619 Denial and Betrayal

"Hahahah! The use of their tongue! Maybe that's the few reasons why our Queen's temper had improved quite a bit in the recent days!" Edwardio laughed out loud at Hamatarou's deduction.

"Well! I have quite a number of villages to take care, I cannot possibly track and remember them!" Hamatarou folded its small little arms together, and Salamander belittled him further that he should be doing a better job as the Sage.

"In any case, how many villages you had contacted for the past year? I believe that's the easiest few to find." Jin wanted to know, but Hamatarou shook his head as he opened his paw and three fingers out.

"Eight excluding the ones that had already perished," Hamatarou said with a tinge of sadness in his voice.

"The rest never met up with me at the allocated time for the exchange of the Atems. The penguins were the only one that was worth my extension of stay. As for the rest, I can only assume they are dead, gone or missed out the timeline I had given them."

"Well what do you expect? I mean I heard that the penguins had to wait 10 years later for the exchange of totems. The chance of the village missing out that promise was extremely high. Besides, what do you for the rest of the time? Eat nuts?" Edwardio did not seem to buy his answer.

"As for the rest of the time, I had been travelling to the Fey Lands in search of a cure for the Giantism Virus. I heard that there were rumours of them having the only solution to this cause."

"The Feys? I thought the old folks said never to entangle yourself with them? The deals that they demand were out of the world. I heard they can twist the words of your contract to their liking and interpretation. I bet that maybe this Giantism was caused by them too." Edwardio responded angrily, and Hamatarou did not know how to react.

"It's alright, no one is blaming anybody. Like what both of you had said, there could be more villages out there that did not wish to come out because of the Giant Monsters. But let's focus on things that we have." Jin calmed the two of his minions down.

"Right now, with Edwardio's information, we can at least take out a bulk of the Salamanders. Then we could possibly look around the City for the villages in relative peace." Jin hesitated at the last part of his comment as he remembered the ferocity of the Father Porkcupine which he had escaped from.

He knew it was not the last time to see that Giant and there might be other similar predators that may be more menacing. (Or maybe even larger in size.) However, with Hamatarou's aid, there could be a possibility that it would be easier to fight against those Giant Monsters should they ever show up.

"You have to remember that the castle had a lot of secret passages. Even if you wish to surround the castle and siege it with all your might, there is a possibility that the key personnel run away to safety." Edwardio warned.

"That is why I want to use Gaeru as our main part of our plan. The amount of attention he unknowingly portrays will definitely bring many eyes onto him." Jin said as he outlined the basic plan on how to capture each and every Salamander.

Gaeru will appear again in front of the Salamander castle to make a ruckus and that is where he had to either push through into the castle with his own strength or be captured right towards the King. While Jin preferred the former, he needed to create contingencies in case Gaeru failed too badly.

At this point of the explanation, both Edwardio and Hamatarou expressed low confidence of Gaeru winning fights with his personal sword. Jin could only wish that the frog swordsman would be able to accommodate different swords and have some other tricks under his sleeves aside from blind provocation.

"So, assuming he would be captured by the Salamanders, I would need Edwardio to break him out and allow him to generate even more ruckus. Try to lead him to the main throne hall and then we could carry out phase two of the plan." Jin had dissected the main objectives of his current operation.

"Break him out of jail? Do you know that the King personally supervise this kind of 'goods'? I will literally be trespassing into rooms which are under the King's supervision. The senior guards would be a pain in the ass to work with!" Why don't you just give the frog some lockpicking magical scroll? That would be far more easy than me attempting such an impossible task." Edwardio replied with haste upon learning what Jin wanted to do.

"But you two are allies now, no matter how uncanny it seems. I can request the System to place a restrictive order to not let Gaeru harm you." Jin reiterated and tried to assure the Salamander, but Edwardio gave a heavy sigh as if he was considering what Jin was talking about.

"Fine. I can aid that blabbering frog a bit, and I guess that will drum up a bit of ruckus since I am abetting with the King's potential food. Although I honestly wonder if the King would even want to eat him." Edwardio sneered as he briefly glanced at the innocent sleeping frog who knew nothing about the plan. The Salamander guard began to think that the more Gaeru did not know about the plan, the better the execution of Jin's operation.

"In the meantime, I am very interested in Hamatarou's sleeping spell. System, can you make spell scrolls out of Hamatarou's sleep magic? I was thinking of detonating them all around the castle and have some agile monster to perform that feat. That way, we can disable the weak ones and handle the Salamanders who have resistance against the sleeping magic." Jin queried which the System announced that it would cost Jin a sum of money.

He readily agreed and the System asked Hamatarou to perform his spell on a dummy. But instead of doing as per System's orders, the Sage looked ticked that Jin had undervalued his magical powers.

"Are you underestimating my sleep spell? I jolly well let you know that it is capable of making any Giant monsters to fall asleep, let alone the animal people!" Hamatarou said with conviction, but Jin shook his head.

"I am preparing for contingencies in case they have a way to counter the sleep spells. Besides, like what Edwardio had said, there are some places where he would not have known to exist so there would definitely be Salamanders who could possibly be out of range of your spell."

"User, do you wish to have Peppers to scan the castle? That would make things even easier as it could detect the number of Salamanders as well as confirming the layout of the castle." The System told Jin to consider such a possibility.

"Hahaha …You are kidding, right? I am doing all this because I did not want Peppers to burn this place down. Who knows if her explosion could not reach to the underground depths of the castle should the Salamanders try to escape? Or what about the secrets this castle had kept hidden? Won't that be a more important find than just destroying the whole castle?"

"Besides, I am denying her the opportunity to burn down a city as large as a country too. I do not think she will take lightly to that matter." Jin reasoned, and someone suddenly voiced out her opinion too.

"Yeah, I agree with that. You will definitely be denying Peppers of that chance. And did you really just look down on the newly gain powers of Peppers which she put in much sweat, effort and rainbow vomits to achieve it?"

"YIKES?! When did you appear?!" Jin was taken aback when he heard Peppers talking behind his back.

"At the point where you decide to deny to me of exploding a city as large as a country. The System brought me in for consult. Little did I know that it was to let me hear the blunt truth." Peppers eyes turned all red and teary. She did not know whether this was considered as betrayal since the act had not been taken place but the intention was already there.

"Look Peppers. Listen. There might be some misunderst-"

*BOOOOOOOOOOOM*