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~~Christmas Day Special - (page 14 of 24)~~

They had always protected that thing with an absolutely absurd level of paranoia, due in no small part to that blasted Magician of theirs. By all accounts, that man had been guarding their only Forge like a jealous housewife for nearly two centuries now.

And for what? What technology did the Vanguard have to show for all that effort? What had the Magician come up with that was so vital to their enterprise?

Perhaps they were keeping that, too, a secret, but Abbas doubted it. More likely to him was that this so-called Magician of Light was, in truth, incompetent and arrogant. How the man had convinced the Vanguardian leadership that he should be the one to look after the Golden Hour, Abbas could only imagine.

But it was the world that had been suffering as a result of such foolishness.

Meanwhile, Morgunov was obviously making great strides with his own work. There was little doubt in Abbas' mind that the Mad Demon had a new Forge of his own and was using it to create these mechanical nightmares. Either that, or his old one, the Cauldron of Chaos, had not been truly destroyed during the Jungle Wars like the rumors had said.

Supposedly, Sermung himself had put an end to it, so Abbas was inclined to believe that was the truth. Sixty years was certainly enough time for Morgunov to have created a new Forge for himself.

Hmph. Abbas remembered overhearing some of the younger servants in the Golden Fort discussing Morgunov's absence from the world stage over the last few decades. They dared to hope that he might have grown tired of waging war or become otherwise indisposed permanently.

Abbas couldn't fault them for their youth and inexperience, he supposed. But there had never been any doubt in his mind that the Mad Demon was working on something this whole time. More than just one thing, most likely.

He didn't even want to imagine what other horrors that madman was waiting to unleash. He had a feeling that Uego had just been a taste of what Morgunov had in store for them.