Chapter 25: Covering Tracks

Balor Ironhammer grimaced as he sat on his throne. He sent out that team to recover the phoenix egg but they still haven’t returned. They were supposed to return days ago…

He sent out search parties and one had returned rather quickly. He looked down at the squad of six Rangers kneeling before him. They all had troubled expressions on their faces…

“So did you find them?” Balor asked.

“We found the convoy your grace… but not the team that was sent out…” the lead Ranger replied.

“Signs of battle?” Balor asked.

“Yes, it looked to be a fierce battle… we suspect they were attacked by a phoenix and… someone else…” the Ranger replied as he averted his gaze. His creased brow wrinkled and Balor could see him chewing his lip under his beard.

“Someone else? So it wasn’t a monster?” Balor asked as he leaned forward.

“We found evidence of battle with the Phoenix, we also have reason to believe the team successfully downed the Phoenix. However, that is where the site becomes suspicious. Someone has tampered with it, removing all evidence of their presence.

We have found nothing on who could have done it. Only that the convoy was destroyed and the bodies were all missing. Whoever did this was professional. No footprints, no signs of tampering, no evidence whatsoever. The biggest indicator was that the site was too clean.

We suspect the perpetrators are skilled infiltrators, probably powerful rogues trained in ambushes and evidence removal.” the Ranger replied.

So it was a foreign power that was meddling with it… monsters didn’t have the ability to be this subtle. At least not subtle enough to throw his Rangers off the trail. They were powerful yes, some are exceedingly hard to detect but the removal of evidence? No… monsters always leave evidence of their presence on their paths of destruction.

They may be hard to track down but complete removal of evidence implies Humanoid intervention. Humanoids were afterall the only races with the flexibility to specialise into such a niche skill set.

Then came a larger problem, who did this? The locations of the attack should be out of reach of most of the human nations. Technically all of the nations might possess operatives capable of this, geopolitics operated on half diplomatic grandeur and half subterfuge…

If any of the human nations were involved they could plausibly reach this place but it would take weeks to cover the distance over the mountains. The reports of the egg came in two months ago so a fast acting nation could possibly capitalise on this information.

But which nation? Perhaps Averlon? They do have a particularly talented spy master according to his reports.

Jaraia is also a certain possibility; they have a famously strong adventurer guild with two Hero Rank Adventurer teams. Jaraia is also the closest to Ironhammer which means their information network within Ironhammer should also be the most robust.

Then there’s Istland, a small nation with an extremely small amount of territory. But they also have a famously good Mage Institute, the best in the region in fact. They could certainly make good use of reagents as powerful as Phoenix Yoke. Then again Istland was a Magic focused society, do they even have access to such capable operatives?

Arune and Cathay are perpetually at each other's throats so it’s unlikely they have resources to spare… Unless one of them wanted the Phoenix Yoke to create a weapon or spell that could potentially tip the balance of power...

Marina was just a nation focused on trading and crafting, although the Phoenix Yoke could help them with their crafting Balor doubted they had the means or incentive to pull something like this off.

Averlin the sister nation of Averlon just cowers at the mere mention of Tralis and from what he’s heard the king of Tralis has his son engaged to the crown princess of Averlin. His intelligence network suggests that Averlin will be swallowed by Tralis within a generation. He even heard that the crown prince of Tralis uses the crown princess of Averlin however he wishes. Taking frequent week-long “vacations” in Averlin to have his fun with the princess. But Tralis has its own concerns further north, there’s a war brewing there...

Balor doubts it has anything to do with those two city states...

“What happened to the attacking Phoenix, any signs of what happened?” Balor asked his rangers.

“Yes, but the things we found were odd and troubling…” the Ranger said as he furrowed his brows.

“Like?” Balor asked as he narrowed his eyes.

“The Phoenix looks to have been killed, there were the signs of a melt crater from the egg… but the melt seems to be extremely minor. The size of the crater implies a blue fire phoenix but it looks like whoever attacked the expedition was able to subdue the egg extremely rapidly.” the Ranger replied.

“How would one accomplish such a thing?” Balor asked his head Rune Lord, his expert in magical affairs.

“There are two methods, one difficult and the other extremely unlikely. The difficult method would be to create a containment device to house the egg. This would be challenging due to the size requirement of the device. This combined with the hazardous terrain would make such a device difficult to transport. It is also unlikely they would be able to transport it before the phoenix resurrects and completely destroys the device.

The extremely unlikely method would be to drain the latent ether of the egg. That would slow the resurrection but it would require a significantly large Ether Crystal. A Class-A crystal at the very least, we have only found five Class-A crystals in our Ether Crystal mines in the entirety of our history, so such an expense would be extremely unlikely. Such a crystal would be worth as much as the egg so using it in such a way would make little sense. Furthermore, as you know Class-A crystals tower three metres tall on average, thus transportation is another issue as well.” Balor’s Rune Lord said as he stroked his beard.

What Balor’s Rune Lord said made perfect sense. If containing Blue Fire Phoenix eggs were worth the trouble he would have done so long ago. Ether Crystals were formed naturally; you couldn’t just break them into smaller pieces or stitch them together. Breaking or cracking an Ether Crystal would cause an explosion, putting them together would just be physically putting two crystals together. It would be like tying two apples together and expecting a larger apple to form…

“Your grace, what Rune Lord Boren says is true but only with the techniques we have available…” Balor’s Spymaster said from the side.

“The Elysian Empire once fielded Phoenixes in their armies, they obviously had the techniques to contain and control them. Techniques we do not have access to. Perhaps the group that attacked the convoy had access to such techniques…” the Spymaster suggested.

“There’s only one organisation that would likely have access to those techniques…” the Rune Lord said as his face went a little pale.

“Yes… the Syndicate…” Balor said with a grimace.

“I have personally overseen the secrecy of this operation. I find it suspect that the assailants knew exactly where and when the convoy would be… It wouldn’t be that far of a stretch that the Syndicate drew the Phoenix to the convoy to weaken it beforehand so that they could obtain both eggs.” the Spymaster suggested.

“Hmmm… that is possible, I know for a fact that the Syndicate has a branch office hidden somewhere in Ironhammer…” Balor muttered.

Balor didn’t know where the branch office was, and honestly he didn’t want to know. Balor rather liked the arrangements of his body parts, he would rather they stayed where they are. He wasn’t stupid enough to try and antagonise the Syndicate…

“Investigate further, if you start to get any inkling of Syndicate involvement, cease all investigation operations and report back to me immediately.” Balor said as he gave his Spymaster a look.

“Of course your grace. It is not wise to court death after all…” the Spymaster said with a bow.

“Do not risk antagonising the Syndicate…” Balor muttered as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

If the Syndicate was really involved then he would just have to write this expedition off as a loss…

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Nemesis looked up at the projection as it appeared. It was time for the schedule check in from Nox and Discordia.

“Lady Nemesis.” Nox said with a small bow.

“Have you cleaned up our friend’s mess?” Nemesis asked nonchalantly as she swirled her glass of wine.

“Yes, the dwarves investigated but they won’t find anything that would implicate his existence. I left just enough clues behind for them to think either we or some other nation attacked the convoy. I left the clues in such a way that the Syndicate being the suspects is a more likely conclusion. I made the site too clean which only added to the suspicions.” Nox replied.

“Excellent, Balor may style himself as a strong ruler but he fears us like everyone else. Politically he will have no choice but to bury the incident, if he really is stupid enough to pursue the issue… we can just… remind him…” Nemesis said with a small smile under her mask.

“Of course my lady.” Nox replied.

“So what of our friend? What is he doing now?” Nemesis asked.

“Our friend is trying to make an omelette out of the Phoenix egg. Rather successfully I might add, it is quite intelligent...” Nox replied.

“Hahaha…” Nemesis let out a small laugh at those words.

How very much like a Firstborn to try something like this. How typical of the ultimate predator to treat Phoenixes like how humanoids treat chickens. Nemesis wondered if he would one day learn how to bake a cake with a Phoenix egg...

“Show me…” Nemesis as she held back her laughter.

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I stood over this makeshift stove in some random cave. I had ripped the metal top of the cage that held the phoenix egg when I got the idea. Now that metal plate was sitting on top of this crudely assembled stove. I opened my mouth and blew another breath of fire under the plate. I watched the plate glow as the yoke on top sizzled. I then picked up a bone I had… borrowed from a nearby troll and I’m using it as this spatula. The bone was the long flat bone on the front of the rib cage.

Is it morbid to kill a semi sentient creature just because you needed a cooking utensil?

Well… yes…

In my defence I was going to eat the whole village eventually so does the reason really matter?

But as I took in the scent of the reddish omelette that was sizzling on the plate…

I regret nothing…

My god it smelt good…

It should be done soon, the Phoenix mother I ate gave me a host of new abilities. It enhanced my armor to [Phoenix Armor] it could now jam spells that were affecting me. My feathers were now a shiny pale gold. It wasn’t the most subtle appearance but I could turn invisible so whatever.

Not only that, I got a bunch of interesting and useful stuff.

My wings were improved naturally with the acquisition of the phoenix genome which means I now have [Phoenix Wings]. Not only that I could now fire this skill called [Solar Bombardment] from my wings. I could also use this new kind of breath attack called [Solar Beam], my normal [Wyvern Fire Breath] has also been turned into [Solar Breath] increasing its heat and now it disrupts magic.

I also got some smaller passives like [Lesser Fire Immunity]. Not sure what exactly what does, how can you be less or more immune? Doesn’t immunity just mean that you don’t take damage from fire? Maybe there were different kinds of fire?

Another strange passive was [Lesser Ether Manipulation] apparently this means I can actually start to learn spells. Only problem was… I don’t know any spells. I guess Cecilia can help me with that.

OH SHIT! It’s burning….

I hastily flip the omelette over to stop my meal from burning. I had to drain the egg of most of its ether to even make it cookable. I mean it is a phoenix egg, heat wouldn’t be that effective normally. But after draining the ether it seems to be cooking quite well. Shouldn't be long now…

I’m feeling really good about this meal…

Hmm… hmm… I started to hum as I remembered this old song I knew in my old world…

I guess I could adapt some of the lyrics. Let’s see how my creativity is, I was hopeless at it in my past life. But with my new abilities, who knows I might be able to write a hit song…

I hummed as I remembered the smooth jazz of the tune...

Not very long ago, just before your time…

Right before your mother fell, flaming from the sky…

You would have flown the skies, and terrified…

A town... Or two…

They would see your flight…

And set their sights…

Cowering…

From you…

Youuuu…

Delecccctable you…

I sang as I flipped the omelette happily.

Mommy had such great plans for you…

I made this stove and it did everything I designed it to do…

But now look at you…

Oh... look at you…

Irresistible...

Delectable…

I sang with a slight laugh as I blew another breath of fire under the stove.

My time is now

Your insides out

Honey, how you grew

And If I get more of you

Who knows what I’ll do

It was always fate's plan

For you to fall into my hands...