COLLABORATIONS

"We're back…" Felis and Canis teleported back into the lair with a flash of blue light, the former homunculi exclaiming out listlessly with a strained face.

Though with a single glance one could tell the little sister of the pair wasn't in a much better condition than her elder sister. Canis immediately took her place beneath a nearby tree before staring off into the distance, recent memories flashing in her mind that mostly consisted of walking in circles forever or being returned to the beginning of the labyrinth right before the end.

Even with the compass, navigating through Miledi's homemade hell wasn't made any easier for the two. In fact it seemed Miledi had gone harder on the two since they were in possession of an artifact made from Concept Magic.

Every time the duo thought they were headed the right way, the ghostly liberator would swap rooms using gravity magic so quickly that it was hardly conceivable.

In the end, the only way they resolved the trials given to them was by using their heads. Literally.

Felis allowed Canis to warm up before grabbing the lioness and using her like a battering ram to break through walls. This of course elicited a whine from the childish liberator but it mostly went unheard as the duo was more occupied with getting their revenge for the hell they were put through.

"Sorry… but I see that you guys must have been successful, right?" Ivan gave a wry smile whilst making now attempt to comfort the two. What was important right now was the success of the mission.

"Yup… we even managed to snatch a few things from her that she thought would be useful. At first she wanted us to beg for them but after a quick bashing and dropping your name she became real easy to deal with~"

Felis spoke with newfound maturity in her voice, to Ivan it seemed as though the tigress had aged tens of years in the ten plus hours she was gone.

Though he sweated a bit knowing that they basically mugged the poor former resistance fighter, ignoring the fact that he had done as such in the past as well. 'Like father, like daughter I suppose~'

"Well good work then, I would've loved to be there to witness it all but Yue and I have been busy since coming upon a new revelation."

Ivan nodded toward the hard working vampire queen, who in turn smiled before returning to sort the items she had brought back to the lair from her recent venture.

"Hm? Yue-sensei, what's that around your neck?" Felis was broken out of her stupor of despair as she was captivated by the silver ball dangling from a chain around Yue's neck.

"Oh this, this is something important to me… something my uncle had left behind for me." Yue spoke with a fond grin, holding the device with both hands as she proudly declared the value it held to her.

'Huh. I thought Yue-sensei hated her uncle…' Felis was about to voice out her doubts before noting the silent finger Ivan had raised out of Yue's vision. She nodded after receiving a simple message through telepathy from him.

'I'll explain it after we deal with the current threat.'

Ivan wasn't exactly fond of the idea of using the precious few remaining hours they had to go through a history lesson beginning at the inception of Tortus. Even if he were to do such a thing he would rather wait for everyone else so he wouldn't have to explain it more than once.

He especially didn't have much time considering what they learned from the message left behind by Yue's uncle. Thanks to it Ivan came up with a contingency plan that would hopefully give them a huge advantage in the upcoming fight.

'It's been a while since I made a fake double but it'll have to do…' Ivan sighed before considering using one of the core's he stripped from an apostle's corpse, deciding that authenticity was important he went ahead with it.

In the off chance the 'demon lord' who was more than likely in cahoots with Ehit was able to read minds Ivan decided to keep his plan a secret only he knew.

'I should have enough skills to ward off any debuffs… I'll have my other thought processes running counter thinking to jumble up everything should my mind get looked into.'

If he was being honest, Ivan had completely forgotten about the existence of the demon lord, in his mind the title was already accompanied by a former demon army grand general who had bit the dust back in the Gruen Labyrinth.

'For a guy who we had been summoned to kill, he sure hasn't had much of a presence in this world…'

Ivan could count the instances of where the demons made trouble on one hand since the year plus he and the others were summoned to Tortus. Which was odd considering the demons would be expected to make a lot of huge moves after hearing the news of a hero party being summoned from another world.

'Must be Ehit's work, he just wanted to give us enough time to become worthy pieces on his board.'

The closest the class was to annihilation was when Cattleya was sent to the Orcus Labyrinth to determine whether they'd become allies or threats.

The question was whether Ehit would really approve of such an operation when it nearly ended the game he had been building up for centuries. Did that mean even if Ivan didn't intervene would everyone still be alive?

His class was the first ever case in recorded history to have been summoned as heroes, who knew when the next time would be should they be killed.

"So what did you stea– I mean acquire, from Miledi?"

"Oh yeah! Well she gave us this cool arrow~! It had a really long name so I couldn't remember it, but I call it Boundary-kun!"

According to Felis, who said according to Miledi, the silver arrow in her hand was the prototype of an arrow the Liberators made using Concept Magic to enter Ehit's 'Heaven'. And while the original arrow worked perfectly to that ideal, the current only existing prototypes were incapable of such a feat. Though Miledi believed that Ivan may be able to make some adjustments to get it working towards its full potential.

"And then there's this other thing too!"

Felis pulled another thing from her Treasure Trove, this time a couple sacks full of white marbles the size of peas.

"She said these were supposed to protect us from this Divine Edict thing… I don't really know what that is but it sounds super dangerous from her words… something about Ehit being able to control people with words!"

Ivan nodded, he'd break a couple down later to what they were composed of and see if they could be mass produced on any level. In any case they learned something actually important from Miledi, and that was Ehit had the ability to control people's actions with just his words.

"And finally, well… this thing is… um?"

"The Godslayer Dagger…"

"Yeah that's what she called it~!"

Canis finished her elder sister's words as she snatched the dagger out of the latter's hands. One didn't need much of a brain to guess what it did.

Ivan accepted the dagger from the lioness before examining it intensely, aside from its completely blue body and lack of a handle guard, the dagger was jagged, thin, brittle, and blunt. It seemed absolutely ineffective as an actual tool to harm someone.

As a test Ivan sliced it down the length of his left arm. Musing as it left behind not a single trace of having cut him.

Canis nodded before continuing her words.

"The little golem said it was created using Concept Magic to only kill Ehit. It cannot absolutely hurt anyone or anything else. She also mentioned it was created under… special circumstances…"

Canis' hesitation brought Ivan to give her a curious stare. If the dagger worked as intended then Ivan wanted to know everything about how it came to be so he could produce some other 'god-slaying' artifacts.

"Well… the little golem said that it happened after she and the other liberators failed one of their attempts to slay Ehit. They stood holed up in a bar for hours each proclaiming how much they hated them. And after they drunk themselves unconscious, this thing was sticking out of the table when they woke up the following morning…"

'So just extreme hatred huh… I guess it would be feasible if all the liberators converged their hatred into a single concept magic spell…'

"That's all, right?"

The two homunculi nodded before returning to their own separate areas of the lair to train themselves.

"Now we await the return of the others, Ari and Claire should be back soon considering the Sea of Trees ain't too far from the teleportation circle."

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Apologies for the extremely late post, though i still have my streak going! It's just so damn hot that sitting at my constantly overheating PC is just torture at this point. Oh, why can't it be fall already? We're already in enough of a drought as it is!

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