Tales of the Old World Demon Lord

Chapter 12 – Emergency meeting

[Eternum Calendar 1971]

With the sun only now just beginning to reveal itself from the horizon’s edge, Morgant stood in preparation for the day. No doubt it was going to be a long one and he needed this time to be alone. He slowly and numbingly shifted through his small wardrobe that was in the corner of the room. Going through most of the ones he owned he found none of them to be quite suitable for today’s expedition.

He stopped once he reached his favorite jacket and muffler hanging by the pole and contemplated on them for a while. It wasn’t exactly the most excitingly themed article of clothing but they were his birthday present given to him last year by his friends. He looked it fondly before deciding to leave it for the time being as they weren’t quite practical for sneaking about or, if need be, for combat purposes.

Continuing to shift through his closet he came across a black and white formal vest and trouser combo. They appeared much more suited for fancy ball parties over fighting or sneaking, however with their slender and formal design it was far more practical than anything else in his closet. Yet holding them in his hands he found himself grinning as he found himself changing into them. As much as Sovereign was all about efficiency and practicality, presentation was also an important factor. He recalled more distant memories of Sovereigns; ‘even if you lose, as long as you appear victorious, then you’ve already won’.

Speaking of which, these memories of Sovereign’s past continued to steadily flow into his head day by day. Though fortunately they weren’t all trying to break into his mind all at once thus he was able to slowly decode and understand those memories. With them his understanding of the world, both now and the old, had enhanced to a far greater degree than any child on this planet. Effectively his body was still that of a seven year old’s but with those enhanced memories flowing into him, he was much more than that now.

There was no doubt that soon the distinction between the seven year old ‘Morgant’ and the enigmatic overlord ‘Sovereign’ would become an arbitrary one. As Sovereign had put it, they were both one and the same. Eventually once Morgant had attained the entirety of those ‘old memories’ it would effectively also mean the full revival of Sovereign.

Yet even knowing this, that his identity would be far greatly overshadowed by Sovereign’s, he wasn’t scared or unhappy about this inevitable change. He embraced the identity of Sovereign whole heartedly, to the point where he found the identity of ‘Morgant’ as a worthwhile sacrifice. If there was one slight concern it would be what the consequences of this gradual change would bring to his current relationship with his friends. Indeed, it was hard to imagine that they’d be repulsed by it nor would they distance themselves, but if it ever did come to that Morgant was fully prepared.

Sad as it may be, he had an even larger obligation now. Though that being said, somewhere in the depths of his still ‘Morgant’ heart he trusted in his friends enough that their dynamic wouldn’t change all that much. This was merely an intrinsic conjecture but he still believed in them wholeheartedly.

Before he was about to leave he turned to the sleeping face of Alice on the next bed to his. He gave a quiet chuckle as he witness her cute reaction as he impulsively poked her gently on the cheeks. Then he gave a satisfied sigh and left, closing the door behind him quietly.

The emergency meeting was to be held in the town hall’s office with various key members of the community. From what he had gathered about it the ones who would be in attendance were ones that had large influences on this small town. The Adventurer Guild’s leader, Merchant Guild’s leader, the Mayor, the Townguard’s captain, Miko and other notable members, they would all be gathering to discuss their future movements.

Since Morgant himself wasn’t invited and it would be much more difficult him to barge in as a mere child he decided he would preemptively break in and hide himself. It wasn’t difficult, with the sun barely up and the town of perpetual snow still half covered in shadows he made his way skillfully through the small town and towards the town square. There a large government building stood overseeing all operations over the town with an air of arrogance and self-importance.

Before he entered, Morgant thought about the flash back given to him by Sovereign once more. ‘[The enemy also exists amongst our own allies, that is an inevitable truth]’; Sovereign was much smarter and leagues more insightful than him so it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume he had figured something out. If that was truly the case then this small quote could be a hint as to who the true enemies are. Morgant’s current conclusion based on that flash back was that the culprit related to this incident will be in attendance.

Bracing himself once more he took a couple of deep breaths before activating [Stealth Field] once more and entered the town hall office. At the center of the town hall there was a moderately sized council room that could easily serve as the meeting’s juncture. Or rather there was no other place then that that would be suitable, thus after easily navigating through to minute series of uninspired hallways Morgant made it to the council room.

This wasn’t any kind of military base nor was it any high level governmental office; there were no guards or strong locks that would stop Morgant for even a second. It was a small open area with several chairs surrounding one large circular table. Other pieces of furniture like sofas, portraits and cupboards were set along the walls but nothing more impressive than that. After bearing witness to the grand architecture that was the old world, something of this level just gave Morgant a sense of disappointment.

In fact the room was so unimpressive that there weren’t even any suitable places for Morgant to hide. The only real option was to hide away on small elevated platform where a large marble statue was placed. This hiding place was such a complete joke anyone would have stood out like a sore thumb and be found out immediately. The only real advantage for this place was that it was slightly elevated and people had a tendency to not look past their eye level without any sort of prompt or provocation. In addition to this however, Morgant had two more advantages that made this place suitable. The first was his relatively small body as a seven year old; the statue would likely not have been enough for any grown adult but for a child it was barely enough to completely conceal him.

The second advantage was his [Stealth Field], an ability that could suppress his secondary noise and other presence indicators. If even Miko, whose senses were far beyond any beings’ couldn’t notice him then it was unlikely that anyone else would. With these three factors Morgant breathed a sigh and decided to go with it as he was starting to run short on time.

Hiding himself while still maintaining almost full view of the council room below he awaited for the guests to arrive.

…

One by one the guests started to fill the room, of them four stood out to Morgant immediately.

The first was the Mayor, an elderly man with one horn protruding from the side of his left temple. A demon-kin, though they were not a rare sight on this continent of demons after all. Through his wrinkled and aging face he had an almost soothing face that could calm the heart and soul of anyone who stared into his deep blue eyes long enough. If they were judged by looks alone then Morgant would have skipped him entirely without a second’s thought. Alas things were not as simple as that in the real world, ‘the weed… it couldn’t be him, could it?’

Dalton [Title: Mayor]

Age - 74

Race - Demon

Threat Level - 202 (Low)

Affinity - Composite Element

Condition - Normal

Ailments - None

External Effects - None

The second was the Adventurer Guild’s local leader. Since this town only had a small and unpopular novice adventurer guild this person didn’t exactly have that much power and his overall posture reflected such a meek state. With his shoulders and back slumped forward he was a skinny Elven male with blonde hair that covered his eyes. Once more Morgant had to remind himself that looks could be deceiving and that there was still a very real chance that this man was the weed.

Gerald [Title: Guild Leader]

Age - 29

Race - Elf

Threat Level - 301 (Low)

Affinity - Range Combat Mastery

Condition - Normal

Ailments - None

External Effects - None

Another man stood next to him, with a rather villainous looking face he even twirled his mustache as he idled about, the Merchant Guild’s Leader. His clothes were lavishing and made of the finest quality fiber and his overall aura screamed out that he was the ‘weed’. Yet, this was too obvious for Morgant to even consider him to culprit, but there was the possibility that this was some sort of reverse psychology. That being said, with Sovereign’s mentality slowly sipping in and corrupting his thought process, Morgant changed his mind. ‘Book covers exist to be judged’, for now this man was the prime candidate.

Francisco Longmoore [Title: Guild Leader]

Age - 38

Race - Human

Threat Level - 107 (Very Low)

Affinity - Fire Element

Condition - Normal

Ailments - None

External Effects - None

Across the table was a rather slender but fierce looking woman with short white hair and hypnotic red eyes. She had a dissatisfied expression as she sat down with her arms crossed. She was also part of the demon race as evident by her two very sharp fangs that couldn’t be hidden behind her mouth. A ‘Vampire’ and also the townguard’s captain. Morgant could easily guess why she was upset; over the course of the past few days a lot of the town’s people had gone missing and now they were on the brink of finding out the culprit. The fact that it was some ‘goblin’ was probably what brought the sour expression on her face.

In fact she was far too easy to read to be anyone of any worthy intelligence. Placing brawns before brains wasn’t particularly a negative trait and in some cases were even advantageous but those kinds of characters also aren’t the scheming type. She was the least likely candidate to be the weed.

Yvonne [Title: Townguard Captain]

Age - 32

Race - Vampire

Threat Level - 325 (Low)

Affinity - Close Combat Mastery

Condition - Normal

Ailments - None

External Effects - None

There were other members of the community that had joined in the discussion as well but they weren’t too much of note thus Morgant had only paid minimal attention towards them. For now he went over the four holographic boxes of personal information about the most suspect individuals in the room.

“I thank everyone for joining me in this dire hour of our small town. Now then, as you know there have been several disappearances happening around our town recently. However it was not until yesterday that we found out some fraction of the truth behind it thanks to a brave farmer.”

The elder town mayor got off his seat and started to spin exposition. The others simply kept quiet and listened as the mayor went into detail about the case, yet none of it was information that Morgant didn’t know already.

“U-umm… is it true that the culprit was a ‘Goblin God’?”

A feeble sounding voice came from the Elven leader of the Adventurer Guild, Gerald. He shirked back as everyone turned their gaze to focus on him as he spoke.

“Mmm~ we don’t quite have confirmation but by the farmer’s own words that seemed to be the case.”

The mayor answered as he scratched his bold head.

“Oi, oi, you can’t be serious. A goblin? Bah! Even I can kill those bugs in my sleep; there’s no way that’s the true culprit. No, what I think is that the true mastermind behind these attacks is one of us. This has the work of someone intelligent written all over it, I’d stake my pride as a merchant on it.”

The one who threw such an accusation was none other than the Merchant Guild leader, Francisco Longmoore. Listening in from above, Morgant was thoroughly impressed, though from the looks of it he was merely basing it off his gut feeling rather than any real deduction. Still, he wondered if it was a good thing that now everyone has the idea that there could be an enemy within their ranks.

It was good because now the weed wouldn’t be able to make any large movements because everyone is now guarded and closely observing each other. However on the other hand the opportunity to see everyone in their natural state was gone. It was often times when weren’t conscious of other people’s gazes that they tended to slip up on the most. Suffice it to say all this did was increase the difficulty of the mission but buy more time to figure it out.

The crowd around the circular table started to become disorganized as they looked to each other with accusatory eyes. To bring them back to order, the mayor cleared his throat and coughed loudly to gather everyone’s attention.

“Ahem! It seems we’ve gotten rather rowdy all of a sudden. In any case, though Longmoore does make an interesting point it will only hinder us to be suspicious of one another at this critical time. What we must do now is figure out a way to deal with the problem of disappearing town’s people before we start throwing accusations.”

“Are you suggesting we set up an expedition party into the place where the town’s people started disappearing? Because if you are, then I’m game.”

The townguard’s captain voiced with an eerie smile.

“Perhaps in due time but for now I’ve brought special guests that offered their assistance to our small problem.”

The elderly mayor shifted his gaze to the door and told the outsiders to ‘enter’. As if on cue three people had entered the council room.

The first was a rather young and slender looking man with long black hair. He wore an obviously fake smile on his face and wore clothes fitting for some kind of high noble.

Enrich [Title: Emissary of Vertloch]

Age - 24

Race - Human

Threat Level - 147 (Low)

Affinity - Ice Element

Condition - Normal

Ailments - None

External Effects - None

‘Enrich…? Where have I… -?!’ Morgant thought for a moment before he remembered where he had heard the name. It was a few days ago back at the orphanage, a mysterious stranger had come to visit Diana and Miko. From the way they had addressed him he seemed to be of a high position within the Demon Lord’s forces. Though that being said Morgant wouldn’t have guessed that he would be a human of all things.

For now he decided to put that thought on hold as he [analyzed] the other two. The most eye catching of the three was a buff man adorned in silver armor that seemed to be made of the highest quality. However, while that in itself was rather impressive there was one other thing that instantly caught Morgant’s attention.

Sipher [Title: Praetorian Grand Knight]

Age - 27

Race - Human

Threat Level - 562 (Moderate)

Affinity - Composite Combat Mastery

Condition - Normal

Ailments - None

External Effects - None

His ‘threat level’ were far higher than what Morgant had seen so far. As if his gilded armor wasn’t enough, to think that his image fit his prowess perfectly was actually a surprise for Morgant. While compared to Morgant’s own threat level of 983 this knight’s didn’t seem that impressive one also had to take into consideration that these values were relative.

Morgant’s own threat value was so high because he knew everything about himself and had the support of the old world. This man’s threat value was decided from his actual combat skills thus was far more deserving of praise. ‘Sipher…’ it was just one more person that Morgant had to keep a watchful eye on.

The last person was a small hooded figure, though she didn’t really hide anything. A young girl perhaps only two or so years older than Morgant stood behind the knight. Or rather it appeared that the knight was keeping close guard on the girl, thus seeing this scene Morgant instantly understood their dynamic. It was unlikely that she was a warrior from the way she was dressed but she could still be a powerful assassin or mage type thus Morgant made sure and checked.

However what he saw left him temporarily frozen.

“… eh?”

Este Fallon [Title: Runaway Princess]

Age - 9

Race - Human

Threat Level - 291 (Low)

Affinity - Composite Element

Condition - Normal

Ailments - None

External Effects - None

Hey guys, enjoyed the chapter? Leave a comment!

In any case, things will now start to get much more interesting and we will finally see Morgant in action soon! So be ready~