Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 138. Arakar’s Trump Card.
“I guess that negotiating with Azuresky won’t be too easy,” Laien said with a weak laugh. It wasn’t that he was concerned about negotiating with someone who didn’t hesitate to extract a bloody vengeance, but he had learned how much a darkness in one’s heart can change that person. He didn’t know how much the Warrior-King had been influenced by the events of three years ago or what he felt after the events of the no less bloodthirsty events of the Bloody Dusk from this year, so he couldn’t help but worry. After all, even though it might be easier to negotiate with someone who was obsessed with something, the probability of that person turning around and stabbing you in the back the moment it was convenient for him was that much higher, too.
“Not necessarily,” Raphael brought up, seeing that Laien’s expression turned gloomy. “Don’t you remember what I told you? Azuresky isn’t the man to easily break the law or throw his honor away and that much hasn’t changed. It’s been three years since he took the crown and apparently, his control over the Bolan Kingdom has reached terrifying levels. Moreover, by no means is all of that a simple result of his martial prowess and his anti-Ikarian stance,” he explained briefly, then laughed as he realized something and asked with a smirk.
“Don’t tell me you went with your gut feeling while proposing to ally with the Holy Union to Elder Samuel? Why do you think he never questioned your idea? If you were to ask me, I think Elder Samuel would have reached out to the Holy Union on his own in twenty or thirty more years, as soon as our generation of experts finished growing their strength,” he pointed out casually, all the while looking at Laien with an amused smile on his face.
“Umh,” Laien smiled awkwardly and looked away, his cheeks growing rosy. “No comment,” he said while scratching the back of his head. Yes, he had gone with his gut feeling, but so what? Wasn’t it all fine if it worked out in the end? Though, it really was quite silly of him to have never thought about this matter too deeply; he needed to admit that before himself.
While everyone chuckled, Raphael collected himself the earliest and picked up the subject from a second ago. “You know, I think you will do just fine with the Warrior-King. Apart from the news that he is leading the Holy Union into their golden age in all military, economic, and social aspects, it’s known that he heavily favors young talents, even more so than other rulers. If it’s the two of you who are going to join the negotiations, then they will most likely go well,” he said with a fair degree of confidence. He might not have as much real-life experience as Laien or Yin, but he had learned a lot about the world and its current political affairs. In this subject, he was definitely more well-versed than either of them.
“That’s reassuring to hear,” Laien said happily, albeit with his face still burning from embarrassment. He had really approached the matter of alliance with the Holy Union far too lightly, but thankfully, he was surrounded by capable adults who took all factors into consideration. Also, he was lucky that this part of his idea was so uncontroversial that Elder Samuel didn’t question it at all. Else, that crafty man would have surely forced them to hand over some more benefits in exchange for agreeing to the deal.
“Mhm,” Raphael nodded his head. Then, after a few seconds of relative silence, he spoke up again since it seemed that no one else would. “How about I tell you a few more things about the Holy Union and its inner workings, then we all go ahead and sleep? After we’re all done with the morning training session, we can spend the rest of the day as we like,” he proposed straightforwardly. They had decided that they would sleep through the night normally every second day, so he didn’t intend to break this routine, though they already did manage to cut down on the night-time by a bit. Maybe it would be better if they slept in for a bit longer this time around?
“Okay,” Laien agreed after a brief consideration, and so did the other three. They would have left sleeping for later if they only had one day and a few hours left to spend together, but since they had worked out a way to increase that time considerably, they weren’t under as much pressure anymore.
Like that, the five of them spent around two hours more talking, then went to sleep after agreeing to simply get up when they felt rested enough. As a result, it was only two hours left until the noon when Laien and Yin finished their Combined Soul Realm training session. However, none of the five of them minded that their usual schedule was delayed by around three hours since they had already taken it into consideration. Thanks to that, they managed to spend the rest of the morning and the afternoon in an enjoyable way, sparring, playing, and eating tasty food throughout the day.
In the evening, however, as the five of them were playing a card game inside the same large house they spent every night in, Sirius came over and interrupted them.
“Sorry to disturb you, but I’ll have to borrow Arslan, Laien, and Yin for at least an hour,” Sirius said apologetically. He didn’t want to disturb the boys when they were enjoying themselves, but it was important for the three little masters to be briefed into the details of their endeavor.
Using the opportunity, Raphael brought up calmly. “Will Elder Samuel also be at the place you’re taking them to? Since we have some time, I’d like to go and see him with Mika.”
“No, he won’t,” Sirius replied without delay, though he had his own suspicions after seeing the unconcerned attitude of both Raphael’s and Mikaela’s. It was almost as if they expected him to come around this time, so he couldn’t help but ask, “Elder Samuel should be in his quarters now, but before anything else, let me as you one thing. Did those rascals tell you everything?”
“Everything?” Mikaela asked back with a playful smile. “Depends what you mean by ‘everything’, grandpa. If it’s about Laien and Yin leaving to the Holy Union tomorrow morning and all of that, then yeah,” he said lightheartedly, then laughed when he noticed the kind of look that appeared on Sirius’s face.
And as stunned as Sirius was by Mikaela’s carefree attitude, he still muttered, “Grandpa…” By the looks of it, the psychological shock this one word caused him to feel was quite immense. Even though he was almost a thousand years old, he was a distinguished water-element spiritual master and a skilled healer recognized for his skills in the entire Arkaria. He had been called many things in his life and he knew of many pejoratives used to describe him behind his back, but this was the first time anyone had the guts to call him a grandpa face-to-face! And in such an innocent way that meant no harm, too! It was far more painful of a blow than if someone was trying to anger him!
Did… did he really look that old? Maybe he should have considered doing the same thing as Jasmine and preserving his youthful appearance at the cost of a few years of his life?
“Grandpa, is something wrong?” Mikaela asked after a few seconds, no longer laughing or chuckling. “You look really pale, do you need to sit down?” he added questioningly, suddenly feeling worried for the old man. Did he start feeling weak all of the sudden? If he was overworking himself, then he should really take some time to rest and sleep or at least take a good and long nap!
Sirius opened his mouth, but as no words to respond with came to his mind, he closed it soon afterwards. “Uhg, no, I’m fine,” he said helplessly a few seconds later. He could see that Mikaela was honestly concerned for him, so he couldn’t bear to rebuke him in any way for calling him a grandpa.
“Really?” Mikaela asked, still not quite convinced. Sirius really was looking not all that well! “You should rest some before you collapse, grandpa. You need to take care of your health,” he said with disarming seriousness and concern, causing Sirius’s face to twitch as his expression turned all the more weird. To top it off, the four friends of his who had been holding back this entire time finally couldn’t bear it any longer and burst out laughing.
“Grandpa…!” Laien chortled, half-trying to suppress his laughs with one hand while holding his stomach with the other. This was too priceless! He should have thought of addressing Sirius in this way earlier, but even if he did, it wouldn’t have had nearly as good of an effect as Mikaela’s totally innocent spectacle!
“Grandpa Sirius, huh,” Yin said while chuckling. It was true that if one just looked at Sirius without considering his background, especially when one thought of how much this old man liked to play the role of the coachman, then he was a bona fide grandpa! Mikaela truly was on the mark with this whole thing, it was just too good!
On the other hand, while Raphael and Arslan were similarly amused, Mikaela looked to be somewhat bewildered. Had something amusing happened when he wasn’t paying attention? If so, then he really wished they would explain it to him too instead of laughing on their own.
Faced with this whole scene, Sirius felt like he was going to get angry for a second, but in the end he merely let out a resigned sigh. “Enough of this foolishness. The three of you, come with me. As for you two, go ahead and take care of your things with Elder Samuel. On our side, we’ll try to get everything done quickly so you can spend most of the night together since Laien and Yin will be leaving in the morning,” he said as calmly as he could, suddenly feeling that the more kids there were, the harder it was to deal with them, and exponentially so.
“Thanks, grandpa,” Mikaela said with a smile, thus making Sirius almost fall over flat on the floor. However, as there was not even a little bit of malicious intent in Mikaela’s voice or in his eyes, Sirius couldn’t find it in himself to actually reprimand the silver-haired youth. Alas, a vein did bulge out on his forehead when he saw the other four kids holding back their laughs once again. However, he could only chew on his tongue as his conscience stopped him from getting angry, all due to the bewildered look that was present on Mikaela’s innocent face.
“Ah, come on now, get going,” he said helplessly and gestured the boys to get up. He sighed with relief when he saw that the five did just that without prolonging this painful conversation and led the way outside. After Laien, Yin, and Arslan exchanged a few words with Raphael and Mikaela, he led them towards the house Jasmine and the others were waiting in while the other two youths headed towards the fort on the uppermost part of the mountainside.
“Here you are,” Jasmine greeted the arriving four with a smile. “Took you long enough. You do remember Zaban, do you not? This shouldn’t be the first time you’re seeing those two either,” she mentioned and pointed towards the two men sitting near General Julien. According to Laien’s memory, they were the squad leaders from Julien’s Cherubim, with each of them leading eleven others from the elite squad in battle.
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“And then there’s those five,” she gestured towards the three men and two women standing behind Julien’s seat. “They are Julien’s lieutenants and they will be responsible for leading one hundred men each during our operation. However, by the continent’s standards, their abilities are equal to that of above-average Generals, so do not underestimate them,” she introduced straightforwardly, after what the five nodded towards the group of three youths.
“That being said,” she added with a meaningful smile. “I can guess you don’t want to spend too much time here as we pulled you away from your new friends, so I’ll try to make it as compact as possible,” she said with a laugh. Knowing the personalities of those three, and especially of Laien, she could tell that a meeting of this kind wasn’t exactly among their list of the most favorite things to do.
“It’s okay,” Yin mentioned after exchanging a brief glance with Laien. “We already promised to spend more time together in the Holy Union after everything’s done, so you can be thorough in this meeting. Still, we will appreciate if it doesn’t turn out to be pointlessly long,” he said with a laugh. It was important for them to learn everything that was to learn to increase the chances of both the negotiations and the battle-oriented part of their plan that would come afterwards, but at the same time, there was no need to beat around the bush or repeat the same things many times over.
“Hoh.” Jasmine nodded, satisfied with what she was hearing. She knew well of the kind of a status Raphael and Mikaela had in the Ruishi Federation, so she wouldn’t oppose to any idea that involved this bunch spending more time together. “Good, the three of you can go ahead and sit on that sofa. Then, we will go through brief introductions and get straight to the heart of things,” she instructed straightforwardly and sure enough, their meeting started off a few breaths’ worth of time later.
“You know me already,” Julien said with a smile. The purpose of those introductions was a bit broader than simply to allow the boys to learn everyone’s names, so he continued. “I’m a peak lightning-element martial master of the fifth rank and I will be directly leading my unit of twelve Cherubim and commanding the whole thirty-six of us in order to protect the three of you as we travel,” he informed briefly, seeing no need to be excessively detailed about the tactics and combinations they were going to employ while performing their task.
“I’m Jordan,” the man sitting next to Julien said calmly. “I’m a fire-element martial master of the fifth rank and I will be directing a unit of twelve directly under Julien,” he said with a slight smile, following Julien’s example and not getting into any of the details.
“I’m Mark,” the second man said hoarsely. “I’m a wind-element martial master of the fifth rank. I’ll be leading the second unit of twelve under General Julien,” he concluded simply.
“As for those five,” Julien picked up again and glanced over his shoulder. “They will roam around and assist us as the need is. It shouldn’t be necessary, but just in case I’d like you to remember their appearances and names so you can easily call them in case something unexpected happens,” he explained and had the five introduce themselves in a brief manner.
“Zaldoc, fire-element martial master of the fifth rank and a spiritual master of the third rank.”
“Ellie, fire-element spiritual master of the fifth rank and a martial master of the third rank.”
“Rodvick, fire-element marital and spiritual master of the fourth rank.”
“Linya, water-element martial master of the fifth rank. Do call for me if you need urgent healing. My unit numbers the most water-element practitioners.”
“Zalar, wind-element martial master of the fifth rank.”
Although the trio of youths already knew that the quality of the Ruishi Federation’s practitioners was exceptionally high, they still couldn’t help but be amazed. All those people could be considered the cream of the crop in almost any place around the world, but here they were all Julien’s subordinates! Undoubtedly, they were also quite a bit stronger than average experts of their rank. Julien himself had proved to have enough strength to fight toe-to-toe with Victoria, a martial master of the seventh rank, so it would be surprising if his men wouldn’t boast similar ability to fight above their own level.
After a moment of silence, which the three boys sent appreciating the strength of Julien’s group, Zaban spoke up in a neutral-sounding tone.
“You can probably guess it, but Grand Yimar Mustafa didn’t object to your plans and intends to work with you to make them succeed. During the next days, I will be responsible for controlling the information network of our people and coordinating us with the agents from the Ruishi Federation. When the time comes, I will stick close to the three of you and inform you and your protectors about any potential dangers or deviations what we are expecting to happen.”
As longish as this explanation was, it was sensible enough and the three boys nodded in understanding, committing this information to their memory.
“As for the four of us,” Jasmine follow up without wasting any time. “After I return with Laien and Yin, we will all travel together within one of the groups of refugees. Naturally, we will be going incognito as to keep up the pretense of sneaking through to the Holy Union,” she stated without explaining too much. She trusted that the three boys remembered all of their plans well enough for her not to need to bring them up repeatedly, and judging by the calm looks they had on their faces, she was right in this assumption of hers.
“As you might recall,” she added with a wry smile. “Those nobles you extorted will be traveling alongside us, but with only a few personal guards of theirs as to not attract too much attention. The presence of Julien’s men will already provide us with enough adults, as the plan is for us to be amongst one of the groups of children that wouldn’t be going to battle, but heading to the Holy Union with us,” she explained and looked Arslan in the eye. It was mainly because of his request that the Prophet had agreed to let children and some of their caretakers head away instead of taking part in the assault on the Guode Yimarate’s capital. Coincidentally enough, this proved to be very convenient for their own plans, so not only had Arslan done a good deed, but he had also increased the chances of success for their own plans.
However, even though she wasn’t about to mention it at the moment, there were few things in the world that came without a price attached to them. In this case, the price was that those kids, despite being able to enjoy a partial protection of Julien’s men, would be put in danger once the battle with the units sent by Yimar Maar erupted. The other groups of children would also be put in danger of being wiped off just in case Arslan was actually hiding amongst them with one or two powerful guards, so in truth, they might have saved those kids from one danger, but they had immediately thrown them into another one.
“That much is simple enough,” Laien said with a smile. “Do we need to know anything else about that part of the plan…? Let’s just call it ‘the escort’ to make it simpler,” he inquired, wondering how far had the escort been planned and how detailed those plans were.
“Nothing much,” Jasmine replied straightforwardly. “The coordination between all the parties involved will be handled by us, so there’s no need for you to concern yourselves. Do understand, I recognize your fighting strength and your ability to come up with great ideas, but as far as pure battle plans and army management goes, there’s little you can possibly help with,” she explained consolingly, her gaze focusing on the duo of Laien and Yin. She knew that those two were quite prideful individuals, though it was a lot more obvious in Laien’s case as he showed his emotions much more openly than Yin, so she didn’t want to unintentionally annoy them for no reason.
“Yeah, we get it,” Laien said with a laugh. He couldn’t say that he didn’t understand where Jasmine was coming from, but he wasn’t one to overestimate his own ability. He could take up a challenge, but realistically speaking, he knew little to nothing about leading hundreds of men and coordinating tens of thousands or even more of them all at once. That was why he hadn’t even tried to get himself involved in the preparations that had been going on for the past five days; he knew that his meddling would have been more trouble than it was worth.
“I’m happy to hear that,” Jasmine said, both her smile and the look in her eyes becoming a level warmer. She couldn’t utter a complaint about the talent or ability of those two boys, but their characters were sometimes hard to handle. Thus, she was glad to see that they knew when to take a step back and not try to manage everything by themselves. “If you have no questions about what we spoke about so far, we could get to the topic to our negotiations with the Holy Union?” she inquired and sent the three boys a questioning look, letting them have a moment to think about the answer.
After giving it some thought, the Laien, Yin, and Arslan all exchanged a glance before Laien replied with a smile. “We’re good, so let’s move on.”
“Very well,” Jasmine said contentedly. They had gotten over the first part of this meeting easily enough and without any hiccups, what pleased her greatly. What was left was quite some speaking and then a discussion, so as she already expected everyone’s opinions to clash, she could relax and allow the arguments to happen. After all, without arguing their points they wouldn’t be able to come up with the best ideas and just like she mused a moment ago, she really did value the creativity of those three a lot. To be honest, she even came to expect the two of Laien and Yin to come up with a controversial and yet plausible idea that would surprise her and everybody else.
“Right, before we begin,” she brought up, looking like she had suddenly remembered something important. “I will repeat it again when we are done, but we expect Abdain, Yimar Maar’s Sword of Rala, to be the one sent to capture Arslan. The man is a martial master of the sixth rank and is a very powerful earth-element practitioner. However, if the one who comes ends up being Arakar, the Great Prophet’s Sword of Rala, then casualties on our side will be inevitable,” she warned sternly, her attitude turning incredibly serious in an instant.
“As you three know, Arakar is a light-element martial master of the seventh rank and he is the one who damaged Mustafa’s Qi Origin. In a one-on-one fight, none of us here can possibly match him. In terms of pure combat prowess, he is a fair bit weaker than Mustafa was, but the new technique he had developed is extremely deadly. It was the more so dangerous when it was still unknown, but now we at least know how to more or less guard against it,” she elaborated, her voice involuntarily filling with a sense of hatred and frustration. This topic was a sensitive one to all of the White Guards, but it was the more true for the likes of her and Reian, who were close to Mustafa on the personal level.
As for how painful to listen about it surely was to Arslan, that didn’t even need to be mentioned. Yet, it appeared that Arslan was keeping his cool rather well as the expression on his face had changed only ever so slightly. “Being amongst friends who are roughly his age was really good for him. I feared that his health was going to be permanently scarred, but it looks like he had dealt with the pain,” Jasmine thought to herself, the look in her eyes turning into a gentle one. The friendships Arslan made here in Eulene were perhaps the biggest prize he could have obtained. Not only would his friends be more than capable of helping him out if need be in the future, but the relationships they established with Arslan would be extremely beneficial to Arslan’s mental development.
“As for what you three need to know,” Jasmine followed up. She took out a full-body portrait of a youthful-looking man with waist-long, silky hair and handed it over to the boys, then continued. “If you see this white-haired man during the battle, you must stay more than five hundred meters away from him at all times. He can cross up to three hundred meters with his Light Steps in virtually a blink of an eye, while the range of his new technique is estimated to be one hundred meters in diameter,” she warned, her attitude quickly returning to the serious one.
“And as for what that technique is called, Arakar apparently mentioned it to Mustafa after wounding him,” she said while trying to keep her frustration in check. She was angry at the mere thought, but she didn’t want to show it to Arslan and everyone else. Thus, she took a few seconds to take a deep breath and only then said with a mixture of respect and hatred in her voice.
“What Arakar used was a domain-type ability which he called ‘the Phantasmal Domain of Scattered Light’.”