What is going on?
Caldrin stood frozen. This was absolutely impossible. They had planned for everything down to the smallest, tiniest little detail.
From Joaquin, to Captain Terran, all the way up to even finding a method of ensuring that Baron Giyoto wouldn’t be present at the time so that they could doubly assure that there would be nothing that went wrong.
The odds that Baron Giyoto would actually do something that managed to stop Captain Terran, especially with all his plans, was next to zero. Associate Producer Gard and Caldrin both accurately assessed that he would have let it happen.
Yet, even that variable was meticulously dealt with.
They might have had their differences, forced to clash because of Grey and Caldrin’s desire to protect his own ass, but the one thing Caldrin was quite respectful of was how intricate Gard’s plans were.
Even down to finding the loophole in the rules that allowed them to close down the Safe Room, blocking Grey from ever having the chance to trade his items in and strengthen himself... everything had been Gard’s doing.
It could be said that outside of the idea to kill Grey at the Canon Event, everything else had been Gard.
As though all of that wasn’t shocking enough, it wasn’t a coincidence at all that Grey had just so happened to stumble into the fourth-ranked of their Zone coming out of the witch’s cabin.
If Grey never got the chance to claim the rewards, then the Genesis System wouldn’t have registered it as his achievement, and the Canon Event would have never happened.
Even until this point, Caldrin still had no idea how Gard managed to hide the fact that Grey got a Legendary Quest so well.
From the very start, this trap was laid out by Gard in every sense of the word...
Only for it to end in a way they couldn’t seem to understand.
"Their minds," Gard said slowly.
Caldrin looked over toward the Associate Producer. His face was still stoic and unmoved. However, the veins in the band of exposed brain around his skull seemed to have grown darker in hue, almost like black blood was flowing through his veins.
"Their minds?" Caldrin said slowly.
"He has somehow found a way to influence their minds. He is adding a calming effect, one that makes them kinder than they otherwise might be. His is closer, more powerful, more deliberate and focused, and it also feeds off of Holy energy.
"It only works acutely, and it is clearly draining his stamina a great deal, but this plan will no longer work. He will survive."
Associate Producer Gard stood to his feet and slowly left the room without another word, his thoughts unknown.
There was something that he hadn’t said, something that Caldrin should be able to figure out if he had half a brain cell.
Two things, in fact.
First, somehow, Grey had been able to gain an ability they had no idea about despite the fact they had watched his every moment. It seemed to be like it came from the Blood Witch Tome, and Grey had even made a nice show of spitting blood onto Terran, but Gard didn’t believe any of the abilities Grey had learned from the tome matched the ability he used.
How was Grey hiding things from even their sight? When could he have possibly done this?
And that led to the second realization.
If Grey was hiding things from them now, even going as far as to do things like this, then it also meant that he was very much aware that he was being targeted.
Targeting a participant was fine—they did it all the time. The audience was even expecting it because they found it to be fun.
But doing so to someone who was so wild, had a vendetta, and happened to be a secret they wanted to keep from everyone else...
That was a problem.
It was a good thing, then, that Gard always had a backup plan. It was just unfortunate that that backup plan came from a maniac as wild as The Great Udon.
But that much was fine. Grey’s location had already been revealed with the mention of his Zone. The best part was that this would be unlikely to come back to bite him because everyone was already used to how unhinged The Great Udon could be. The number of times he had broken the rules was far too many to account for.
And now every higher Race knew exactly what Zone to go to if they wanted easy pickings.
Which of them would want to give up the chance of having the resources of not just one, but two Zones so early on?
One way or another, he would crush this child.
And then when he was done, he would bury Caldrin for daring to pull him into this mess.
**
"Kneel before her Holiness," the old knight spoke, and Grey responded in kind, falling to a knee.
Inwardly, Grey was already shaking. His stamina couldn’t keep up. But he couldn’t give up so close to his goal.
He had to keep pushing, even if it was just for a little while longer. Then he could pass out and let it go.
The words the old knight used were already far more pleasing to his ears. He actually didn’t care for the Goddess either. Her name seemed to be used to make his life a living hell a lot. But at the very least, she didn’t hate his guts as much as Captain Terran.
Even if the old knight had just told him to kneel, Grey would have done that too.
Was he stubborn? Maybe.
But he’d be damned if he’d lower his head just for Terran to find a weak reason to kill him anyway.
That he would never stand for, no matter what.
He felt the sword touch his shoulder, and a surge of might filled him.
’Huh? What is that?’
Grey felt a surge of might spilling into him.