Chapter 80: The City of the Spiral

The Ash-Forge Crucible dominated the eastern courtyard. Iron-Scale’s mutant Kobolds welded heavy iron plates over the shattered remains of the cathedral’s main altar. The massive furnace consumed the Sun Kingdom’s legacy in a blinding white inferno.

Human slaves shoveled broken golden statues, enchanted armor, and bones directly into the raging fire. The Crucible broke down the divine metals and organic matter, churning out massive ingots of blackened star-iron for Red’s war machine.

Heat warped the visual space above the towering smokestacks. Gray ash coated the thousands of laborers in a thick film.

Gorak marched through the soot-covered plaza, dragging a thick steel chain behind his massive frame.

Sven human captives tumbled and scraped across the blood-slicked stones, bound by their necks to the heavy metal links. These were the former administrators, the minor mages, and the pristine scholars of Aurelius. Their white silk robes hung in dirty, torn strips.

Bleeding knees left long crimson trails across the ruined marble. Gorak yanked the chain upward. The scholars crashed onto the central dais, scrambling on their hands and knees to avoid strangulation.

Then, the Warlord stepped back and slammed his bone-plated fists together.

Up in the Void, Red accessed his interface. He selected a bulk inventory drop from the conquered vaults and targeted the coordinates right in front of the captives.

A towering stack of golden-bound books materialized and slammed into the stone dais. The heavy thud of the holy texts echoed across the courtyard, silencing the clatter of the slaves’ shovels.

Iron-Scale slithered forward, his metallic scales grating against the marble. He tapped the top book with a rusted spear tip.

“Open them,” Gorak ordered.

A scribe with cracked spectacles crawled forward. He flipped open the gilded cover of the High Sun Doctrine with trembling fingers.

“Your god is dead.” Gorak leaned forward, bringing his scarred face closer to the kneeling group. “His miracles are gone. You need a new faith to survive the Spiral.”

The scribe clutched the heavy parchment pages. A minor mage next to him pressed a shattered holy symbol to his chest, coughing blood onto his chin.

“You will rewrite the doctrines,” Iron-Scale hissed, his forked tongue flicking over her jagged teeth. “Cross out the prayers. Erase the hymns. You will turn these pages into schematics for the foundries. Every holy verse becomes an instruction manual for the City of the Spiral.”

The scholars stared at the towering stack of their sacred texts.

“The meat out there needs purpose to work,” Gorak added, gesturing to the thousands of ash-covered slaves hauling rubble. “You will give them the liturgy of the assembly line. If a single page praises the sun tomorrow, you go into the Crucible.”

Gorak bared his serrated teeth, resting a heavy hand on the chain linking the scholars together. The scribe grabbed a piece of charred wood from the ground and began scratching frantic equations over the golden script.

Red watched the glowing interface floating within the infinite dark of the Void. Columns of pale green text scrolled across the terminal. Down in the physical realm, the fractured scholars of the City of the Spiral stood before the massive foundries. Their voices echoed over the clatter of iron and stone as they read the new industrial liturgy to the fourteen thousand starving slaves.

The broken humans hoisted items onto their bruised shoulders while reciting the dimensions of the Ash-Forge. A counter on Red’s primary display tracked their mental submission.

The Faith metrics spiked with every chanted schematic. The number ticked upward in violent bursts, jumping from 150,000 to 184,200 within minutes.

Red dragged a finger across the holographic screen to open the exchange menu. He highlighted the total Faith pool and hovered his hand over the Divine Point conversion node.

He needed DP to expand the newly christened City of the Spiral. A massive terraforming blueprint would require millions of points to establish automated resource pipelines. He tapped the secondary icon blinking at the top corner of his vision—the SSS-Rank Talent interface.

The [Exponential Divinity] module expanded across the dark space. Ten golden nodes flashed in the center of the display, representing his accumulated charges. He possessed ten stacks of the 100x multiplier, forming a total 1000x amplification available for instant deployment.

Activating the charges right now would multiply his current Faith conversion and flood his reserves with immediate capital. But Red pulled his hand back from the glowing panel.

He rubbed his jaw and analyzed the broader logistical map of the eastern continent. The City of the Spiral required massive foundational infrastructure to become a true empire. Burning his highest multipliers on a basic currency exchange would waste the scaling potential of his trait.

He closed the conversion menu and locked the ten charges back into his vault. The 1000x stack would wait until he needed to instantly evolve a city-spanning defense grid or mutate an entire legion for the coming wars.

The primary communication rune on the terminal flashed neon green.

[INCOMING CALL: GORR]

Red swiped his hand across the holographic display to accept the transmission. The projection expanded, forming the jagged stone avatar of Gorr. Her granite shoulders slumped forward. She dragged her rocky hand down her face, scraping pebbles from her brow.

“What is the next phase for your army?” Gorr’s voice ground like shifting tectonic plates. “You took Aurelius city and his people. You have the numbers. I need to know where you are marching.”

Red leaned back in his chair. He studied the fractures running along her stone jawline. She shifted her weight from side to side, causing the visual feed to distort.

“You look wrecked.” Red tapped the edge of his console. “What is actually going on over there?”

Gorr dropped her hand and exhaled a cloud of dust. “My communication channels are collapsing. Every minor deity within a thousand miles of your borders is flooding my terminal. They saw what you did to the Golden King. They want me to act as an intermediary.”

Red brought up the regional map on his secondary screen connected to Omni-Web.

[MAP UPDATED: EASTERN SECTOR PANTHEON]

Dozens of small, flickering divine nodes dotted the landscape around his newly conquered territory. Hunting them down individually would waste time and resources he needed for the Ash-Forge.

“Tell them to speak to me directly.” Red crossed his arms.

“They fear your interface.” Gorr pointed a massive, blocky finger at the screen. “They want to offer unconditional surrender. They are begging you to keep your monsters out of their domains.”

“I will host a summit.” Red tapped a waypoint onto the center of the holographic map. “I will bring all the surviving gods into one digital space to outline the new chain of command. It will take time to set up the infrastructure. I am busy with the foundries right now. Nobody is to disturb me until I send the invites.”

Gorr nodded. Her stone features settled into a rigid mask. “I will relay the message.”

“Add an amendment.” Red leaned closer to the visual pickup. “If any of them attempt to bypass the queue or contact me before the summit, I will send Iron-Scale to their physical territories. The City of the Spiral needs more fuel for the Crucible. I will happily process their followers into star-iron.”

Gorr crossed her massive arms. “Understood.”

Red reached for the terminal to cut the feed. He paused his hand over the glowing red disconnect node. “This restriction applies to the cowards hiding behind you. You have a direct line since you are the only one who tried to help me. If you need something, use it.”

He tapped the screen.

[CALL TERMINATED]

The stone avatar shattered into pixels, returning the interface to a blank state.

Red watched his city and the list of facilities he had to restore and upgrade.

“There goes my DP reserves…”

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