NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1689 Stalling Tactics
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The back and forth between Meg and Pebbles continued, stretching out to ten minutes of what seemed to be stalling tactics… and Kat had no idea why. Oh she knew that Meg was buying plenty of time for Hunter to do her thing but Pebbles was clearly doing the same thing at this point. Buying time… and Kat had no idea why. Lily was similarly lost and Strdl seemed to be noticing that something was weird as well, at least from what Lily could see of her. It was hard to tell what Kamiko was thinking, as neither were able to see her face but Kat imagined she'd be in a similar position.
What Kat was missing, was that 'Creep' new a thing of two about demons and the way they were summoned by the church. When the church summons a demon for a job there are two parts to the contract. The first section is the standard requests and detail what is wanted from the demon. It's the second part that's more relevant here though.
It details a number of things that the demon is not to do, such as interfering with public officials such as the mayor's officer or higher nobles that are not directly related to completely the objectives laid out in the contract. As well as a number of other specific provisions for ensuring that they don't go on a rampage or start playing politics.
Creep's plan, was to get Meg, or any of the demons here, to see Pebble's as the legitimate mayor of this 'town' or to see the town itself as a legitimate part of the kingdom. If Pebbles could manage it then in theory Meg, and all the other demons, would become limited by the contract. At the moment they were seen as bandits, which was part of the old plan… but right now they needed legitimacy. Just a shred.
It didn't need to be enough to hold them forever. Creep even knew that demons could bend their contracts somewhat to be more in their favour. That wasn't the point though, his plan was to get the ball rolling. To get them to slip up and think, just for a second, that the town and all the people in it were legitimate members of the kingdom and deserving of protection under the contract.
From there it would be easy to find a suitable angle to 'attack' from. Promising favours, trades, or anything that was needed really to avoid getting wiped out. Anything except for handing over the crystal sadly. His backers had become exceptionally interested in the thing after knowing about it for just a few days and orders from on high were not to release it. That's the major reason for Pebble's not just handing it over. They couldn't.
Of course, what Creep didn't know, couldn't know. Was that all of that was a moot point. The girls hadn't been summoned normally after all. Sure they'd accepted the summons, and acted like they were obeying the contract… but their true mission was to find and take out the drake and save the world. Those extra terms and conditions had never applied to the group, even if they were likely to obey them anyway…
But there was one more wrinkle. One 'small' issue that meant that even IF Kamiko, Kat and Hunter were willing to pretend they were held to that standard, that the contract was effecting them in some small way… Meg wasn't summoned in that initial group summoning. She was summoned by Hunter. True Hunter had been summoning reinforcements for the mission… but it didn't really matter. Meg was entirely disconnected from the church's binding. It was never in effect on her.
So all of the little pleas, the pokes and prods to make Meg see this town as legitimate were doomed to fail at every angle. Meg didn't care for the town. She didn't care how legitimate they were… and her opinion on the matter would never trigger any contractual backlash.
Which of course was making the whole conversation rather awkward for Pebbles at this point. He was told the barest outline of the plan and then let go. Told it would be more genuine that way… and that he'd 'know he was successful when he saw it'. Well… over ten minutes of discussion later and he very much did not see it. He'd either missed it completely, or it wasn't going to show up. Pebbles didn't know what was worse.
He teetered on the edge of indecision. Creep had said that they couldn't hand over the drake crystal without taking a big risk of blowback. Of course, glancing around revealed that they were already in a pickle and things were not liable to go well if things kept on going as they were. He didn't know what to do. Creep had been pretty specific, that stalling was fine, and that even if the plan didn't work perfectly it would buy them time they needed. Needed for what he didn't know… and at that moment he really wished he did.
At around the same time, there was a slight fuzzy mirage, visible for less then a split second around Meg. Once it vanished, nothing seemed to change but anyone paying close attention would notice that Meg's right hand was now held shut where before it had been an open palm. Meg was of course the first one to notice but continued her speech without showing anything had changed for a few moments.
"… Look, how am I meant to know what specific crystal you want. I can't just let you into our main treasury, but you also clearly want a specific crystal. So… either you just want to sneak in and steal everything or you should KNOW what it is you're looking for and can share that with me," said Pebbles, not believing it in the slightest. He knew that the 'crystal' was something weird, and he'd been informed that it was once part of the drake… but he had no idea why that mattered.
Meg threw her hands up, using the motion to disguise some slight of hand. She'd felt the paper that 'someone' had placed inside her recently closed hand. While throwing it open she used her thumb to slide it around and onto the back of her hand, holding it there just with her thumb. She sped up her perception so that during slight paused of her gestures she could read the note without anyone looking.
This was a lot harder then it sounds. Through it all she was talking, responding to Pebble's 'complaint' and she had to ensure that her words didn't get distorted alongside her perception of time. It was something she had a good deal of practice with, and aided by the translation ability was more than sufficient to retort while reading the note. "Nonsense!
"It is a very particularly crystal, and I've already gone over when it was stolen and who it was stolen from. Now, I'm not going to even pretend that I'm hear on Curl's behalf but it IS important, and I feel as you're being potentially obtuse here. We can restart this fight any time, and unlike you, I'm quite confident in my own backup should this come to blows,"
While speaking Meg read the entire note, multiple times just to be sure. It read as follows:
Found crystal.
Crystal hidden in safe at the top of town, hidden inside gardener's shack.
Enchanted but openable.
Enchantment holding the item in place sophisticated.
Not checking for intruders, checking that the drake piece remains in place.
Lack knowledge of enchanting to remove it without alarm.
Setting off the alarm triggers a teleport sequence. Unclear result due to nature of the piece.
Advise
Meg was not pleased that whoever had set things up knew what they were doing. Well, not completely. Trying to teleport the crystal away was going to cause all sorts of issues, but it was at the very least smart enough of a plan to cause her issues if she forced things. This meant she either needed to get close to the enchantment herself to break it in the correct way…
Or actually negotiate with Pebbles for the crystal. Something she really hadn't been trying to do. Up until this point it was a waiting game… and if the enchantment was good enough to stump Hunter it had to be quite impressive. Sure Hunter was no enchanting savant, but she'd picked up quite a good deal of info on how to bypass enchantments to ensure she could always get to her target.
It wasn't the first time Meg knew the lamia to be stumped by something… but it was still a rare occurrence. Meg did wonder how much of that was Hunter not wanting to cause a giant explosion… a rather likely occurrence for higher tier enchanting such as this. On the other hand, if it really was programmed to teleport the drake crystal away then perhaps Hunter wasn't willing to risk setting it off, not completely confident in her skills, just somewhat. Meg was annoyed, as the note did not say and Hunter hadn't stuck around for whatever reason.
Things just weren't going to be easy.