Outside the seal, the world had not been idle.
The staging plain where Kaiden's dungeon gate once stood had become a forward operating base the size of a small city.
Military-grade mana artillery lined the northern ridge in rows deep enough to blot out the treeline behind them, their barrels aimed at the empty coordinate where the gate had vanished, each one primed and cycling through idle charge rotations that made the air above them shimmer like highway asphalt in August.
Armored transports idled in columns along the access roads.
Helicopter gunships held pattern overhead in rotating shifts, their downdraft pressing the grass flat in overlapping circles that hadn't been allowed to spring back up in hours.
