Chapter 639

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, deep in the heart of the Association's Central Headquarters, a muscular man with bright red hair and a matching beard walks in circles in a large golden room.

His footsteps are light, almost like skips, and the air around him is full of silky yellow-white Divine Energy.

The room is hundreds of meters wide and dozens of meters high, yet it is extremely plain inside.

There is a single entrance and exit point, and on the other side of the room, there is a golden throne with a staircase leading up to it.

At its base, many tables and chairs lie empty, as though many speeches for a very important crowd have been spoken here in the past.

But now, the man walks in circles with a devious smile on his face at the opposite side of the room.

He mutters to himself as he thinks of grand plans, occasionally showing his mental breakthroughs in the form of massive displays of bright yellow flames emanating from his palms, tethered to their core with dense divine energy. Yet, once they hit the room's golden walls, the flames dissipate in an instant.

Even when the divine fireballs are thrown in seemingly random directions, headed toward the throne and stairs at the back of the room, they too are absorbed by the golden material, and the flames never disrupt the solid state of the room.

Deep below this golden coating, dense black stone lines the entire room and even makes up all of the artifacts within this tyrant's palace.

Not even the strongest flames of a True Core have any effect on the unique S-Grade shielding.

The man stops his pacing and pulls out an obsidian black cube with three bright yellow crystals on its face. He presses one of them, which burns the brightest.

"Shall I send out the scouts and prepare for a base to be built in the Dark Continent? The time is near..."

He smiles while pulling his finger from the crystal but holds the device in his palm as he continues to walk around the empty golden hall, leaving nothing but the light crackle of bright yellow flames that cover his body and the sound of his footsteps to fill the silence of the great room.

A few minutes go by, and the red-haired man gets back into a rhythmic display of walking in circles and thinking before another click sounds on the transmission device.

—

In a room coated in a dazzling silver lacquer, of a similar size to the last, there is another throne at its back with an identical staircase leading up to it.

However, everything below the first few steps is submerged in a super-cooled liquid that flows like water but has the white coloring and temperature of ice. Divine threads surge through the material, and they only manage to stay inside and not radiate out to the outside world because of the same dense black stone that lines this room.

—

Redgrave's flames fill his room again as he makes his voice sound impatient, but he smiles ear to ear, caring little about waiting a few more days.

"Come on, Beckman, what's a few million lives matter if we've already brokered half the new world away in your deal with the Demons."

Elara speaks up next, almost instantly after Redgrave's remark, as she begins walking down the steps of her throne to stretch her legs.

"It's been decades since you made that deal anyway, Beckman. I'm in the mood for a good fight. What if we just battle them for control? All three of us have become far stronger since that meeting. What's the worst that could happen if we broke the contract?"

She grins too, riling the meticulous man up for a bit of fun.

He replies after tapping away at his system interface in his dark lair for about a full minute before replying.

"It is our best course of action to honor the deal. Even now, if all three of us in our current forms were to face the Demon we met years ago, there would only be a 21.75% chance of our victory, and that would incur a minimum of one casualty between the three of us. It is not the optimal path to take moving forward. If we—"

Redgrave yells back through the transmission device, cutting him off from rambling endless numbers.

"Yeah, yeah—this again, I know. It was a joke. A joke, Beckman!"

Elara's chuckle sounds out through the transmission device before she adds to the conversation further.

"Thank you for your analysis, Beckman. I too was just having a bit of fun. There is no reason to stray from our deal. I won't leave the shelter until you believe the time is right... Though, one thing still makes me think. What do you make of the incident between Raven and Sebastian? Are we missing anything? Did she really kill the threat that ended Mr. Freeman?"

There's a long pause through the whole channel, but the man finally looks up from his dashboard and replies.

"There is a 95.68% chance that Raven has allowed them to live and aligned herself with the threat she was tasked to eliminate. Her death after the initial clash was certain—cause of death would be divine energy poisoning, without a doubt. Considering the resources available, she could not have survived without help. There is a 0.04% chance the threat she let survive would be strong enough to injure any of us if that is the display of their total power."

The man taps away at his interface, and numbers continue to pile up before his unchanging gaze.

After another moment of silence, the man speaks again.

"Redgrave, sending out a few scouts would be a great use of resources. Have a survey of the 8 Great Regions, The Dark Continent, and Raven's base conducted. If this Flame Emperor is a bigger threat than we initially anticipated, it would be best to nip things in the bud, even if the chances are minuscule. Anything that changes the odds of our ideal outcome must be eliminated."