Chapter 549: Three Reasons
Hutch's words left a pregnant silence over the room. It was hard for the upper echelon to properly wrap their heads around this matter, but somehow also easy for them to accept.
The realization left them quaking internally. Just what level of manipulation and planning did it take to pull something like this off? Not only would it take the foresight necessary to realize that a nation could only be united when they had a common enemy, but it would also take a level of genius they could fathom to make those of the Slayer Legion accept this reality so long after their initial creation.
The upper echelon members had long since been taught of the true origins of the Slayer Legion, but it wasn't until this moment that they understood their true hidden purpose.
In truth, was this so different from their initial reality? Their main goal had been to protect the citizens of The Empire and to pave a better future for them. And now, their goal was the exact same… It was just that their spears were pointed in a different direction than where they expected.
But now, they had another problem to face.
While the upper echelon were properly indoctrinated and could accept this news with ease, the same couldn't possibly be true of their lower ranking members. One just needed to think of existences like Big Buddha to understand just how much many of their people hated The Empire.
No small number of their recruits were made up of those who loathed The Ascension Empire and wanted to live to the day it fell. But, this was precisely where the genius of the Slayer Legion lay… It was created for this expressed purpose. And, with all the most powerful members knowing the truth behind this, it was almost too easy to control how much progress the Slayer Legion made toward that goal.
This was the ultimate truth. Worrying about how those lower ranking officials would react…? Who said they needed to find out at all?
**
Leonel sat in meditation, his Internal Sight stretching out over the City.
White City was over 50 kilometers in diameter. If Earth was still a Third Dimensional world, with his Fourth Dimensional Internal Sight, Leonel wouldn't have an issue covering this distance. But, after entering the Fourth Dimension, it was much more difficult for Leonel to cover such a distance.
In such a fledgling Fourth Dimensional world, Leonel could at most cover ten kilometers at best and that was only thanks to his obscene sensory talents and in thanks to reaching completion in the Four Seasons Realm which seemed to have boosted him in all aspects.
However, even this wasn't enough to cover the whole city. This was why Leonel had had no choice but to walk around the city slowly.
His goal in traveling around the city had more to do with just finding the spies. Other than this, he also had to read the layout of the city and draw a map of the Force Art nodes littered throughout.
When Leonel saw Hargrove City teleport for a second time, a lightbulb went off for him. The only way for the City to have managed to do this was if there was a permanent teleportation Force Art drawn into its foundation. The reason for this was simple.
Take a talisman, for example. They were usually one time or limited use items. This was because the drawing of a single Force Art had many limiting factors whether that be the skill level of the one who drew it or the material it was drawn with.
The easiest way to visualize this was in comparing the Mage Arts of Camelot to treasures created by Force Crafters.
A Mage Art, once drawn onto the air, whether with no medium or with a Spiritual Wood forged wand, would only last long enough for a single attack. Even stronger spells would last for a few seconds at most, while the longest lasting spells like Leonel's bell defensive spell would only survive a few attacks at most.
By comparison, a treasure created by a Force Crafter was on a completely different level in terms of longevity. A well crafted weapon could survive decades, even centuries of continuous battle. There were some weapons that had even existed for millions of years without issue.
What was the main difference? The quality of material used to draw the Force Art!
Force Arts came in all different shapes, sizes and even languages. But, the one fundamental truth was that the medium used to draw them would always decide their longevity.
So what was the point of all this? Why was it important at all?
Well, it exposed one fundamental truth to Leonel, and that was that these cities weren't teleported here through one time use treasures. The very foundation of these cities were Force Arts!
One might think this wasn't very useful. Even if Leonel knew this, what could he possibly do about it? Even if he managed to use it, wouldn't it just be a teleportation Force Art? What was the use of bringing a city to a battlefield?
From Terrain's perspective, this made sense because they were invading another's land. But, Earth already had many well established Forts and Cities that could put White City or Hargrove City to shame.
Beyond this, since Terrain had drawn in permanent Force Arts, who knew if they had a greater purpose for them? What if much like Hargrove City, Terrain had a method of snatching White City back? If that was the case, it might make Leonel's actions even more useless.
All of this said… Leonel didn't see these matters in this fashion at all for a few reasons.
Firstly, he believed his level of skill was beyond the Crafters Terrain employed to draw these Force Arts. Secondly, he had learned when he reconstructed Camelot's Mage Arts to amplify their strength that Force Arts could be considered complete sentences and paragraphs while the Runes used to draw them were the words. In that case, such a large Force Art… just how many of these words could he rearrange? And what kind of new sentences could he form with them?
But, the third was the most important.
With the sturdy materials used to draw this massive Force Art… Leonel felt that he could do something much better with all that wealth.