Bab 973: Vital Information
It took a few moments for everyone to assemble, including those who had been in the dormitories, the bathroom, or the training area. Eventually, though, everyone was seated in the central room, facing the large monitor.
There were only two other individual teams aside from the Harmony Guardians. The first to arrive was a seven-member group called the Wandering Scale. Meeting Hera drove them nuts, since she was the only one who actually had scales. They specialized in adaptive combat and unconventional tactics—basically the kind of people you called when you had no idea what you were walking into and needed people who could think outside the box.
The second team, Stormcrest Company, had five members. Their focus was on defensive formations and precision operations, almost the opposite of the Wandering Scale. They were the types to create a plan, follow it to the letter, and make sure no variables interfered with the mission.
Seeing those two groups so adjusted and confident in their own specialties made the Harmony Guardians slightly uncomfortable. Unlike the other two teams, they didn't have a specific skill set. As Flint would say, they were just "a bunch of morons in over their heads who have no idea what they're doing." On the other hand, according to Vash, there was something called "failing upwards," meaning succeeding through mistakes that somehow worked out.
Ka'mal walked over to the monitor. "What I'm sharing with you is the most up-to-date information we have, but don't expect it to be completely accurate. It's very likely things have changed since we got this. Even if we had obtained this information today, always consider it incomplete."
He glanced up from his tablet and froze. "Why are there a bunch of equations written on the wall?" he asked, turning to the large team.
"Oh! Sorry. I did that," a dwarf with a prosthetic left arm and armor covered in gears spoke up. His name was Brok Anvilhand.
"Why did you use the wall? We have a bunch of notebooks, and there's a whiteboard in the corner," Ka'mal said, pointing to the left side of the room.
"I know, I know. I was sleepwalking when I did that," Brok said with a sheepish shrug.
Ka'mal paused for a long moment before asking, "You do math when you're sleepwalking?"
"Yeah. I know it's weird, but that's what happens ever since I was a kid," Brok replied.
Ka'mal did a double take at the equation on the wall. "Is it at least correct?"
"Not really. I messed up the order. I was supposed to first do what's inside the parenthesis, then the multiplication, and then the addition. But I canceled out the square root of 64 with the square root of minus 64, even though only one of them is being used for a straight addition. That made the whole thing wrong," Brok explained.
"If you say so. I'm not going to try to figure that one out," Ka'mal said as he tapped his tablet. An image of the lab's exterior appeared on the screen. It was hard to even call it an entrance. It looked like nothing more than a white pillar covered by moss standing in the middle of the jungle.
"First things first, this is your destination—the entrance to the lab. We've checked and confirmed that there's no other way inside. You should all be able to go in together. The problem here is the guards."
Ka'mal shifted the image, now displaying a group photo of people in the Guild. "From what we know, the security of this place is being handled by a highly specialized group of former military personnel."
The image changed again, showing a battalion of about ten people wearing camo and holding various types of weapons. "They used to be part of a special team—the kind that would only show up for black ops missions. They're also the kind of people no one would care about if they vanished, which tells you what kind of organization we're dealing with. We don't know specifics about their individual skills, but at least one of them has a group buff. It's a smaller-scale version of what Cyrus could do."
"Wait. You're not actually saying that the legacy of one of the Nine Heroes is with them, are you?" Zephyr asked. The harpy, with multicolored feathers and ribbons attached to his long cornrows, wore a heavy frown on his face.
"No. As far as we're aware, no one knows the whereabouts of Cyrus' legacy. What they do have is just something created with those powers in mind," Ka'mal replied. He tapped the screen again, bringing up a new image.
It showed two Soldiers of Strength standing in the middle of an army, side-by-side with a comparison to two individuals from the previous photo. "We believe these two are not the only members of that group who became Soldiers of Strength. So expect that most, if not all, of them have similar powers."
"Do we know their levels?" Skyler asked.
"No concrete information, but we're assuming they're at least around level 60," Ka'mal answered.
"Fuck," Blade gasped. "While being a Soldier of Strength they are supposed to be able to fight people 20 levels above them, right? So that would mean level 80. Aren't most of the people here a bit under level for that?"
Ka'mal shook his head. "We don't expect all of them to be there at the same time. Like I said, they are working as guards in the facility, which means they should be working on shifts. In addition, everyone here has a history of being able to handle the Soldiers of Strength. Some overpowered them, others disrupted the effects surrounding them, and some specialized in fighting enemies stronger than them. The agency didn't pick you because we consider you expendable. We called you because you are a group of people who have a high likelihood of winning this fight."
"That doesn't mean you wouldn't be better if we had stronger people involved."
"That is true, but if we waited, we would lose an opportunity that we're going to have. Not to mention that we would have to remove people protecting key points around the MAZE and leave large holes in our defenses."
"And what exactly is that opportunity? You mentioned it a few times but never really explained what's going on," Selene, an elf from the Stormcrest Company with silver hair and a specific pattern of scars going across her arms, asked.
"Wait. I didn't say it?" Ka'mal frowned. Everyone shook their heads in response. "Oh, my bad. I honestly thought I had talked about this. According to a report, The New Dawn is preparing a big presentation of their newest 'weapon,' which should be a new version of the Soldiers of Strength. How they are doing that, I don't know. We were able to liberate the Strength Spirits but maybe they still have enough in storage to create more of those soldiers."
"Either way, according to the information we have, they will be taking this enhanced version to a different place for the presentation. And there will be a detail made out of those same security guards accompanying the prototype. Which means they will have less people inside the lab giving us a better opportunity to strike. We expect that at least a third of the guards go to the presentation, but there is a world where we are only facing half of them inside the lab."
Blade nodded. "Okay. That changes things. Twenty of us versus five or seven of them feels more doable."
"Exactly. And aside from those guards, you should also expect more people working there. Probably scientists and possibly other guards that are not as high level. But I think the biggest issue will be the defenses of the facility itself. We have some blueprints that say they have robust lockdown protocols, which include closing the sequential corridors to stop anyone from getting in or out. But we do have an answer for that, don't we?" Ka'mal turned to Grimm, a dwarf from the Wandering Scale.
The man nodded with a smile, stroking his beard, that always seemed to be covered in soot. "You don't have to worry about that, boss man. My Beatrice will be more than enough to open a hole in those walls. And if she can't get the job done, they'll have to face Penelope."
"What?" Vash asked with a confused expression. He was not the only one as half the group was just staring at the dwarf.
A beastman of tall stature with a mane of red coming not just from the top of his head but going around his face sighed. "Don't worry about that. He is the demolition expert, but for some reason he names his explosives after his exes. According to him, the worse they hurt him, the better they explode. Whatever that means. I'm Raxus by the way. Leader of the Wandering Scale. Sorry for not introducing myself when I arrived, but I ate something that really didn't sit well with me."
"Speaking of which, Penelope is the worst one, isn't she?" another elf, this one also from Wandering Scale with platinum blonde hair and wearing a set of black leather armor.
"No, no. I think you are wrong Iris, the worst one was Josephine," Ivy, Iris's twin sister who had the same platinum blonde hair and wore the same set of armor, replied.
"You are both wrong," Grimm spoke up. "The worst one was Cassandra. But if I have to use her, not even the forest will be left standing."
"Right... Anyway. Once you get there, you'll be using a set of cloaks that will only last for a few hours. They are extremely powerful, super expensive, but because of the magic inside them being so strong, it will start to destroy the fabric as you walk around. It's completely safe for you, but once the spells are active, you will have 149 minutes to reach the lab. That should be more than enough time to cover the distance from the outer layer of their patrols to the inside. But try not to take too long. The longer you have the cloaks on you, the better your chances are of reaching the prisoners inside without being seen."
"Can't we just take another set of cloaks, then? That way, we swap to the new one after the first gets spent," Hera asked.
"Unfortunately, no. If there is another one of those cloaks being affected by the effects of the first one, they trigger a strange resonance and both are canceled out. The R&D department spent a long time working on these. And they are still upset to this day that they were unable to make the duration reach 150 minutes. And honestly I can't blame them. It would piss me off," Ka'mal said.
"Yeah, I get it," Flint nodded.
"I think that's about it, at least for the dangers in the lab. The rest is pretty standard. People trying to fight against you, lesser Soldiers of Strength that are not as high level. Anyone who is there getting the skills to become a Soldier of Strength can also be a problem," he paused, double checking the information on his table. "Actually, there's one more thing. It says here that maybe Morgan Wabeeri, the chairman of The New Dawn, will be there for an inspection. But I don't think he should cause any problems. I mean, the guy was level 30 the last time I heard anything about it."
Hearing that name, Blade's eyes turned sharp. "If he's there, then we might have bigger problems."
"What do you mean?" Neria turned to the human.
"He was there when I stole the files. He kept taunting Romeo while we fought the Alpha and Beta. Something tells me that if he's responsible for all that, he will also have some power."
"He is also richer than the System. Isn't he funding the entire war effort? I can only imagine what kind of gear someone with that kind of money would have," Kros, a beastman with gray fur and a scar over his left eye, said.
"Frostbite might also be a problem. She was there during the assault on the centaur homeland. During the fight, I killed their Chieftain, and they had a legacy. But the Legacy also came with a wendigo skill. I couldn't handle the idea of having something like that and gave the Legacy to her. And before anyone calls me stupid, trust me, I know. But at the time, I didn't know she would betray us and capture everyone involved in the assault. Later, I discovered that she is not exactly Morgan's right arm, but she's one of his favorite goons," Blade explained.
"Do you remember anything about the legacy?" Ka'mal asked.
"Only that it was about tattoos. Each tattoo gave a specific kind of power. And the older the tattoo, the longer it would take for me to get access to the skill behind it. The wendigo tattoo is the only one I remember. It could take people's abilities as long as I ate them. It felt sickening."
"What?!" the Harmony Guardians and Ka'mal gasped.
"What?" Blade asked back.
"Tattoos that give power? And one that can take someone's powers away? Why did you never say anything about that?" Ka'mal asked.
"I told people that I gave her a legacy, but the specifics weren't relevant. Especially since I barely understood what it did," Blade defended herself.
"Are you kidding me? Did you read the file about the Soldiers of Strength?" Ka'mal gasped.
"I did. What about it?"
"And even after seeing that the tattoos connect them to the people who are bound to daemons, you didn't think you should say anything about it?" Ka'mal pressed.
"I saw that there was something about tattoos, but I figured it was just about identifying them. But since their skin is red, there's no need to worry about what's on their bodies, so I just skipped that part."
"You have got to be kidding me. If that was just to identify them, why would we make a new part of the file specific about tattoos if we already had one about appearance?"
Blade shrugged. "I don't know. This is an intelligence agency. I thought you would just say everything you knew."
While that was going on, the Harmony Guardians were all staring at Hera and Vash. They had questions, but it was clear that the two were already thinking about something. "Fuck, that might be it," the Empress finally said.
"Yeah," Vash nodded with wide eyes. "If that's how they're making them. That's it."
Ka'mal heard the commotion and turned to the two. "I was about to ask you. Is this as big as I think it is?"
Hera nodded. "It should be. Just so everyone understands, Vash and I have legacies. We were asking our Heralds about this. If the Soldiers of Strength are being created with the help of a legacy, and that legacy is in any shape or form actively interacting with the connection between the humans and our people, the moment someone else takes the legacy, that effect will be gone."
"Does that change the operation, then?" Brok asked.
Ka'mal frowned. "I don't know. It's still possible that the Legacy just helped them create the tattoos, not that it's actively doing something. I should talk to my superiors, but they're going to take ages to come up with a decision." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know what? Fuck it. I'm adding a priority target to the mission. If you find Frostbite, or whoever the fuck has that legacy right now, kill them. Even if it changes nothing, we are at least taking a big piece off the board."
With that, the meeting was over, but instead of creating more anxiety and worry about the upcoming operation, the entire team had renewed dedication. After all, as long as they were able to get rid of the Soldiers of Strength, the war would shift in their favor.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
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