Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2963: Encampment

Klea arrived at the designated checkpoint on Dawnstar’s outer district, nearly a hundred miles from the city center.

She had not expected what she found.

A massive encampments complex had appeared — rows of massive tents arranged in precise grids, surrounded by temporary fencing reinforced with basic formation seals.

Transport ship would occasionally land and drop more refugees in thousands, and they were properly send to one of the guarded encampments., while more encampments were being built

It looked, at first glance, like responsible crisis management.

Overflow accommodation. A controlled space to process the flood of incoming refugees before releasing them into the city proper. The kind of organized response a competent city lord would establish when population pressure exceeded existing infrastructure.

Klea had seen competent crisis management. She knew what it looked like.

This was not it.

She stood silently in distance hill overlooking the eastern section of the encampment and began counting everything that felt wrong.

The first thing she noticed was the guards.

There were far too many of them.

Not only around the perimeter, but positioned throughout the camp itself in unusually dense patrol patterns. Yet despite the overwhelming security presence, Klea saw almost no actual relief operations being carried out.

Very few healers.

Very little food distribution.

Almost no visible processing teams.

Instead, the guards themselves dominated the camp.

And they were armed far too heavily.

The weapons hanging at their sides were not crowd-control equipment or emergency deterrents meant for frightened refugees. Many carried military-grade spirit rifles, suppression chains, and combat artifacts designed for warfare against cultivators.

The kind of weapons people carried when they expected resistance.

Not civilians waiting to be processed.

Her divine sense swept the compound carefully.

Five thousand guards.

Nearly one in every ten of them was a Magus-level cultivator.

Meanwhile, the refugee population inside the encampment already exceeded two hundred thousand people.

Yet the numbers still did not match.

Based on the intake figures Klea had pulled earlier, there should have been at least another hundred thousand refugees and five thousand additional guards.

Klea slowly exhaled before turning toward the two figures standing behind her in silence.

One was Varkul, the current leader of the reformed Midnight Brotherhood, his expression unusually grim as he observed the sprawling encampment below.

The other was Boraan—the Iron Maw.

Formerly the Eighth Brother of the Midnight Brotherhood and now Varkul’s most trusted field commander. The massive bald man stood with crossed arms beside them, his scarred face unreadable while his enhanced metal jaw clicked faintly beneath the dim light.

”How long has this been running,” she said quietly.

”Two days. Maybe three.” Boraan paused. ”We only identified it yesterday. It expanded fast.”

”The numbers don’t match, where are the rest?” Klea said.

Varkul nodded ”Groups have been moved every few hours. Transported to another location”

”Where?”

”Another facility. We haven’t yet enter..”

Klea absorbed the information silently.

Varkul had already briefed her during their journey here about the Moonlight Syndicate’s confirmed involvement in the disappearances.

He had also mentioned another name.

Aelric the Veilbinder.

Leader of the Occultists, and arguably the second most dangerous underground organization in Dawnstar after the old Midnight Brotherhood itself.

Under normal circumstances, Klea would have carefully noted both names before beginning a proper investigation into their possible connection with Red Dawn faction leader Gerardy.

But today, she had no time for that.

She only had two priorities.

Find the missing refugees and locate the thousands of guards Gerardy had stripped away from the city.

Then suddenly—

The western gate of the encampment began to open.

Three massive transport vehicles rolled through — bulk cargo vessels with their holds converted into passenger compartments, each one large enough to carry a thousand people. Guards directed a selected group from the central holding area toward the vehicles with the brisk efficiency of people running a practiced schedule.

Klea watched the selection process carefully.

Only cultivators. Earth realm through Sky realm — no Magus. Each person was assessed before being waved forward, the guard checking something on a formation tablet, a brief inspection that happened too fast for the subject to understand what was being evaluated.

Not trafficking in any simple sense.

Something that needed cultivators specifically. Sorted by level, transported in organized bulk, taken somewhere that required more guards than the encampment itself.

The thought settled in her chest like cold water.

She turned to Varkul and Boraan.

”We’re going in.”

Neither of them hesitate and follows.

Klea’s mental abilities were not the kind that announced themselves.

She extended a sustained projection across all three of them — a precise distortion that blurred their presence from the perception of everyone within range. Not invisibility. Something more accurate than that. The guards’ attention moved across them and found nothing worth holding. The refugees nearby sensed nothing unusual. Even the Magus-level operators at the gate processed their approach and registered only the crowd moving around them.

They joined the group boarding the transports without a word exchanged.

Up close, the people being loaded were more frightened than they had appeared from the roofline. Voices stayed below a murmur.

She positioned herself near the center of the hold as the vehicle sealed and began moving.

Two thousand people in this vehicle alone.

She could feel the weight of that number around her — bodies pressed close, breathing carefully, the collective anxiety of people who had survived something terrible and were not yet certain they had finished surviving it.

The journey took slightly over an hour.

When the transport stopped and the hold opened, Klea looked out and went still.

A mountain. Or rather, the inside of one.

The transport had entered a tunnel carved into the base of a rocky ridge several kilometers outside the city. Beyond the tunnel entrance waited a complex — lit corridors branching in multiple directions, the scale of it suggesting construction that had taken months, possibly longer. The walls were smooth and deliberately finished. The formations embedded in the ceiling gave off the particular quality of long-term power investment.

This had not been built for this outbreak.

This had been here. Waiting.

The three thousand people filed out into a receiving area where more guards stood waiting.

The silence that had held during the journey broke as people began asking questions — what is this place, where are we, what is happening.

No guard answered.

In the confusion of unloading, Klea slipped sideways from the group and pressed against the corridor wall. Varkul and Boraan followed without a signal. The projection held. The guards’ attention stayed on the crowd.

She began moving deeper into the complex.

Soon, they noticed another group of guards.

These were not soldiers.

They wore no military uniforms, only dark leather armor and loose robes that made them look more like ordinary civilians or mercenaries at first glance. Yet the longer Klea observed them, the more unsettling they became. Their expressions carried a faint instability, a strange fanatic intensity hidden behind forced calm.

Varkul glanced toward them briefly before speaking a single word.

”Occultists.”

Klea silently noded.

The receiving area branched into corridors. She took the left passage, following the low hum of active formation equipment, and within minutes the corridor widened into a laboratory space that stopped her at the threshold.

Containment formations built not for quarantine but for extended occupation. Specimen records arranged along the walls in the precise documentation style of long-term systematic research.

Not emergency response.

Deliberate study.

She looked at the nearest record without touching it. Read three lines. Stopped.

Before she could process what she had read, Varkul gave a signal.

She followed his gaze to the end of the corridor.

Doors. Massive ones, sealed with heavy formation locks, spaced at regular intervals along both walls. The corridor extended further than she could see clearly, but her divine sense pushed through the barriers and found what lay beyond them.

Rooms.

Dozens of rooms.

Each one large enough to hold hundreds of people.

Each one occupied.

She moved to the nearest door and looked through the formation-glass panel set into its frame.

The room beyond was enormous. And it was full.

Hundreds of individuals, sitting or lying across the floor in the particular stillness of people who had stopped expecting anything to change. But that was not what made her breath stop.

Their flesh had swollen and twisted grotesquely beneath torn skin while jagged horns protruded from their shoulders, jaws, and foreheads. Some possessed elongated limbs ending in claw-like fingers, while others had patches of exposed muscle pulsing visibly beneath cracked flesh.

Several had mouths that no longer closed properly, revealing layers of sharp uneven teeth dripping with saliva.

One spine bulged outward like bony spikes trying to tear free from its back.

Infected.

Every person in that room was infected.

She stepped back and looked down the corridor.

She had come here expecting a trafficking operation. A criminal network using the outbreak as cover to move people for profit.

This was not that.

”What the heel are they doing!!”

Klea immediately attempted to connect to the Cosmic Palace, intending to send an emergency report about everything she had just discovered.

The moment she activated the communication link, however, her expression shifted slightly.

The connection failed completely.

Not because of distance.

Something within the facility itself was interfering with long-range communication. A restriction formation must have been established, subtle enough to avoid detection at first glance yet powerful enough to isolate the entire area from outside contact.

Klea’s eyes narrowed immediately.

She was ready to leave, exit the building.

Her divine sense spread outward once more, probing carefully through the hidden structures, and underground fluctuations.

Then suddenly—

She sensed a familiar aura.

She was sure as this person was not native to this realm.

Grand Magus Kayelin.

”Why is she here...?”