After accepting her terms for the sake of obtaining Bam, Athena became a sleeper agent for Citrus against the ancient Jaxith family. Maintaining her irrelevant and weak persona in the palace as she steadily gathered information on the entire continent from the comforts of her bed chambers until the day she was inevitably called upon.
A day that came sooner than she had anticipated as it was before she had even brought Bam into her servitude after perfecting the process of preparing him by finding orphans with similar build and facial structure to Bam and having her elder brother send them to the front lines of various battlefield so Bam could obtain strength necessary to be accepted into a royal family as her attendant.
The fact that Bam had possessed a decent magic potential and an innate ability had been a rather unexpected boom as she had been willing to sacrifice more for Citrus to resurrect him if he had turned out to be too weak to fight. At that point, she would've been forced to find another method to bring him to her side which would've been a more complicated strategy.
Her assignment was to incite the war between the Jaxith family and its bordering regions, forcing the family into its current desperate situation.
This was a task that normally would've been impossible to accomplish within such a short period of time if she hadn't gathered incriminating information on most of the high-ranking noble families simply by listening to the palace maids gossip and piecing together the bits and pieces of information they provided as though she could see the entire picture.
With that, starting the war was mere child's play as all she needed to do was have the noble families under her thumbs sow seeds of discord against the Jaxith family as a show of disarray to the neighboring families.
Allowing their spies, most of which had already been identified by her and manipulated to safely gather the information she created for their various families to create an alliance for the sake of an invasion of the crumbling ancient family.
As the Jaxith family was one of the oldest families in the demon continent, it was rather easy to convince the neighboring regions of their immense value to them.
To aid her plans, she had even manipulated her impulsive eldest brother into charging straight for an ambush which led to the death of the 1st prince of the Jaxith family, leaving the 2nd prince as the heir to the throne.
While the second prince was more logical and rational in comparison to the first prince, that didn't mean he was harder for Athena to control.
If anything, she found people that were too impulsive and irrational to be the hardest to control as she could never predict when he would do something completely ridiculous and accidentally ruin her plans.
Using the war, she was also able to bring Bam to her side a lot earlier than she had originally calculated, which was a sweet bonus that made her want to work even harder as he was even more adorable than she remembered.
While she hadn't been told the reason for the war by Citrus, something like that was easy for Athena to comprehend. She was confident at least one of the neighboring regions at war with them was already under the control of the Brimstone family and that was all she needed to know to peice everything together.
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"You okay~"
Athena instively jerked her head back by a inch as Citrus face had at some point gotten only an inch from hers as she crouched in front of Athena with oddly fascinated expression on her face.
Athena regained her composure almost immediately which was a first for her as there weren't that many people whose actions could so easily Garner a genuine response from her.
Looking at the rather fascinating smile on Athena's face, Citrus chuckled as she licked her lips and spoke, all while she was still crouched in front of Athena as she stared at her eyes.
"…I have to admit, I hadn't expected so much from you at first but I've been quite impressed by your progress so far. Here, I even brought you a gift~"
Citrus reached into the air and pulled out a strangely colored item from her storage space.
It was a crystal with mismatched colors swirling within it as it glowed a dim light. If one observed closely, one would see the translucent sculpture of a lady with four arms in a pose like the god Shiva but with the head of a serpent.
Each hand held a different weapon and a different colored gemstone adorned each of the serpent's eyes.
"This would be…"
As the girl accepted it with gratitude, Citrus watched her with a cold predatory gaze, as though the girl was little more than a bug before her eyes. She then stood up and casually threw herself on the couch.
Indeed, Athena was nothing more than a bug in the presence of a being like Citrus. But because of that, both sides shared the same goals.
"You have my deepest gratitude, Lady C—"
"There's no need for thanks when you earned something. I'm not the type of person to not reward my tool's hard work you know~ Intake it you understand the requirements to use such an item?"
"Of course."
The girl smiled.
It was a very lovely smile.
That was why she asked:
"Are you sure you are prepared to use it properly? You will not survuve a failed attempt you know~"
"I am fully aware of that l, Lady Citrus. Trust me, the preparations have already begun."
"Really now. Then, make sure they're finished before this regions come under the banner of those guys~"
"Understood, my mistress."
Citrus smiled a predatory smile as she stared at the girl as she lowered her head in reverence.
There wasn't really a reason why she had decided to take Athena under her wing back then. She was probably just looking for a reason to kill someone and that child's entire family just happened to be a pass time for her.
Although she enjoyed killing. Random and pointless killing wasn't fun for her. She needed there to be a reason and helping a twisted child that had caught her interest just happen to give her a legitimate reason to go wild.
She had almost completely forgotten about Athena until about a few years ago when she met Mammon and decided to help him in his foolish attempt at world domination. She had only found him cute and thought it would be fun to assist him for a bit.
Especially since he was one of the few people she had met that possessed the stamina to satisfy her in bed. The fact that he was strong and had a cute face was a bonus.
However, she was still a member of the Great Brimstone family and could not afford to have someone else become king, whether it was one of the other Great Five or an idiotic Primordial.
She had planned on killing him after learning the method he had used to take down the layered barrier around the Darknar castle but he had unexpectedly died to the unknown Primordial who had somehow taken over the Darknar region.
While Citrus was given the freedom to act as she pleased despite being a pureblooded noble of the Great Brimstone family, it was because she had earned special privileges for various contributions to the family.
As such, when Mammon had failed, she needed to find a new method to help her sister accomplish her goal while providing her an excuse to let loose once more.
Thinking of that, she remembered the pawn she had met in the city a dozen or so years back and she decided to cook up several more plans of her own. To Citrus, people were nothing more than playthings for her. They were toys and pawns that could be manipulated rather easily by her wimps and she had quite the knack for it.
However, amongst all the people she had met, there was only one person she was unable to make move as she pleased, and that was her exceptional and darling little sister, Izabel.
It wasn't that her sister was a genus like Athena or was as calculating as herself, no, if anything, she was a complete idiot who was only exceptional at fighting even though she was yet to reach her full potential.
Despite that, she was always able to go against Citrus' expectations time and time again and was the only one capable of surprising her.
Citrus was ecstatic, her love for her sister growing with each day, and to further her growth and not have her constantly chasing after her shadow, she resigned from her position in the family and handed it over to her.
In only a few years, she should be able to ascend to her level and become an actual challenge for her. If anyone would become the next demon king of the demon continent, it would be one of the two after an epic fight for supremacy.
That was Citrus' ultimate goal. She did not truly care for the family or the Great Five. As long as she was able to eventually face up against her beloved younger sister. Being killed by her also didn't sound so bad. It was a rather storybook ending she craved for.
A rather sadistic smile crept across her face as she watched Athena lower her head to her while a tingling sensation ran across her body. However, as Citrus's mind wanders in excitement, a pair of green eyes appeared and disappeared in the girl's shadows without so much as a trace.
"Alright, let's end this here. I'm sure you know what to do in that meeting right?"
"Yes, mistress. I'll make sure the Jaxith family comes under the Darknar family without fail."
"Excellent. The most vulnerable time for a family is during its expansion. You never know what or who, you're bringing into your family which is why the Great Five is no longer aggressive with their expansions. I'll have them learn that the hard way."
Citrus had only two objectives in coming here today.
The first was to reward Athena for her hard work so far, to inspire a deeper dedication from her.
The second was to confirm the situation with the Jaxith family and how far along Athena's plan was coming. The plan for the Jaxith family is to become a vassal family of the Darknar family against the objections of the Elders.
That was the whole reason why she had incited war and created the shelters. To reduce the power of the prideful ancient family while still making them worthy of vassalage.
So far, everything seems to be going as planned so there was nothing to worry about. Especially since Athena's presence had been particularly requested for the meeting.
Citrus could not help but smile. When this unknown behemoth had first appeared, he had immediately disrupted her plans with Mammon so Citrus had expected more out of him.
However, everything, from the ridiculous display of power against the undead king to the formation of the Darknar family, everything had gone as she had calculated so Citrus couldn't help but be disappointed.
As she expected, truly, only her younger sister was capable of surprising and stiring excitement within her.
As Athena raised her head to ask a question, she finally noticed her mistress was already gone, without a trace. With a smile, she stood back up and kept the item she had received inside her specially encrypted storage box.
A box she had obtained from Aurora with several more layers of protection than the ordinary storage box. Despite that, she proceeded to place the box underneath her underwear drawer and chuckled.
She found the thought of someone going through her underwear drawer to find the storage box to be quite alluring, despite the possibility of such a thing being null.
Walking over to the mirror, Athena adjusted her hair and makeup before ringing the small bell next to her for the maid responsible for dressing her for the day, her smile as clueless and charming as always.
After everything was completed, Athena rejoined Bam outside as she headed for the conference hall. She will later summon Blane to herself to help solidify her presence in the meeting with so many powerful individuals.
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In the next moment, a shadow quietly slithered into form as a figure appeared in the now empty room. It walked towards the drawer and its green eyes glowed brightly for a moment before returning to normal.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l