124 A hasty trap

"That was easy, did they really thought mere mortals could stand against us like that?" The red hair of Meridiana was floating in the air, like hypnotic flames. The powerful light of the two moons was accentuating this even more. Her skin had finally recovered the slightly purple color that was the true form of a succubus. Without needing to be someone else, both her and Davion were completely different than their former appearances, the one they used to fool the humans.

"Too many of them escaped. This could hardly be considered a success." Like her, he had removed his helmet to feed himself on the survivors, or those that survived before that. His blue face was the last thing many eyes saw on that day. However, unlike the succubus, he was not happy by the fact that they were unharmed. The ambush that was planned against them was hardly a threat, making it weird. Maybe the fact that they dealt with it beforehand was the reason, but the orodil felt that something was off.

"Well, if you hadn't prevented me from chasing after them, we would have killed more of those delicious humans. It truly is a wonder that they decided to attack us in the middle of the night. In the end, they could flee in panic while we stood there, watching them. Why did you do that?"

"Feelings."

Brushing off the answer of Davion, she could only respect it. After all, if an orodil felt something, it probably meant mana was involved. The fact that they probably attacked the early scouts made those that prepared the trap mad. Even more when against all odds, they decided to just retreat, without even chasing the fleeing soldiers. "By now, with the fact that the sun will be visible in the sky in a few hours, Ymir should have already begun to act. We need to go."

They were not very far from Archet but they were not supposed to come back there. Instead, they needed to take the tunnel the Akûl and his army crossed to go toward the other side of those mountains. The offensive on Avenio could accelerate everything, and with someone having to defend the newly conquered Archet, it was too risky to expose Leilade to unnecessary risk. After all, Kardel was not really suited to fighting head-on fights, contrary to Davion and Ymir.

After all, if she was to die, no one else could hope to survive. And from what she had extracted from that princess from Massalia, it was complete cooperation between all the human nations and the Organization. Maybe even the last Hero, that Archmage could come as well. And if with less than 900 years, Leilade had reached this point, they could not underestimate a human that had lived for more than 1000 of years. Even if he only stayed on the same planet for all those years and could only painstakingly find new ways to develop magic by himself.

They arrived right after dawn at the same cave they used to create a fake cultist lair. The previously normal cave had been turned into a polished tunnel, with legions of skeletons guarding the entrance. They were wearing grey armors, and behind, dozens of liches could be seen. Obviously, they were weaker than some undead they had seen, but their number could compensate for that. From what they knew facing and battling adventurers, those skeletons could hold their ground against most of them.

Hundreds of meters after entering, and after dodging the vast amount of skeletons still working at digging the walls and cleaning the tunnel, they reached a room with a very familiar inscription on the ground. Not bothering at all by its presence, Meridiana immediately stepped on it, and soon, a blue light surrounded her and made her disappear. Right before walking on it as well, Davion could only see some liches crumbling on the ground, all the mana in their bodies being siphoned by the portal.

"Davion, can you ..." Even before he could reorganize his thoughts, the orodil had the smaller duvodiad in front of his face. Kardel was looking at him, like he wanted to use the portal, in a slightly urgent way. Because they could only step aside since it was quite a surprise, the two newcomers saw the duvodiad disappear in a flash. Turning around to look at Meridiana, he saw her raise her shoulders, as she was as clueless as him.

Walking a few meters, they entered the central room of the base, where they could see a very bright dot appearing on the globe. It was the first time they had seen this, and could only wait for Leilade to inform them about what happened. At the same time, they noticed that the shadows surrounding the little girl were clearly bigger than before. They could no longer touch her without being in contact with the dormant evil that was inside her body.

"A Hero had been spotted in Avenio. During the battle, Ymir had some ... unfortunate words. In reaction, those gods from above blessed one human, to a point where he was capable of forcing the Akûl to kneel. But not enough to injure him with the armor of master Agnil. Therefore, Kardel personally proposed to hunt the unwanted guest."

The cold lich quickly summarized the previous events, leaving the two baffled.Wasn't the gods convinced by Leilade that they will not hunt for souls anymore? Thinking about the slight pause in the speech of Malakov, they truly wondered what nonsense the red giant managed to say to make a god use his own energy. They did not have access to the amount of information the Empress of the Underworld could obtain, but the general behavior of those godly beings was no mystery to them. But what followed was even more perturbing.

"Did you two heard anything? Meridiana? Davion?" The small child turned her sight on them, but they had a hard time understanding the question. However, they still had to answer as the baffled succubus was beginning to do. "No, Empress. But what do you ..."

"We did not hear a loud roar, Empress." Davion cut the succubus in her tracks, allowing the later to figure out by herself. Linking the roar with something utterly terrifying, she almost smashed her own head. She had completely forgotten about that detail. But then, she wondered about the same thing that Leilade asked.

"There are two possibilities. The first is that those gods are considered as a part of this planet, meaning that their intervention would not make the Saksa react. From the rare records we have of the Ancients, they seemed to truly hate all the gods, even targeting the Venerable Ones at sight. Therefore, we can rule out this hypothesis unless you could believe that they had a change of heart all of a sudden."

Nodding their head, the three others agreed on that. Many weapons they had collected from the Ancients were fueled by divine energy, meaning that gods were not only not welcomed, but even hunted. The fragments of their history they managed to gather were generally speaking badly about gods. So, for the ultimate weapon designed to protect one of their worlds to not react when such being was manipulating their energy in the vicinity was weird. Nearly impossible.

"The second is the fact that the Saksa is completely asleep. Better not bet on its death, even millions of years could not amount to anything in front of that thing and if someone wants to make me believe a creature on this planet is capable of killing a Saksa, I would crush that fool. But if he is so asleep, that the intervention of one god is not enough to activate its protocol, we have more things at our disposal. Of course, those are last resort actions, I don't want to be the reason why we have a Saksa killing us all."

If Leilade could just use a single of her own spells at her disposal, no Hero could ever harm them. Entire planets were devasted when she finally had the authorization from the one above her to act as she wanted. Of course, it was also when she had the support of one of the orbs of the Ancients, meaning an almost unlimited amount of energy. But out of fear, on this planet, she could only resort to low spells, only breaching this rule once, to give a body to Malakov. Fortunately, with her own blood as a medium, it was bound to provoke fewer ripples than anything else at her disposal.

"As long as the pressure from the gods is not too strong, there is no need to take any risk. However, for the incoming battle, I would suggest that Kardel could use his rifle, especially if another Hero is born." The suggestion of Davion had already been put in motion when Malakov reported the news of a Hero in the first place. The completely broken weapons and armors she had managed to keep after arriving on this planet had been repaired, with still some issues.

Mainly the energy weapon that was salvageable. Because the inner mechanisms and the ammunition were completely destroyed, Agnil could only come up with a pale copy. He was maybe a master engineer, but he was definitely not knowledgeable in that area. He could probably come up with a plasma generator if he ever found the right materials, but that would need things that not even Malakov could create from sheer mana. And what was the point of creating something that provides so much energy when they couldn't even use that energy efficiently?

"Agnil has already restored it to a functional state. As for the firepower, he still hasn't tested it yet. Malakov, tell him to put everything else to a stop and focus on this. I want to know if it can truly fire."

"Yes, Empress."