Elena and co. stood in front of the entrance to the General’s base. “How should we proceed from now on?” Elena asked, looking at a swaying leaf of a tree a few centimeters away from her face. A small insect was climbing up on it. A frown formed on Elena’s face as she flicked it away, “I don’t like insects, it seems,” she commented upon noticing Audrey and Dred looking at her.

“No woman would like them,” Audrey shook her head as a shudder ran through her back.

“I can’t really disagree with that. So?” Elena asked for the second time.

Closing his eyes, Dred used his Sense while saying, “To be honest, I don’t know this General, but if the Emperor managed to win so many battles without fault and take over three Kingdoms in a few years, then I believe that he and the General aren't idiots. This makes me believe that this General wouldn’t talk even if we tortured him, so the best option would be to check their computers for possible information, though storing the location of your Emperor seems like a useless and stupid idea, trying never hurts.”

“I believe that only a few confidential people know of his location or maybe only the General. And if torturing doesn’t work, we need a new method,” he concluded the matter at hand.

Crossing her arms in front of her chest, Elena started thinking since she was the only one with some knowledge of mind related Magic. After a whole minute of silence, a smile formed on her face as she snapped her fingers. “Gotcha! I think that this will work, but it’s a bit risky. Either way, this is our best shot. If it doesn’t work, we will have to use the barbaric method and try to get it out of him with force.”

“What is it?” Audrey asked as she leaned closer in her strong curiosity.

“You will see it later. Since there is only one person in the room that should serve as a control room. If the person inside isn’t the General, try to get information out of him,” Dred replied as he finished sensing the whole underground base.

“Why me? You two could go and I could see Elena’s Magic,” Audrey furrowed her brows, trying to get her ‘ticket’ to a good show.

“It is likely that I’d have to deal with computers, which I have no knowledge of unlike you,” Dred reasoned, destroying Audrey’s chances completely. Slumping her shoulders, she turned into her Shadow Form and entered the base.

“You too are curious, aren’t you?” Elena asked with a chuckle.

“Of course! I too like Magic. I never said that I didn’t,” he too chuckled as they followed Audrey.

Stopping in the hall, they spotted the General in the middle of the mass of people, while Audrey went towards the control room with much displeasure. Entering the General’s shadow, Elena started copying the contents of his mind into Ekilsta. If only I could simply access the knowledge in Ekilsta, I wouldn’t have to bother with any of this… but that would be too unfair against the universe, I guess. Fucking Ancestor and its rules, she cursed in her mind.

A sudden stinging pain filled her head as if she was being punished by a higher being… Still, fuck you! She thought with annoyance.

When Ekilsta finished with the General, Elena whispered to Dred with the help of Wind Magic in a very low voice, “Use necromancy.” Since the General was speaking, nobody heard her. She used her Mana to attack the General’s mind, who barely had any kind of Magical Resistance.

When her Mana overloaded a nerve in his brain, he died on the spot and blanked out for a moment and stopped in the middle of his words. Elena used her shadow to keep his body standing. Dred brought him back to life with necromancy and then Elena loaded everything into his mind from Ekilsta. Furrowing his brow, he shook his head and continued his words, not even noticing his sudden death and his change of race from human to undead.

Leaving the base, Dred questioned Elena’s motives. Sitting down on the ground, a smile formed on her face as she started to explain herself, “You remember when I killed that guard at Gautama’s mansion and we used necromancy on him? With Ekilsta he remembered everything and ‘returned’ to life, in a way. Undead can’t use external Magic, so if the General tried it, he would fail. That would definitely alert him.”

“Yeah, he had Mana in his body, so he must have been a Magician too, though a very weak one,” Dred agreed with her.

Nodding her head, Elena continued, “Mages are always rotating their Mana in their bodies, just like you or I do. I’m quite sure that I wouldn’t notice it either if my cells started devouring it in small amounts, not to mention this low-level Mage. As you know, I can’t withdraw information from his mind I have no knowledge of. So for example, let’s say that I want to know what his childhood was like.”

“I can’t withdraw such information from his mind with Ekilsta since I don’t know about it. I know that he is a guy, so I could withdraw that knowledge from his mind in his current state.”

Tilting his head to the side, Dred asked, “And what about input?”

A grin formed on Elena’s face as she said, “That’s exactly what I thought of. I can input anything I know into his mind, but if it clashed with his general knowledge, he would notice the new information and get alerted. I mean, let’s say that I input my whole life into his mind. Would you not get alerted if the whole life of a person appeared in your mind just like ‘poof’?”

“I would,” Dred nodded his head.

“It would make him start thinking about me, which would be bad. Firstly, I should find out if he knew anything about me or not. If he did, then I’ll have to make him forget about me or us and if he didn’t then I’ll have to make him think of us as allies he can trust,” she said, pulling up her legs and resting her chin on her knees. Closing her eyes, she used her bacteria to listen in on the commander’s words.

Her Wisdom wasn’t as high as Audrey’s, so she was a bit slower when it came to learning, but she understood most of his words. If he used words like girl, woman, black hair, wyvern, she would definitely notice that he was talking about their group. To spend time wisely, she started to learn their language on a higher level, while still listening to the General.

“I’ll go and check on Audrey,” Dred said, seeing her focusing on the device in her hand.

“Okay,” she muttered, almost ignoring him completely. Nudging her side with his nose, he said, “You should watch your surroundings more. Your focus is great, but try to divide it a bit.”

“Huh? Oh, it’s true. I’ll try to change on that,” she replied with a blank face.

Raising her head, a sudden realization hit Elena’s head, if somebody went back to the control room, the General must know about it. I should make him forget it. She sneaked into the base and after focusing on Ekilsta, she slowly deleted the General’s memories about the technician.

“Why are we still standing here? Let’s go quickly!” he shouted with a sudden realization on his face. Walking towards the wall, he pressed a tiny tile and a hidden passageway opened in front of him. Nobody dared to question his choice, so they just entered without muttering as much as a complaint. Dred and Audrey left the control room at the same time and joined the General’s shadow with Elena.

The dim headlights lit up the narrow passageway in a yellow light. It’s good that I came down, Elena thought. After a few hundred meters, the passageway turned into an underground hangar. The General pressed a red button on the wall. The lights turned red and the ceiling split into two halves. Everyone entered the aircraft in an orderly manner, which easily had enough space for fifty people.

Two technicians took their seats at the front room of the aircraft and took off. When they left the base, the roof closed once again and hid everything. The red button the General used turned on the defense system. If anyone entered the base now, it would blow up and kill everyone inside. The only problem was that Elena and co. were with them.

“Do we go to the B base?” one of the pilots asked.

“Of course, that’s the protocol. Just follow it,” he nodded his gray head. Elena has been pressuring him with her Mana ever since she ‘killed’ him, which tired his mind out. Rubbing his eyes, he sat down in his chair and yawned loudly, “I’ll take a short nap, don’t bother me unless it’s something important. I have to be well rested if we are going to do this.”

“Yes!”

When the General fell into a half-asleep state, Elena entered an idea about herself into the General’s mind. Even if he didn’t know anything about me, that much wouldn’t hurt, she thought. As a result, he couldn’t help but open his eyes wide and think aloud, “What if that monster and those Magicians came from that portal? Could it be that the other side is filled with those kinds of creatures and people? If that was true, we are in big trouble!”

One of the pilots turned around and looked at him with surprise. They obviously knew of the portal since their satellites recorded the whole scene. Gulping loudly, he said, “Shouldn’t we take defensive measurements in that case?”

Nodding his head, the General replied, “If that’s really the case, it’s best if we retreat on all fronts and reconsider our tactics. Who knows? Our visitors might destroy the other Kingdoms for us.” His expression changed to a thoughtful one as he muttered, “I should notify the Emperor and send a few spies through the portal.”

If Elena had a face in her current form, she would definitely grin. So you do know about us. It’s good to know, but it makes things a little harder. I’ll have to think of a good way to earn his trust, she thought.

The General contacted the Emperor and told him his newfound idea and the possibility of powerful opponents. Although the Emperor’s face wasn’t visible on the completely dark screen, his voice conveyed his self-confidence and filled the General’s heart with assurance.

“Our emperor is amazing,” the other pilot commented when their chat was finished.

“Indeed, his plans have been perfect from start to end and we have won every single battle. Except for the God Peak Mountain front and the last… incident,” the General agreed with him, furrowing his brows while mentioning the latest turn of events. When the General took a short nap, Audrey and Dred knocked out the pilots. Considering that they hadn’t done anything since the flight started, it was clear that they didn’t have anything important to do.

Resting her hands on the backrest of the General’s chair, Elena leaned forward, close to his face. “How peaceful you are while we are supposedly coming for you. Don’t you feel guilty?” she chuckled in a low voice.

“Let’s see~ You will forget that you have ever seen anything related to the portal and you will forget everything that happened after it. When you wake up, you will want to meet the Emperor instead to talk about an ancient formation you found at the God Peak Mountain front. You will know that it needs human blood to work and that you can’t contact him through any device because the people of Drung Kingdom are listening in on your channels with a new technology.”

“You will remember to a black haired girl, called Elena, but you don’t know her face or what she looks like. You will feel sad and remorse because you don’t remember her, even though she was your best childhood friend. You will want to do anything to reconcile with her,” she whispered into his ear, slowly changing and configuring his mind to her needs.

When finished, she stood up with a straight back and sighed loudly, “This is fucking tiring. If not for having almost zero Magical Resistance compared to my Wisdom, I don’t think that I could have changed so many things.”

Feeling concerned, she crossed her fingers, “I hope that it will work and my ‘settings’ won’t clash with either of his memories from his past.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have added that part about yourself,” Audrey commented with a frown on her face. “Why do you even need it? We can dispose of this guy once we find the Emperor.”

Scratching the back of her head, she answered, “This might be the best chance for me to test how my idea works. I could focus on nothing but the end result or I could try something bigger!”

“You should have just done this with some random weakling instead,” Dred remarked.

“Well, I could do it with these pilots, but the only problem is that I can’t use Ekilsta elsewhere at the moment or the General would turn brain dead…” she replied, brushing her black hair to the side, her eyes shining with a strange glint. The aircraft was flying quite close to the ground, probably to make it harder to notice. They flew past a swarm of birds when a thoughtful expression appeared on Elena’s face.

“What if… What if I tried to create something like a hivemind? A place where Ekilsta could store the memories of each person separately or better yet, split its consciousness into numerous parts?”

“Although that sounds great, it won’t change the fact that only Ekilsta can control them,” Audrey brought up the first problem.

“So you should upgrade Ekilsta too,” Dred added in her stead.

“Geh, easy to say! How the hell do I do it?” Elena shook her head.

“Maybe try to level up your Demon form so that your Summon would have a stronger effect.”

“Oh, good idea, Dred, why did I never think of it?” she shook her head, questioning herself.

“Want to guess?” Audrey asked with a smile.

“What?”

“Well, we haven’t slept ever since leaving our Dunk planet. You may try to cover up your tiredness, but I’ll see through you anyway. We have been together for quite a long time now,” she replied, patting Elena’s shoulder.

Rubbing her eyes, she answered, “It’s true that I’m very tired, but I can’t rest just yet. We will have a biiiig relax time when we are finished with this, alright? I’m sorry for pressuring you too.”

“Well, we did meditate on Dred’s back, which helped us a lot and I could have stayed back to train Cor and sleep a bit too. But it’s still Dred who has it the worst, so it’s no wonder that he stopped talking again,” Audrey replied with a chuckle.

“Ah, shit. I almost forgot to remove the ‘forgotten childhood friend Elena’ memories from his mind. I’ll test it later on someone else,” she said as a sudden realization hit her. After correcting her mistake, she entered the General’s shadow along with Audrey and Dred. The pilots woke up a good three minutes later and hurriedly collected themselves after seeing that everything was okay.

“Shit, we fell asleep. It’s good that the General didn’t notice it,” the first pilot rubbed the back of his head, feeling a slight amount of pain.

“Shh, what if he woke up and heard you?”

“Why is it that when somebody starts hushing others it will be the loudest?”

“I’m sorry.”

The General woke up ten minutes later and asked how close they were to the Emperor.

“What? We are traveling to the B location, following the protocol as the General sai-”

“What are you talking about?! We should be moving towards the Emperor! I have important matters to share with him.”

“But-!”

“No buts! Turn towards his location this instant!” he shouted at them, seeing that they were trying to disobey his commands. Although they were just trying to prove their innocence, seeing that the General was angry, they shut their mouths and did as told.

Ah~ Ranks, titles and social standings are great, after all, Elena thought, feeling happy that she didn’t have to do anything to solve the matter at hand. Let’s see what this Emperor will do when I knock on his front door, she thought with a chuckle as a grinning face of shadow formed in the General’s shadow.

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