"You are letting yourself be seen more than you should. Could it be on purpose to show off your abilities in an attempt to impress me?" Rex asked Starry Mood as she used the soldiers she controlled to destroy any incoming enemies that were not cladded with armour.
The incoming enemies had their weapons broken with a snap of her fingers, just like how she did it for the first wave of soldiers. Without any arms to bear against the 'enthralled crystal armours', the soldiers which she took over, literally walked towards the unarmed and tore the enemy troops into pieces.
They were stuck in a tunnelled corridor with no other place to go to. Their comrades were not going to open the doors for fear of giving the intruders the chance to access the next section of the Flying Fortress.
The unarmed helpless soldiers had no choice but to beg for their mercy. Yet the armoured puppets of Starry Mood did not comply with the whims of the weak when their arms and legs were torn out of their body like tearing a piece of paper.
Blood was spilt everywhere as part of the process and she subsequently walked through the pool of tattered soldiers treating them as stepping stones to her destination. The edges of her starry robe had been tainted with blood, yet she sauntered forward towards her enemies.
"Perhaps. I would welcome you granting me some form of proper land. Maybe a place to research my magic in peace for me and my team of researchers. Of course, I'd be willing to share any breakthroughs we might encounter… assuming you're willing to fund it." Starry Mood turned around, her hands behind her bag as she looked at Rex who merely shook his head in amus.e.m.e.nt.
"As much as I would like to grant those wishes, I'm not the master of the System. I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree." Rex explained and then Starry Mood stopped in her tracks and stared at him in confusion.
"But aren't you the…?" Before Starry Mood could finish her thoughts, Rex placed his finger right on her head, asking the System to give her the full version of the story. He initially did not want to do this when she signed the contract due to the situation they were in as well as the urgency of travelling into battle straight after so Rex had only asked the System to give her a short summary of the predicament she would be going into beforehand.
Now, to avoid the issue of mistaken identity, he decided to give her the information she d.e.s.i.r.ed via the System.
Most would probably faint from the overload of information and require some time to recuperate, hence why Rex initially hesitated to do this. However, given that she had already signed the contract and that her troops were onto the Flying Fortress, her task was more or less complete.
He would prefer getting the exact location of the Crystal Engine from her in order to overtake the Flying Fortress with ease, but there were other ways to find it. Be that as it may, just at that moment Rex finally felt a certain energy emanating from the direction they were facing which he could not detect until he reached this close.
With that, her presence was no longer needed and King Rex asked the System to get her out of the current battlefield, especially since he feared it could complicate things further based on her history. He assumed that she must have been one of the engineers who had worked on the Flying Fortress, either that or she had some personal relations with one of the more important crew members.
"Bellator Rex is right, her memory reveals that she was indeed an employee of Aljun City before becoming the Shadow King of Demopolis." The System said as it had taken the opportunity of overloading her mind to take a (very thorough) 'peek' of the information she was keeping. (After all, her actions puzzled Rex AND the System at the same time.)
"So was I right in guessing that she has some vendetta against her previous employer?" Rex asked since Starry Mood had already fainted and the crystallised armour warriors escaped her control. This gave both relief and pain to the soldiers stuck within the armour as they came crashing down to the floor. Their wails and cries of help once again fell on deaf ears of the dead and Rex decided to give a helping hand since they were somewhat irritating for him, especially with the alarm wailing in the background.
Hence, he once again raised his sword and emanated a particular chi throughout the corridor, causing the screams and cries to stop. Instead, the souls of soldiers slowly emerged out of the crevices of the armour and they floated around Rex's sword. He also picked up Starry Mood before she fell to the pool of her enemies' blood and he placed her on his shoulders, waiting for the System to create a portal.
"Now that I can feel the magical vibrations of the crystal, I don't really need her anyways." Rex thought as he pointed his sword towards a door barrier. For the past few barriers, the possessed crystallised soldiers had been the ones opening them, allowing the duo to move through rather easily. That also made the rest of the enemy soldiers terrified since those door barriers were mechanised with the strength to bisect an ogre.
Obviously, Rex did not know that those mechanisms were powered by crystals and Starry Mood had been able to manipulate them easily. Still, the enemy soldiers expected the barriers to hold for now since they saw the possessed armours had fallen through their magical balls. Alas, Rex was a powerhouse on his own and those souls which he collected from the dead were going to play an important role in opening those barriers.
Even without the possessed armours and Starry Mood's help, Rex had ways to reach his goal. He was able to materialise the souls and commanded them to open the barriers. Those souls under the King's orders fused themselves into one giant figure and collectively they were able to have sufficient strength to open them. As they created a small opening, a few of the souls broke off from the main body and slaughtered the rest of the soldiers hiding behind them (Well, a better word would be guarding but they were too frightened to even do that job properly.)
For the next few barriers, the very same thing repeated itself and as the souls slaughtered Rex's supposed enemies, he collected them as allied souls and they merged into the mountain figure, empowering it to break the barriers even easier.
At the very end of the corridor, there was the Crystal Engine which Rex marvelled at for a moment before holding his sword right at it. With a light touch, the System immediately connected itself to the Crystal Engine and began to take over its power. While the deck possessing the controls to the entire ship, the System was able to infiltrate the Flying Fortress command through their main power source and got it under its command.
"Mission accomplished. That was a nice warm-up, I should really go out more often. It's so good to know that we have someone on our side who could potentially become our next air force chief engineer. Xie Jin, luck truly smiles at you in mysterious ways." Rex thought as he raised his sword once more and all the souls that had been out wandering about after killing their targets were recalled back into it.
Now that his interim task was done, it was time to focus on fixing the Demopolis issues again while his Brother Kraft executed his true master plan.
