A week passed.
By then, the worker rotation for the North Branch had finally stabilized.
The Obsidian Collegium had already spread news of its cooperation with Lootwell.
Lucien soon learned that this mattered far more than an ordinary announcement.
The Obsidian Collegium was not merely respected in the North.
It was trusted.
The North Continent was a place of hard weather and harder memory.
Blizzards could bury towns. Mountain rivers could become killing floods in one night. Beasts wandered places where maps became suggestions.
Worse, the edges of the North was the nearest to the Black Mass.
There had been skirmishes before.
A few Black Mass monsters had once tried to emerge using their Origin Core fragments.
They had not reached the deep inland because the Grand Master of the Obsidian Collegium had seen the signs before the disaster matured.
The Grand Master had even divined the arrival of the Evershade Exchange.
