"Yes, I'm sure it will be worth it. I'm sure you'll be interested in the preserved corpse of someone with a mana body." Finn spoke in a monotone, as if it was no big deal. He heard a loud noise coming from the other side and when he lifted his head to look, he noticed that both dragons were gone and the elder was looking intently at him.
"Explain yourself and you better not hide anything." The dark elder ordered and Finn promptly obeyed. He spent the next few minutes recounting all the events since he'd split from the unit, to what he'd witnessed in the city of Faltra, without hiding any details.
Finn knew the elder would read his memories when the mission was over, so it would be a stupid idea to hide something.
"Fascinating, fascinating...! A mana body with a late awakening of affinity! That's the stuff of legends!" The elder exclaimed fanatically. Countless tomes flew around him feathers quickly wrote down all the experiments he planned to do with such a specimen.
"Elder, I'm glad the material is to your liking, but as for my request...?" Finn asked cautiously, not liking the maddened gleam in his eyes at all.
"Your request? No problem. Your mission was to hunt down the word keepers, so there would be no official records anyway. The mind reading will be done by one of my trusted apprentices and with my authority, the matter will be closed. " The elder said as he waved his hand, as if the matter was something trivial to him. The elder opened a map of the region and muttered for some time.
'Um... he is currently in the country of Mirkor, more precisely, on the border with the semi-human empire. My influence in this region is almost nil and if I make a big move, it's possible that the other elders will find out and interfere. The last thing I want is those vultures messing with my stuff!' The elder thought, already considering the corpse of Athos his property.
"More importantly, I need you to listen to my instructions carefully. You said the body was with a team of rookie mages, right? I'll send an extraction team to Clastro City to retrieve the body, they should arrive in approximately a week. Have the mages ready by then."
"Elder, Clastro is two weeks by carriage from Faltra. Even if they left now they wouldn't arrive in time." Finn informed him.
"Don't they have any wind mage capable of casting flying spells on their team? What do magic academies teach these days?" The elder grumbled like an old man before sighing. "I will send them to the city and order them to wait for a week or two until the mages arrive."
"Understood, elder." Finn waved at him. They spent the next few minutes working out all the little details before ending the call.
"Oh, one last thing." Finn was about to hang up when the elder suddenly called out to him. "Is Captain Emilia around?"
"Yes, she is. Why?" Finn asked suspiciously.
"No, it's convenient for her to be around. Kill her." The elder spoke in an icy tone.
"What?" Finn stood up abruptly, praying he'd heard him wrong. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Emilia's sleeping body and felt a tightness in his chest.
"It's an obvious result, isn't it? Regardless of the method you used, she is incompetent enough to be defeated by a subordinate and have an extremely important item stolen from her. That's more than enough reason to be kicked out of the white fangs. And the order cannot allow its secrets to be exposed. Therefore, she must be killed." The elder pressured him to kill her.
"With all due respect, elder, I don't believe she needs to be killed. Captain Emilia has an almost perfect track record in the missions, in addition to being one of the most promising white fang assassins, she also comes from a magical lineage that serves the order of generations. His death will not go unnoticed." Finn said, trying to convince him to reconsider. He'd heard Emilia complain about her family a few times and knew she was the black sheep of a powerful family.
"Council elections are approaching, aren't you? If you spare her, you can use that to rally their support. I'm sure she'll be more useful alive. I beg you to reconsider elder." Finn bent over as he pleaded, going so far as to lean his forehead on the floor.
"Um..." The elder frowned for a while as he investigated her family. A black book floated up to him, containing the family history of all active white fang assassins. He arrived at her name and widened his eyes recognizing her last name.
"Emília Ripha..? Is she one of the Ripha?" The elder muttered, before a hideous smile appeared on his wrinkled face. The Ripha were one of the families that served the current water elder, his greatest political enemy within the order. He was more than willing to let the girl live if he could have such a family owing him a favor.
"Boy, today is your lucky day. I'll spare the girl and let her get away with a demotion. Tell Captain Emilia to contact me as soon as she wakes up." The elder spoke after a time of deliberation. "Now stop wasting my time and bring me my dead body. And don't you dare call me again if you value your life." The elder threatened him before ending the call, without giving Finn time to respond.
Left alone, Finn began to shake with excitement, before jumping in with a huge smile on his face.
"I did it!!HAHAHA! I really did it!" He continued celebrating for a while as he raised his fists in the air in triumph. "Good thing that old man was an avid researcher, who doesn't care about rules as long as he gets what he wants."
Finn continued waving his fists for a while, until Emilia's sleeping body appeared in his vision, and he felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over him. Guilt for hurting her, for betraying her trust, and for tarnishing her career weighed heavily on her conscience, making her victory hollow.
"I'll let you hit me all you want when you wake up, but I need to finish what I started before I wake you up." He apologized to her once more before turning around and using the headset to communicate with the mages hiding in the forest.
"Leader, can you hear me? I have successfully negotiated with the elder and he has agreed to cover for us in exchange for the boy's corpse. Delivery of the corpse will be made to Clastro City in two weeks, so I need you to-" Finn started to explain the plan for the magic item, when he noticed an abnormality.
No matter how much mana he flowed into the communicator, he couldn't connect the receiver item in the leader's hands. The communication item was a set of transmitter and receiver, the transmitting side had to feed the item with mana, until it connected with the other party. The greater the distance, the more mana would be needed.
Finn had already fed the item several times more mana than it should have to cover the entire forest and even then, it still hadn't connected. There were only two explanations for this: the mages had left the forest for whatever reason and were out of reach, or...
"-someone destroyed the item. Something happened to the leader and the other mages." Finn muttered, having a bad feeling. He kept feeding the communicator until he ran out of mana, but there was no result.
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