The noise across the Ninth-stage battlefield had begun to thin. Explosions no longer overlapped quite so constantly. Longer gaps of relative quiet opened between clashes, filled only by the dry wind scraping across the sand and the occasional grunt of effort. Human figures pressed forward more often than they were driven back. Gnome auras flickered and went out one after another, each disappearance leaving a small, visible hole in their formation.
When the fifth Ninth-stage Sovereign Gnome collapsed and did not rise, the remaining Gnomes faltered in a way that needed no announcement. Shoulders hunched. Steps became shorter. Eyes flicked toward the open desert as if searching for an exit that no longer existed.
Grey felt the change in the pressure of the battlefield. The humans here could finish the rest without him. The Peak Sovereign battlefield still needed him.
