Personal Mission
"The Preferential Light Justice Sect has become aware of the problems that the leader of the mission on our side has still sent a strong force of disciples against the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect's Commander at the Little Lake. In the name and the honor of the Preferential Honores Sect, the entire sect would like to apologize to Commander Ciemnosc."
“Next, we would like to inform Commander Ciemnosc that the Sect Master, Yolin, will now be dictating some of the measures that the Preferential Light Justice Sect will take and hope the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect would gladly receive.”
“First, in order to demonstrate our sincere apologies and our regret for the losses you have suffered, as we have also taken extensive collateral damage from other major organizations… The Sect Master has ordered all troops to stop attacking the Little Lake altogether indefinitely. There will still be the sending of our troops into the center of the Region, but it will no longer be so with the intention of targeting the Little Lake… without the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect’s cooperation.”
“Second, the leader of our mission within the central territory of the Region will be betrothed to Commander Ciemnosc, and if necessary, her assistant Yeri will even be granted to Commander Ciemnosc as a concubine. Miss Lena has already been notified, and despite an initial refusal, she has come to accept her fate for breaking our sects’ agreement.”
“Thirdly, the Preferential Light Justice Sect hopes that when the time comes, in 1 month, for the Craftsmanship carnival to arrive, Commander Ciemnosc will take his time to make a few extra contracts with outsiders from your sect just like in the past. The Sect Master would really like to let the sect become a buyer for Commander Ciemnosc’s marvelous creations and medicine if possible.”
“Err… Well, that’s it.” After reading through the whole letter, Schnell folded the letter once again and passed it over to Ciemnosc, who took it and stored it in his Cover Space bags for later to burn it down. He then faced the faces of everyone in the room before asking lightly, “What does everyone think? Ah, it doesn’t matter. These are my matters it seems. I’ll deal with them as they come.”
With that, Ciemnosc stood up, and without him needing to say anything, everyone else stood up and bowed towards him as he turned around and walked out of the room. This was basically one of the ways that Ciemnosc would make it clear that the meeting was over unless someone else had something important to say. As such, he lightly said right before turning around the corner, “Prepare enough people in 3 weeks. I’ll be leaving in 1 month for the carnival, and in 3 weeks… It will be our first payback to one of our enemies.”
“Yes sir, understood.” - “Heard, Commander.” - “Yes Commander!” - “Yes sir!” The commanders still in the room said before maintaining full silence. They looked at each other a little before beginning to disappear, while Situ Shi had to silently walk out of the room himself; quite a bit awkwardly.
After coming out of the headquarters, Ciemnosc went back to the prison and finished the first batch of prisoners being devoured by him. His whip was naturally the one he used as he didn’t feel like losing the ability to wear the same clothes each time he went in and then out - now, that would be really, really weird indeed.
When he was done with those 5 hours, he went back to his mini mansion, but Schnell, who had been hard at work the last few days suddenly came up to Ciemnosc just as he was about to come close to his mini mansion. In Schnell’s left hand was a letter that was pressed against his chest and his neck right in front of his neck, against it as well.
“Sir, this is a letter from…the grand elder.” Schnell looked around as if he was making sure that nobody was around, but only when he saw Ciemnosc nod did he continue. “This was hastily sent, and it seems to have relation to the letter that was sent by the Preferential Light Justice Sect by its sect master.”
“Alright, you can leave and have everything prepared in 3 weeks.” Ciemnosc grabbed the letter and dismissed Schnell before giving him a reminder to keep on his hard work. In return, Schnell nodded and bowed deeply to Ciemnosc as he walked away before disappearing to the side and not making any other noise as he seemingly sped into the distance within all blind points for anyone within the stronghold.
Step, step, step, step…
Walking through the gates of his mini mansion, Ciemnosc had already opened the letter as he began reading it with Mosto closing the gates behind himself. There was a mechanism for an array formation to do it. But Mosto had fun being the gentleman that his towering, bulky self is, and Ciemnosc was no one to deprive Mosto of his right of having fun acting like a butler; ah.
“I’m sorry, Little Ciemnosc… But the Preferential Light Justice Sect, if you’re looking forward to going back to the sect after a month for the carnival… do not… trust them any longer, take care Little Ciemnosc.”
‘...’ Ciemnosc was pretty baffled. To say the least. If it wasn’t because of the strangeness of the situation from just the way that this letter arrived, with the grand elder’s unique seal and her own array formations covering its contents, then the content of the letter itself was ever more confusing as it was quite detailed.
In one way, as Ciemnosc suddenly stopped in his tracks, all he could think of is in what kind of things the grand elder had gotten into to be available for all kinds of information. He wondered if she was even aware of all the things he had done up until now, and just as he was wondering that the content of the letter changed as if sensing the change in mood from Ciemnosc’s heart.
“You’ve done great things, Little Ciemnosc. But if you can, and I’d rather that you choose this other path, it would be better off for you to run into the Little Lake and go to the western side of the Region. There, even if it is once again invaded by enemies. It will no longer be a threat to you, as your whole self is key for the destruction of the major organizations…were you to join them.”
“I can’t promise you anything if you do go to the carnival, Little Ciemnosc, but I can assure you that I will be doing everything I can to protect you… I haven’t seen you in a long time, I really can’t believe it, but even if you can’t trust me…then trust in the fact that I believe you are the key for our planet to grow stronger as it once used to millions and millions of years ago. You can’t die firstly because of that, Little Ciemnosc.”
“Please take care, and remember that you can no longer trust anybody…until something happens, then you’ll know what to do and who to trust, unconditionally or not. Grand elder Jing Zhu.”
‘...’ Ciemnosc looked at the letter that was now slowly burning itself right after his eyes went through the very last ‘ . ‘. Ciemnosc was actually rather amused with this method, as he was sure that it would be the same if he read the letter with his Spirit Sense, or if anyone did for that matter.
After the letter turned to ashes that continued on to disappear amidst the wind surrounding him suddenly as if also sensing the change in his mood and with the before-noon becoming ever so darker all around the stronghold and outposts… Ciemnosc then kept walking forth, with Mosto returning to walk behind him in silence, seemingly knowing of his change of mood.
. . .
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Many days went by, and Ciemnosc was way past 11 years old…by just 3 weeks though.
There wasn’t much for Ciemnosc to do other than to keep on devising certain little things for the port and the facilitation of building up things or creating. For instance, the Craftspeople were now allowed to build big things, after being shown what happens to naughty boys and girls well enough. It even seemed as if an instinctive fear and subservience developed inside their hearts when it came to Ciemnosc’s image and being.
With cannons being built in just these 3 weeks and by making sure nothing was wrong with the mover and over again before being passed over to Ciemnosc for him to finish and complete the last few touches and the arrays that mostly make the canons, ten of these cannons were smoothly created and confirmed for their utilization at certain ships.
These ships were perfectly the same as the others, except for the fact that they now each had a couple or 1 single cannon installed on them, one for each side or at the top of the ship’s main mast.
This of course, wouldn’t have made any sense for ordinary people to build it like so, and the tremendous force whenever one of these shots wasn’t small, but with the magical and divine aid of arrays as well as the capability for cultivators to process materials and raw resources that ordinary people couldn’t do even in 2 whole generations if they depended on their machines - it was more than possible for Ciemnosc and his minions— Craftspeople —to swiftly allow such overbearing and unpractical installations of cannons to be finished without any problem.
The ships that were selected for the installation of cannons were the ones that had the best sailors on them, as the entirety of the testing in phase 2 was completed with just ‘sailors’ so to speak, phase 3 of forming formations for different purposes as well as with different tactics each while using some bait-boats for target practice.
Phase 4, and the final step for testing these ships, were just about to start being implemented, consisting of the actual practice for fighting. One ship would go against the other. At first, it would be merely rocks being thrown with a mediocre cannon, which was very old even in human history, but with Ciemnosc’s tweak, it was goddamn powerful somehow.
Indeed, his cannons of the old times of humanity were even stronger than their current artillery, and that was with their current artillery being able to shoot down a 2-story building with just 1 of them shooting about 10 shells at it in the case that it hit with extreme precision, because it didn’t even have such accuracy in the first place.
In any case, the rocks thrown at the ships were basically hopeless even with the rocks getting a coating of tough Creature’s hide to keep the rocks from breaking at the moment they are shot, and they were even reusable for about another 3 times to keep on the testing.
These rock fights were to be used for practicing the aim at close combat as if the enemy ship was waiting to get close enough to then board their ship, evasive tactics were already devised, so now it was their turn for the sailor to do well enough to avoid being boarded and getting fucked in the ass by the enemy from other major organizations.
It was the best sailors against the best sailors, but only the ‘enemy’ ships would have a team to board the ‘good’ ships. Whenever there would be a successful boarding of the ‘good’ ship, those in the ‘enemy’ ship were to be given the green light to beat the shit out of the ‘goodies’.
As such, all sailors prepared to devise their own strategies, their own shit just to survive, get a great score for their aim and then endure it until it was their turn to be the ‘badies’ and then be the ones looking forward to boarding the ‘good’ ones as the ‘bad’ ones to give them a harsh beating. There was nothing more wonderful than competitiveness, and even more for its passionate thrill.
There was a rumor that the 3 who are the best in this, their whole group of sailors would get promoted as higher-end direct subordinates of the 3 commanders that will be chosen, from those very same groups, as the first commanders of the Little Lake ever!
As such, with a prize being put on display already, the groups of people who were best at sailing were doing their very, very best to find a way to win while being completely authentic and using real-time strategy and tactics.
The other step of the phase 4 testing was going to be the boarding of an enemy ship itself, which would occur in either the worst results of a ‘good’ ship or close to the end when there would be a team vs team-like section of cruel repeat, repeat and repeat over and over again so that their overly improved memory could get the hint of being always ready for any situation… Anything could happen, and that was something that their Commander Ciemnosc had always warned them, while they had also come to live it rather not too long ago.
Not many could take foot on a ship with how ‘small’ they were. The only good thing these ships had was their height, which wasn’t anything that the old ships that Ciemnosc has read from before or seen in almost-gone pictures could compare to, and its wide, that is what allowed for even 1,500 troops to board it.
Then would be the last step of the 4th phase, actual shooting from the cannons, the ones with arrays, and that make the water go all the fucking high up and make a mess out of the Litte Lake’s calmness in just a moment.
It would at first be from very long distances, up to when the ships that would be facing each other will only be able to see each other, barely, through the array targeting guidance system. Which though the system itself wasn’t unheard of, it had never been this…particularly advanced, and even more so for the cannons.
Ciemnosc had already more or less predicted that for the ‘extreme distances’ step of phase 4’s last step, there might be tons of problems if people don’t have their heads working well. AAndAndt was the case most of the time. As such, he had left incredibly obvious and easy to understand instructions of how the ships will fire at each other.
First of all, they wouldn’t be firing one after another shot towards an enemy that is just way too far away, like in the way that both ships would be facing each other firstly at being on the utmost extremes of their array targeting guidance systems, which would be facing each other sideways and firing without moving.
Then, it would be a race towards each other where the fire of their cannons would continue, but on the first step, it would be about only 1 shot every 15 seconds. Otherwise, they will really give rise to a huge mini-tsunami that would come from nowhere and without differentiating friend or foe.
Creating such unhelpful changes in the waters of the Little Lake wasn’t going to destroy ships, at least not their own. But it would be the most - stupidest of uses for such powerful weapons in case they weren’t successfully hitting the enemy with an accuracy of at least 80%.
When in the second step, racing towards each other, the ships will fire at a much lesser interval but aiming at the front of the ship to either force it to dodge and become sluggish or to be bumped a few meters into the air above the surface of the Little Lake’s waters. Ships that were ‘hit’ like this would get their points decreased. And in case a negative result came out from such a testing step, the ship with that result would face extensive, exhausting punishment with extremely heavy objects being carried around by their arms or backs.
In any case, the ‘racing towards each other’ step would also put into practice the skill of the sailors to read the defensive detection of enemy’s fire and their dodge, maneuvering capabilities. There was a sail on the main mast of the ship. But they were only used for maneuverability, with devices that had an array inscribed on them that would eat up some wind that was uselessly moving around, letting it become the strength of any ship for better mobility and so on.
Then, the last step of phase 4 was to do an actual simulation of a battle, where one wins the moment the second last shield breaks, leaving only the remaining defensive line of arrays available, which was the one for emergencies.
This last step was about facing 1 on 1 starting from the extremities of their array of targeting guidance systems, which could become anything. A melee, a long distance, extreme distance and even racing towards the same direction while shooting at each other and putting their whole into evading, and aiming - which is the one where the best could be decided to be - since Commander Ciemnosc deducted that situations such as the last ones might occur rather commonly; to even that of suddenly passing by an enemy’s ship.
In short, anything could really happen in a battle above water…
Meanwhile, they could even practice until the time for phase 4 to come by ‘playing’ around with their ships. They couldn’t use their cannons for that matter, and had to use the ‘mortal’s’ cannons instead to practice, or else it was a big sanction and even the possibility of being taken the chance to become a sailor away, becoming a trooper hiding in the ships instead of sailing them at best.
The terms weren’t obviously known, though most have heard or read it somewhere, it was known that while they were deciding Commander Ciemnosc’s navy, the Commander himself would finally lead a large force of the most elite ones within the army to attack the encampments of the enemy!!
It would only be one encampment since it needed a lot of time to deal with such things. And the army didn’t have enough Conflagrate realm cultivators to face off against the other 2 major organizations at the same time. And also due to the fact that the Commander would be returning right away after this now personal mission, to the sect, everything would be resuming its activity after he returned.
After he returns once again, everything will go alright and even better.
…