It has been a full day after the attack on the Border Army.

After the death of the Emperor, the Moon forces went into a full retreat. The stampede that Adam was afraid of happened on the side of his enemy. Thousands fell over and were stepped to death by their comrades that tried to get as far away as the zealots behind them as possible.

Some tried to organize resistance. The female general that started the assault managed to rally a few hundred men before Adam found his way to her and put a blade into her chest.

The Voyagers were washed back by those retreating as well. Without the support of the Empire of the Moon, there was no way they could take on tens of thousands of men just by themselves.

When the smoke cleared, the Voyagers retreated back to the Emerald City, only to find the entire Empire in chaos. Generals and governors tried their best to claim the throne, thanks to the lack of an heir. The Voyagers’ action of terminating the Crown Prince has come back to hurt them.

Perhaps the only good news was that, in the midst of this chaos, the disappearance of all the Rune Crafters wasn’t noticed by anyone important, and no action was made to find out what happened.

Still, the Voyagers quickly discovered they could get no more help in the Emerald City. Gradually, more and more of them departed. Jean suspected some of those that left also realized they were attacked by fellow Voyagers and chose to work by themselves instead.

Out of the 35 Voyagers that went on the march, 6 died. 15 left at some point after the battle. Only 14 remained in the city. Jean, Demon, and Blink were among them.

And tonight, Jean decided to have a heartfelt conversation with someone.

“Jean.” Violet smiled warmly as Jean walked into her room. Cassandra was right behind her. She had a cold look, as always.

“Violet.” Jean went straight to the point. “I want to talk to you.”

“Oh.” Violet turned to Cassandra. “Can you give us some space, please?” She licked her lips. It wasn’t rare for Voyagers to seek some pleasure in the middle of these tense missions.

“Actually, it’s better if she stays here.” Jean cut in. Violet glanced at the blonde before nodding at Cassandra to have her stay.

“Ok. What is it?”

“You are one greedy bitch.”

“I’m sorry?” Violet’s expression changed as Cassandra’s eyes turned silver. Jean felt the space around her closing in, but she quickly warped her Voyager armor onto her body.

“Drop your telekinesis or I’ll drop it for you.”

“Cassandra,” Violet ordered Cassandra to stop. Jean wasn’t a fool. She knew they might kill her to silence her, and she must be prepared. “Jean, what do you mean?”

“The one that attacked us during the battle used telekinesis. It was your doing, wasn’t it? You wanted to eliminate those that would share your prize after the mission is over.”

“It wasn’t me. I was attacked as well. Whoever it was almost got me impaled by an arrow. Just because Cassandra has telekinesis powers doesn’t mean she’s the one behind this. We're Voyagers. We have access to countless worlds. Telekinesis is no stranger to us.”

“Maybe, but I decided to take some notes.” Jean took out a picture from her watch and tossed it to the two. Violet glanced at it. It showed Cassandra picking up the watch of a Voyager in front of the Voyager’s impaled corpse.

The picture looked like it was taken from above.

Violet’s face was ice cold.

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“True. Your girl might just be an insensitive bitch who picks up the belongings of her dead comrades. But how do you explain this?”

Jean tossed another picture out. This time, it literally showed Cassandra using her power to impale Ares.

“It is true that it can be difficult to see everything in the heat of the battle.” Jean smirked. “But, don’t forget, there is a thing called satellite.”

Jean had entire fleets in her watch. At one point after she entered the mission, she took out a dozen observers and put them into space. For some reason, observers couldn’t see beyond the Matrixes of cities, but they were able to observe the entire battle unfold.

She wasn’t the type who would make a careless mistake.

“Ah.” Violet nodded slowly. “So, what do you want?”

“I have three other Voyagers with me. If I don’t go back to them, they’ll broadcast this evidence to all the Voyagers on the mission. If you don’t say yes to my requirement, they’ll do the same thing. It’ll be pretty hard to survive this mission if everyone else is hunting you.”

Cassandra growled, but Violet stopped her.

“What do you want? What is your requirement?”

“First, don’t try to backstab me.”

“Fine.”

“Second, you took down 6 Voyagers. That’s 6 watches. I want all of them.”

“How dare you!” Cassandra’s anger couldn’t be suppressed anymore. “I will rip you and your friends to pieces before I allow you to claim our prize! And if it comes to that, I will kill every other Voyager on the mission!”

“Cassandra!” Violet declared loudly. “Leave us!”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Mistress!”

“Leave us now!”

“Yes…” Cassandra slowly walked out of the room, but not before giving a death glare at Jean.

When they were alone, Violet took out six watches and tossed them to Jean. Jean picked them up, examined them, and put them away. She gave a provoking smile at Violet. Just as she was about to leave, Violet said something that made her freeze.

“You need to work on your mask.”

A confused look quickly found its way onto Jean’s face as the girl turned around.

“What?”

“I said your mask needs to be better.” The anger on Violet’s face disappeared, and Jean found herself looking at an expressionless face.

The same face she sees in her mirror every morning.

One devoid of all emotions.

“I don’t know what you are talking about. Look, whatever you have up your sleeves...”

Violet suddenly took out something from her watch and tossed it at Jean. The blonde’s Voyager armor was immediately on, but that item went through it and entered Jean’s body.

Jean stood there for a moment, confused. Nothing happened.

“What was that?”

“That was an Emotion Bomb. It was created by collecting the despair of an entire city that was starved to death. A very interesting piece of gadget.” Violet suddenly turned up her volume. “Guard!”

A Moon soldier walked in. Before he could say or do anything, Violet tossed the same device onto the man. As soon as the device made contact, the man suddenly collapsed onto the ground. Tears flew out of his eyes. His pupils went dark. In moments, he was dead.

There was no external wound.

“It can kill a man in seconds by literally taking away his will to live.” Violet turned back to Jean. “But you didn't feel a thing because you don’t have emotions.”

Jean’s mind turned. If she could pretend like the bomb was working, only delayed, then perhaps…

“I know what you are thinking. I have tried this on someone twice your mission count. It worked immediately. Don’t try to fake it.”

Jean’s confused look stayed there for a second before fading away.

Mask off.

“Who are you?”

“One of your kind. Only I got in earlier.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Completing the mission.”

“And? What else? You can’t assassinate all the other Voyagers. You only took down 6 of them with the help of the Border Army. You won’t get that lucky again.”

“I am not telling you.”

Fair enough. No point to dwell on that.

“Why are you telling me this? It will be easier to counter-manipulate me if I think you can be affected by emotions.”

“To plan for the future.”

“Explain.”

“What governs our actions?”

Jean thought about it. What inspires her to do all the killing and atrocities? What is the code that was written in her bones?

“The desire for strength.”

“Correct. If you survive the mission, we can work together in the future. Working with one of us is more efficient that working with normal people. We can gain strength together.”

“And if our interests conflict?”

“Then we will fight and kill each other, but that is irrelevant for the moment.” Violet offered. “If you stay with me. I have a way to exterminate all the other Voyagers. We can take their watches and their share of the reward.”

Jean thought about it for a moment.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because we would both prefer taking the whole reward ourselves than splitting it with a comrade. When the time comes, you will betray me and attempt to terminate me. If I stay with you, I will have no way of resisting.”

Violet looked into Jean’s eyes. She knew denying would be useless. Jean would’ve done the same thing if the two switched places.

“Correct, but we will remain in touch after the mission concludes.”

“Correct.” Jean nodded before turning and walking out of the camp.

Violet’s expressionless face turned to an angry one as Cassandra entered. After all, most Voyagers should be pissed if they were blackmailed and lost all the prize of their hard work.

----------------------------------------

On the other side, Jean met up with Demon and Blink.

“How is it?” Demon asked. They knew what Violet and Cassandra did and that Jean went to confront them.

“Quite well.” Jean smiled and tossed them each a watch. “In addition to them keeping their hands off us, I got 3 watches. One for each of us. I just made sure they were real. I didn't look, so whatever you’re having, it’s completely based on luck.”

Demon and Blink took the watches over and reached inside. They didn't expect this. This was never part of the plan, but they weren’t complaining. As for the content, they were certain Jean looked inside and chose the best one for herself, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. After all, Jean was the one that went in there and risked her life. If the conversation went south, it was her head that would be the first to roll. She deserved a little extra.

If they knew Jean kept 3 more watches to herself, they wouldn’t be so understanding.

“But I still don’t understand.” Blink frowned as she ran through her watch. The content didn't match her fighting style, but if she could sell them, it was still quite a fortune. “Why don’t we just tell everyone what Violet did? She attacked more than a handful of us. She would never make it out of this city.”

“First of all, none of the Voyagers would risk everything to take down Violet. If Violet flees, they wouldn’t go after her at all cost. Expecting them to kill someone as powerful as Violet is going to be futile.” Jean slowly explained. “Secondly, if we expose them, Violet and Cassandra would have no more concerns. They would be free to strike us down. In that case, it’s better to keep this as leverage.”

“Understood.”

“What is our plan for the future?” Demon rose another question. “The Empire of the Moon is lost.”

“For now.” Jean, the straight A student that she was, quickly answered. She has had everything planned out already. “I think we should work together with John and regroup the Empire. It shouldn’t be that hard. This time, we will go further and completely control the Empire. We will turn it into a war machine.”

Demon and Blink nodded. They have seen the power of armies in this world. While the forces of the Empire of the Moon were scattered and defeated, they could be reorganized.

As the two left to ready themselves, Jean found herself some place private and took out a Purifier Executor.

“How was the mission?”

“Successful. All the personalities have been uploaded to the Purifier network. Research has been initiated already.”

Before the battle began, Jean took out an army of G-1s and Purifier dark templars, which were newly developed, and sent them on a special mission.

As the Moon main forces clashed with the Sun Border Army, things got really chaotic. A significant portion of the men in the rearguard were ordered to reinforce the front. When the defeat came, the remaining of the rear guard was scattered.

That was when Jean’s covert army struck. Following the tracking device Jean placed on the apprentice, these cloaked units sneaked to the Rune Crafters and executed the guards. Perhaps there were forms of detection in this world, but they certainly didn't factor in here.

With the situation in control, the Purifiers downloaded the conscious of all the Rune Crafters before executing them all. These Crafters could’ve been useful themselves by working on the Purifier units, but Jean didn't need a few hundred Purifiers upgraded. She needed tens of thousands of them, at least.

In that case, hundreds of prisoners running around was just a nightmare.

The Emperor didn't want Jean to have the technology, so she did the most Jean thing possible and took it by force.