Ch.188Improvisation (1)

Ortes massaged his eyes. The fastest way to release the containment barrier was to manually undo each of the magical formulas he had forcibly grafted using his “eyes.”

He was fidgeting with his eyelids, unsure if it would help his eyes recover but feeling he needed to do something.

“Ortes.”

It was Carisia calling. Ortes stopped his massage and walked toward her.

“What is it?”

“The board members have shared their opinions.”

Theoretically, Carisia was a being who had obtained the magical power of both White Light and the Artificial Ten Realms. She could control and monitor both White Light’s communication channels and Hydra Company’s channels.

However, the gap between “being able to” and “having achieved” was not so easily overcome. Even a decent magician would have exploded without finding stability between the power supplies of the two realms, yet she had reached a level where she could freely switch between both channels in such a short time.

“Ah. I did share the situation with the board members, didn’t I?”

“Yes. I told them that a problem erupted in Greenwood, which was meant to be a diversionary front outside the seven main battlefronts we established. I also informed them about Arguirion’s attempts to slander us.”

In Ortes’s plan, Hydra Company and their allies were directly involved with seven of the Ten Realms.

First, White Light. This was the foundation of the World Division Realm. Without capturing White Light, the World Division Realm would inevitably fail.

This stage had succeeded.

Second, Yellow Thunder. This was the realm Lampades needed to capture. The interference waves amplified by Yellow Thunder’s output would paralyze communications on other realm fronts.

After the two most important fronts, there was no particular priority among the five remaining fronts. To be precise, there was one front where the succession battle should be delayed until the very end rather than prioritized for capture.

That was Black Darkness, assigned to Kine.

Kine planned to bend Black Darkness to her will using the fusion of sanctity and magic—sacred magic politics—which she claimed to have realized thanks to Ortes, though he couldn’t understand that assessment.

Naturally, Kine couldn’t conquer the Black Darkness Tower alone. No matter how exceptional her talent was, and despite having created a considerable friendly faction in a short time by employing both sacred magic politics and social political techniques with the support of realm magic.

Even with the elders, it was uncertain whether sacred magic politics would work. Therefore, Ortes gave Kine a very unique mission.

Kine had to engage in politics at the Black Darkness Tower.

But not to conquer Black Darkness. Rather, she was to attempt politics to make Black Darkness conquer other towers.

According to phase 1 of Ortes’s plan, if White Light and Yellow Thunder fell, intense chaos would sweep through the Ten Towers. The news of White Light’s fall would be shocking and terrifying, and if Yellow Thunder fell shortly after, fear would spread uncontrollably.

That was when Kine needed to step in.

While succession battles were declared in all other magic towers and they faced “challenges to authority” according to Ortes’s plan, why would no one challenge the Black Darkness Tower?

Because even those impudent ones trying to overturn the hierarchy by exploiting the chaos in magical society feared Black Darkness!

Though the tower master of Black Darkness was absent, the power of the Black Darkness Tower didn’t come from a single powerful tower master. The nearly infinite quantity of undead battalions, including the Spartoi, was Black Darkness’s true strength.

Knowing this, those rebellious groups dared not approach Black Darkness. Only Black Darkness could maintain such strict order.

With the tower masters of the Ten Towers absent and the remaining White Light and Yellow Thunder fallen, the magical society needed a “strong leader” in this chaos.

And that leader, naturally, had to be Black Darkness, which was maintaining order.

With this logic, Kine planned to make Black Darkness embark on a war of conquest. Since the term “war of conquest” was too blatant, Ortes advised her to express it as a “grand choice for maintaining public order” when casting her political spell.

If the politics worked properly, Ortes could create a more favorable situation on the Ten Realms front with Black Darkness as the vanguard.

Hector’s knights were decided to face Silver Iron after being dispatched to the Yellow Thunder Tower.

This was for practical reasons. The knights’ fighting techniques had been inputted into golems’ automatic combat devices and sold as products for many years. Silver Iron was the leading corporation at the pinnacle of golem manufacturing.

The golems of the Silver Iron Tower were known to combine strength more powerful than knights of old, delicate craftsmanship, and faster speed. However, they overlooked one thing.

Golems had accumulated fighting technique data over a long time, improving the precision of their combat programs. This was because fallen knight families continued to sell their secret techniques to Silver Iron.

But was it purely for wealth and glory that they handed over their secrets without hesitation?

Of course, there were knight families who sold their secrets for money. But on the other hand, there were also fighting techniques injected according to the knights’ grand plan to guide the combat patterns of Silver Iron Tower’s golems.

Thus, the knights had been teaching fighting techniques to golems over hundreds of years. They analyzed every movement and posture the golems could use, while simultaneously devising perfect countermeasures for those techniques.

The golems of Silver Iron Tower were considered to have completely ended the era of knights, but they had been raised to inevitably lose to knights in the future.

However, the fronts assigned to the remaining three were not clear. According to the operation plan, Knemon was to handle Violet Plum, Niobe was to handle Blue Water, and the Divine Light Order was to handle Red Flame, but the plan could change flexibly depending on the availability of troops and the state of the fronts.

The roles of those three were reserves.

Niobe could use Blasphemia’s authority to block Panoptes’s intervention, and the Divine Light Order could deploy high priests to any front using Prodito. Kine’s information warfare capabilities were also not to be underestimated.

Knemon’s organizational capacity was no match for Blasphemia and the Divine Light Order, but unlike the two, he was highly reliable. The Bubble of Erasure that Ortes returned to him was a move that made Knemon a secret weapon capable of changing the tide of battle.

However, such operational plans were meaningless at this point.

Even combining Hydra Company and all allied forces, they could be involved in a maximum of seven fronts at once. This inevitably left three fronts that couldn’t be immediately interfered with.

Ortes classified the attributes handled by each of the Ten Towers, gathering those “most suitable for delaying tactics.” Frost Creation, Rain Wind, and Greenwood. These were the three magic towers with the longest average duration from the start to the end of succession battles.

For these three fronts, Ortes prepared “a ragtag coalition of miscellaneous forces” to simply buy time. If the alliance led by Hydra Company secured seven realms, adding the Artificial Realm would effectively give them magical power equivalent to 8 realms.

The remaining three realms would create an insurmountable magical power gap. Reaching this stage would mean Hydra Company’s effective victory, but…

“Damn those Arguirion bastards. I have no idea how they crawled all the way here.”

With Arguirion appearing in Greenwood, all plans were thrown into disarray. The situation now prioritized stopping Arguirion in Greenwood over victories on other realm fronts.

The problem was Arguirion’s slander if they temporarily withdrew the interference waves transmitted by Lampades from the Yellow Thunder Tower to send communications.

What if Arguirion’s slander reached other towers during the gap when interference waves were withdrawn?

All remaining towers might gather together to prepare an expedition against Hydra Company.

‘If old man Hector had secured Silver Iron, we might consider a decisive battle, but…’

There was still no news from Silver Iron. Ortes took a deep breath.

‘First, I need to hear what the board members are saying before deciding.’

“What do the board members say about the current situation?”

***

“They’re just saying we should turn off the interference waves from the Yellow Thunder Tower.”

“What? That would make us too likely to be identified as the mastermind behind everything and attacked.”

In reality, Ortes was indeed the mastermind behind everything. But the generous Carisia didn’t point that out.

“Arguirion is still fighting in Greenwood, right? It’s clear who’s the easier enemy between Arguirion, who hasn’t secured a realm, and Hydra Company, who has.”

“Huh?”

Thinking about it, it was simple. Arguirion’s seizure of Greenwood was a “currently ongoing” threat, while Hydra Company’s capture of White Light was an “already occurred” event.

If they left Arguirion unchecked and they managed to get their hands on a realm like Hydra Company did, the Ten Towers would be in a much worse position. For the Ten Towers, suppressing Arguirion took priority over a decisive battle with Hydra Company.

“They’ve analyzed that even if a Ten Towers alliance forms, they’re more likely to attack Arguirion before us.”

It was a convincing analysis. As Ortes closed his eyes briefly, another fact came to mind.

Carisia’s voice was very similar to White Light’s.