NOVEL NEXT Chapter 61: Kidnapping
Mila
Mila waited for the dead of night and then started moving. She’d figured out the camp layout during the day, and she knew where the tents of the leaders were, so she headed to the tent of the general furthest away from Isaiah’s, the tent housing Omalia Gale, niece of the Gale Clan leader.
From the conversations she’d overheard, she knew Omalia and the clan leader’s twins leading the invasion were not perfectly aligned, so she had an idea on the best way to get the information she’d originally been after when she’d targeted Isaiah.
Disguised as a non-existent relatively young Gale Clan member, she walked up to the two guards in front of Omalia’s tent and saluted like she’d seen other Gale Clan members do, placing her right hand over her heart with fingers fully splayed. “News from the Life Tree Empire’s forces.”
Both guards' eyes grew slightly wide and one of them quickly entered into the tent, which was about the size of a one person apartment. Less than a minute later he came back out, and then both guards brought her in.
“What’s the news? Something about the assassin that idiot Isaiah chased to our doorsteps?” Omalia was pretty, her long greenish blond hair in a single braid down her back, but her room was not. The various pieces of furniture were covered with papers and there were artifacts all over the place.
On a table to the right of the room, however, Mila could see a map of the main continent, marked in many places in script not native to Hira, and that was exactly what she wanted.
“Yes.” As Mila spoke, she spread out her aura to cover the entire room.
Then, using one of her main minds, she snapped the necks of both the guards, thankfully succeeding due to their surprise and lack of Toughness.
Omalia’s effective Aura stat was above a twelfth of her own, however, having actually received resources to boost it unlike Isaiah, so trying to attack her body directly with Telekinesis wouldn’t work at all.
Instead, as she killed the two guards, Mila summoned the Twin Dragons into her right hand in sword form and lunged at Omalia, using Artifact Enhancement and her Law Egg of The Reaper to cut off the woman’s dominant left arm in one attack, making the sword on her right hip useless. The young woman wanted to scream, but Mila had used her third main mind and Telekinesis to grab a pair of artifact pants from the floor near where Omalia was standing and she wrapped them around Omalia’s throat, cutting off her airway.
Mila then changed Trickster’s Guise to show her elf identity again, making it look like the illusion covering her had faded rather than changing. “Your monster tried to kill me today, you won’t do the same, right?”
And then she sent over the contract she’d originally wanted to give to Isaiah.
Terms:
- You may not reveal any secrets about the initiator of this contract to anyone for any reason
- You may not take any actions with the intention to harm the initiator of this contract
- You must follow all the orders of the initiator of this contract for half a day
Punishment:
Death
Do you accept?
Yes/No
It was a bit riskier than the contract she’d given the Flare Clan cultivator, as there was a higher chance Omalia wouldn’t agree given there were no stipulations to stop Mila from killing her. But by this point Omalia should also know of her conversation with Isaiah, so the fake identity she made would likely make Omalia think the chances were higher Mila would let her go.
And, thankfully, Omalia accepted the contract.
“Alright then.” Mila smiled warmly at the woman, changing the Twin Dragons to earring form with enough control to not disturb her illusion. “Just stand there and don’t move. You do, however, have my permission to stop the blood flowing out from your arm.”
Mila then pulled the glove she was wearing over the Left Hand of the Runescribe into the Left Hand of the Runescribe’s subspace and used Telekinesis to gather everything in the room of value into the subspace as well, including the bodies of the two guards, Omalia’s severed arm, and the bloodstained carpet.
“Tell me where anything of any value I haven’t already gathered is hidden.”
There were a total of five secret compartments in the room and, with Omalia’s directions, Mila was able to open them all at the same time and take out their contents. There were two communication artifacts, like one half of the paired rings Mila and Aalam had used for long distance telepathy in the tutorial’s second challenge, and the other three contained papers with intelligence reports Omalia hadn’t shared with the rest of the clan.
Mila didn’t look into them more as she didn’t have the time.
“Alright,” she told the trembling woman as she stepped extremely close to her.
Then Mila took out the token she’d received from her last System reward and poured a lot of mana into it, and, 13 seconds later, she and Omalia were standing on the platform hidden in the desert cave.
Mila put both the token and the platform away, needing to move the platform to a new location to be safe. Then she sat down on the cool ground and indicated for Omalia to do the same, which the other woman quickly did.
“First, transfer all your wealth to me as ransom for your life.”
Omalia looked scared, but she relaxed slightly as soon as Mila mentioned the word ransom, and Mila got a new System message.
Omalia Gale has transferred all her wealth to you.
You have gained 47 E rank universal credits and 849 F rank universal credits
Congratulations!
You have made money.
It was absolutely nothing compared to what she’d received from Morin Daal, but every little bit helped, so Mila didn’t really care. Her class advancement would require tricking people out of a lot of wealth, and getting them to pay for freedom she had no intention of granting counted.
“Okay.” Mila smiled warmly. “Just sit there quietly for a bit.”
Without bothering about modesty, Mila took off the uncomfortable armor she’d stolen and put back on her blue dress.
Then she took a little more than a half hour to go over everything she’d stolen from Omalia’s tent, using all three of her main minds to speed up the process, and she quickly gained the information she’d originally been looking for.
The remaining three invasion forces were two subordinate clans from the Life Tree Empire and an independent force called the Albatino Merchant Union. The Gale Clan had found the location of all of their Pillars of Conquest and they had the locations of the Pillars of Conquest for several other forces as well, namely those of the Flare Clan, the Kingdom of Night, and the Quill and Vol Clans Mila already knew about.
There was also a detailed dossier of all the forces in the Palazin Galaxy Cluster, where all the invasion forces came from, and Mila was relieved to learn there wouldn’t be any cultivators with divine classes among the invasion forces, as everyone in the cluster, even the undead, worshiped a war god called The Unstoppable Blade, and Nana Xara was quick to point out he was not the type to lend any divine power to anyone under C rank.
More interesting to Mila, however, were several documents showing the Gale Clan’s guess about where Hira was located, as this allowed Mila to infer some very useful information.
Hira was assumed to be somewhere in the Palazin Galaxy Cluster, but the cluster was too large and the System would shroud the planet’s location for the next 72 years. The implication then was that it was standard to have invasion forces from around where new planets would appear, and this meant it was very easy to form grudges with future neighbors, something natives of worlds undergoing apocalypse style integrations would need to worry about.
Mila hadn’t asked Nana Xara about the rules of where invasion forces could come from or how they were chosen before, and she resolved to do so in the future.
There was also a lot of information about the assumed or confirmed generals and leaders of the various invasion forces, and Mila particularly liked the analysis of Morin Daal. It stated he was likely one of the most powerful leaders, what with his Legendary grade race and the extra racial abilities that gave him, but he was an idiot who his father was hoping would grow up by having to face the battlefield.
Finally, in the documentation Omalia hadn’t hidden, there was detailed information about the natives as well. They didn’t know where Roland was, thankfully, but they had pretty detailed information on the native forces in the center of the continent from around the time Mila was manipulating the rebel leader, meaning several of their scouts had snuck in without her knowing.
Altogether, the invasion forces could be thought of as five groups. First in power was the Kingdom of Night, with their two subordinate forces the Gale Clan and Flare Clan. They seemed to have invested the most into the conquest of Hira, the two forces other than the Gale Clan investing more than normal for an F++ rank world as well.
Next was the force of the Life Tree Empire and their two subordinate forces. They’d seemingly invested the bare minimum, not sending any of their true talents, but their bare minimum was better than the maximum of a D rank force like the Gale Clan under normal circumstances, so the Gale Clan considered them the largest danger.
Third then was the force of the Kingdom of Amoranth and their two subordinate clans. From what the Gale Clan could find, they’d invested more than normal for an F++ rank world, but not to the same degree as the forces of the Kingdom of Night.
Finally, the Kindar Raiders and the Albatino Merchant Union were independent forces whose goal was likely to use the environment of the world undergoing integration as a way to train their young talents, not actually aiming for the conquest of the planet or the contents of the Shadow Thief’s inheritance.
At least that is what Mila would have thought if she hadn’t seen the contents of Omalia’s hidden documents. After seeing them, however, she was very suspicious of the Kindar Raiders.
One of the documents showed an estimated guess of the location of the Kindar Raiders’ Pillar of Conquest as well as confirmed reports of some of their movements since the start of the integration, their force seeming to have scattered, with all their members individually training, while the other two showed confirmed reports of the Flare Clan investing quite a bit more than the main reports of the Gale Clan while the other contained reports from scouts who’d been trying to find the Undead.
When she was done reading through everything, Mila looked at Omalia and raised one of her eyebrows. “So, your family has betrayed the Gale Clan?”
