Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 3019: Dark Territory

Emery settled into a lotus position at the heart of the Khaos Hub.

His true body remained perfectly still within the domain, but his consciousness split apart, flowing through ten separate threads of awareness.

Each thread connected to one of his shadow clones, allowing him to see through their hollow eyes, hear through their borrowed ears, and experience ten different places simultaneously.

The shadow clones spread across the dark elf territories, and Emery began methodically mapping his own intelligence network.

There were more than two thousand Waypoints scattered throughout the dark elf domains.

Not all of them were usable.

He discovered that quickly, and at a cost.

Some Waypoints led to unstable passages where space itself had become fractured. The moment a shadow clone attempted to pass through, the spatial corridor collapsed, shredding the clone before it could even emerge on the other side.

Several were lost that way within the first few hours alone.

Emery simply noted those Waypoints as permanently unstable before creating replacement clones to continue the survey.

Other Waypoints proved equally disappointing.

Some opened onto barren, lifeless worlds where nothing remained but endless stretches of stone and dust. There were no settlements to observe, no civilizations to infiltrate, and no roads leading anywhere useful. Reaching another inhabited world from those planets would require a spacecraft, and launching one would immediately reveal his presence to anyone monitoring the sector.

Those Waypoints he marked as isolated.

They were not entirely worthless—they could still serve as hidden refuges or emergency escape points—but they offered little value for reconnaissance.

In reality, barely one Waypoint out of every ten led somewhere truly useful.

But that was enough.

These waypoints revealed a civilization with two very different faces.

The first was the heartland—the militarized core of dark elf power and the source of everything their civilization stood upon.

It stretched across endless ranges of jagged black mountains, where volcanic peaks spewed ash into the sky and rivers of lava carved glowing scars through the earth. Thick smoke from countless forge-fires and volcanic vents hung permanently overhead, blotting out the sun until only a crimson glow remained.

It was this landscape that had given the region its name. Within the deep territories, true daylight rarely existed. The world was illuminated only by molten lava and the eerie blue radiance of witchlight.

One of Emery’s clones drifted above a vast mining complex and gazed upon the foundation of the dark elves’ strength. Hundreds of labor camps surrounded enormous open-pit mines, where tens of thousands of slaves extracted ore day and night. Orcs hauled massive loads across the scarred terrain, trolls acted as brutal overseers, and endless columns of shackled captives climbed from the depths beneath the crack of whips. The dark elves themselves never labored. They commanded while countless slaves and subjugated races built their empire for them.

Farther within stood their fortress-cities—colossal bastions of black steel fused directly into the mountainsides, stretching across entire peaks. Towering walls concealed vast halls that descended ever deeper, transitioning from cold metal corridors into chambers carved from living stone.

These inner territories were heavily guarded, sealed from outsiders, where every stranger was watched and every shadow scrutinized.

Emery kept his clones completely concealed here, moving silently from shadow to shadow as they observed the fortress-holds and endless forge complexes without revealing their presence.

Yet the dark elf domain possessed a second face.

And it was there that Emery gathered most of his intelligence.

The open holds—frontier settlements, trading cities, and commercial outposts where military authority gave way to commerce. Here, the perpetual smoke thinned enough for pale daylight to filter through, and the population became far more diverse.

Wood elves and high elves arrived under carefully negotiated trade agreements. Hybrids of countless bloodlines worked the bustling markets. Even humans could occasionally be found among the crowds—merchants, mercenaries, smugglers, and wanderers who understood that enough coin could purchase safe passage almost anywhere, even within dark elf territory. Compared to the rigid discipline of the inner domains, these frontier settlements felt chaotic and alive, filled with information brokers, black-market dealers, and the constant flow of goods and secrets across borders that officially did not exist.

In places like these, invisibility became a disadvantage.

A shadow hiding in an empty alley learned nothing.

The valuable information flowed through crowded taverns, gambling halls, merchant exchanges, and noisy marketplaces, carried in casual conversations between travelers who believed nobody important was listening.

So Emery’s clones abandoned concealment.

Instead, they adopted carefully crafted disguises—a wandering dark elf, a mixed-blood mercenary, a human trader—faces ordinary enough to disappear into a crowd. They rented rooms, bought drinks, lingered in taverns, wandered the markets, and listened.

It was in these border towns that the real intelligence flowed.

Sector by sector, waypoint by waypoint, Emery built his map.

And through it all, he gathered.

After a few weeks, the data had accumulated into something substantial.

The intelligence itself was worth a fortune.

He could have sold much of it to the Alliance for a great deal of contribution — reliable intelligence on a reclusive, hostile power was always in demand. But he set the thought aside. To trade it would be to reveal how he had obtained it, and the ability to reach anywhere the waypoints touched was a secret far more valuable than any contribution.

For now, the star chart’s true power would remain his alone. He would keep the intelligence, and keep the method hidden.

But of all the threads his clones pursued, one task mattered above the rest.

For it, Emery had committed two of his ten.

Within a particular dark elf noble territory,

Their target moved through a heavily guarded palace, watched at every hour, surrounded always by an entourage. So Emery set his two clones to watch instead, patient and unseen, learning her habits across weeks.

And a pattern emerged.

Once every week, without fail, the target left the city.

It was a routine she never broke — travelling by luxury train across the planet to visit a holding set among three mountains.

The clones had confirmed it over the previous week’s trials, cross-checking the schedule against what could be pried from other sources. By now Emery knew the route, the timing, and the escort down to the hour.

This week, he made his move.

The target boarded the train as she always did, her entourage filling the forward cabins, her personal guard stationed at the doors. The train pulled out of the city and began its long run across the planet, threading between the mountains.

Emery’s clones were already aboard.

One waited outside, clinging to the train’s hull in full concealment, ready to assist the moment it was needed. The other had come aboard in disguise — wearing the face and uniform of a train servant, moving through the cabins with a tray of food, unremarkable and unnoticed.

It reached her private cabin, slid open the door, and stepped inside as if to deliver the meal.

Then it let the disguise fall away.

"It’s been a while, Mistress Azula," the clone said, Emery’s voice speaking through it.

"Or should I say... Lyanna."

The woman turned, and the glass slipped from her hand, shattering against the floor.