"Instead, I want to apologize to you all. It was my job as the City Lady to prepare for such an outcome."
Morgan didn't expect that the first thing Cassarae would want to do was this, but when he looked at her now… he felt his own Favorability increasing despite himself. A heavy weight that had been on his chest was slowly put down.
"Now that we've gotten the unfortunate stuff out of the way, I think I should also shed some light on some things. While we've suffered a blow, we've also gained a lot.
"There are three troll corpses, and we've also managed to gather several powerful treasures from the battlefield as well…"
Cassarae began to explain their gains, livening up the mood. Sylas noticed that she didn't mention using the humans for their Genes and only did so with the trolls, but he felt that this was only to be expected.
Sylas didn't expect that everyone would be as nonchalant about using the Genes of their fellow humans for improvement.
"City Lady, if I may say something," just when Cassarae was about to get into the details of the end of the Trial, Gregory spoke up.
"I do know a little bit about the end of the Trial."
Cassarae was pleasantly surprised. "Please."
It wasn't just Cassarae either; everyone was curious.
Gregory cleared his throat. "This is information I've been made aware of so that I might properly guide you in making decisions. From my understanding, most administrative personnel like myself will be informed of this basic knowledge. Please use it to inform your decisions.
"The Summoning is a process of integration between your world and wider existence. During this event, your world will be split into two, not in a literal sense, but in a more metaphysical sense. The process of the summoning is the real plane of existence that is your planet, fusing together with this Aether-dense plane.
"Once the Trial concludes, this process will begin, but only slowly. As such, in the beginning, there will be no Aether on your planet, meaning that while you might keep your physical prowess, your more fantastical abilities will be sealed off from you.
"However, this explanation shouldn't steer you wrong. It isn't that your planet needs this Aether Plane and not the other way around. The Aether Plane needs an anchor in reality. You can imagine it like a fabric of space and time; it has no substance if it's not in relation to other things.
"The so-called nine attempts are the limit of the Aether Plane. If it fails nine times, it will either collapse or be forced to pick a different world to integrate with. After this ninth failure, Earth will be pulled along and be tethered to this different world as well, and ultimately you'll lose all rights to rule yourselves… if you survive, that is.
"The process of tethering to a different world is very violent, and it's likely that very few, if any at all, would survive this outcome. The Extinction Events that result from failure would be on a far smaller scale than this."
Gregory let his words hang in the air, and everyone felt the weight of them…
Those Extinctions had sometimes wiped out more than 90% of Earth's population, and yet this was supposedly worse than all of that?
"Setting this aside, once the Trial has concluded, you will be able to return to Earth, and gateways will form. You will be able to travel back and forth between your planet and the Aether Plane by making use of these gateways, but they will also be a trial for Earth as well.
"This location is just the outskirts of the Amazonian Wilds. But the gateways that will appear can do so from anywhere, at any time.
"The closer to the end of the Summoning your world comes, the more frequent these occurrences will be until there is little difference between the Aether Plane and your planet.
"As for the final step… I am hazy on this matter because it is said that it is very different depending on the world, its grade, and the integration type. It should even be affected by surrounding successful Summonings as well.
"But from my layman's understanding, in order to succeed in the final step, the Aether Plane and your planet need a stabilizing force of some kind, while you also need to combat destabilizing forces.
"These destabilizing forces are often events of the system… Dungeons, Quicktime Events, Quests, even powerful extinct creatures… the more of these remain unresolved, the stronger your stabilizing force needs to be to counter them.
"That is everything I know."
Everyone fell into their thoughts, somewhat understanding and somewhat not.
Gregory still hadn't explained what a stabilizing force was…
And the destabilizing forces, how many of them did they need to clear? It couldn't be them all, right?
And why were the extinct creatures counted? That felt odd.
Sylas wasn't sure what to think either. He felt that they were missing too much information, but once again… it was impossible for him to ask the Madness Key about the situation unless he wanted to get slapped with another Hunger spike.
"Thank you, Gregory," Cassarae smiled, feeling that it was good that she had invited him. "In that case, I believe our best choice is to attempt to meet on the other side, no?"
She let the question hang in the air. Everyone looked toward one another and eventually nodded.
Sylas frowned. This might be difficult for him. Would the Browns let him leave? And if he did so, what would it mean for his family? Unless he was strong enough to not worry about the Browns, or the Grimblades as they called themselves now, it was impossible for him to make such a choice.
As strong as Alex had been, or even Lauren, neither had been on the top ten list, while it was a Grimblade that firmly held that top place.