Chapter 863 Growth

All sorts of discussions erupted as soon Tenestra finished her words and Line could only smile proudly among the girls expressing disbelief, awe, and fear.

Line clapped her hands to refocus their attention and said with a big smile, "And that's it. It may sound unbelievable and you're free to discard everything you just heard and saw. In any case, we answered your question regarding our Gods' safety. And if you still think we're lying, the only thing you can do now is rush towards the surface. Don't worry. No one's going to stop you and I think I'm close enough with Yoruichi-san and Serafall-san to ask them to allow anyone who wants to leave."

The wide smile on her face exerted an invisible pressure that even those from Loki Familia felt a little bit scared. The Line they knew wouldn't be able to emit this kind of menacing aura while wearing a joyful expression. She had truly changed.

The subsequent quietness was able to give Line a chance to finally answer their real question, "Before we entered the Dungeon, I also asked around about the sudden surge of people in the city. What I found was they were people from Altena trying to confirm the veracity of the rumor about Magic Control and the people from the Sword Smithing City Zolingham who came because Hephaestus-sama contacted some engineers over there to assist with the building of a smaller city outside of Orario to serve as a factory for the Magic Powered vehicles.

"There are other people who came from other places too, but not as many as from the former two. You could say that Orario is currently expanding, not just as a Dungeon Town and Magic Stone exporter, but also as a Research Center and for Magic Development."

After those passive-aggressive words, Mia sighed and stood up from where she was sitting, "That is more than enough. I've already heard what I wanted to hear. And it looks like the guest from Astarte Familia won't say anything since she hasn't seen how we do things around here. We'll take our leave. Have a great rest and I look forward to working with you."

Mia beckoned everyone from the Hostess of Fertility to follow her and aside from Ryuu, who hesitated a bit, everyone else followed her.

There was so much for everyone to digest and the Hostess of Fertility leaving created a similar idea in their heads. One by one, groups of girls slowly left and even those who didn't intend to leave had no choice but to follow the crowd.

As Riveria watched this, she thought that Mia had aimed for this because the moment she took her leave was too abrupt and precise.

Soon enough, only the inhabitants of the tent and the two new additions were left, "Looks like that group's activities are a lot more inconspicuous around here compared to what they were doing in my place."

"If they had no problems showing their dominating force, then that's probably true.", replied Riveria, "I apologize on behalf of everyone for earlier. I didn't think they'd all come here out of curiosity."

Tenestra chuckled and said, "It's fine~ It's actually really refreshing to see rival Familias having a civil discussion and end it at that. At my place, when you become isolated and have shown a clear disadvantage, you'd be lucky to get out alive."

The girls who had less experience tensed up but Riveria remained calm and replied, "I see. Looks like the Dizara Region isn't for faint-hearted individuals. Though I assume you'd also take advantage of your enemy in that position."

Tenestra smiled and a bit of her bloodlust leaked out, which was clearly felt by everyone, "Of course. It's not every day you can reduce the threat of your enemies."

The Amazoness sister's interest was piqued even further because it's a familiar bloodlust to them. A bloodlust that one can only develop through constant life and death battles against other people. Meanwhile, the others were taken aback by this sudden change.

Riveria nodded in understanding, "Naivety will not only lead to your own demise, but also those who you care about. As long as your conscience and moral upstanding won't deliver suffering to others, there's nothing wrong with coldly erasing those who threaten you."

"But enough with that," Riveria then suddenly turned to Line with her expression deepening in solemnity, "Line. What does Kisuke want to happen? What is all this for? I refuse to believe that this is just for charity. What price are we paying here?"

The sudden change of tone caught Line off-guard, but she was able to recover immediately as she was already expecting this question from her, 'My words weigh more than theirs, huh...' Line recalled Yoruichi's statement back then. Similar to hers, Line returned the expression of solemnity and said, "Truth to be told, I don't exactly know why they're doing this, but they explicitly implied that something big was about to go down and they were just giving us a surviving chance."

Riveria frowned and Tenestra who didn't know anything about this was startled. However, the two of them had different and diverging ideas. While Riveria was wondering what sort of event could make Kisuke say it's something big, Tenestra was reaffirming that Kisuke's group indeed had more information than they let on with what's currently happening within the Dizara Region.

To those around them, however, they had no idea how serious this was and could only continue listening to get more context.

After a few moments, Riveria asked, "What did you witness?"

Line stopped for a moment and thought back to everything that was revealed to her. From the fact that only Kisuke, Yoruichi, and Aika were the only Humans from their group, to Kisuke's battle against Team Lightning in another world. While she wanted to tell them everything, she didn't want to betray their trust. Besides, even if she did, there's no way they'd believe all of it despite laying all the foundations required for them to accept it as truth.

After all, even Line couldn't believe it at first despite having the front seat in all of that. It's really just that hard to change one's perception, especially to those who had grown old and were strongly set in their own beliefs.

"I promised not to say anything about what they are doing, but from my understanding, the beginning Age of Gods is imminent. If you want to know more, please ask Loki-sama."

Age of Gods. A both easy and hard to understand phrase. Line didn't want to sound cryptic, but that's all she can tell them.

Riveria sighed and took out a medallion engraved with Magic Circuits with a small Magic Stone in the middle, "Then let's ask Loki now."

Everyone became confused at her words but they got their answer when Loki's playful voice suddenly rang out from the medallion, "My~ Age of Gods, huh? Does Kisuke intend to wage a war or are these actions a result of being backed into a corner? I wonder which it is?"

"Loki-sama!?" exclaimed all of her children.

Line, on the other hand, immediately turned her attention to the one who brought the medallion out, "Riveria-sama! This is!?"

Riveria smiled and answered, "It's a pair of Magic Tools that sends and receives sound when activated. I developed it back then while experimenting with various things and I gave the other half to Loki before we left for the expedition. I kept it a secret from everyone, because I wanted to use this as an advantage."

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While talking among themselves, Serafall suddenly stopped speaking and held the side of her head, "What's wrong?" asked Yoruichi.

Serafall didn't answer for a few seconds until she closed her eyes to confirm something before nodding to herself and saying, "The surveillance barrier that I erected on the camp detected an outgoing communication Magic. It seems that Ria-tan was able to develop a Magic Item for communication. While it's primitive, to think she'd be able to do something like this so early on, it seems like we're underestimating them."

"That's amazing, isn't it?" Yoruichi let out a voice of admiration.

"It is. She only received the basic articles regarding Magic, but still managed to figure things out on her own and advance."

"But did she show any signs that she's capable of that?"

Serafall shook her head, "From the looks of it, she hid her level of competency."

"Heh~? If she can do that, I guess it's time to trust her with bigger things. I'll leave her to you, Serafall. If possible, I'd like her to take control of some of the barriers that Kisuke left behind."

"Of course, I can take care of her~ It's fun to see geniuses like her have fun while growing." Serafall happily agreed, "But only if she is capable of resetting her Level to 1. That's the minimum she has to do to go beyond this world's constraints."