Sitting in Talia's reassuring little cottage, Hyperion let out a sigh of relief.
"Lanqi, thank you for saving me once again."
"Don't worry, Hyperion. Now that you've got Tata backing you, as long as a bishop doesn't march right into the Hutton royal capital, you won't be in any danger."
Lanqi looked at Hyperion. Even after interrogating Phoenix, she didn't seem to have relaxed.
"...Still, I'm afraid the Southern Continent won't stay peaceful for much longer," Hyperion said in a quiet voice, nodding.
Beyond the intel they had already extracted from Sticela, the Resurrection Church cultist they had subdued in the Banquet of Sanctuary Villains Shadow World, Phoenix also possessed a few hints that Ivanos, the Bishop of Destruction, and Farmer, the Decay Cardinal, were coordinating an operation.
Furthermore, this assassination plot revealed that the two bishops intended to secretly sabotage the relationship between the Hutton Kingdom and the Aloran Kingdom.
They were likely plotting something terrifying against both nations in the near future.
Lanqi had also told Hyperion that once the Blood Clan cemented control over the Creti Empire, the first thing they would do was start a war. On one hand, it would bleed off factions within the empire that remained disloyal to them; on the other, it would allow them to annex more kingdoms, plunder resources, and pen humans like livestock.
With the southernmost Creti Empire in turmoil, and several of the Southern Continent's Cardinals already stirring far ahead of schedule, the war bound to erupt across the Southern Continent was very likely accelerating at a breakneck pace.
When that time came, it would not just be Hyperion's crisis—the entire Hutton Kingdom would face catastrophe.
"Once we slip away to the Northern Continent over the winter break, your fifth omen of death probably won't trigger for a while," Lanqi admitted helplessly. "From the Resurrection Church's perspective, we'll have vanished off the map. It'd never occur to them that we traded identities and infiltrated the church's northern branches directly. But after we return to the Southern Continent, your fifth crisis might very well be the continental war itself."
He counted them up; it should have been four by now.
Because he kept saving Hyperion and altering the original trajectory of events, it now seemed the Blood Clan and the Resurrection Church's decisions were shifting due to her prolonged survival—much like a butterfly effect.
Piecing together the information only he possessed with what they had learned from the Resurrection Church cultists, he realized that the effect of Hyperion's continued survival was very likely this:
The Blood Clan would launch the war earlier and with far greater urgency.
"If a full-scale war instigated by the Creti Empire—the strongest nation on the continent—breaks out, combined with targeted strikes from the shadows by the Resurrection Church, the entire Southern Continent will descend into chaos..." Hyperion murmured.
Across the Southern Continent lay over a hundred nations, large and small. Aside from the colossal Creti Empire isolated by rugged mountain ranges, and formidable major powers like the Hutton Kingdom, Aloran Kingdom, and Canberra Kingdom, there were numerous lesser kingdoms, as well as several duchies and marquisates situated near the north.
"Once the empire launches its invasion northward, some of the neighboring smaller states might defect directly to their side, while the Hutton Kingdom and Aloran Kingdom will form an alliance. Of course, other nations will choose to remain neutral at first, waiting to see how the wind blows," Lanqi predicted for Hyperion like an oracle.
He naturally knew what the Southern Continent would look like once hostilities commenced.
In the main story's future plotline, the Southern Continent had been a chaotic, war-torn realm to begin with.
And in that tumultuous era, every top-tier powerhouse would be of paramount importance.
Tier 7 and Tier 8 figures could drastically sway the outcome of a major campaign on the battlefield.
Some Tier 8 powerhouses were formidable enough to outmatch an entire army on their own.
For Lanqi, who was only at Tier 4, this was simply way ahead of his current patch.
While he had specialized advantages against the Blood Clan, against human opponents he couldn't possibly dream of crossing swords with a Tier 7, let alone a Tier 8.
Starting from Tier 5, not only did the stat disparity between tiers widen dramatically, but high-tier cards also began boasting absurd, outright broken effects.
Even within the same tier, power gaps became increasingly pronounced.
To use an analogy, the higher the level, the more avenues there were for a whale to widen the gap over an average player.
A being of Ivanos's caliber could slaughter an entire duchy single-handedly if not held in check by multiple Tier 8 combatants.
If Ivanos ever reached Tier 9 one day, he would become a true god of calamity, toying with mortal lives at his whim.
In more gamified or quantified terms, Tier 8 could roughly be viewed as the level range of 80 to 89. As one moved closer to Tier 9, their stats within the same tier continued to climb. For example, a massive difference in base stats existed between the weakest Level 80 and the strongest Level 89, yet both were lumped into the same tier because they could both wield Tier 8 cards.
Furthermore, advancing from Level 89 to Level 90 required an astronomical amount of experience, and the leap brought by that single level was utterly terrifying: a breakthrough meant crossing from the Tier 8 realm into Tier 9, unlocking world-ending Tier 9 magic cards.
Once reaching an elite tier like Tier 8, the gap produced by innate stat growth rates became glaringly obvious. On top of that, individuals had essentially finalized their Orange Epic and Pink Sacred loadouts, locking in the composition of their magic cards, making match-up advantages between different classes and schools exceptionally stark.
This was precisely why some Level 80s could actually overpower certain Level 89s.
Of course, in this real world, there was no concrete concept of levels.
Lanqi was merely drawing an analogy based on the game from his past life that seemed modeled after this very world.
"If only... Father were still in the Hutton Kingdom..." Hyperion murmured, looking down.
At times like this, she always thought of her father.
"Indeed. If Duke Mikhail were still around, the Hutton Kingdom would have another combatant of at least quasi-bishop caliber," Lanqi sighed.
"Quasi-bishop caliber...?" Hyperion looked at Lanqi in bewilderment.
"That's how the School of Alchemy puts it," Lanqi explained helplessly, clarifying this utterly ridiculous colloquial classification.
Regardless of the specifics, Tier 8 combatants were already among the absolute apex powerhouses across both the Northern and Southern Continents.
Because there were no concrete level metrics and the disparities within Tier 8 were vast, the students at the School of Alchemy had devised several distinct tiers just to categorize Tier 8 combat strength.
Power-scaling debates had long been one of the alchemy students' favorite pastimes.
Just from what Lanqi had overheard, there were all sorts of preposterous terms like Standard Tier 8, Strong Tier 8, Quasi-Bishop, Bishop Tier, and Super-Bishop.
For instance, both Ivanos and Loren were classified in the Bishop tier.
Meanwhile, Talia was placed roughly in the Strong Tier 8 bracket.
Quasi-bishop combatants could barely hold off a Resurrection Church Cardinal on their own, but had no way of winning—such as Juliana, the Undying Sword Emperor.
Super-bishops, on the other hand, referred to the one or two strongest cardinals within the Resurrection Church.
In a war, a Bishop-tier Tier 8 could alter a nation's destiny all on their own.
This was why Loren was hailed as the Hutton Kingdom's guardian pillar.
Thus, Duke Mikhail's disappearance dealt a devastating blow to the Hutton Kingdom; as a stone tablet bearer, Duke Mikhail was at least as strong as a quasi-bishop.
Later on, unable to bear the endless bickering among his fellow alchemy students, Lanqi casually introduced the concept of "levels" as an analogy, suggesting they standardize their measuring sticks.
To his surprise, ever since Lanqi floated that concept of "levels," the alchemy students argued over power scaling even more ferociously.
Now, they constantly debated what exact level Dean Loren, the Hutton Kingdom's strongest combatant, sat at in the eighties, versus what level the Bishop of Destruction Ivanos was.
The arguments were ceaseless and heated.
In fact, the School of Alchemy had reportedly initiated joint research with the School of Magic Engineering, aiming to develop a magic tool capable of analyzing a target's precise "level."
In any case, none of these problems were anything for Lanqi, a mere "level forty-something," to worry about.
All Lanqi knew for certain was that he and Hyperion had secured their tickets into the Northern Continent's Resurrection Church.
All that remained was to make proper preparations, and they could embark on their winter break project.
He only hoped that when they returned from the north, the Southern Continent would still be relatively peaceful.
Lanqi certainly had no confidence that a single trip to the Northern Continent would let him level up enough to sway the tides of a continental war between kingdoms.
Chapter 198