The demons who followed her felt an instinctive fear toward the sphere that made them step back, but it quickly disappeared.
The reason for this is that, on one hand, they are originally humans, so these basic instincts of demons, while they affect them, do not hold the same importance to them as they would to a real demon. And on the other hand, they have absolute loyalty to Kaito, they could even die for him. So if Kaito trusts Sonya, they will trust her too.
Far from getting closer, they became excited, and even one of these demons, one of the high class demons of the Bael clan, approached her visibly thrilled.
"Excuse me, Lady Sonya," he asked with excitement.
"What is it?"
"Well, not to brag, but before dying I was a great magic researcher.
There are some investigations, mostly theories, that say that when a mage reaches level 5 in an element, they are able to materialize that element in the real world in its purest form, without spells or skills, simply the element manifested physically, being itself a weapon capable of threatening the gods..." the old man explained excitedly before getting to the point "...then, that little sphere, could it be?"
"That is it," Sonya said simply.
"Incredible, so Miss Sonya has already reached level 5, is there even anyone who could defeat you now?"
"There is no need for flattery, there are still people stronger than me," Sonya replied before looking in a particular direction, "For example..."
With a loud crash, a cloud of dust rose in front of them and the ground trembled.
Once the dust cleared and the view became clear, a large crater was revealed. There was a short white haired girl with feline features, holding three other girls in her hands and surrounded by a white energy.
"Hi," Koneko greeted simply.
"Did something happen?" Sonya asked, knowing they would not stop and come here for no reason, and not without something serious enough.
"Let us talk somewhere else."
...
"Then I will take my leave," said the former lord of the city and owner of the mansion they were currently in.
After Koneko told her they needed to talk, Sonya told the army to continue while she stayed in the city.
The city lord surrendered quickly since he had witnessed firsthand how his entire army was killed with a single attack.
At this moment they were in what used to be his office chatting.
"So, what is it?" Sonya started.
"Barak is a clone," Kaguya said.
"You mean Barak the berserker? How did they find him outside the capital? What exactly happened?"
Kaguya explained everything that had happened, from Mashiro fighting to Koneko's arrival.
"When I saw him I felt that he had no soul so I suspected he was a clone, and while searching I found this," Koneko said.
Mashiro used tiny mana particles to draw Barak's hand in photographic quality and show it to Sonya.
On it you could clearly see how in his palm it said "#23".
"I have been thinking about the situation for a while and I think we have a problem," Kaguya said.
"What do you have in mind?" Sonya asked.
"Barak is the heir of the noble house Barak, they even gave him the name of the house, that is how important he is. However, he is a clone, so it is clear to assume that 'this one' was not that important. Therefore, what matters is not him but what he represents."
"What he represents?" Sonya was confused even after the explanation.
"That is right, each one of the eight noble houses has a plan to take over the kingdom, right? I think Barak could be the plan.
Most elves, whether pure or dark elves, tend to be mages. Meanwhile, the Barak house on the contrary are geniuses in physical strength, which once developed enough is basically anti magic."
"So you think the Barak house is creating an army of anti magic monsters? It is not that I do not trust you, but you must understand that with just strength it is not enough to take a kingdom, right? Unless it is absolute strength."
"I know, that is why I spent so much time analyzing this, I am almost sure I have at least 85 percent of their plan," Kaguya said confidently.
Sonya blinked surprised for a second before asking her to continue the explanation.
"According to what you said before, the Barak family is in charge of the teleportation halls and the communication channels, they are basically a rapid response team against threats.
Their plan is to use that to teleport several Baraks to take all the outer villages quickly. Since the villages are the weakest, there would be no one to stop them, and once they have taken at least 20 percent of the kingdom with that it will be harder to drive them out. Even if they fail and cannot keep advancing, they would still have gained a greater power than the rest of the eight noble houses," Kaguya explained.
"That plan..." Sonya murmured.
"That is right, it is almost the same as ours," Kaguya finished.
"I understand, so they will definitely send people to stop us, they might even start their plan ahead of time because of this."
"Forget the might, they definitely will," Kaguya said, "Have you not noticed? A whole day has already passed and we have almost half of the outer territory, this exceeds our expectations of how slowly the capital would respond. With the level of what we are doing, the fact that no one has come yet can only mean that the news is being suppressed, something only the Barak can do.
What they are doing is easy to guess, they are using us as an excuse to release those anti magic clones. That way they will look like the good guys, I just do not know how long they will wait."
"It makes sense," Sonya said, "Even so... thinking that Barak is a clone, I remember he was my classmate, at the beginning he was the least talented of all, even less than the famous talentless Ashen. But then he started improving, surprising everyone."
"It is not time for nostalgic memories, we are in trouble," Kaguya interrupted frustrated.
Sonya looked at Kaguya for a second before looking at the other girls with a confused expression.
Mashiro simply shrugged, Ai shook her head as if seeing a child's tantrum, Koneko was the only one who spoke.
"I told her it is not that serious, but she insisted on coming to tell you," she said with a frustrated tone.
"You are the ones who are not taking the problem seriously," Kaguya replied.
"There are dozens, maybe hundreds of people completely immune to magic and with incredible strength appearing everywhere at the same time."
"But Kaito..."
"Kaito..."
"Leave it to..."
The three spoke in unison and stopped at the same time to let the other speak.
"Kaguya, you should trust Kaito more," Sonya said.
"You cannot always depend on others," Kaguya said instantly.
"But you cannot defeat them, right? So it is fine to ask for help," Sonya said.
"But..."
"It is fine, it seems you have some issues depending on others," Sonya interrupted, "Then think about it logically, Kaito would not let them take his territory, so he would act even in the hypothetical and almost impossible case that he does not care about any of us.
And regarding the enemy's strength, they will appear in all outer zones at once of course, this could be a problem for anyone else, but Kaito can cross the entire territory in 15 minutes. Barak may be strong but I do not think he is stronger than Kaito, especially because Kaito does not need to be stronger, it is enough for him to do that trick he does of phasing through things and attack their heart.
He does that, runs to the next one, and repeats the process, easy right?"
"You are right," Kaguya finally said.
"I know I am, now, it is late, why do you not stay here for the night?" Sonya said, looking at the rest, and they all agreed.
Maybe it was because of the exhaustion, whether mental or physical, from what they had done during the day, but everyone slept until almost noon, even Kaguya whose habits are firmly ingrained in her. The only one who did not was Sonya.
However, when they woke up they found that Mashiro had left.
"It is fine, Kaito came earlier and took her somewhere," Sonya said simply, easing their worries.
"Something Kaito cannot handle?" Koneko asked surprised.
"No, he said they are only an annoyance because there are too many of them. Even if they are weak individually, the problem is that they keep appearing, so he needed someone with extreme area damage so they would not bother him while he does something else," Sonya explained.
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
(They don't reach 15 at this moment, since there is a marathon of my other fic because it is ending.)
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)