He changed his clothes because they were dusty and dirty from all of his traveling and the hay he carried to burn the mass grave. But he didn’t have to have a bath because his body was clean.
It was true that he didn’t sweat through his journey because his body wasn’t the one doing all of the work. But even the hands that he used to carry hay were clean. So the cleanliness of his body couldn’t be attributed to chance.
As he boarded the airship in new clothes, he smiled and said to himself, "This Pristine Sword Metac is already paying dividends. I hope that things will continue to go this well from now on."
As luck would have it, everything went well from then on. There were no accidents on their way, and they arrived at the world barrier just in time to see the large ball of fire from the sky into the world barrier.
Loki didn’t witness this sight, of course. He was in his cabin, busy cultivating.
His plan for this life is to go with the flow when he can, avoid trouble at all times, and focus on reaching rank 4. So he doesn’t plan to antagonize Greg this lifetime.
Because of this, he didn’t try to avoid Greg by pretending to be angry during the question and answer session. And when Amelia assigned him to post 419, he didn’t question her about it.
Ten of them were assigned to Greg, but only nine of them went with Greg to their post. One of them insisted on taking another route.
Greg made sure to complain about this decision, but he didn’t stop it. He only gave Loki one week to report to the post.
When Loki returned, he found out that all nine recruits had died and Greg had gotten a new airship. This didn’t surprise him.
He simply smiled and said, "Now this is home sweet home."
Then he locked himself up in his room.
Ever since he arrived at post 419, he was rarely seen. They only saw him once in months, and that was because he went out to get the materials he ordered.
He ordered the metals that he needed to forge his body so that he could strengthen his body while fusing energy threads. After he got them, he stayed cooped up in his room for months.
But he didn’t stop paying attention to the communication channel. He wanted to keep abreast of the situation. Especially when Greg began making a fuss about attacking the fortress cities of the Martial Body Sect.
Greg made some bogus claims about how the rank 4 protector of the fortress cities opposite them was absent. No one believed him, so he couldn’t rally them to battle. All he succeeded in doing was arguing with them.
This back and forth continued for months until Greg couldn’t take it anymore. After three months of being on Earthly Battlefield E6-137, Greg decided to go on the attack even if he wasn’t supported by his subordinates.
Eventually, someone stepped forward to follow Greg on the mission. This person was a fresh recruit who had never seen any fighting and was eager to earn merit points.
As usual, the veterans couldn’t believe that someone would be so suicidal. They were riled up into asking if this person was crazy, stupid, suicidal, or all of the above.
The veterans tried to convince him that it was a bad idea to follow Greg into battle. But the person refused to back down.
Instead of convincing this person to give up on the mission, they failed and also failed to prevent more people from signing up. This was because once that first person signed up, some other recruits gained the courage to go on the mission too.
All in all, 20 people signed up for the mission. There were 6 veterans and 14 recruits. So there was one person less than the last timeline.
When Loki saw this, he scratched his chin as he said, "So, even without me, Greg would have still succeeded in taking people for the mission. I guess people are just that desperate to earn merit points."
He had thought that if he didn’t stand up to support Greg, Greg wouldn’t be able to convince people to follow him on the mission. But apparently, that wasn’t true.
What happened was that the absence of his support delayed Greg by one week. After that, one more week of talking their ears off, some people eventually folded and decided to follow him.
This outcome made him interested in the outcome of the mission. He wanted to see if the ending of the mission would change without him, so he paid closer attention to the communications channel.
A minute after the people going for the mission had assembled, one of the 20 said in the communication channel, "Greg insulted someone during his talk with us. That person quit. So now there are 19 of us."
This caused someone to laugh and say, "You’re telling me that you’re already experiencing casualties before the battle? Hilarious."
Another person said, "I’m not surprised. Mark my words, worse things will happen."
A third said, "I think this is a bad omen of worse things to come. If I were you, I would quit now."
No one had anything encouraging to say on the communication channel. They either made fun of the people going on the mission or advised them to quit early.
All of this negativity got to some of the remaining 19 people. 5 veterans and 1 recruit decided that it was probably a bad idea to follow Greg, so they quit. This left 13 people still willing to follow Greg on the mission.
Greg wasn’t deterred by this, though. He was hell-bent, so he urged the remaining 13 into his new and improved airship before taking them for the attack.
Meanwhile, Loki chuckled and said to himself, "I remember this event in the other timeline. So I’m not surprised that it turned out like this."
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A/N: Please, don’t forget to vote with your power stones and golden tickets. Thank you.