Emerging from the dimensional portal, the Prophet threw the twins to the ground and narrowed his ghostly eyes. Almost instantly, two beautiful women dressed as Victorian maids entered and carried the twins to a bed, and the handsome gentleman lost all interest. No, he gave one final look at the unconscious twins, and his porcelain-perfect face finally cracked into a frown of displeasure.
Malachi sensed the Prophet's mood shift and instantly knelt on the floor begging forgiveness.
"Prophet, please punish me! I have failed you!"
"Malachi… What are you talking about? It was my miscalculation. I'd never anticipated the Solaris House to be so advanced."
From the start, the Prophet had believed he had the world in his hands. He'd spent centuries investigating and understanding how Hyades functioned. He knew all the organisations, how many potential threats there were, and their weaknesses… everything had been analysed down to the finest detail.
Hence, the Prophet had been confident when he sent the Twin Brutes to help the Foolish Lich and when he sent Malachi to search for the Hero and kill him. But unfortunately, as it showed, his calculations were far from the mark.
"Everything was wrong from the beginning. With the current turn of events, it's safe to assume that our plans have been compromised."
"E-Everything, sir?! But how would they know so much? Has there been an information leak?"
The Apostle was stunned speechless. The Demon Cult had always been a secretive organisation, and few, if any, knew of its existence. While he didn't know the full extent of the Solaris Cult's intelligence powers, he knew Alrock from the inside out. He wasn't one to establish an intricate intelligence network, and it was almost impossible for him to identify the actual abilities of the Demon Cult, let alone figure out their plans.
But the Prophet was more than convinced.
"Malachi, your viewpoint is too narrow. This universe isn't as simple as you think. There are more arcane secrets than you can ever imagine."
While Malachi was considered one of the most powerful existences in Hyades, he was ultimately a denizen of a lower dimension. The Demon Realm had far superior existences capable of bypassing the laws of physics and reality to achieve their goals.
"I have underestimated this lower realm. I'd thought that by being secretive and under the radar, we would be able to slowly accumulate our strength until we were strong enough to take over Hyades completely. I now understand that I was wrong. The Solaris House… They likely have an oracle or a seer."
"Oracles? They exist in Hyades?"
The Prophet had taken great strides into hiding the Demon Cult's activities. When he discovered that someone was meddling with their affairs, he launched an inquisition and found no leaks in the system. That could only mean one thing…
"While uncommon in an infant world like Hyades, oracles and seers that peak into the flow of spacetime to catch glimpses of destiny are widespread in the Demon Realm. Our Demon King is one such example. With the ability of precognition, he could discover Hyades from dimensions away."
"The same ability as our lord…"
Malachi's felt a shiver run down his spine. Precognition was a gift and a power that was hardly discovered in Hyades. And even if there was a seer, their predictions were always cryptic and hardly ever accurate. After all, no one could truly predict the future other than the Demon King, who the Prophet and the Demon Cult served.
Yet, the Prophet was convinced that the Solaris House possessed such an individual.
"That or they have a regressor—someone who defied the laws of heaven and transferred their consciousness back in time. Either way, we must reevaluate our assumptions of the Solaris House. They must be exterminated first to continue our ultimate plan."
There was no way for the Prophet to know that his second conjecture was closer to the truth, but either way, he was right that the Solaris House, namely Amon and Yue, knew the future.
Either way, it placed the Demon Cult at a severe disadvantage when warring against the Solaris House.
"Should we launch an all-out assault? With our manpower, we should be able to destroy the Solaris House."
Although Malachi had a prior brotherhood with Alrock, his new allegiance lay with the Demon Cult. Or more specifically, with the Prophet. If the Prophet ordered him to conduct a suicide mission, he would do so with no questions asked.
But, of course, the Prophet was far more composed and could rationally deduce his next course of action.
"No, it's too risky. Even if we annihilated the Solaris House, at most, it would be a pyrrhic victory. The cost we will incur would take centuries to rebuild, and our plans would be cut back a few generations. That's not a timeline our King would be happy about."
Even before elevating their threat levels, the Solaris House was already a monolithic giant that the Demon Cult had to face. The depth of their talent was unfathomable, and they had Knight Orders that would make the Hyades Republic's Guardians or the Holy Church's Paladins lower their heads in inferiority.
At the Demon Cult's current ability, they could defeat the Pinnacle Knight Alrock and destroy most of the Solaris House's forces. Still, it would come at the expense of their entire military.
And it was a cost that the Prophet was unwilling to bear.
"Furthermore, if they have an oracle at their side, we will have to be additionally careful when making plans against them. Anything that we plan would be uncovered by their precognitive sight. So, we must bolster our forces from the Demon Realm until… precognitive sight won't matter."
What good is seeing the future if it's unavoidable?
If the Demon Cult could summon legions upon legions of the best forces from the Demon Realm, there was nothing the Solaris House could do to defeat them.
Unfortunately, more time and resources were required for that to happen.
"Luckily for us, Ravenna has recovered most of the Foolish Lich's research."
The Prophet turned around and gestured to the young woman waiting by the door. Unlike her usual skirmish self, she showed exquisite poise and elegance as she approached the pair. During the chaos of Malachi and Amon, later Alrock's battle, Ravenna sneaked into the Lich's lair and retrieved most of the valuable assets for the Demon Cult. And of course, that includes the Lich itself…
The bespectacled woman dragged a hollow skull filled to the brim with necrotic energy and placed it near the Prophet. The skull, which should have been quiet the entire time, now chattered its teeth as it began spinning excuses.
"M-M-My lord, it wasn't my fault! H-How would I have anticipated that the Solaris bastards would attack me?!"
"Shut it, Agva! Don't talk unless the Prophet addresses you!"
"R-Ravenna, you need to back me up here! Haven't I done everything I could for the Demon Cult?!"
"Everything you could? Is that why you hid the fact that you completed the Magatama research months ago just to milk us for more money?"
Ravenna sneered in disgust as she crushed the Foolish Lich's skull beneath her heel. Stripped of his mana by her mere presence, he could only clatter his teeth in frustration, cursing silently. Yet, despite his helplessness, his hollow eyes remained fixed on the passive Prophet—his true fate resting in those unreadable hands.
Alas, the Prophet was wholly uninterested in Agva. He turned to Ravenna and asked:
"Have you recovered all of the Magatama samples?"
"Naturally, my lord. While he's completely useless in everything else, Agva made the perfect sample of the Magatama. With them, we can begin mass production and storing demonic energy would be far more efficient."
The Demon Cult required Agva's research to find a better method of storing demonic energy. While potent and superior to regular energy, demonic energy had a significant drawback. It went against the natural order and quickly destabilised when removed from a biological organism's body. That meant there was no way for the Demon Cult to create mana crystals or mechanisms to store their energy, significantly hindering their combat potential.
"With the Magatamas, we can finally begin summoning Demons en masse."
Using the Magatamas, they could finally create the massive dimensional gate to link Hyades to the Demon Realm, increasing the Demon Cult's ability to summon Demons, thereby empowering their organisation.
"That's not all. While retrieving the Magatamas, I realised that Agva had created the perfect form of a Slaughter Doll. With this new technology, we can create vessels for higher-ranking Demons to pass through the gate."
"Oh? That's surprisingly useful."
The Prophet smiled. It was evident that the news elevated his mood and eased the tension in Malachi and Ravenna's back a little. But they were unaware that the Prophet's smile hid a far more sinister agenda.
"We've lost nothing in this altercation. We obtained the Magatamas, found a method to create Slaughter Dolls, retrieved all research documents, and even saved Dante and Damien. But why… why do I feel so agitated?"
As the Prophet grabbed his chest, the two Apostles listening in felt their bodies turn cold—like someone had poured a bucket of ice water on them. They knelt silently, awaiting the Prophet's following orders.
The Prophet gazed into the distance, his mind on the young man with whom he last crossed eyes before he retreated. The youth looked no older than twenty and was not the promised hero. And yet, the young man agitated the Prophet more than anyone else in his long life.
The handsome gentleman remained silent for two minutes as he reflected and calculated. It wasn't until Malachi finally grew impatient that the Prophet finally moved.
"I changed my mind… recall all our forces. We must conduct some restructuring and evaluate where our weak points lay. Let's change our plans for the next phase."
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The Prophet ignored Malachi and Ravenna's concerned eyes while he walked out of the chamber.
'Since the flow of time has been messed with, let us change the game, shall we?'