60 War Plan Deception

Lieutenant Reana revealed her speculation that the new king, or the 'false king' as she called him, was using his planned attack on the 37th unit as a way to cover up the truth.

On the surface, it seemed that he simply wanted to capture Deon and Remi, but in truth, he was sabotaging the mountain war effort…clearly, he had colluded with the Fan Kingdom and was trying to deliberately lose this war!

Everyone became silent, but Deon remained unfazed and once again asked the most important question.

"How many people have sided with the false king? Most importantly, how many 2-Star shamans are on their side, and how many can they spare to attack this camp?"

Their priority should be survival, now and always.

Unfortunately, there was no clear answer to this question. Most of the military's upper echelon on the mountain were thought to remain loyal to the old king, but certain units and platoons were spies working for the new king.

After pondering for a moment, Deon asked about the generals.

Again, nobody was certain, but Reana seemed sure that General Li and General Senlin remained on their side at the very least. That said, General Senlin had been relocated to the South East of the kingdom before all this began, whilst General Li had been caught up in a siege battle for the past 3 days.

"It seems that the battle has long since begun, then." Deon declared, scaring a few people.

"Commander, it's true that battles have already broken out here and there, but it's just because the rebels and the allies are crossing paths and can't help but fight." Lieutenant Reana explained.

"No, I'm afraid that it's likely more malicious than this, lieutenant. Ah, it would be easier to just show you."

Deon had someone go fetch a larger, more accurate map of this region of the mountain. He laid the map down across the table and began placing pins in various locations.

Dot, dot, dot…

Deon showed the movement of the various units in the surrounding area over the past 10 days. He had already memorised this information, courtesy of Lieutenant Shi, who was surprisingly keeping a close watch over the overall situation.

Lieutenant Reana and a couple of others showed shocked expressions, but some people still didn't understand. All they saw was that over the past 5 days, each day saw much more movement of many units than the last.

Deon took it upon himself to explain.

"Every single rebel group has shown some movement since 5 days ago, but it ramped up during the last 3 days, ever since General Li became preoccupied, allowing the rebels to reposition without his interference. This is enough time to setup a war camp for a battle tomorrow, don't you think?"

"I…I naturally realised the strange movements of the rebels, as did high command, but this…Commander Deon, you're saying that this positioning…it's so that they can launch a hidden attack on my other 9 units?!" Lieutenant Reana asked as her eyes widened in shock.

"Mm." Deon nodded. "These units are also positioned perfectly to launch a sneak attack on your reinforcements, lieutenant."

"Ah!" Lieutenant Reana exclaimed.

Lieutenant Reana had arranged for 1,000 men to enter the 37th unit as reinforcements. If it was before, she wouldn't believe that the enemy would know of this plan, but Deon had pointed out just how deeply the new king had infiltrated his spies…even she could not be certain that there were no traitors in her platoon!

"Lieutenant Reana…you might want to return to your men, or at least deliver this news somehow to prepare them." Deon advised plainly. Reana's expression immediately changed and she quickly stood up.

"Lieutenant, let me go with you." Deon suddenly called out. "But not right at this moment. We should prepare properly before heading out."

"Commander, what about our camp?" Captain Dan anxiously asked. "The false king will be arriving tomorrow, so-"

"So wouldn't it be for the best if I wasn't here?" Deon chuckled. "Naturally, Remi will also go with us. When the false king arrives at this camp and finds that neither of his targets are present, he won't bother wasting any time with you all, not when the camp is so thoroughly protected."

Everyone became silent, feeling like what he said was quite reasonable.

"I suggest we all meet back here at 1700 hours. Half of us will head out, the other half will remain here and defend against the false king. Do you have any objections, Lieutenant Reana?"

"Commander, you're saying that we will head out with so few people?" Lieutenant Reana asked with a frown. Currently, only the captains, commanders and lieutenants were present in this meeting, whilst Deon advised that they return to her other units as reinforcements with only half of these people!

It was entirely possible that they might encounter a 2-Star shaman powerhouse…

"With a small group, we are less likely to be noticed. We're aiming to sneak into the middle of the chaos, then to take charge over the allied forces and lead your men to victory against the rebels, lieutenant, we don't need many men."

In the end, everyone agreed with this plan. The group dispersed, leaving Deon alone in the command tent, staring after them with a dark glow in his eyes.

The plan that he stated just now was partially what he intended to do…but partially not.

Deon was already certain that there were traitors amongst the people Reana brought with her. They would definitely now report his 'plan' to their superiors, who would prepare accordingly.

Naturally, they would be caught off guard by Deon's last second changes.

Before returning to complete his own preparations, Deon sought out Remi.

"What, great grand father said that?" Remi's eyes widened after Deon repeated the old man's words of advice that he entrusted with Deon to pass along to Remi.

That old demon claimed that Remi knew the method to evolve the class of her core spirit! Whilst she would not be able to do this prior to the coming battle, Deon was quite curious to see if this was really true.

"Mm, he said that you should try to improve the class of your core spirit as soon as possible. Is it true then, do you know the class evolution method for your core spirit?" He asked with a strange glint in his eyes.

"The method…I guess I do know it…" Deon was a bit confused by Remi's uncertain answer. Surely she either knew it or she didn't, right? But he didn't have time today to worry about Remi's matters and left her to ponder her options alone.

With that, Deon retreated to his private courters.

During the command meeting, a multitude of items were moved into his private quarters in secret. From this, it was obvious that Deon was trying to trust as few people as necessary right now.

"Alright then, I have 7 hours. It's not exactly long, but it should be enough…hopefully."

Deon opened a large black bag, sighing slightly as the disgusting pinkish greenish brains rolled towards him.

Over recent weeks, he had learned so many new spirit refinement recipes, and so many of them required various parts of demonic beast corpses. Blood, organs, skin, flesh…and brains.

Using so many brains was definitely more gross than any normal refinement though.

Deon ended up just stocking up on masses of demonic beast corpses which he kept in a self designed freezer room below this very tent. It was essentially an enormous underground cellar.

He achieved the cold temperature to preserve the bodies with 2 methods; firstly, he used the 1-Star frost crawler spirit. This spirit could freeze over a certain area of a flat surface. After using this ability tens of times to cover every wall, floor and ceiling, it was pretty good.

Secondly, Deon had gathered icy demonic beast cores. These things constantly released frosty energy.

And so, he managed to create a freezer that only needed an hour of maintenance each month to maintain the cold temperature.

"I only managed to gather 22 brains in the end…will it be enough…?"

Only the brains of 1-Star insectoid demonic beasts could be used for this coming refinement. It was already amazing that he had 22 complete 1-Star demonic insect corpses down there, but this refinement could potentially require up to 99 insectoid beast brains!

"Larger brains are somewhat better, but more intelligent brains are the absolute best." Deon muttered to himself.

Looking at this mix of bugs, who could tell if they were intelligent when they were alive? Well, Deon actually had some idea, but this was only because he knew where each of the brains had come from.

"Wasting so many brains would be such a waste, but I need to at least try this now." Deon sighed and shook his head, resolutely deciding to go ahead with this.

As for the spirit that he was planning to refine? It was one of the recipes taught to him by Remi-s great grandfather; the silver class glistening bed bug spirit!

And so began the refinement.

First he threw in the bronze class shining bed bug, then forcefully fused in 9 ordinary bed bugs along with a mixture of demonic insect bone marrow and blood.

A broth formed and refined over the heated cauldron. Deon quickly discarded the filthy layer, before adding in more spirits, blood and marrow, and repeating. He did this once again, resulting in 3 partially fused shining bed bug spirits.

Deon clapped his hands together over the spirits, slamming all three spirits together and fusing them into one.

Whoosh!

Deon felt slightly dazed, realising now that the old geezer had missed a bunch of details out from this refinement procedure! That old demon seemed to have an annoying habit of writing down his recipes in a poetic format, making them difficult to understand. Now that he was doing the refinement himself, Deon was forced to adapt to the situation.

Deon carefully created a cycle, removing the depleted blood broth whilst replenishing it with unused blood.

BANG!

Suddenly, the mixture exploded. Thankfully he had failed quite early on and the spirits were not damaged. The 'fusion' split apart and the spirits returned to their original state, it wasn't a problem to start again.

Before starting, he suddenly noticed another beast corpse…this one looked extremely similar to the bed bug!

This was perfect. The recipe stated that using blood, marrow and brains that more closely resemble the bed bug spirit in appearance, greatly increased the chance of success.

The difference was clear right away, Deon managed to return to his previous point without much difficulty.

Deon added the 3 most intelligent brains to the cauldron.

The brains melted down into a pink-red pool, before a whirlpool formed and the fused spirit greedily absorbed them. Deon wasn't discouraged to find that his spirit was not yet completed, though those 3 brains pushed it over one third of the way!

The next 3 brains he tried were the 3 largest. They weren't as useful as intellectual brains, but they were still quite good.

Time passed by, Deon continued melting down brains in the cauldron, until finally…

Success!

Deon sweated slightly…he only had 22 brains to work with and ended up using 21 one them…but what did that matter now, he had achieved success!

This was no longer a simple bed bug, nor a shining bed bug; it was the silver class glistening bed bug spirit!

He felt the difference immediately; an improvement to his energy levels, his concentration, his motivation, his mental resilience, his mental fortitude, a reduction to his mental fatigue, and of course, the reduced need to sleep.

The effect now was very much obvious, compared to the subtle effect from the bronze class version.

The reason for Deon wanting to succeed in this right now, was because of the insanity that he was about to attempt.