The hall was stirred.
"All our strength?" the Blood Conqueror echoed coldly. "What do you mean by 'all our strength'?"
"Literal meaning," Hackzord replied lazily. "Abandon the cities where we've exploited all the God Stone mines and half of the continent to the Sky-sea Realm. Direct all our forces to the Land of Dawn. I mean all, including old and new troops, until the human race is wiped off the face of this planet."
"Stop, you insolent brute!"
"Are you crazy?"
"Then where should the millions of residents in those cities go?"
"Although Ursrook didn't explicitly say that in its letter, I believe they should be relocated to the Fertile Plains. It's a vast land that'll be large enough to accommodate these migrants," the Sky Lord answered.
"We aren't going to have a mass relocation," the Mask snorted while bursting into a furious laugh. "That'll be suicidal if we don't move the Birth Tower along with them. Plus, we only have one chance to erect the new tower after the arrival of the Bloody Moon. We could have built the tower in Taquila, but your genius commander lost the entire Fertile Plains. Isn't it too late now to talk about relocation?"
Hackzord fought down its urge to retort. As Ursrook had had limited forces at its command, and the king had refused to send more reinforcements, it had thus left Ursrook no choice but to abandon Taquila. However, Hackzord managed to suppress its resentment toward the king and remained expressionless.
It had to discipline its mind.
"We have alternatives," Hackzord said. "For example, we could use the Deity of Gods — "
"Absolutely not!," the Bloody Conqueror cut across Hackzord rather fiercely. "That's our only hope to repel the enemy at the Sky-sea Realm. How could we waste it on those low lives? Stop talking nonsense!"
"The Deity of Gods is our ultimate weapon," the king said. "It's an essential part of our operation plan, and nobody could ever change that, not even a new lord. That's settled."
The king made the final verdict.
Hackzord was profoundly relieved. In fact, it also felt that Ursrook's statement was a little too audacious. If Hackzord had had a choice, it would have rather kept the contents of the letter to itself.
Anyway, it had fulfilled its duty to the king.
"Also, I find it absurd to increase the force by ten times..."
Just when the Bloody Conqueror was about to pursue the argument, someone interrupted it.
"I actually think we should take Ursrook's warning a little more seriously," the voice said mildly, which startled everyone. It was the guardian of the king's city, the "Silent Disaster". As a lord, it rarely spoke on a meeting. Like its name suggested, the Silent Disaster had a taciturn character.
As the most powerful lord among the nine, the Silent Disaster despised the Mask and the Resentful Heart who had to rely on clothes to disguise their weaknesses. As for the Silent Disaster itself, it wore a gleamy black armor every day, its face completely masked by the visor, as though it did not care about its personal image, nor did it feel that the armor was uncomfortable to wear.
"And your reasoning?" the king asked curtly.
"Possibly... there are some other legacy shards unknown to us in this world."
There was another murmur that swept over the hall. It was louder than the one after they had heard Ursrook's final words.
"How is that possible? There are only four shards in total. Don't we find shards based on their shapes."
"Do you think that human beings upgraded by some unknown means so we'll have to put all our strength into the battle against them?"
"Where did you get that information?"
The people on the floor raised various questions.
"No, I don't have evidence. It's simply my own speculation," the Silent Disaster drawled. "I saw something... incomprehensible in the Divine Land once."
"Can you tell us what you saw?" the king asked, half of his eyes resting upon it.
The Silent Disaster shook its head and said, "It's indescribable. Please take a look at my memory." With these words, it bowed its head.
"So..." All of the king's eyes snapped open! In an instant, a chill stole through Hackzord that made it shudder uncontrollably. Its instinctive revolt reached its peak.
The injection of another individual's thoughts made Hackzord shift in its seat uncomfortably.
But it had to be absolutely loyal to the king.
The Sky Lord thus suppressed its feeling and offered to connect.
Then, eerie images streamed into it and filled its heart with fears that chilled it to the bone. Among those images, Hackzord, dimly, spied a man, standing with an air of detachment not far away. This man seemed to be enjoying watching it struggle. Hackzord knew that this was not an illusion. Black tentacles that represented corruption were now rushing to attack it in a frenzy. If Hackzord did not leave now, it would soon drown in the Realm of Mind!
So Hackzord fled. During the escape, it broke one of the armrests of its chair.
The next moment, Hackzord woke up with a start and felt a chill running down its spine. The other lords also gasped and panted, obviously sharing the same feeling as Hackzord.
Now, everyone understood what the Silent Disaster had meant.
It was a well-known fact that legacy shards were connected with each other. When they communicated through the shards, there was a price they had to pay. Generally speaking, the price for the party who knew less about the Realm of Mind would be higher. They would not have been that surprised had this person in the Divine Land been a witch, as witches rarely visited the Realm of Mind voluntarily. They merely trespassed into the Realm of Mind every now and then, which did not really mean anything.
However, this person was a male.
According to the history of humans in the past thousand years, males had never displayed signs of magic.
There was no plausible explanation to this phenomenon except that human beings had upgraded.
It wasn't until then that Hackzord understood why the Silent Disaster had not shared this incident earlier. Nobody would like to admit that a low life had made it jump off the chair.
Hackzord wondered whether the Silent Disaster flushed underneath its helmet.
It appeared that its armor was not completely useless.
Was that the real reason it requested to resign from its guardian position?
Presently, one lord turned to Hackzord and asked, "Your lordship, did you also — "
"No, I only went to the Divine Land a few times, and I didn't see anything strange there," Hackzord cut that lord off while holding its chest a little higher. "If I did, I would have reported to the king immediately. I believe things would have been very different if it were me, based on my understanding of the Realm of Mind."
With these words, Hackzord darted a cold glance at the Silent Disaster.
"Interesting." Just then, a bright, silvery voice joined the conversation.
The "Nightmare" sitting at the end of the table, wearing a white robe, finally opened its third eye and broke the silence it had managed to keep since the beginning of the meeting.
Comments (341)
BurntCabbage
BurntCabbage
So is Roland's Realm of Mind full of corrupting black tentacles that can scare the $hit out of demons then? No wonder he gets along so well with the tentacle Taquila witches...
LastMoon
LastMoon
Roland was completely clueless at that time and he almost made all the Demon Lords wet themselves.
Dice
Dice
Funny how they fear Roland yet he was totally clueless the whole time 😂
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