Human Continent, Eastern Area of the Human Continent, Fortress of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe, several hours later after the attack on the City of Torlen.
After the trio have returned from the City of Torlen, Samiel decided to stay a bit in the Fortress of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe. He noticed that the population was much lower here; probably the Demons had already moved after they noticed the destruction of the Torlen, making use of this opportunity to make a move on the defense positions of the Human Brotherhood.
Samiel observed the behavior of the Demon Tribesmen in the fortress. They were running around from place to place, probably preparing for an offensive or something like that, but judging by the festive mood in the place, it was clear that they were going to fight someone.
For the next few weeks, maybe two months or three months, there would be relatively quiet for them because the Demons would be pushing the offensive, and there would be only some missions that they would issue to The Guild, most commonly the most challenging things. Certainly, there were missions that even the Demons wouldn't want to undertake; thus they would pass them to the middleman.
Of course, that kind of Missions would Samiel never take because he knew that if there were things that even Demons didn't want to do, then it was plain suicide. That was because he noticed that the Demon Tribes right now issued the mission to The Guild, only in two cases and not even in one situation more.
The first one was if there was a thing that they needed to carry out, but from some objective things, they just couldn't. Such was the attack on the Torlen because the Demon Tribes were under close watch from the forces of the Human Brotherhood, and their own forces were needed at the other parts of the frontlines. For the same reason, they couldn't afford to send a small group of their experts, and for that, they used the services of The Guild.
The second one was the situation when they attempted to achieve something, but they failed spectacularly, but at the same time, there was no other choice, and they needed to achieve the same thing. Just like the Imp Tribe and the clearance of the human troops at the Two-Faced Monkey Island, these missions were basically out of necessity.
"We will be returning back to Goldtooth City afterward; for some time, the Demons would be pushing forward, and once again, the offensive is halted; only then we would be undertaking another mission."
Samiel said, while Yvriane didn't say anything and Dharzug just snorted but didn't refute it. Even he was aware that the Demons would be now dropping only some suicidal missions that they either failed to accomplish or didn't wish to accomplish, and those were, of course, mission impossible.
Commanders of the forces of the demons were the younger generations from various tribes, who were here to compete and harvest contribution points within their own tribe and they, of course, wanted to prove themselves. So they were not that keen on handling the possibilities of obtaining contribution and glory to a middleman.
After that, Dharzug went to the tavern that was constructed here by some adventurous merchants because this was an opportunity for the greedy merchants. They were aware that the soldiers who were stationed in the safe zones would want to drink, and thus, many of them departed from the Demon Continent to the Human Continent, where they were constructing various taverns, brothels and places of entertainment, where the Demon invaders would spend their money.
Samiel only hoped that the Ork wouldn't create a mess by brawling and fighting with the Demons, Orks were temperamental, Demons were no better, especially when alcohol was in play. Fortunately, we won't be staying here for more than just a few hours, so hopefully, there won't be any trouble coming from that.
Meanwhile, Dharzug went to drink in the inn, Samiel with Yvraine took a stroll around the fortress, as the Demon soldiers mainly ignored them because they were affiliated with The Guild, which in turn was taking the Missions from the High Council of the Demon Tribes. So they were some kind of allies, one could say, not knowing that Samiel was taking notes about the defenses of the fortress, how many soldiers were stationed there, their strengths and equipment etc...
And then, he planned to send all of those informations to the Human Brotherhood through anonymous means because he wanted to have the 7th Prince of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe, Prince Kisrith, killed.
***
After touring around the fortress for some time, Samiel decided that he had gathered enough information about the forward fortress of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe and took out the Holo-Brain that he brought on the black market of the Zephystrand City. It was specifically tweaked so commonly, criminals used these kinds of Holo-Brains because they were untraceable and specifically adjusted for anonymous communication.
When he sent the message he wanted to send, he stored the Holo-Brain back to the Dimensional Ring and decided to return back to the Goldtooth City because he wanted to enjoy the comfort of the Goldtooth.
Fortunately, the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe was rich enough to construct here teleportation terminals, and as a member of The Guild, he could sue them for free and would instantaneously arrive at the Demon Continent.
Surprisingly Dharzug didn't really create any conflict with the Demons drinking at the tavern, but judging based on the atmosphere there, it was not that far from it, as the situation was pretty tense there. Samiel took Dharzug with him, even despite the protest from the huge Ork; in the end, he went together with Samiel and Yvraine as they departed from the Human Continent back to the Demon Continent.
With the teleportation terminal, they would be teleported to the destination, which was another fortress of the Golden-Horned Demon Tribe on the Demon Continent, which acted as a hub for their logistic efforts.
After collecting Dharzug, they went to the teleportation terminal, which teleported all three of them away as they appeared on the Demon Continent, and everything took just several seconds altogether.
***
Goldtooth City, Demon Continent, Several Days Later.
After several days have passed since the fall of the Torlen, which Samiel managed to bring down with Yvraine and Dharzug. Exactly like he predicted, after the fall of the City of Torlen, the Demon Tribe launched another huge offensive on the defensive lines of the Human Brotherhood and managed to push the humans from the entire Eastern Area of the Human Continent.
One of the most notable defeats of the Human Brotherhood was the newly termed battle at the ruined city. Apparently, the Commander of the Reinforcement Forces of the Human Brotherhood who was sent there to establish a new foothold, Commander Harry Strickland, managed to find one of the hidden stashes of the previous City Lord of Torlen, Jaspar de'Charetier and disappeared.
His officers realized this only several hours later when they started searching for their commander, but he was nowhere to find. This created a huge mess in the chain of command because for two days, the army of 50,000 human troops that were sent to the Torlen didn't know what to do, and only after more than two days, the orders were sent down from the higher-ups of the Human Brotherhood.
Unfortunately for the army that was stuck there, they were ambushed by the army of the Demon Tribes and slaughtered to the last man. Because the human army was basically camping outside of the ruins of the City of Torlen, they were essentially defenseless against the ambush of the Demon Army.
Afterward, the Demons progressed deeper and deeper into the Human Territory until they stopped and established defensive lines. It was clear that the Demons were taking their time, but they were also cautious and learned that the Humans were putting off the resistance.
A piece of news has reached Samiel that on many battlefields, Humans were using some very advanced weaponry that was somehow imported from the Avalon Kingdom because it was no way that the Human Brotherhood would be able to manufacture advanced rifles with the firepower that was strong enough to kill even Bronze-Tier individuals under the concentrated firepower.
This caused Demons to suffer significant losses, and even though the Demons didn't really care about their losses, it was only until it hit some cap. After that, they needed to lower the casualties, so it didn't look too bad on them. With the combination of advanced magetech and genetic strengthening, shockingly, on some battlefields, the Humans managed to turn the tables on the Demons.
Certainly, this was all without the interference of the Gold-Tier Demons. However, still, it alerted many, as it was clear that the Demons were cautious not about the Human Brotherhood but about the Avalon Kingdom who was supporting them from the shadows.
Right after they returned to the Goldtooth City, the first thing that Samiel went to do, was to absorb some of the Mana Crystals, as he still had about 150 Silver-Tier Mana Crystals and countless Credits and Gold Coins, for which he could buy other Mana Crystals. After he reached higher levels, he planned to check on the content of the spatial equipment he looked from the Jaspar de'Charetier, as he was sure that the man was rich.
Not to mention, he looked at several warehouses of across the City of Torlen, all of which were stacked up with materials and resources. All of those were of strategic purpose, some of which were very rare, and would make Smaiel a nice amount of money after he launched the IMC Project.
He was delighted at this because indirectly, the Human Brotherhood had helped Samiel a bit because it once again lowered the initial investments into the IMC he planned to make. Of course, one of the most significant items on the list were the materials, as he was essentially launching a company that would be trading weapons and war supplies.
He estimated that the initial investment to the IMC would be between 1,5 to 2,0 million Credits because he planned a lot of things and wanted to start fast. Also, fortunately, thanks to his loot, he would need to invest only around 500,000 Credits, mainly for the premises, employees and other things.
The priciest things were, of course, the materials, but the Human Brotherhood had approximately several million Credits worth of materials.
Samiel took out another Silver-Tier Mana Crystal as he was absorbing Mana from them at tremendous speed, as he felt that his Level would be slowly increasing. After ten minutes and draining a whole bunch of Silver-Tier Mana Crystals, Samiel felt his Level increasing once more, reaching this time already Level 34.
When he returned back from the Human Continent after completing the mission, he was at Level 32, and he immediately started practicing the Nuclear Void Mana Control Method and draining one Mana Crystal after another. Soon enough, he reached Level 33, and after several days he spent by training and stabilizing his powerbase, he continued with Leveling Up once more.
Of course, Samiel continued practicing the Nuclear Void Mana Control Method and drained one Silver-Tier Mana Crystal after another until he used all of his reserves. Not to mention, he was also using all of the Mana Crystals from the spatial equipment which belonged to the Jaspar de'Charetier as the aristocrat from the Avalon Kingdom had a high number of the Mana Crystals, surprisingly even more than two hundred Silver-Tier ones.
[User Samiel Zentaur has reached Level 35.]
After some time, Samiel heard the mechanical voice of the Akashic Records in his ears as he saw the translucent window which bore the same message. Samiel then stretched his body a bit because he was sore from all of that sitting and doing nothing, as he essentially was just meditating for countless hours straight without any stop.
"I should probably check the rest of the content of the spatial equipment of de'Charetier."
Samiel muttered as he took out five Dimensional Rings, three spatial pouches and one necklace, which was also acting as a dimensional storage place. Slowly he started putting out everything from the spatial equipment until, after forty minutes, he managed to empty everything.
Afterward, he was spending the next hour adjusting everything, categorizing and putting everything into order until everything was done. Before him was a small horde of gold ingots, gold coins, Credit Cards from the Vaultbank, pieces of jewelry and other things.
Altogether he obtained from de'Charetier the following loot:
x8,756,800 Gold Coins
x100 tonnes of Gold Ingots (One Gold Coins weights approximately 10 grams, so 100 tonnes is 100,000,000 grams, which would be converted to 10,000,000 Gold Coins)
x550,000 Credits
Samiel didn't really bother to count an uncounted number of jewelry, gems and other things, as he would probably sell them through the IMC in the future. Though he had to admit that the overall loot from Jaspar de'Charetier's belongings was way better than he initially expected.
Still, it was rather understandable because Jaspar de'Charetier was ruling an important and prosperous city like Torlen, and he squeezed as much as possible from that position. And as the decades passed, it was understandable that the City Lord amassed tremendous wealth, especially considering that he was on the 8th Floor.
Of course, those Credits were not made from any activity on the 8th Floor because more than half a million Credits was an outrageous amount for the 8th Floor of the Tower. With the standard exchange rate, it would be around half a billion of Gold Coins.
So Samiel quickly deduced that it had something to do with financing the research into the Genetic Enhancement Synergies, which he was overseeing on the 8th Floor. Those were funds provided by the House of de'Charetier to buy resources and ensure that everything proceeded smoothly and without any problems.
"Still... this was good loot; who would be thinking that I would be so lucky... probably the Demon Tribes would be banging their heads on the wall."
Samiel muttered as he smiled at the thought of the riches he obtained before he noticed that he got a message through his Holo-Brain. When he opened it, he realized that it was from Yvraine, who was calling him to the inn's bar.