Nero watched with a smiling expression as the convoy left. He gave Fril a sign and he closed the gate. Fril looked like an old man who had a crooked back and always walked bent over.

While the Combined Magic of Ester, Ramor, and Fril was very good at disguising a person and suppressing their aura, it was not all-powerful.

It could not completely remodel the person and had to match the basic structure of the body. Still, it was already an extremely impressive disguise.

Next to Nero was Xersies, who looked like the mayor. Xersies had the advantage that he already looked human-like and he was a light mage, so he could create illusions well. Light magic was not as effective at cloaking and deception as dark magic, but it also has its profundities in it. That's why Nero let him take over as the mayor.

When the gate was finally too much and Enos and his companions were out of sight, the smile disappeared from Nero's face and was replaced with a cold thoughtful expression.

Unfortunately, the villagers did not have much information from the world that helped Nero in his goal. They had questioned and tortured him long and hard, and of course, Ester used his magic to search for their memories but it was in vain. Unfortunately, the village was very isolated and had little to do with the outside world, so there wasn't really any useful information known by the locals.

But the messengers sent by the great city were quite different. They had a huge amount of knowledge, about the country, politics, and, of course, magic.

Nero learned that this world has its own magic system and the magic was divided into six different ranks:

Rank one was called demi, rank two were called warlocks, rank three were masters, rank four were ancients, rank five nobles, and rank six were called messiahs.

If Nero and the Polykenas were also classified in this way, then Nero was at the top of rank five and his five generals were in the middle rank five.

Of course, there were a few other Polykenas who were nobles too, but most were between rank three and rank four. In fact, rank one Polykenas were rarer than even rank five because Polykenas are born directly as warlocks.

But what confused Nero the most were the situations of the universities.

If magic was really divided into different ranks, then by using and absorbing the Black Crystals Nero would rise in rank. In doing so, the first one he found was by far the most powerful, giving him an instant push to rank four. Nero did not understand how exactly these crystals are formed, but on his home planet was quite a large vein.

The Polykenas on the other hand, rise in rank the more chaos energy they released and absorbed. Most of the energy goes to the hatchery, but a small part is absorbed by the Polykenas themselves, making them stronger and more powerful and rising in magic.

But in this world, people seem to increase their magic through training, but in order to increase and improve their rank, they have to be in a certain region.

These regions are claimed by universities, which are especially created to help young and also old mages to advance. There are also many differences there. There are more than 50 universities in the entire country, but only in a handful can you advance from rank three to rank four. It doesn't seem to be possible in the others. Nero couldn't figure out the reason for that yet.

Actually, Nero wanted to capture Enos and his entourage for more information as well and read their memories, but Enos and his partner had quite a strong aura. From the messengers, he knew who Enos was, but he also knew that he was quite strong and only one step ahead of Nero's rank.

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They could have successfully captured the two, but it would have caused quite a stir and Nero didn't know what options Enos had to send a message to the people in the capital.

In general, he understood very little about this world. There were only a few nobles, but somehow his spy could still be overpowered and caught or even killed. Lors, the spy he had sent to this planet ahead of time, was also rank five, so either one of the city lords personally made a move, or there were rank fives on this world when the messengers knew about.

It was a shame that he had to let Enos go, but it was already a huge risk to ambush the messengers.

Nero went to the square and saw all the kids and parents playing and fooling around. He whistled lightly and immediately they stopped,

"You can go back now, defend the wall and let me know immediately if anyone moves outside."

With a wave of his hand, he sent the Polykenas scattering around the square away. It was not a perfect disguise, the children had some peculiarities that could be seen if you look closely, but because the Polykenas were running all the time, Enos could not find anything peculiar about them.

Nero had stationed them here so that in case of emergency, they were immediately ready to slaughter the companions.

Xersies, who was still in disguise as the mayor, sighed,

"How do we want to proceed?"

From one of the adjacent houses came a tall muscular man and an old and thin one, they were Shire and Ramor. The two walked to Nero and silently walked beside them, also eager to know how they were going to continue.

Nero was silent for a moment and waited until they arrived and then answered Xersies question,

"Enos and the others will probably return home for now and tell the mayor of their town what they heard from us. They will put out a high alert, assuming that it is Reils in the forest who have broken the truce. This means they will send a small army into the forest and search for them. We will lure them deep into it and then ambush them. By we, I mean you, of course. You will then attack them and slaughter them and make them believe that you are Reils. The survivors will then report it and remove all doubt."

Shire frowned,

"But then won't they just go and ask the Reils about it?"

Ramor analyzed,

"And the Reils will deny it, of course. But will the humans believe it? Of course not. After that, the humans will believe that the Reils have a plan and are up to something. The Reils will believe that the humans want to find a reason to attack them and will start to gather their forces on the border, which will further reinforce the humans in their belief. And before you know it, war will break out."

Nero laughed lightly,

"As expected from the Ramor, exactly right. The borders are guarded to the teeth and normally there is nothing and no one who can cross them unnoticed, so the Reils will absolutely doubt that any of them would have crossed the border, let alone one of the nobles who are being closely watched. This will lead them to send more Reils to the border, which the humans will interpret as preparation for an attack. Of course, you can't leave the elves out of it completely. I don't know much about the elven situation, but there are only two possible ways the elves will react. Either they will attack while the two armies are already fighting, or, more likely, they will wait until a clear victor emerges from the battle and attack him before he can recover and properly digest the spoils of war. This should become an absolute all-out battle that will not stop until one emerges victorious. And then, we will finally make our move.

I have to admit, this planet is dangerous because there are exactly three beings more powerful than I am and we don't know how many are still hiding, but we are extremely lucky that the planet's balance of power is so unstable, and only the slightest push can make the rock roll and cause a catastrophe."

"What are we going to do about the three messiahs?" asked Xersies,

"Well, I hope that they will crush each other in the air, but we are probably not that lucky. I have too little information to judge the power of the three kings and make precise plans, but we will get it once the big battle starts. We can still decide how to proceed after that. If the power difference is too great and we don't have a chance, we can't do anything else but put this planet aside and look for a new one."

Thoughtfully, Nero walked on. Nero shook his head and pushed the plans to the back of his mind for now,

"But before that, we must first prepare our little attack in the forest. At least three of you need to come along so the Reils are sure it can't be any of them. If it's just one noble, then it could be that he somehow escaped the Reils' radar and is working on his own, but if it's three, then there's no way they could have left the country unnoticed."