“Then why don’t you make it smaller?” if compressing it would do such magic, then why wouldn’t we make this hole like a needle hole?

“That size is the perfect size for the orb to bring the most effect without endangering the life span of the orb,” he pointed at the orb before adding, “if we tried to compress it even further, the orb itself may crash. If not, the time for the den to last will be shortened.”

“These orbs produce dens with life limits?!” I was shocked to hear that.

“Nothing we make lasts forever, lord,” Loran acted as if he was a wise old man, “the lifetime of any single orb we have will last for a month at most. But if we compress it more, the time will decrease even if it is only a few days.”

“Interesting…” I never thought these dens would last for one month and vanish. Thinking about this made me feel more secure and a little disappointed.

If this was the case, then there was no point in worrying about zombies coming out from these dens going berserk.

Even if they did, the dens would collapse entirely in one month. So it wasn’t that risky to last one month and defend until the den would collapse on its own volition.

But if that was true, then that meant these dens couldn’t be used for eternal defence. I thought they would last forever, so I planned to use them as one of the mightiest forms of defending my conquered zones in the other worlds.

“It looks like I can only use them as means of assault,” I sighed when I realised this. It was a nice limitation, but one that would bring me quite the headache as well.

I didn’t hesitate anymore. I simply grabbed this giant orb with one hand and tossed it like it was nothing.

It was indeed heavy, but with my current body strength, maxed stats, and strong cultivation base, it looked like nothing.

Once it fell down, something weird happened.

The orb started to emit copious amounts of fog, condensing underneath it as form of a cushion. The orb should have landed fast, but it took almost ten times of what it was supposed to take to reach the hole.

During this elongated time, and with its speed getting slower not faster the closer it got to the hole, the fog seemed to encompass the entire orb as it was hugging it.

I saw the orb’s size getting shrunk gradually as if it was under some sort of spell. It was an interesting scene. Even if I knew this was going to happen, I still felt amazed when watching it.

Once the orb reached the hole, it was smaller to fit in that hole as Loran said. Loran’s words meant one thing; his race had already conducted such tests before and knew how to deal with these orbs.

And that made me more confident in seeing the results Loran promised.

Not long after the orb vanished into that hole, a faint shaking happened to the ground around before the shaking grew tremendously stronger.

It was like a car going from zero to one hundred mile speed in one second!

The intensity of these tremors was very strong and violent, enough to knock everyone around it off their feet.

“Retreat now!” I didn’t even wait for Loran to remind me of this as I shouted for everyone down there, “go back to the kingdom!”

I didn’t call back my warriors yet. Even if the zombies weren’t in better shape than my forces, it was safer to let the entire group retreat as one force, just the same as they advanced here.

The retreat journey was longer than expected thanks to these continuous violent earthquakes. They kept running amidst falling down and standing up, making them look rather funny in the eye.

The generals summoned their chariots and flew high and safe away from these weird shakings. When everyone that mattered evacuated, I called back my entire warriors into my inventory.

The sky was filled with tens of chariots led by generals. They stood on my side, not moving as I didn’t.

I stood in my place watching the scene up front unfolding to its end. The shaking continued for a few minutes before wisps of yellow energy came out from the central hole.

It looked like giant snakes were trying to squeeze themselves out from the hole. In the next ten minutes, some of these wisps fell and merged with the star-shaped hole around, others went wild and even grabbed many zombies from around, turning their flesh and bones into yellow dust that merged with these wisps.

“Is that normal?” I felt something weird was happening to this den, but Loran simply smiled as he said in confidence:

“The orb is hatching, and it’s absorbing energy from the world and creatures around. As we didn’t supplement it with any monster blood, it has to improvise and absorb as much as it can from the world around.”

“Interesting…” from what he said, it seemed like these orbs were real eggs containing real life forms that wanted to mature and hatch.

I watched this bizarre scene as more followed. The zombies around were killed mercilessly and in such a brutal and genuine way before more flooded the hole.

It looked like something was calling for zombies to come to this spot. Even with their large numbers, the wisps of yellow energy wiped right and left, flashed everywhere, killed everything in a blink.

It was as amazing as frightening as well. I now felt good that I called back my warriors and generals, or else they’d have ended up as a meal for this scary den.

“I have to warn my forces to get away from these orbs the moment they use them,” I muttered to myself while watching the wisps shine all of sudden in bright orange light.

And with that shining phenomenon, the wisps stopped moving, alongside all the zombies surrounding the den in a few hundred metres radius zone.