine "divine revelation," the race was naturally rebellious. It went without saying that not all goatfolk were willing to follow Vidia's guidance and spread its "dark wisdom" across the continent.
As a result, when the insect calamity struck, a considerable number of goatfolk were still in Abyssal City and had failed to evacuate.
The insects pressed down from the surface, forcing the goatfolk to retreat to the lowest part of the city. The situation should have been hopeless. With so few of them, even their mastery of psionics couldn't keep them alive. But old Vidia still had a bit of a conscience. It hadn't completely abandoned those descendants who had refused to heed its advice.
Perhaps it was the affection one felt for a bloodline passed down for a thousand years. In any case, the bottom two levels of Abyssal City contained a psionic barrier that didn't need outside power to function.
That barrier was what protected the dark descendants who had reached the end of the road.
There was just one problem with it.
It hadn't weakened over time, but its range had been shrinking steadily. From the beginning of the insect swarm's assault until now, the barrier beneath the city had already contracted by half. This had forced the goatfolk to make some cruel decisions that went against all human decency.
So, from that perspective, it wasn't necessarily Vidia having a sudden change of heart.
Maybe that damned King of a Thousand Curses was using the deadly poison known as "hope" to corrupt the children who had disobeyed and questioned it, treating the whole thing as a "divine punishment." It probably hoped that once the story spread, it would earn itself some dangerous