Irium

"I mean no disrespect, your majesty, but I do think you heard me very clearly."

He, or the Temple of Temur I guess, will "present" to us Cartel Hopkins. This would be a pretty sweet deal if it had us doing something less dangerous than going against the strongest mortal in the universe.

"Hah!" I sigh and take a glance back at Roswaisa, who seems to be considering taking the deal, and so I ask Raka, "What exactly will the "support" you gain from us do in all this?"

If the support we give to him, or Temple of Temur, is not revealed to Dues, then this might be a plausible way to go about things.

"Buffs!" He answers as he looks at me.

"You want buffs from us?" Obviously, we are speaking in a language that normal people generally use in video games but "buffs" basically mean "temporary strengthening spells". For example, by giving a person capable of putting a dent in iron a strength buff, he could become capable enough to rip apart iron. This effect will wear off with time though.

"Hmm, it"s still kinda dangerous."

Buffs are proper magic spells. Their effect can obviously be picked up on, especially as they wear off after a time. Since Frosts has no proper mages, someone who does must help them if they want to go in battle all buffed up. Even if we wouldn"t be immediately found out, it"s not like Dues will not be able to put two and two together with some time.

"That it is." Roswaisa suddenly says with a deep voice, "But this might be a chance worth taking."

"Are you serious?" I ask, surprised by her saying that.

"Someone needs to get that b.i.t.c.h off her high horse! And that is not something we will be able to do if we just sit around waiting for the right moment to present itself." She says. "Think about how many years, no, centuries she has spent planning every little detail of this. Do you think she will just make a mistake someday and give us the chance to retaliate?"

Well, by that very logic,

��You are the one who should think of how many centuries she has spent planning this? Do you think she wouldn"t have ever played a scenario like this in her head?"

She probably already suspects that these guys would come to us for help and we would start considering it. She probably has taken some precautions for it that will get us into major trouble.

"Yeah, we will probably be walking into a trap here but it"ll be fine if we play our cards right."

"Huh!?" What does she mean by that? What "card" do we have to play to not get into trouble for going against her?

She drags me away from the rest of them by my hands and then says.

"We can just tell Dues that this was the only way to find Cartel."

Ah!

"It"s not like these Frosts guys are going to win. So, at the end of the day, Dues would have successfully suppressed a rebellion and found the man who has caused her much headache. If she weighs that against some Frosts losing faith in her, she would still not have much reason to be upset at us."

That – sounds plausible.

Yeah, that"s actually doable.

"Come on! We have to take this chance!" Roswaisa urges me to agree.

"Let"s make sure of something first!" I say.

"What!?"

"We are going to tell her that this way the only way to find Cartel, right? Let"s make sure of that being the truth!"

Hearing that, Roswaisa smirks.

If Dues later finds out that we just ignored some lead we had and agreed to this deal, our excuse will fall apart, wouldn"t it? So, let"s make sure that there is no lead like that.

*****

After going through all the records we have of the denizens of this realm, no "Cartel Hopkins" wound found anywhere. We checked the list of people who have ever gone out of the realm for whatever reason and tried to match Cartel"s face to them. Since I am the king, I was able to mobilize many people on this whole thing and so the process didn"t take as long as it otherwise would have. Still, we came up with nothing. No one living here could tell us anything about him either.

From what Raka told us, Temple of Temur guys are planning their chaos for tomorrow. Before that, we need to make sure no stone is left unturned, or at least enough of them are turned that the ones left unturned are pretty d.a.m.n hard to notice.

And so, we make sure to go through the secret files that Trevor and Kaylith had that weren"t revealed to others as well.

Still, we found nothing much. The only possible connection to Cartel we found was a top secret mission by Trevor to send a few Glice denizens to Earth as spies in Remedy Corporation. Apparently, this happened right after Kaylith took this realm from Lucifer (which happened 6 years ago apparently).

If, let"s say, Cartel was one of the people who was sent as a spy in Remedy, does that lead us to him? It doesn"t. Trevor shut down this program a year ago and all the spies were called back. In fact, it has been mentioned that all of them came back and are living here now. And none of these people match the description we have of Cartel.

So, that"s it, isn"t it?

We should have enough of a reason to accept the Temple of Temur"s deal.

I wonder though, what is Irium doing right now? And if he were to find out about all this, will he accept this as a smart decision or will he protest against?

One of the easiest things for me to do is to predict him when he is trying to be funny. And one of the hardest things for me to do is to predict him when he is not being funny.

I hope this decision doesn"t put us at odds against each other.

*****