Chapter 524: Covering Tracks
Once Leo finished outlining his findings, the room quieted for a brief moment as Veyr took a slow breath, his gaze drifting toward the ceiling as though organizing his thoughts before speaking.
"Well, I concur with your conclusion that the Su Clan clearly doesn’t feel like this planet holds any strategic importance to them, because the protector of this planet, the Commander in-charge, is pretty much an outcast..."
Leo shifted slightly in his seat, his eyes narrowing as Veyr leaned forward, voice happier now, as he shared a sad truth that secretly made him happy.
"According to the gossip lore, he’s a Su Family member who has fallen out of favor with the ruling branch and has been sent out to this remote planet to behave as its protector. The man doesn’t have a family, and spends most of his time drinking and lazing around. So much so that he hasn’t attended a single military meeting in the past two years."
Veyr hesitated, scratching his cheek thoughtfully before finishing the thought.
"He might be lazy... or he might just be depressed, but either way, he’s not much involved in how this planet runs."
Leo didn’t respond immediately. He sat upright now, eyes locked on his cousin with a frown beginning to form.
"I don’t think you ever become a Monarch if you’re fundamentally lazy by nature," Leo said slowly, the skepticism in his tone unmistakable.
"It’s not like he’s a Master level warrior who got lucky just because he belonged to a big family. He is a Monarch. That means, at least at some point in his life, he was a talented and ambitious man."
His fingers tapped lightly against the wooden table as he continued.
"So if the reports say that he’s just wasting his life around here... take it with a grain of salt."
Veyr shrugged with a small grin, clearly not offended.
"I thought the same... So yeah, I’ll be cautious, but that’s what the rumor mill has been saying about the Commander."
He leaned back, folding his arms as the conversation reached a slight pause, both of them processing the conflicting accounts they’d gathered so far. Then, after a short silence, Veyr spoke again, this time with a subtle shift in tone, sounding slightly more serious and grounded.
"Anyways, apart from that, I think I have some inkling about the hidden ’ace’ that the Righteous Faction might have."
That caught Leo’s attention instantly. His eyes lifted with a faint glint of curiosity as he turned fully toward Veyr.
"I think it’s a super high-powered mana-railgun that’s designed to deliver an attack equivalent to a peak Transcendent swordsman’s full strength, that should in theory, slice even Destroyer Class Ships in half, and is too fast to evade."
Veyr watched Leo closely, noting the subtle lift of his cousin’s brow as he registered the potential threat.
"During the previous wars, it’s the superior ships of the Cult that were the biggest problem for the Righteous Faction, and since then, they have invested a lot into anti-aircraft technology. Every zonal base has two such hidden guns, and they have the capability of eliminating entire fleets in real combat scenarios."
Leo absorbed the information carefully, his expression unreadable as he leaned forward slightly, placing both elbows on the table.
"So if we are to launch an attack on Koral, we first need to make sure that our ships have a way to defend against these railgun attacks, or not attack at all..."
Veyr snapped his fingers with a grin, nodding in agreement.
"Bingo."
The room fell quiet once again, but this time, it was the satisfying kind of silence, the kind that came only after reaching a hard-earned conclusion.
With this final piece of intelligence in hand, the core objectives of their reconnaissance mission were now complete. They had identified the key threats, gathered intel on the planet’s defensive structure, and uncovered its leadership vulnerabilities.
There were no more lingering doubts, no more guesswork to cloud their judgment.
The path ahead was clear.
Tomorrow, they would return to the Cult, not with vague theories or gut instincts, but with a full understanding of how to orchestrate a competent and devastating war strategy.
—--------------
The next day, Leo and Veyr chartered a hovercraft flight from Zone 12 to Zone 11 under the official pretext of meeting a few division heads to finalize arrangements for the upcoming interzonal exercises.
It was a clean excuse, logged in the system with all the right authorizations, routed through the internal communications grid just like any other mundane officer-level movement, as on paper at least, everything looked perfect.
However, the two cousins never actually boarded that craft.
Instead, just minutes before the scheduled departure, Leo slipped away into a quiet corner of the launch terminal, where he activated [Mirror World], placing inside the vessel two indistinguishable clones of himself and Veyr, that were perfectly dressed, perfectly mannered, and just lifelike enough to fool anyone watching.
Meanwhile, the real Leo and Veyr had already transformed into janitorial staff and exited through the rear maintenance corridor, blending into the morning crowd without even raising a single brow.
With altered faces, olive uniforms and nothing but modest duffel bags on their backs, they passed through the unloading dock, where a White Tiger Union ship was unloading this week’s supplies, and slipped onboard, just a few minutes before the ship was done offloading everything and was ready to take-off.
*KABOOM*
Roughly thirty minutes into its mid-air journey to Zone 11, the hovercraft carrying the clones detonated in a contained but dramatic explosion, scattering debris across a barren plateau just east of the Zone 11 Military Base.
To any witnesses or investigators, it was sure to appear as a tragic onboard malfunction, perhaps sabotage, perhaps pilot error, or perhaps just a mechanical fault.
But either way, it was staged to be a disaster that could give way to many possibilities.
With no body remains found in the wreckage, the Righteous Faction could only conclude that Lieutenants Larry and Aaron had gone missing under uncertain circumstances.
And hence launch a massive manhunt to find their missing location, wasting precious manpower and attention chasing shadows over the next few days.
This was exactly what the Cult wanted as well, because, while the Righteous Faction burned resources trying to locate two men who no longer existed, the Cult would be preparing and analyzing every last piece of intelligence that Leo and Veyr had brought back, so that they could craft a strategy sharp enough to carve a hole straight through Koral’s defenses and win this war without losing too many men.
The first Domino had officially fallen.
And the preparations for war had finally begun.
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