Chapter 432: Recon and Return to Gledea
Arthur moved his finger anticlockwise and an illusory clock appeared on the documents, moving counter-clockwise.
At first, there were no changes, but after the clock had undergone two full revolutions, the contents of some papers changed.
Suddenly, Arthur stopped moving his fingers and frowned, before deactivating his Pseudo-Authority.
"That’s the most I can do.
Someone with a higher Authority than me had a hand in the creation of these documents and they must have done something to alter their contents under certain circumstances.
For example, if the ’Triton’s Ark had been conquered by Demons; Automatically Alter the contents to misinform them’.
It’s not surprising they’d do this considering the fact that you guys would need information about Zefesh from the Ark."
Arthur had just been making a wild guess based on the ripples he saw through his left eye, and it turned out his guess had been correct.
He passed the documents back to Alvey and the man cross-checked them, noting that several locations on the maps had changed, and certain things had disappeared.
"We’d need to make a reconfirmation."
"The barriers on Zefesh obscure our satellites. Spies would have a hard time due to the Anti-Demonic Barriers prevalent there.
How would we do so?"
While Barron and Alvey were discussing this, Arthur was collecting a plain map of the continent from another one of the Generals.
He had someone make a copy of the maps he had just backtracked and then decided to toss that along with the maps into his subspace. After this, he silently held up his hand and started drawing in the air.
Of course, they wondered what he was doing, but the boy was using cosmic energy to draw upon the energy of some ambient universal laws. He hadn’t used these laws much, so it took him a while to get what he wanted.
After that, he constructed a teleportation magic circle with cosmic energy and vanished from the room.
◇ ◇ ◇
Two days later, Arthur was still missing from the Ark, but the Generals were preoccupied with other things to think of where he was.
All of them were standing outside the Headquarters on Sector 1, watching the skies when a giant Airship bearing the Demon Army insignia peeked into the Island Fortress’ Airspace.
Two waves of powerful demonic energy swept across the island in an instant, after which the Airship began its descent to the ground.
Upon landing, all the Mid Ranked Demons bowed their heads while the High Ranks saluted immediately. Only Alvey, Barron and Sylvan did not take any particularly special actions.
Then the people whom this reception was for, stepped out of the Airship.
Their Black Uniforms bore the symbols of the Demon Army and Navy respectively, and encircling these insignias were five stars.
This was the Supreme Commander of Gozon’s Demon Army on Aramis, accompanied by the Fleet Admiral of the Demon Navy.
Both of which, were Peak Ranked Demons.
"General Orkorin. The status report is ready for you."
Alvey was the first to speak after all the due respects had been paid
"Good work, Sargon.
I saw the other message you sent and I’d like to know the reason for the extra soldiers so I can compile a report for Their Majesties."
"Let’s go inside first."
Just as Alvey said that, he and every other Transcendent nearby sensed divinity in the sky. Looking up, they saw a golden dragon circling in the air.
The Five Star General, Cruz Orkorin, silently raised his hand and gathered demonic energy at his fingertip, however, Alvey stopped him before he could let it loose.
"It’s an Ally."
"Ally? That is a Divine Dragon, Sargon. Since when did they become our allies?"
"They hadn’t. Just that a certain ’Special Associate’ of ours subjugated one of them."
A streak of silver light cascaded downward from above the dragon’s silhouette and within the span of a heartbeat, it reached the ground.
As Alvey expected, it was indeed the ’Special Associate’ of the Demon Army who had vanished for the past two days.
"We have guests? Oh, it’s McE-"
The boy stopped when he noticed that the colour of Cruz’s eyes was emerald green and not the blue they were the last time he saw the man.
"Oh, it’s the real you, this time. Well, Hello."
He snapped his fingers and the Dragon in the skies disappeared, before walking up to Alvey and pulling out the documents and maps he had taken with him two days ago.
"I’ve cross-checked it. There are a couple of new Bases that have sprung up which weren’t on either version of the maps.
Although their overall strengths aren’t much when compared with those ones which have been around for years, it’s still substantial."
Arthur brought out some copies of maps he had acquired on Zefesh and seeing this confirmed Alvey’s conjecture that the boy had indeed gone to Zefesh two days ago.
"Now then..."
There was a shift in the undertone of his voice as he lifted a map, its surface adorned with markings denoting only two specific locations.
"These two places are most definitely ’Fake Divine’ factories. The sheer amount of harnessed race factors I sensed there were not much different from Duskhand.
It made me want to Vomit."
With two fingers raised, Arthur pressed on.
"I’d give you two sets of special Anti-Divinity Missiles just for these two places.
Everything else you need to know is in that folder so you can look at it when you’re free. I’d go start working on the missiles now."
Arthur took a step back, a glimmer of recognition flickering in his eyes as he added.
"When I’m done condensing the Anti-Divinity for the missiles, I’d be going back to Gledea."
His words had Alvey, Sylvan and Barron looking at him with surprise as they certainly didn’t expect to hear Arthur say he wasn’t going to participate after all the recon he just did.
"Why?"
"I have a bunch of godslayers I need to teach how to ’fight’ like godslayers should."
Leaving that one line as a reply, he activated Greater Teleportation and disappeared from the area, leaving the two Demigods who only sensed faint spatial ripples surprised.
"It seems our Status report has just experienced some updates."
Barron muttered as he glanced at the files in Alvey’s hands and the red-eyed demon nodded. He called up one of his subordinates and passed the documents to them before giving them instructions.
"Analyse this, process it and then make copies."
"Yes, General."
As the person went to carry out the orders, Cruz who had been silent finally spoke.
"Are you just going to trust his information like that?"
"While I do have a certain degree of trust in him, it’s not 100%. There are things he could have missed out on or things he didn’t consider important which might not be the case for us.
I’d cross-check it with some of the intel I have about Zefesh and plan accordingly.
Besides, it isn’t the first time he’s gone on one of his random scouting missions and brought back valuable information."
Barron seconded Alvey’s words, citing the incident with the Divinity in the waters surrounding the Triton’s Ark.
"If he didn’t figure it out, we’d have lost the thousands of seamen we were supposed to send underwater.
But anyway, let’s go inside first. There’s a lot more in the Status Reports than the locations of military bases on Zefesh."
Like so, the Demon Army and Navy Higher ups went in to conduct their meeting, while Arthur helped Stelan and the other godslayers better control their racial abilities.
Sadly, there were no ’Elder’ or ’Ancient’ breed variants. Not even a ’High’ breed even.
Nevertheless, Arthur wasn’t too disappointed as he knew that these higher variants would not be so highly sought after if they were so easy to discover.
It made him wonder just what twist of fate was at work for him to have discovered Esna when he was just randomly hopping from planet to planet.
As he said, he did not concern himself with any of the plans for Zefesh after he had condensed the Anti-Divinity for the missiles he wanted them to use on the ’Fake Divine’ Factories.
After that, he returned the godslayers to their home world, giving them practice assignments for the next time he summoned them.
He then joined up with the Airships returning to Whitboro in Gledea and left the Triton’s Ark at the same time that the ships arrived with the new soldiers to be used on Zefesh.
Getting back to Gledea, he headed straight for Torten where McEnda III was based, not for the High Rank Demon himself but for his aide Sigesi.
That encounter ended up with a mountain range disappearing from the surface of the planet overnight.
By this time, the attack on Zefesh had been carried out and he saw the reports of a resounding success McEnda III was sent along with a message for him from Alvey.
The news also spread to the Northern part of Gledea and it was then that the Aramisians realised that the Triton’s Ark had fallen and the Demons had made landfall on Zefesh, taking the Southern Half.
The citizens and the Aramisian Coalition Army, already reeling from the losses at Duskhand Bastille, now found themselves plunged into widespread panic.
It was at this juncture that Arthur decided to leave Torten for Tolgue City in Githal, where a fated Reunion awaited him.
