The Door Opened, but Not All the Way; They Lost, but Not Completely

As the ground shook at the arrival of the Winged Hussars, Priest Manson closed his eyes in pain.

His pain wasn't just because the damn Transians had stopped his carefully laid plan at the final step. His aging body, even with the Hunting Lord's blessing, was also struggling to bear the increasingly immense psychic pressure.

Without the Starstaff to regulate it, the old gnoll had to rely entirely on his own willpower to complete the operation.

In that respect, the bastard was one tough son of a gun—one tough old gnoll, rather.

After all, when Grand Duke Triss had borne the psychic storm with her own body to tear open the Astral Plane, she had several Serenade Core Crystals sharing the burden. This old bastard was trying to force it through with nothing but his own strength.

That was damn impressive!

And it really hurt.

The psychic storm still hadn't grown powerful enough to open the rift Manson had imagined, one that could swallow Shadow Valley whole. But he was almost at his limit, so this wasn't the time to worry about that.

"Open!!!"

With a pained roar, the old gnoll raised the broken half of his Starstaff toward the sky.

A moment later, a dazzling psychic radiance shot into the heavens. It was just like a replay of the great rift at Blackflame Pass—but old Manson didn't have a wisecracking serpent to help him locate the Astral Plane's currents and serve as his Astral Guardian.

Not only that, the gnolls had been too lazy to calculate the positions of the Astral Plane and the material world. Their whole approach was wild and simple: pick a direction at random and hit it with brute force.

They only wanted to open a rift. What might come rushing through afterward wasn't even