The airboat stopped mid-air, not even drifting, a short distance above and away from us. About four stories up. Enough space to easily spot someone trying to board it. I had to kill the Envoy, protect Bao Wang, and somehow capture the airship.

The Envoy leapt off the airship, landing on the ground easily enough. The difference in our Body stat was incredibly small. A couple hundred at most. “Envoy of the Divine Empress,” I called out. Might as well and try and get as much information in our pre-fight banter.

“Champion Michael,” he returned the greeting. “A surprise to see. A face like yours way out here, have much to discuss.” And how could I forget his odd way of speaking.

“I doubt you were just flying around, looking for little old me. I mean after what the Divine Empress did, I would have thought I would have been left alone?” I asked and watched his face carefully. The muscles around his eyes tightened slightly as they narrowed. She was still missing, and he was looking for her.

“What do you know of her? Where is the Divine Empress? Speak now or you die.” I grinned at this. The fact that her number two was in a tizzy running all over the place, or flying all over the place, was the confirmation I needed that she wasn’t around.

“So, you don’t know what happened to her? How sad. But you can’t beat me, and your threats don’t work on me,” I replied.

“I will beat it out. No answers can you hide here. I am the Envoy.” Saying your name doesn’t make things true. Well time to fight. I kicked off the ground and approached him. I saw his eyes go wide in surprise as I closed the distance.

I had been thinking about this fight for a long time. His skills, my skills, and how we reached a draw last time. His fighting style had many holes in it. He did not have a movement skill. I would overwhelm him and claim victory quickly.

“Acid Shot,” x20. Air Burst. “Acid Shot,” x20. I shot forward as I used my acid skill, increasing the forward momentum of the balls of acid. That was why I unleashed a wave. That was the bad thing about depending on your Body stat to move. No emergency burst of speed like I had.

“Sheer Barrier,” x10. He parted my acid attacks like Moses parting the Red Sea.

Air Burst. I quickly manuvered to intercept him as he retreated and tried to strafe to the side. “Acid Shot, Acid Shot, Acid Shot, Acid Shot,” I kept up the pressure, alternating with my left and right hands. Air Burst. He kept retreating and putting up barriers, but he was on the back foot.

I was closing in on the airboat and was about to make a break for it when he suddenly stumbled and lost his footing. I didn’t even hesitate for a moment to capitalize on his mistake. “Acid Shot,” x50. It was all acid. An acid tsunami.

That was the power of combining multi-cast with lots of Spirit. I could dump it all into a single attack and overwhelm an enemy. His hands were on the ground and got caught in the acid. “Acid Shot,” x10. I wasn’t taking any chances by getting close for a suicide attack for some nonsense like that.

He didn’t even scream as he melted, but I couldn’t stick around to watch him die. I needed to capture the airboat. Air Burst. I skidded to a stop as the two soldiers’ heads fell off the airboat followed by their bodies and a trail of blood. The corpses hit the ground and burst apart in their white armor. It was a mess.

The airboat began to descend. It was the diviner and his fancy robes. “Peace! Peace!” he said and held up his arms. I didn’t like this. I looked back the Envoy and confirmed his remains were melting away. No dragging himself out and coming back.

The diviner began speaking in Chinese. “I don’t speak Chinese. Bao Wang!” I shouted out for my translator. He hurried over with the cart. I kept an eye on everyone as there was a rapid exchange. I really wanted to look at the airboat, but I couldn’t afford to be distracted.

“Bao Wang, translate, who is he what is going on?” I interrupted once they both weren’t speaking.

“This is the Chief Diviner of the Dragon Empire.” A big shot then. “He says he caused the Envoy to stumble. And is willing to negotiate. He says he has important information. But he wants ten million points in crystals and will keep the airship.”

He wanted to defect, but he also wanted a parachute. Or not defect, run away. Well, that was confirmation that the Divine Empress truly was missing. But I wanted the airboat. It just appealed to me.

Stolen story; please report.

“He has also said, that if we try anything, he will detonate the airship, killing himself and making it worthless.” Of course. He wasn’t going to go into this type of negotiation half assed.

“Why now? Why not leave before?” I gestured at Bao Wang to translate. There was a bit of back and forth before Bao Wang explained what the Chief Diviner had said.

“He was always under heavy guard or was unable to leave the Forbidden City. This is the first chance he has had to run away, and the airship just made it even better. Also, the Divine Empress is missing, and the Dragon Empire is struggling since there is no Lord General and the Envoy has been focused on finding her.”

That is why I didn’t have an evil empire. It was too easy to lose control the moment people sensed weakness. They were like rats on a sinking ship that was just a short distance from land. They would climb over each other just to survive.

This was a top-level senior person, and he was just jumping ship at the first chance. It would be like Clarissa defecting. “Ten million points, that is quite a bit. What information does he have that is worth that much?” I asked. Bao Wang translated and there was a short back and forth before he translated back to me.

“Everything he knows about the Dragon Empire and personal information about the Divine Empress. Also, he said to give this to you for free. The Envoy isn’t dead.”

“What? But he was melted. I melted him, completely,” I countered.

“He said the Envoy will come back over and over. It is one of the pieces of information he knows.”

“I don’t have ten million points on me. It will take six days. He can come with us to the level 4 zone or hide out somewhere.” Bao Wang translated what I had just said and then translated back to me.

“Alright. He says six days. Not a moment longer. He will wait be back here in the morning, six days from now. Ten million points and he can leave freely. And you get all the information you want.” I pulled out my notebook and removed the pages with the heist planning and my notes.

The last one had been lost and ruined during my crawling after the fight with the Divine Empress. It was annoying, but that was life.

“I am going to write down a lot of questions. One per page. That way he can just hand the book over, you can translate, and he can leave right away. No sticking around. Does that work?” I asked. There was more back and forth.

“He says that is acceptable.” I paused before writing realizing that Bao Wang would need to translate it all.

“Alright, I am going to speak, you can repeat it out loud and record the questions down. One per page. Anything about the Divine Empress. Weakness, skills, power, stats.”

“Then there is the organization of the Forbidden City. The Black Talons as well. Uniforms procedures, everything about them. Then the Inquisitor and Master Fleshcrafter. Any other hidden powerhouses and their skills.”

“A rough map of the Dragon Empire along with its cities and points of interest. Standing orders the Divine Empress has left behind.”

“Best guess on where she could be. Any weaknesses as well.”

“I already asked that earlier,” Bao Wang said.

“Well put it in again.” That was the most important thing. The Divine Empress’s weaknesses. She was not someone I wanted to fight head on.

“The layout of the Forbidden City. Airships and how they work. Skills, monsters, and any other knowledge he has. Also, meta-points or god-points. Everything he knows about them.”

I tried to wrack my brain for anything else. “The Envoy of course. Since he is coming back. How is he doing that. Anything he knows about the Astrologer. Also the Almighty System and the Systemic Lands. Where are the rest of the cities? What is the calamity? The towers? That weird area to the Northeast of Esperanza, the staging city for the invasion.”

“Anything he knows about raw energy manipulation, stats, and skills.” I listed off questions one after another as Bao Wang furious translated them into Chinese. I wanted one question per page, so it would be easy to confirm that they had all been answered.

“Any other diviners? How to hide from his sensing? How is he sensing? How did he find us?” I was hitting the bottom of the barrel, but I think that covered all the key topics and we were running out of pages. Bao Wang finished up.

He then passed the notebook to the Chief Diviner who then said something. “Six days he says. That is the longest he can afford to wait around and even that is pushing it. The Envoy will be back here after that.” That was some serious bullshit, but at the same time I had just gotten a super high-level defector for cheap.

This was a person who spoke to and listened to the Divine Empress on a regular basis if anything Bao Wang had explained about how the evil empire was run was actually true. This had just fallen into my lap and I was not about to try and argue about the price.

It was actually insanely cheap in my opinion. But my guess was that the Chief Diviner wanted to leave as quickly as possible. The airboat was his escape plan, he just needed enough points to get wherever he wanted to go and hide out there.

The airboat probably had a permanency modifier like the carts. Still, there was one thing left to grab before we departed. I went over to the cart and pulled out two large blankets. Both men watched me as I went over to the splattered corpses and wrapped them up, armor and all. I also took their helmets off their severed heads.

If we were going to rob the Divine Empress, I was not about to turn down firsthand examples of high-level armor and clothing. Even if they were nasty and dented. I loaded the corpses in the cart. “Let’s go,” I told Bao Wang and he started pulling the cart as we set off. The Chief Diviner remained behind by the airboat awaiting our return.

The Envoy had been desperate and foolish, but when you could come back and your life revolved around the Divine Empress, then his actions made sense. Only Clarissa and I would be the people to know the last moments of the city. She would have a summoner scouting and I had been there. Honestly, she might know more than me. I really wish I had seen the Astrologer and the Divine Empress go at it firsthand.