"… that's everything we know.", one of the ogres that had captured earlier answered. He had a blank look on his face as he looked at Taiku. The others behind him had the exact same expression, including the Troll King, Zod.
It was a short session with Taiku forcing all of them to spill the details on what their objective was. There was some resistance before, but that was easily taken care of by Taiku's [Hypnosis] skill. The trolls and ogres weren't particularly known for their mental fortitude.
According to them, the North was sending barely a fraction of their forces to the Northern parts of the West, while the East struck from the South-Eastern parts of the West. While all this was happening, a majority of the North's forces would be concentrated on the South to subdue them. The general idea was to put Reiman's attention on too many things for him to actually focus on what the East truly wanted. All the assailants believed it was leverage on the West that they wanted – which was why they were sent to capture Ulva and Arisu – but Reiman couldn't believe that.
Taiku looked back and nodded to both Nukeme and Reiman, confirming that this indeed was all they knew.
Frustrated, Reiman punched the wall for falling right into the East's trap. From an outside perspective, it looked like they had prevented what the East wanted, but Reiman knew better. Sure, everything appeared to be a diversion, but they were all real attacks, coordinated with the intention of harming the West in some way or form.
With the borders all being preoccupied, the remaining soldiers close to home, weren't particularly the strongest or the craftiest. It was very easy for someone to sneak in, an example was the group that was right before them. If they managed to infiltrate, the chances that others did the same were high.
The story about the East wanting leverage on the West was plausible, but far too naïve to actually be the East's true objective. There was something in the West that they wanted and Reiman couldn't quite figure it out.
"If this was going to happen, we should have just sent soldiers to the South rather than leaving them to waste time here.", Taiku who had heard news about the South's request for aid muttered.
"No. There was no need for that.", Reiman shut down that idea completely and started to walk off. The others followed closely behind him, passing by another cell. Nukeme scoffed at the prisoner in there and caught up to Reiman. "No matter what action we made, the enemy had multiple plans to reap some sort of benefit. I was overconfident."
"Still, shouldn't we have at least sent the shadow demons? Or one of Lady Hinotori's Shadow Fiends?", Nukeme presented a good argument.
Even if not a Shadow Fiend, a single Shadow General was more than enough aid to the South. With their ability to summon more Shadow Demons, the West had an immense army, large enough to threaten both the North and East. At least, that was the general notion at the moment.
Reiman doubted anyone else was aware, but according to one of the Shadow Generals, there was a current issue in the realm they came from. Summoning more shadow demons was beyond them at this point. Obviously, the East and North weren't aware of this, but their time sure was convenient.
For this reason, Reiman dared not spare a single resource as the West was no longer unlimited.
"We can't do that. I have other plans for the shadow generals and their fiends. In fact, they should be completing their tasks right about now.", both Nukeme and Taiku eyed Reiman suspiciously, wondering what he meant by that. However, he didn't share the details with them.
"Still, I can't help but feel that Lady Hinotori would reprimand us for not aiding the South. Was there truly nothing we could do?" Taiku pondered, but the answer came to him swiftly.
"That too has been taken care of.", Although barely a whisper, both of them heard Reiman's words.
"What's that supposed to mean?", the two asked simultaneously, only to find a deranged grin spread across Reiman's face. His eyes shook greatly and his body trembled powerfully as he remembered the events from mere moments earlier.
***
Some hours prior to the current events, back in Reiman's control centre, Reiman was leaving to go meet up with Taiku and Nukeme to gather information from the captured assailants that had launched an attack and Ulva and her party, when he was stopped.
'Won't you respond, Reiman?', a telepathic message went directly into Reiman's head. 2 beings appeared behind him and he could feel a cold sweat run down his spine. He turned around only to find a boy with pale skin in a butler's uniform, carrying cat with dark golden feathers, a pair of wins and a short horn growing out of its head, in his arms.
'What is the situation in the South?', Maou, the little kitten asked with a pompous attitude.
Reiman would have to be lying if he said that it didn't tick him off that the new-born acted in such a manner. But he also knew he couldn't underestimate the kitten simply due to its age when he thought about its mother who was far younger than Reiman was. The mere fact that this kitten was mostly mute, but had such ease communicating was proof that he was no idiot.
"I made a serious blunder and underestimated the North's assault on the South. From the looks of things, they won't survive what's coming to them.", answering honestly, Reiman bowed to the duo. His subordinates followed suit, all aware that an insult to the kitten was an insult to their leader.
'The South? Is that not where Zana lives?', such a casual way of addressing the tyrant. Either they were that close or Maou's impertinence knew no bounds.
"Yes.", either way, Reiman wasn't going to risk his neck correcting the kitten.
Silently, the kitten flapped its wins, jumped out of Julian's arms and onto Reiman's table then stretched its body. As if it did nothing but sleep all day, he yawned as his bones cracked, producing an oddly comfortable yet concerning sound.
'So, how large is the force in the South?', he asked. For a moment, Reiman was starting to feel like the kitten saw all of this as a game. Still, something told him that pointing this out would only end badly for him, so he signalled for the informant to respond accordingly.
"30,000 strong. 10,000 mountain trolls, 500 griffins, 100 wyverns an-" the informant was cut off.
"You can beat those numbers, right Julian?", unamused, Maou asked the boy who had an exaggerated grin on his face.
"It is not my job to do so.", a chirpy attitude with a flat rejection. Still, something about the way he said that ticked Maou off.
"I didn't ask if it's your job. I just asked if you could do it.", he snapped back, glaring at the annoying butler.
"Well, if I release my evil eye of Doom and-"
"So you can do it?", uninterested by all the unnecessary details, he cut to the chase.
"Oh come on! Just let me describe my super special mov-", Julian was starting to whine about Maou's indifference to his rather eccentric mannerisms, but was cut-off once more.
"I don't need that. If you can do it, but aren't allowed, then I just need a servant as powerful as you to do the job, right?"
An odd and unexpected proposal so out of the blue, even Julian couldn't help but to be perplexed, "Huh?"
Maou, unamused, bit into his leg. The blood trickled down onto the floor.
"What are you doing? You can't harm yourself!", like an over protective guardian, Julian rushed towards Maou and tried to attend to his leg, but the kitten hissed at him.
"Just shut it, Julian. I've been listening to you for so long I can feel my ears bleeding and I don't like it." Understandably, Maou had lost any sort of patience he could have had with Julian. Over the course of the past few weeks, Julian has been at his side at every single moment. When he slept, Julian watched over him. When he ate, Julian tried to feed him. When he eased himself, Julian tried to wipe his ass. What made it worse was Julian's over-the-top character and his corny lines that made Maou cringe-up every time he spoke. Maou generally didn't care for most things, but even he couldn't help but to be extremely concerned by this very, very odd child.
"Ah~! Your cold demeanour is truly becoming of the future demon lord. I'm so proud.", running to the background, Julian shed tears of joy. Maou scoffed at the man, correction, masochist who enjoyed being berated, wounded or rejected.
He focused on what he was doing. His blood spread out across the floor, forming a circle on the floor. From the circle, lines of the blood started to connected, forming a complex web on the ground. A symbol that Julian was all too familiar with. So familiar, that he couldn't help but feel a tiny bit of concern that Maou could create something like this so casually.
Maou applied his mana to it, turning the blood pitch black, completing the magic circle's formation. It was a summoning circle for devils. And not a low-ranking devil's summoning circle, but one of the highest possible summons.
"Now come forth, devil."
As soon as he commanded, a devil emerged from his blood.
At a single glance, Julian could easily tell that this devil was not ordinary. He scouted it out from head to toe and considering the fact that most of a devil's power was capped when they left hell, he estimated that this devil was around the level of a Devil Cavalier, if not higher.
"Excellent, master. Your summoning abilities truly ar-"
"Stop talking, Julian. Your voice irritates me, you disgusting vermin."
Afterwards, Reiman completely loss focus. The devil before him was greatly supressing its presence, but there was a voice whispering his ear to not make any sudden movements even though Maou summoned it.
The next few moments flashed by in an instant and Reiman was now walking through the prison area with Nukeme and Taiku behind him.
"That's not important now. Let's hurry up. Taiku tell the other captains – cyclopes, orcs and kobolds included – to start infiltrating the North. Nukeme, completely abandon the assault on the East and focus extensively on finding the other invaders or at least finding out what it is they're searching for with the aid of the dryads and treants. This war has dragged on for too long, I want to send things into the final phase."
"Hm? Final phase? So soon?", Taiku was the first to show concern for Reiman's abrupt decision.
"Isn't it a bit too early for that?", Nukeme agreed Taiku's trail of thought. Claiming to be ready to enter the final phase was a bit rash. They were no were near ready to take on the tyrants Krull and Sora without Hinotori's presence, which is why they originally chose to weed out their forces before facing them.
"No. Our opponent is far craftier than I expected. I doubt I can keep up with them, so I'm going to throw this entire ga- urh, war into shambles. Both sides will be confused and at least then, I can start to control the momentum once more.
__________________________________
In the skies above the West, as Reiman was having his discussion with Taiku and Nukeme, a lone ogre was flying high above the clouds on his wyvern and looking down. He couldn't see through the clouds, but he had a vague sense of where his soldiers were.
He was no mana expect, but even he could tell that a powerful barrier of mana was covering some portion of the West. This barrier was what served as a prison camp for the North's soldiers. He had already had a meeting with tyrant of the North, Sora and the discussion had gone exactly how he wanted it to.
The second phase of his plan was beginning. The first phase was still ongoing, but due to a lack of a report from one of the teams he sent to kidnap a certain group, he felt like that particular plan was in trouble. It was the ultimate plan he had come up with, but now he felt it was useless. From the way things had played out, Karon understood that his opponent was no retard.
He was intelligent, although his plans were awfully obvious and lacked creativity. It was so bad Karon was starting to feel stupid for creating multiple layers to his plan for conquering the West. Perhaps, he gave the West's mastermind far too much credit. Still, he wasn't going to let up here. His plan had 3 phases.
Phase 1 was to give the opponents the notion that they had the upper hand. Feed them enough wins to make them grow complacent and that have gone off without a hitch. Phase 2 was now going to start. Phase 2 worked on the premise of his opponent finally realising that everything went according to his desires and trying to switch up everything by causing as much disarray as possible.
He had no proper information as to how his opponent was about to act, but he knew for certain that this was what was going to happen. In order to completely wreck the West's general, he was going to flip the battlefield first and continue being in charge of the momentum.
Everything was going according to his plans. The South would be conquered whether the West sent aid or not. Word of their victory would come soon. If the West was intelligent, they would attempt to focus on capturing the North, but even then, a majority of them would still be preoccupied by the East, leaving themselves vulnerable to an attack from the inside – the imprisoned soldiers.
Then there was the thing his men were still searching for. He doubted it would be easy to find, but if they found it, he wouldn't even need to lift a finger anymore to win this fight.
With everything having been thought out, Karon flew straight towards the North. To the Wyvern's Graveyard, home of the tyrant of the North, Sora. He would return a few days later to kick off phase 2 once the West had started their attempt at controlling the entire field.
When that was done, phase 3 would begin.
RECENTLY UPDATES
