Chapter 11.5 – Déjà vu
Inside of a rather gothic looking castle in Midnight City’s northern city district, Victor was standing in his own classical style office. He looked at the communication device in his hands blankly for a long time. He then pressed the mute button, and with a bitter laugh, he said, “I never expected him to find out so quickly.”
On the office room’s couch sat a woman whose age was already starting to show. She had a medium build with tight combat clothes covering her body, the important parts all protected by specially processed plates. Her body that couldn’t be considered tall and sturdy was brimming with an aura of power.
Signs of age could be seen from her cheeks and the corners of her eyes, and a long scar extended all the way from her neck to her face. Even though the scar had underwent treatment, becoming quite dim, it didn’t seem like Sinking Blade’s medical technology was great enough to completely make this scar disappear.
This woman was reclining on the couch, propping her chin up with her hands as she gazed at the enormous map on Victor’s office wall. The map mapped out what laid west of the great lakes, as well as the surrounding areas in great detail, including cities, power distribution, dangerous organizations, natural resources, and trade relations. It was much more detailed than what he allowed Su to see. Her eyes landed on N69. From this map, Midnight City occupied the northeastern corner, while N69 was what was closer to the center. Of course, to the northwestern direction of N69 was a continuous expanse of uninhabited mountains with nothing notable of value. At the very least, there was nothing indicated on the map.
“With the level of technological achievement Su displayed, repairing and starting up the water purifying computer chip shouldn’t be too difficult. We should have anticipated this a long time ago.” The woman said, her voice rather rough.
“But he actually brought nuclear fuel too! You have to understand that without a main source of energy, the water purifying unit of a normal base couldn’t even be started up!” Victor said with a forced laugh.
“The problem lies in the fact that we cannot deal with those mutants!”
The woman hit the nail on the head, directly pointing out the core problem, making Victor’s face immediately become pale. He retorted with somewhat lacking confidence, “It’s not that we couldn’t deal with them, but rather that the losses would be too severe! To suppress that mutant tribe, we would lose over 300 elite soldiers…”
The woman’s sneer cut off his words. “The loss of 300 soldiers would signify our forced annexation to Steel Gate or Kelan City, so we still could not have dealt with those mutants! I already reminded you a long time ago to expand the armed forces as soon as possible, but in the past two years, what did you even accomplish? You only increased our military by 100 soldiers.”
They were in his domain right now, so Victor’s face immediately fell, coldly saying, “Our soldiers are not armed mobs, only needing to be fed. They need salaries, weapons, training, and large amounts of ability formulations. Maintaining the current size is already our limit! Do you want Sinking Blade’s financial situation to collapse?”
The woman waved her hand and said, “I don’t understand these things! Alright, let’s not talk about these meaningless matters. What should we do now? Should we find a way to control him? At the very least, he doesn’t have much of a foundation, only having five members.”
“Control?” This time, it was Victor’s turn to sneer. “Do you think with our strength, we can control Su? Control an eighth level ability user with four powerful followers? When we fought in this region in the beginning, whose abilities were over five levels? RIght now, do you think that we can beat Su even if all five of us fought together?”
The woman became silent.
She was the five-membered committee’s Lora, as well as a terrifying warrior that had seven levels of power. On the battlefield, she was a bold and powerful soldier, but regardless of whether it was politics, economics, or strategy, she was weaker than her four companions. Lora also knew that once abilities passed the seventh level, manpower would take a sharp plummet. Normally speaking, it was extremely difficult for lower level ability users to defeat an eighth level ability user purely with numbers. Even though there were exceptions to every situation, exceptions were always tied to luck. Those without high enough levels of the Mysterious Fields, with only their own luck to depend on, usually did not encounter any exceptions. That was why from an ability standpoint, there were never any exceptions.
“Your intention is…” The woman asked.
“Cooperation!” Victor set his resolution and spoke decisively. “We will rule this territory together with Su, and then we will see if we can cross those mountains to challenge Frozen Throne!”
“Frozen Throne?!” Lora leapt up. She stared at Victor and then said, “You are definitely crazy! Moreover, we don’t even know if it still exists…”
Victor laughed and said, “Alright, don’t be so excited. It was just a passing thought. Even if we truly found Frozen Throne, we are still not the main force. Alright, we already made Su wait long enough. Making an eighth level ability user wait is not a good idea.”
Victor opened the communications channel again. Unexpectedly, Su never hung up, still waiting. This made him feel a bit happy, but even more wary.
For a powerful eighth level ability user to have this much patience, if it wasn’t lacking in confidence, then it was modesty. Even though he didn’t see how the mutants were wiped out, during Malphas and Forde’s battles, Su already sufficiently demonstrated his own power. He seemed to rely purely on his own strength, and like a game, crushed those two oppressive bandit groups that had given him so many headaches. That was why there was no way Su was a swindler who was pretending to be powerful, so the only possibility left was that he was modest.
In this era, if an expert knew modesty, then that meant that he had the confidence to control everything, or some kind of conspiracy was brewing. Regardless of which one it was, neither was a good thing.
Victor immediately broke out in cold sweat.
