"He should already be working on releasing her using his knowledge of runes."
The Overlord seemed to frown in irritation when he heard this, but the Grand General couldn’t really tell since most of his face was mechanical. The Overlord knew that this was a serious situation, but he couldn’t help but feel annoyed by the fact that things were progressing like this. They had an opportunity to take Gillian for themselves a few centuries ago, but that bitch decided that she would rather trap herself within an eternal rune than give up her life to them.
"What are the chances that Jason can break through the [Cage of Eternity]? He only became a Rune crafter a year ago, so it is impossible that he would even understand what a First Grade Rune looks like. And if someone like us with centuries of experience was unable to break through it, then there is no way he can do it."
The Grand General nodded calmly as he accepted that this was true, but the Grand General wasn’t willing to risk it. They had already underestimated Jason once before, and that was what put them in this position in the first place. The Grand General would rather make sure that Jason wasn’t in Atlantis at all rather than put the future in the hands of fate. The Grand General could still remember the last time they put their trust in fate and how it ended up costing him a chance to grow stronger. Two hundred years ago, they had been involved in a massive battle against the powerful Vympir Queen, Gillian, and the powerful ruler of the Machina, the Overlord. The battle had been fierce, and it just happened to spill into the world of Riyad and interrupt a powerful ritualistic ceremony being carried out by the Aquina. The power being released by their fight interfered with the ritual and forced it to malfunction, and Gillian took advantage of that situation to escape behind a powerful rune before they could kill her. They weren’t able to get through the rune since it was so powerful, so they just forgot about her and focused on using the Machina for their personal ambitions.
But for some reason, Jason Marc just wouldn’t allow the past to remain in the past, and now that foolish Necromancer from a backwater world was going out of his way to try to unearth a secret that had remained buried for so long! The Grand General refused to accept a situation like that, and he swore that he was going to kill Jason Marc if it was the last thing they did! The Grand General turned to the Overlord as these thoughts passed through his mind, and the Overlord folded his hands and nodded in acceptance before he asked a simple question.
"Do you think we should allow the Radagans pay us the money that we asked for and forget about the Mana Core in the Yellow Ashen Mountain, or should we push them further to try and take the Core for ourselves? We can take the money and resources from the Machina before leaving this world and taking on another identity. They’ll never find us."
The Grand General frowned in annoyance at the mere thought of leaving behind the core that they had worked so hard for. Right from the start, the Overlord never really cared about the money that they would get from the Radagans, and they always intended to exchange the money for possession of the Yellow Ashen Mountains so that they could retrieve the core of Rumunaga that was buried there. That core was the only way they could grow even stronger, and the Grand General refused to leave it behind in the hands of those foolish dragon people who didn’t even understand the worth of what they had! The only reason why the Overlord hadn’t done anything to push for possession of the Yellow Ashen Mountains all this time was because he had been busy with his augmentation. But now that he was done, he had a choice to make.
The Grand General spoke.
"I think we can take both. The Radagans should be paying the ten billion gold coins within the next few hours, so once we have our hands on the money, we’ll take all the resources we can acquire from the Machina before leaving. Our first stop will be Radagan itself. We’ll dig our way through the Yellow Ashen Mountains and take the Core before anyone can stop us, and then we’ll vanish."
It was a brilliantly greedy plan that only someone who had no conscience at all could come up with, but the Grand General didn’t care at all about the Machina or the Radagans, and he would happily leave them all to die with a smile on his face if it meant he could gain more power! The Grand General turned to the Overlord when he heard him speak in a mechanical voice.
"Do you think we were too greedy this time? We’ve never tried to carry out an extortion this big before. Could that be the reason why things are spiraling out of control?"
The two men looked at each other curiously as they considered this possibility for a moment before they both burst out in laughter! Of course, they had been too greedy, but that doesn’t mean that they were wrong! They just never thought that the Machina were so weak that they would allow a small issue with a Rank II world become something so serious! Even if they were greedy, the Machina were the useless ones since they couldn’t properly handle someone from one of the lowest ranking worlds in their domain!
"If the Machina were stronger, then we wouldn’t be in this mess. It is the fault of the Machina for being so useless, so our greed does not matter."
The Grand General said this with an annoyed smile, and the Overlord nodded along. They had chosen to become a part of this world a long time ago because they believed it would give them the best opportunities and allow them to gain as many resources as possible after the Period of Lawlessness ended, but they never thought that someone like Jason would emerge from such a weak world, and now that things seemed to be getting out of hand, it was obviously time for them to leave this world behind.
The history between Gillian and the current Overlord of the Machina goes back to the time when the Period of Lawlessness was at its bloodiest! During this period, people died at every turn, and there were entire worlds that were being wiped out from the Primordial Expanse by powerful mages who were seeking to either increase their own power or to gain glory in order to make their world stronger! And it was during this bloody and terrible period that a young man once known as Alexander Lockhart was reincarnated in this world! Alex had once been a student existing in a parallel Earth that didn’t know anything about magic or mana. He had been a regular science student studying biology in the university, and his everyday life was filled with nothing but long experiments and short nights with no sleep!
But all that changed the day Alex began carrying out a particularly interesting experiment on an endangered new species of slime that had been discovered in the Amazon forest. This slime was known to possess a biological trait that allowed it to consume special rocks and then transform its body to match the physical structure of the rock it had just consumed! For the first time in years, Alex had shown actual interest in an experiment!