12 Belathine Empire

Hi! Mr and Mrs Mooncat here!

Sorry to intrude on your reading. This is the last chapter for this week which marks the end of the RTW contest (end of June). At the beginning, both of us never expected to write a second novel; we leisurely write a fun lighthearted novel 'A Sojourn of a transmigrated Housewife'.

When the RTW contest popped up earlier this month, both of us said to each other, why not? It can indirectly expose our main novel to bigger audiences too. We absolutely adore RTW and sometimes wonder what could happen next. (This is our biggest past time, we love to narrate to each other a bombastic continuations of a lot of stories such as 'Yamato', 'Code geas', or even 'disney's frozen'..strangely all of them turned sci-fi and directed towards space dominion) *laughes* so childish! (bashful)

So, again, why not right? Most importantly its fun!

So, the question is, what comes next?

As all of you know, the ASTHW is a weekly release (if not, Mrs Mooncat will tell you now haha). From this, Mrs Mooncat was able to save some chapters during rainy days. However, for GW, it was a write-to-post basis, typically every 2 days, 1 chapter. We really don't have any back up chapters at hand. However, we persisted since we have promised to give our all for the month of june.

To readers who was hooked with the development (thank you so much!), do not fret! We will not put the GW to stop or on hiatus. However, we need to reduce the releases to match ASTHW to once a week so that we can start piling on the chapters again. With this, both of us won't be so stressed anymore haha

ASTHW will be released on Monday mornings while GW will be released on Tuesday mornings weekly. No worries, when the stocks increased, we'll make double releases etcs for you guys. Bear in mind, this is still a short story. Since we want to maintain the quality to a certain level, it had prolong to this level. However, the number of chapters won't be too much, that is a promise. It won't become neverending.

Please wait for it and keep on supporting us.

Lastly, thank you a lot for fellow authors/readers who helped us improve ourselves. We did feel a marked increase in delivering our story from this contest.

Without further ado~

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Pasha was approaching the border of Belathine, the Oni's empire at the Zooras continent after travelling for few hours. It was located to the southwest of the Impassable Mountain Ranges.

She is travelling comfortably in her flying camouflaged car which was the only one of its kind. It could bend the lights from the surrounding which produced an invisibility effect.

As usual, Celine was the one who refitted the engine originally developed by the young exemplary witch girl, Anya, into a fast-moving vehicle, though it was just about Mach 30at full power.

She switched off the modified hand-carry VIRCOF mounted on the dashboard of her car. A few hours ago, she got a notification from Roland to listen in on his ad-hoc speech. He stressed that it was very important and every personnel from the Witch Intelligence Agency must tune in and listen to it.

This resulted in a haphazard arrangement, where she sent an agent to the crowd to stream and record the speech live. Agents who were in active duty will be sent with an encrypted record of the speech to listen in later. She had no choice; all three of the Witch Elders were on the move to their respective mission.

She was yet again very impressed with Roland's profundity. Roland had shown her again and again that knowledge was boundless; although he was as weak as a chicken, he could still rule the world.

However, for this time, she wasn't enlightened with the speech; there was a lot in her mind on the three incidents that prevented her from understanding. Furthermore, it was way too advance with a lot of terms and concepts were out of the norm from the standard Neverwinter education she received before.

She believes that only Celine would have a chance to gain anything out of it.

At the border she sent an encrypted code to the Senior Witch responsible for the area, Helen, for a coordinate to rendezvous.

Unbeknownst to her, the encrypted code was intercepted midway, failing to reach the Senior Witch.

...

One of Aruthos's assistant had intercepted a mysterious encrypted code from an unknown entity at the border of Semoa, at the edge of the Belathine Empire.

"High General! An unidentified flying object was spotted stealthily trying to enter our empire without permission, sir! It was moving at extremely high speed. We could only detect it from the leaked code but not the source." The young Belathinian analyst reported nervously.

Aruthos's heroic brow furrowed menacingly.

These d*mn foreign spies keep on coming one after another!

He was helpless with the current civil war embroiling his nation. As the highest military authority in the empire, he didn't support any faction. He knew, whoever he supported will ultimately gain the empire.

Till now he wasn't sure which faction will be beneficial for the empire. Therefore, he didn't interfere with their conflicts and only focused in dealing with the cumbersome aftermath. After all, the strongest faction usually will result in a strong leadership afterwards. Right now, he vigilantly concentrated on exterminating external threats.

However, what made him truly mad was all three factions contesting for the highest seat were actually backed by foreign forces which was unfriendly to Belathine. Their ulterior motives were to create more confusion and anarchy in the empire before they could take the advantage to swoop in and take over. Several spies infiltrating their empire from all side were caught and confirmed his suspicion.

Even someone as straightforward as him could see it as clear as day. Why didn't the stupid representative from the different factions notice this? They should be shrewd enough to notice. Unless they were traitors of the nation.

As Aruthos kept on thinking with an unpleasant expression, the young analyst saw the high general's expression getting darker and darker. He trembled slightly and tried hard to keep his face down.

The high general was the strongest Belathinian in the empire. He also held the highest military power in this nation. If he offended such a figure, he should just pack up and leave the empire; there would never be any advancement for him in the future.

"High General, the unknown object will enter the Main Capital airspace in five minutes." The analyst reminded him again.

"In which direction?"

"North-east. Two o'clock direction. Four minutes." He gulped.

Aruthos's stood up to a height of 2.5 meters. His single curved horn at his forehead was sharp and gleaming. His body rippled with powerful muscles.

It's about time to show these d*mn foreigners not to mess with a Belathinian.

He hovered in the air and shot out from hallway. In his hand was a futuristic-looking metallic halberd.

...

A tall and stalwart Oni with reddish bronze skin suddenly appeared directly in front of Pasha's flying car's trajectory. The Oni's long black hair whipped about wildly, making an intimidating scene.

He flew without assistance with a gigantic halberd-like weapon in his right hand, ready to attack.

Pasha knew she had been found out.

She stopped the car and prepared to go out and explain to the local expert in front of her.

However, the other party, accelerated instead! The Oni didn't give her a chance!

He will clash with Pasha in few seconds!

She detected an unyielding ill intent aiming towards her.

"Hmph! Know your place!" She snorted coldly.

She had tried to be more solicitous towards the other party. Since the other party won't accept it, let's just talk with our fists!

"Initiate Recombinant Protocol version 3.0"

Pasha's flying car suddenly disassembled into three pieces as she hovered in midair!

The flying car's chassis including its engine system and exhaust turned into a large hoverboard . Magnetic clasps were attached to the hoverboard where Pasha placed her feet. The complemented magnets were also strategically placed on her body to help her to balance herself well on the hoverboard in any situation.

The upper exoskeleton of the car rearranged its translucent particles and flew towards Pasha's body, equipping her like a scaled silvery armor. Her head was covered with a metallic helmet. A red horizontal visor replaced her eye function. Her shoulders were adorned with epaulets which held a translucent-like cape behind her back.

The last piece of the disassembled car consisted of magic stones and metal shards. They rearranged themselves into metallic gauntlets adorned with a rotary disc each. The discs were embedded with six multicolored magic stones. Both gauntlets equipped themselves to Pasha's arms automatically.

The assembly took less than five seconds to complete.

Pasha calmly poured in her magic energy into her gloves at the last seconds as she awaited Aruthos.

Within the next seconds, both clashed in midair with Pasha's thrusting her fists forward and Aruthos's thrusting his weapon.

The clash created a shockwave of several tens of kilometers midair, dispersing the clouds in the surroundings with both retreated several steps.

...

Aruthos was shocked with the human lady in armor's physical strength!

His hands were bleeding between his index finger and thumb on both hands. He was mentally blown away by the stranger in front of him.

He could not accept that this human woman was stronger than him, an entity who was the strongest in the empire!

Just like a modern Valkyrie. The thoughts that fleeted through his mind make his reaction one tenth of a second slower as he received a knee strike to his abdomen before he could react.

The strike was so powerful until he was sent away directly towards the ground like a shooting meteor making a small crater.

He roared angrily as he got out of the hole and launched himself again towards the armor-clad woman. He swung his halberd and tried to hack the woman again with a loud roar. The halberd which can previously destroy a mountain shone with a pale golden light.

To Aruthos's shock, the woman did not even evade and coolly held up the blade of the halberd with a single empty hand while looking in his direction. He could feel that the halberd encountered a repelling force from the witch's hand. It made his halberd slowed down until it fully stopped in her grasp.

It was like the halberd and her gloves were opposite poles; it made no sense to him at all!

A witch! He exclaimed in his heart.

He could almost feel that under the red visor, the woman must be laughing at him. Rage clouded his eyes as he felt shame washed over him!

Thinking that his dignity was compromised, the fuming Aruthos activated his halberd as it shapeshifted into a rifle-like weapon. He channeled his qiinto the weapon and bombarded the woman point-blank in a surprise attack.

"Ah.." A lovely startled voice was heard from within the metallic helmet as she was blasted to the ground.

He went all out with his qi and filled up his prized Qi Bursting Halberd to the maximum while roaring heroically!

Continuous bombardment akin to the sound of cannon resounded for a full five minutes. The shockwaves generated from the bombardment was like a strong storm blowing from all directions launching dust and debris into the surrounding.

As the high general depleted his qi reservoir without reserve, the bombardment came to a stop. Heaving heavily from exhaustion, Aruthos waited for the dust to settle. His mind had regained a semblance of clarity.

He was very sure at least the woman was mortality wounded and will be under his mercy. Then, he would magnanimously treat her, and enquired her about the reason for her intrusion. He had developed a deep respect for the expert in front of him, regardless of gender.

…

A minute was all it took for the dust to settle. It revealed a thoroughly furious Pasha behind the metallic helmet. The fluttering translucent cape behind Pasha's back has formed a layer of barrier for defense in front of her. Besides that, no even a speck of dust settled on her armor.

"Courting death!" Pasha instantaneously vanished from Aruthos' view.

"Sh*t! Not good! "His expression changed as Aruthos could feel death was approaching from his back.