Chapter 468: McEnda’s Bet
It took two days for Rachel to contact Arthur to inform him that she had results, so Arthur and Evan once again made their way over to her apartment.
Despite the strange tensions during their last meeting, Arthur acted like nothing happened, treating Rachel amicably as usual.
This made it hard for her to ask even one of the dozens of questions she had lined up for him.
Anyway, thanks to Rachel, they were able to find out who the woman was.
First off, she was NOT the owner of that dog tag, but the mother of its owner.
Unsurprisingly, said owner was dead.
Her name was Margaux Bonnet, mother of the Late Marcel Bonnet, former First Lieutenant of the Army who was killed during one of the Demon Army’s attacks some years ago.
Like Arthur suspected, he was a soldier assigned to the Starlight Fortress and was deployed in battle where he met with the army of a deceased Demon General and was killed in action.
His cause of death: evisceration of the heart.
According to the reports about Margaux, she was the head Alchemist of the Starlight Fortress till she went missing 3 years ago.
It was also documented that she had a skill called ’Vengeful Spirit Summoning’ which did exactly what its name implied.
When they saw this, Arthur and Evan shared a knowing glance, both having come up with the same conjecture—that the Spirit whom they had seen ripping out the heart of the last Victim was the Summoned spirit of Marcel Bonnet!
It made the Revenge theory a lot more concrete.
Marcel had died after his platoon clashed with the now-disbanded Platoon 471, but since Margaux did not know which particular Demon had killed her son, she was going around killing them all.
The platoon had 50 Demons in it, 10 had died over the years and out of the remaining 40, she had taken 20 out.
They guessed that the reason she had spent 3 years off the grid was because she was trying to locate all the former members of Platoon 471.
When they got all the details down, it was time for Arthur and Evan to take their leave so they could plan how to catch Margaux.
Rachel wasn’t in her best mood, since Arthur was going so soon even though she wanted to spend more time with him.
Seeing this, the boy said he was going to visit again soon, before pulling her into a hug and whispering one line in her ear.
"Please, stay away from those life-eating "Curses"."
He and Evan left after that and returned to Militopolis, informing Alvey of their discoveries. It was here that Arthur revealed the plan he had to catch Margaux.
All of the remaining 20 Demons of the former Platoon 471 were located, and each one had a ’conditional spell’ cast on them by Arthur and Alvey.
It wasn’t too hard to find them as the Military Police were already keeping tabs on them.
The ’Conditional Spell’ automatically activated another spell if certain conditions were met.
In this case, the ’Condition’ was for the target of the spell to be ’damaged by divinity’.
Since Margaux always employed her divinity when dealing with her targets, it was a suitable condition and Arthur used his own divinity to test it.
Alvey’s part in this was casting the Spell to automatically activate—forced teleportation to a set location.
This meant that if Margaux damaged any of them with divinity, then both she and the demon would be forcefully teleported to a fixed location.
Evan also helped, employing a skill of his called ’Track Down’ to mark all the Demons so he would know the moment they teleported.
With that done, all they had to do now was wait for Margaux to take action.
◇ ◇ ◇
While they awaited Margaux’s next move, the days rolled around and the time to welcome the new forces from Gozon arrived.
Hundreds of thousands of Demons and Dark Elves, tens of thousands of Vampires and a few thousand Fallen Angels.
This sudden influx of existences into Aramis alerted the planet and it quickly sent warnings to the Aramisians, who in turn, reported this to the gods of the Aramis faction.
Alarmed at the Gozonians’ sudden introduction of new forces during a time when they already had the upper hand, the Aramis faction quickly scrambled to respond.
They hastened their negotiations with some other Race Rulers to have them bring in soldiers from different races to bolster their declined forces.
The Gozonian Demon Kings knew this and made a show of ’trying’ to interfere in these negotiations.
In reality, they were just buying time so the Aramisians would not be able to bring in many soldiers before ’Alvey’s Plan’ took effect.
They didn’t know the plan’s details, but they were curious to see what surprise Alvey had in store for them.
◇ ◇ ◇
The 7th of April was the day that the new High-Rank Demons and Generals were to meet with those already on Aramis.
For the reinforcements of Gledea, Militopolis was the location chosen to welcome them. A small event for them to familiarize themselves was planned and in attendance were all the Generals and the majority of the High Ranked Demons on Gledea.
Naturally, Arthur was included in this lot and he brought Evan along with him as an aide, keeping the boy close in case Margaux took action.
’It’s a good time for her to take action, after all...’
Arthur thought to himself as he saw Evan exit the changing room with a Demon Army uniform on.
"The amount of enchantments on this thing is crazy..."
Evan spoke as he glanced at the uniform and saw the numerous defensive and healing magic enchantments on it. They were all high level too.
"It wouldn’t matter much in most scenarios though."
Arthur replied, remembering how the enchantments Aravae had were all broken when Duskhand attacked her.
’Well, his attack power was just so high it overloaded the enchantments.’
Putting on his concealment ring, Arthur entered the hall where the other Demon Generals were, greeting those he was familiar with and engaging in some small talk.
His high popularity with the Female demons earned him some ’resentment’ from their male counterparts; but of course, it was all just jokes from the guys.
When Evan wondered if Arthur had any of them in mind, he discovered that female demons had considered Arthur a ’Look but don’t touch’ kind of guy.
Just when he was about to question why this was the case, McEnda suddenly called everyone’s attention to himself before speaking.
"Attention everyone! Who wants to make a bet?"
Hearing his sudden question, most of the demons present gave him questioning gazes and some High Rank Demons spoke up.
"Bet? What are you betting?"
"What are we even betting on?"
McEnda put his hand in his subspace and retrieved a dark red crystal from it, emanating waves of Universal Law energy that drew all eyes to him.
"An Annihilation Law Crystal I recently discovered."
The sight of the crystal had some High-Ranked Demons drooling, and one of them even cursed out loud.
"Fuck! Why do you get to discover such a thing!? You don’t even have an affinity for the law!"
McEnda knew the demon who spoke to be one who had recently become a Transcendent. It seemed he was good with the Law of Annihilation and was searching for a crystal, but his search had been fruitless so far.
Arthur looked over the crystal in McEnda’s hand, his eyes widening lightly as he spoke.
"Damn, this thing’s good. Has up to the Mid-Rank Law."
"Mid rank?!"
In other words, the crystal sure to deal with all one’s law comprehension needs till they go to the Mid-Tier Deity Realm.
"Huh? How’d you know?"
Arthur raised his hand and twirled a ring of annihilation law energy around a finger in response to McEnda’s question, and seeing it, the Archdemon’s eyes gleamed.
"Look! We’ve got confirmation from someone who comprehends the law. This thing is Legit!"
"What’s your bet?!"
A demon shouted out his question and McEnda glanced at Arthur beside him before speaking.
"I’m going to bet this that some of the new guys are gonna find trouble with Arthur."
"Wait, why am I the subject of your bet?"
Arthur’s instant retort earned a wave of laughs from the demons, with some of them nodding in affirmation with McEnda’s words.
"Who’d do something so stupid?"
The first person to disagree was surprisingly Alvey who had previously been ignoring the situation.
"I already sent reports to them in which I mentioned Arthur. They should have been briefed."
"I gotta say, Alvey, that report was pretty long so I’m betting a substantial number of them didn’t read it."
McEnda responded to Alvey and one of the Greater Demon’s subordinates who was nearby silently nodded in agreement.
"That’d be daft of them. Why would they not read a report that details everything they need to know about a new world they are going to be fighting with their lives at risk in?"
Alvey didn’t seem to comprehend why someone would ignore such a thing and seeing his friend’s thought process, McEnda sighed and shook his head.
"I’m sure of it, there are those who wouldn’t."
"Okay, let’s say such incompetent Generals exist. Why would they want to find trouble with Arthur?"
The man casually dissed 25% of the newcomers without even knowing it as he posed a question to which McEnda raised his fingers and began counting.
"Many reasons.
Well, he’s clearly the youngest person in this hall.
He’s a Legendary and has a ’General’ Rank...something only Sovereigns and above are supposed to have.
His Rank is even a ’Major General’ rank, which puts him higher than some of the High-Rank Demons in this place.
I’m sure some of them would NOT like that."
McEnda then glanced at Arthur who was sitting not too far away with a portable console in his hand and playing a game as he continued.
"Oh, and look. I can’t sense his level for some reason.
Someone’s definitely gonna question that."
"Why would they make trouble when it’d be clear that all of us here aren’t complaining about it?"
The Archdemon shook his head once more, smacking his lips as he replied.
"You expect a lot from people, Alvey. You have much to learn about the world."
"Don’t act like some sort of Sage, you’re only four years older than I am."
"That’s Four whole years on you! So, ready to make the bet?"
Alvey pondered in silence for a moment, before putting his hand in his subspace, bringing out a box emanating a frightening amount of demonic energy and placing it on the table.
"Bet."
No one knew what Alvey had in that box, but it was clear McEnda did from the way his eyes glowed as he saw it.
"This is going to be interesting..."
"Wonder who’d win."
"Are you guys not scared of the loser taking their annoyance out on us?"
