Chapter 57: Preparing

Camilla's joy-filled laugh seemed to awake the dead island as the shadow clouds above seemed to move by themselves and morph into her face and started talking. "Everyone! We are going to war! Recall every single undead in the continent, let's go and destroy Julie of the Demon Tribe!"

The dead island seemed to move with those words, dead trees came to life, graves that were common all over the island had zombies with rotting flesh come out. Skeletons from a war long ago moved too, picking up their armor and swords.

..

Back in the throne room, Camilla had a pleased face, her red eyes were filled with excitement as she looked at Alex's Blood Avatar. 

"I know you didn't tell me this for free," she said triumphantly, "I also know that you aren't dumb to lie to me. So what is it that you want? Whatever that is, I will do my best to give it to you. Also, don't try any small talk, I hate it."

Alex nodded. "Okay, I want ten tons of adamantium, the hearthstone of a Legendary Blue Sea Whale, and Rank 4 and Legendary Rank cored of Fire Boars."

"Hmmm…" Camilla contemplated a little, thinking about the advantages and disadvantages to this, her child-like body making this act seem cute. But Alex knew better than to underestimate the monstrous thoughts that went through her mind, "Okay, you can have them all."

She then closed her eyes and a black hole, the size of an adult's body opened. Out of it came a block of dark gold like mineral, this was Adamantium, then another treasure chest appeared out of it and it had the rest of what Alex had required.

"Thanks." He said, before extending his hand towards the items, and they sank in their shadows, being teleported far away, where the original body was.

Fwish!

A red spike pierced his body and he turned into a puddle of blood. 

"Pleasure doing business with you," Camilla's smile didn't waver even a little as she killed off Alex's Blood Avatar, "Next time come with your real body, I would like to meet you for real. Also, I can't wait to see what kind of weapon you will be building."

Camilla felt that after so many centuries, things had started becoming exciting once again. 

...

While that was happening, within Magic Academy, Headmistress Julie is in her office, looking down at the people in the city, moving faster than usual.

Her office, unlike one, would expect, was very minimal and normal size, with cheap furniture and the only thing that had any value of notice was the amateur theory book on the shelf, all written by 2nd rate mages.

She now had a new body, it looked very similar to her last one, except that her eyes were yellow.

Julie couldn't help it as her thoughts went back to Alex, and her act as Ain. She couldn't detect what she had done wrong, how had he found out her real identity? There were thousands of mages in her city who implored similar disguise tactics to get close to people with up-and-coming power.

So even if he had seen through her spell by some miracle, Alex shouldn't have been able to figure her out, or who she was. Also all of her moves and acts, all were made with her new persona in mind, no gesture, no way of talking, there was nothing that would point to her and Ain being the same person.

Julie didn't even use any habits that she might develop in the future, just in case Alex was some kind of Future Seeker, someone who could see a glimpse of the future. She never even planned to reveal she was Ain in the end, just because of future sight abilities like this.

Thousands of possibilities played in her mind, none of them being the correct one, always there was one mistake that she made. 

Even the way they had met for the first time had been coincidental. Julie knew that mages within her organization were looking out for themselves. So when she sent Van, a wizard that she predicted (correctly) would attack any talented person on the ship. 

Julie planned to be there as Ain to save the day for… Lily… that was her target. Boredom also played a part in it, as she already had many Heroes with similar potential to Lily. But this time, her <Compass of Destiny> had activated randomly. 

The <Compass of Destiny> was a Mythical Level tool that would point to something that could be either extremely bad or good for the user. It was created with the core of the God of Destiny, and it only activated at random times, the time before this that it had activated was 170 years ago, back when Julie used to be relatively young. 

That had led her to learn of her true parentage, allowing her to grasp normally impossible things. 

When she had found this artifact, she was alone and no one would know, she would never even show it to someone in the future. 

"So how the hell did he know it was me?!!" She gritted her teeth in frustration, Julie had sacrificed a lot to pull the Gods' attention to Alex and have him bombarded and almost possessed. 

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became, the whole scene of him conversing with her replayed back hundreds of times in her mind. After all that, she could see that Alex had been leading her from the beginning when he had accepted Ain's request to go with him. He had known that if he refused, then she would just follow him where he couldn't see her.

"That kid… he led me all along, he knew what was waiting for us in there. He knew who I was, and he damn knew how it would end!!" 

*knock* *knock* 

Two soft knocks landed on her door, bringing Julie out of her thoughts. "Come on in."

The door opened and an old man with a bald head and beard that went down to his knees came in, he held on to a mage staff that he also used to walk. He seemed like a mage right out of a children's storybook.

"Excuse me, Headmistress, but the Holy Kingdom has declared war on us," he gave some shocking news and seemed nervous.

But Julie was very calm when hearing this, the cold and calculating look in her eyes didn't change at all. "Continue," she ordered him.

"Well… the people are confused why something like that was happening. The Holy Pope just said that the Gods are not to be mocked." 

The Headmistress smiled. "It seems like after all these years people have started forgetting who I am. Well, let me remind them… and it's about time I took over this damn Continent."

She knew that her using the Gods to put pressure on Alex would come back to bite her, but she did so and knew the risks. But she wasn't about to let him have whatever was in that place, because Alex seemed to be willing to offend her to get it…

'I can't wait to see what he was after, and I also can't wait to get my hands on it.' Julie pondered, a small smirk making its way to her face.

...

 Don't forget to throw some power stones :)

...

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