Chapter 245 The Meetings Pt.II

“It’s because the one thing we, humans, need right now, is to create the most intense amount of chaos imaginable.”

Hiro’s words caused the entire room to go even more silent than it already was. Naturally, this piqued the interest of everyone present.

“What do you mean by that?”

Acting as their representative, Excelcior spoke up. Hiro stood back, sighed and scratched the back of his neck.

“Telling you guys that now will be me giving you too much information which you could misinterpret and lead to the situation being worse than it already is.”

His words caused everyone to have their own understanding.

Some presumed he was insulting their intelligence, some presumed that he hadn’t thought this far in his prank and some took it as him telling them that they simply weren’t ready for the information.

Obviously, there were those that were greatly displeased by his words.

“Listen here, human brat. I’ve been alive ten times as long as you have. Ain’t no way I ain’t ready for this.”

Ajaxx spoke up, the voice filter on his suit making him sound dangerous.

“And I have lived three times as long as you have, little shrimp. I can say with certainty that the human boy is right.”

Yvon, antagonising Ajaxx, spoke what was on his mind. The mechanical dwarf glared at the elf, but was unable to do anything because sitting right next to him was a literal off-switch for his armour.

“Still, that does not mean you can barge in here, telling us you bear information you aren’t willing to share.”

Yvon berated him for his rash actions. Hiro, admitting he was wrong, let out a nervous laugh.

“Sorry, but I had to make sure you guys had accurate information.”

“Ok, then how about we continue the meeting. If you spot an error, that’s when you come in to correct us.”

Seiko suggested. Everyone in the room liked his idea, so Hiro backed down. He patted Seiko on the back with a smile. Seiko’s ears perked up, evidence that he was pleased. Some people in the room who had known him long enough caught the tiny movement and glared suspiciously.

“Ok, let’s go back to the discussion on the New Kyoto Em- Uh, Hiro?”

Before Excelcior could finish his sentence, the young boy raised his hand.

“Sorry that I’m interrupting so soon, but the Dark Church is split into two factions. Those that want to revive the Goddess and those that want to revive the god slayer.”

“What? What do you mean, revive their goddess? There are only seven gods in this world.”

Jeanne interjected, her blood boiling from the claim of there being another goddess.

“Um, I don’t know if you’re being serious or not, but there is an army of gods waiting at Horizon’s gate, willing to charge down to this realm.”

“You mean angels and other higher beings that serve the gods?”

Fubuki, with a clearly agitated expression on her face, tried to interpret his words for everyone. Not wanting to be the item of their wrath, Hiro decided to go with what they said.

“Sure. Whatever. Anyhow, the Dark Church is currently at its weakest, since one of the factions finally betrayed the other. We need to strike now.”

With that, he backed down again, but everyone had their eyes still fixed on him. No matter how much they tried to think about it, wasn’t Hiro way too suspicious?

As if he could read their minds, Hiro added.

“I have an informant on the inside. They give me information on such matters.”

“This informant of yours, how do we know we can trust them?”

“Magic and physical communications have been cut off. How do they give you your information?”

“What are the current states of things in the empire?”

Different members bombarded him with questions. All of which he had the flawless answers to. Still, there was one person in the room that looked at him with scepticism.

“Oi, Mr. True Hero. How do you know about all of this in the first place? What made you try to investigate the Dark Church.”

Charlotte, the paladin of fire, spoke up.

“Excuse me?”

“What? You didn’t hear my question or you don’t understand?”

“I heard your question. I was just surprised. Well, the truth is, I just did so on instinct. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He bashfully replied, scratching the back of his neck and letting out a nervous laugh. Everyone’s eyes widened and just watched the young man. Whether he was naïve or lying to them, they couldn’t help but praise his boldness.

The first person to break the silence was then Excelcior with a mighty laugh.

“Excellent instincts! I guess that settles it!”

“Excelcior, you can’t possibly acc-”

Charlotte tried to argue, but stopped once she met his fearsome gaze.

“Tch.”

She folded her arms and looked away.

“Tell us more, young Hiro.”

___________________________

In the span of 30 minutes, the leaders had given me a rundown on how their territories worked and the sort of countermeasures they had to ward off any enemies. From the looks of things, we needed to work around it so the races wouldn’t accidentally hurt themselves.

For now, since I had no proper reach in the East and North, I wanted to focus all my efforts on the South and West.

I explained to the other races the importance of them joining forces with the others. Our example was how we got the timber wolves, Fenrir alliance and pumas working together on defence. The goblins, who were still the weaker members, were in charge of hunting down meat for our members.

Kobolds who were used to house service were in charge of cooking, the rat men were our information network and also our general labour force, being the most versatile group out of everyone. As for Yokino’s crew, they took a part in every single thing, other than cooking of course. No one wants to see spiders cooking.

At first, we got scoffed at, but once the others saw how transformed and organised the West was, they shut their mouths.

Honestly, even I was surprised. The dryads and sprites had created light orbs to light up the forest so the weaker creatures like goblins could avoid Nightmare Vipers who were so dark not even [Night vision] could capture them.

To be honest, the forest still looked like a forest, but the visible change was with how the monsters interacted. Timber Wolves weren’t out to kill the weaker races, goblins walked about freely, the illusive rat men walked about, screaming their presence for all the races to see without fear. Most people weren’t even tensed. In fact, they were having a meal and conversing outside the tree, awaiting the results of the meeting.

In my eyes, all I saw was a zoo without cages. In their eyes, they probably saw a beautiful metropolis.

We won them over easily and started to plan.

Considering the location of the south, it wouldn’t be odd for demons to cross the Dourean desert, into the swampy south and through the West to attack the closest human kingdom, Boulderdane.

Normally, humans could get lost in the fog of the south, but demons had a skill that allowed them to avoid such things. They also had the option of using aerial travel to close the distance, but if humans did the same, their middle ground could be the skies above Larm.

I didn’t want to wake up to the smell of burning chicken on one random Saturday because an idiot had his lesser dragon shoot a fireball and miss. And the demons unfortunately wouldn’t try to bypass the Dourean desert completely, due to its residents supporting humans instead of them.

Suddenly, the demons were looking like the underdogs in this situation. They were lucky that humans were also messing up and very selfish.

With that, Yokino offered to have some of her termites and dragon flies in the south act as border security. They would alert Zana so she acted as soon as possible, while also providing back up for her. The Marsh Rusalkies were to start opening up to the other races instead of killing them or poisoning them. They were reluctant, but one threat was more than enough to get them around.

I informed them that orcs and kobolds were on their way here. The east was currently deemed uncooperative and so it wasn’t the concern of the others now. The North was different. We simply hadn’t heard word from them and so their position was an enigma.

Should the North also refuse, I personally wouldn’t be bothered by it. However, if their forces were broken through and humans used that route to pass through the other sides of Larm, I was willing to go there and forcefully up its security.

During the meeting, Diane spoke up and told us advised us to create a figure head that could terrify the humans.

“What do you mean?”

I asked curiously. There was absolutely no need for a figurehead when the forest itself was a stronghold.

“Well, you see. This is actually something I heard from Larm himself. The best weapon you can use against humans is simple lies. They would back down once their given the illusion of a monster so strong they can’t beat.”

“Oh, so we just spread word of a monster as strong as Goliath roaming the forest in his place?”

The Rusalkies, who for some reason, really didn’t want to work with the lizardmen and others, were very interested in this plan.

Diane, with a devious smirk, shook her head lightly.

“No. We present them an existence that is stronger Goliath.”

“So, the one who killed Goliath?”

I asked, curious to see her response. Again, she shook her head.

“No. From what I hear, there’s a bounty on that one’s head. Announcing that he lives here is the same as inviting greedy fools to the forest. For all we know, we could even anger the owner of the name.”

Once she said that, I had another idea. Honestly, I didn’t like the concept of creating a fake monster to scare away humans since I needed my dungeon to grow, however, I could use this to my advantage one way or the other.

‘Amethyst.’

In a poof of smoke, my first familiar appeared behind the throne I sat on. She raised her head above the seat and the others in the room looked at her in shock.

I couldn’t blame them though. It had probably been a while since they’d seen a member of the dragon race up close.

‘You called?’

She came in front of me and looked me in the eye, barely paying attention to the others in the room. I transformed into my humanoid form so I could pat her on the head.

I was currently in an outfit Sylphie had made for me. It was more or less a dark brown battle gown, with knee-length boots. She wanted to add a symbol at the centre, but said it was a bit much in her opinion. The outfit itself wasn’t supposed to be aesthetic. I chose this out of the numerous clothes she’d made because this was honestly the least attractive or should I say feminine, out of them.

“This is Amethyst. The new Guardian of Larm and our new figure head. She’s also my familiar, so do be kind to her.”

‘Hm? What’s happening?’

She asked me, completely oblivious to the kind of task I’d just given her. The others in the room marvelled at the sight of the shiny drake. I couldn’t blame considering Amethyst was quite literally a bundle of precious jewels acting as the scales of a fairly dangerous beast.

Her growth rate was also scary, considering she had already broken through to B rank. Alas, there was no way she was ever going to get to my level. However, the new issue was spreading the terror that is supposed to be Amethyst to the humans.

I was about to ask [God’s Wisdom] and the other mes, but something came up.

‘Oi, there’s a problem.’

Hyakkun, who was mostly in charge of the system spoke up. It would seem the others were busy with their jobs.

Speaking of which, our jobs had grown exponentially in terms of difficulty. Now, Akira was monitoring the skills of almost every single member of the familiar. Giving them advice on how best to use it, some times adding some skills to the list for them if necessary. He was supposed to go out to bring more humans, but that was put on hold.

Akkun who was busy with magic had gotten so absorbed with the dark arts, he was basically a hikikomori in my head. He would sometimes speak to Zana, Kala, Yuuna and Tsuna about magic theories, but that was all he’d do. Occasionally, should information on magic be needed, he’d be there to answer.

Hyakkun though, he was super busy all the time. Apparently, there were some flaws with the system and he had been conversing with the system master about it. Some functions had actually been disabled after a while.

‘What is it?’

‘Crap. We should have attended to this way earlier.’

‘Huh? What’s going on?’

‘The [Shadow’s Crib]. It’s hatching.’

‘Seriously? What’d the system master say about it?’

[It’s a surprise. Even I don’t know ~(*~*)~]

He displayed her response before my eyes. I couldn’t help but feel a rage well up within me.

‘Ah… she really is use-’

‘Mind your words. She might deduct some stat points for that.’

‘Ugh, let’s just ignore it. It’s not like it can hatch while in the item box. Leave it there and we’ll sort it out after the meeting.’

‘Hmm, that sounds logical enou-’

I honestly thought that would work. But as if to prove me wrong in that very moment, the [Shadow’s Crib] appeared before me in front of everyone. Their eyes all fell on me, but I was too focused on the little black ball. Overtime, it had come to look like an ostrich egg.

It floated above the table, oozing some fiendish aura. The cracks on the eggs only showed me the seemingly endless darkness it contained.

[The [Shadow’s Crib] is ready to hatch]

[The [Shadow’s Crib] is breaking]

[This has garnered the attention of several higher beings]

[Their eyes are all on the [Shadow’s Crib] with various expressions]

‘W-What? What are those guys doing here?’

While system alerts flooded my face, the egg cracks widened.

[A great evil is descending upon the Mortal Realm]

[A [Unique Sacred Event] has begun]

[Unique Sacred Event: Madonna of Catastrophe

Description: ???

Rewards: ???

Difficulty: SS

Time Limit: -]

‘Eh?’