Sacred Flame Echo Console

Shien stepped across slabs of rock blackened by intense heat, following Victor deeper inside.

The farther they went, the more the stone walls shut out the clang of hammers and the hiss of steam outside, leaving only their footsteps and Victor's somewhat labored breathing.

Shien glanced at the hunched figure ahead and said evenly, "I left you the plans before I departed for the city. It hasn't been long, yet you've already assembled it. That's much faster than I expected."

At those words, Victor's withered shoulders straightened a little. "I've only put together the basic framework. It's still a long way from finished, and that's mostly thanks to how detailed your plans were, my lord."

As they spoke, they reached a freestanding black stone bench with a strange, rudimentary device sitting on it.

A ring of unpolished black iron was fastened to a stone slab with thumb-thick rivets. Several crystal boards etched with intricate runes interlocked around a rune core shaped like a miniature Sacred Flame base.

Looking at the machine he had pieced together, Victor gave a dry chuckle. "My lord, this is a prototype, so it does look rather crude."

"As long as it works." Shien held his hand above the white crystal chip, feeling the faint but steady waves of heat.

Before heading to Tear Knight City, Shien had already envisioned reaching beyond Blackpine Fief sooner or later and bringing the surrounding territories into his domain.

But a larger domain brought a practical problem: orders traveled too slowly.

[LV.4 Warzone-Level Cluster Command] could clearly reveal Blackpine Fief and the surrounding terrain, but however powerful the skill was, Shien's mental strength could not extend it any farther. He therefore needed to consider other ways of transmitting information.

In this world, there were roughly three existing methods of sending