Lord Shadow

Chapter 410: Scheming in the dark (8)

SOMEWHERE IN AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

A rotund middle age man is looking at something. with his white hair being blown by the wind outside he looks older than he is.

The video display is playing on his table.

There seems to be many things that shocked him contained in the video

His eyes seem to be taking it all in.

He then sighed at each moment. It is shocking what is contained in the video but he doesn’t seems shocked. It was almost like he expected it but from the expression on his face, he is clearly displeased.

Behind him is a woman, slender, tall, beautiful and blonde. She is clearly of European descent with piercing blue eyes and strikingly blonde hair.

She did not try to look at the display since she already knows what it is about. The man keeps looking and when it arrived at the important moment he sighed once again

No one could understand what he is sighing about, the woman was unresponsive as she just keeps standing behind him without no reaction.

The video ended and the man lean on his chair. He took a few moment and then he asked.

‘What do you think of it?’ he turned around and ask the woman.

The woman shakes her head and said

‘I don’t know. Depends on what you think Mr. Broker. I thought you would be pleased with what happen’

The man sighed and lean back on his chair once again.

Yes, this man is none other than the Broker. Four months ago, he heeds the call against Death Monarch and raised a King of the Criminal Underworld.

They need a leader to make sure the criminal underground did not turn into chaos.

He chooses Void as the leader. He did not like the guy but he had no other choices.

He considered Loki but that guy is always scheming something and The Trickster did sabotage his operation in Bolivia. He did not forget about that.

There is also the fact that Loki is too close with Death Monarch and no one is quite sure where his allegiance really lies.

As for Void, well, he is an unpredictable bastard but he is clearly not in league with the Three Great Powers.

He also choses Void because of his abilities.

Void abilities is something that is very suitable to deal with Death Monarch powers.

But he of course knows the limitation of Void powers. At least from what he has seen he could guess the limitation of that power.

And his plan worked.

For the first few months there were some probing from other forces trying to sow dissent and incite the criminal family to take power and rule the criminal underworld but they remain united.

In front of the same threat they have no choice but to remain united. Talking about trust with criminal is a pointless talk but they all know survival.

And they know if they started to divide themselves, they would be picked off one by one.

And the criminal family have made many concessions to make sure the Criminal Alliance could stay united, reserving their power, waiting for Death Monarch to leave.

The Corleone back off of Italy as the Republic is securing their rules in that part of Europe as they put their navy on the Mediterranean coastline

But they were not spared of punishment.

Since they are one of the factions that conspired against Death Monarch kill order, their crime family were hunted and many of them were killed.

They seem to be hiding somewhere in Mexico joining temporarily with the Navarra crime family.

The Yakuzas on the other hand, take one region in the Bubble Land as the Twin Sages of Japan Oreki and Hikigaya grip on the island nation seems to be solidified with each passing day.

And the Bratva?

Considering the hatred, the Ice queen Katarina had for organized crime, they are lucky that most of their people have not been completely eradicated.

The whole criminal underground seems to go silent.

There is no big deals of weapons or violence. They seem to be retreating with fast speed and trying their best not to stand out from the rest.

And in that early month, Void seem like an amiable man, open to reason. But finally he understands why the Trickster call Void a madman.

He killed one of the generals of Society of the Light before killing them all in a fit of madness. He then laughed and dance amongst their corpses.

It is the act of a madman. He had to do a lot of things to cover up this matter.

But now…this?

The video he just watched was sent by one of his little rats in the White Owl. It shows Void destroying a titanic palm from the skies with only his finger

And he just found out it was the Death Monarch palm. He sighed because this is the last thing he wanted Vid to do.

To have the eyes of Death Monarch trained on them is not a good thing.

He sighed.

The woman behind him then said.

‘Void…. does he even listen to you Mr. Broker?’

The Broker sighed and then said

‘Does he look like the type of guy that listen to me? What is his obsession with Death Monarch anyway?’ He said it out loud.

Actually of the many people in this world while people know him as they guy with all the answer there are some people in this world that he doesn’t have a good grasp on.

His ability is Status Reading.

In the beginning of the Fall, his power was just reading the status of the monsters and beast which helps him identify the weakness of monsters

But as he grew in level so does his ability. He could even see the status of a person and then deduce and extract information from the status.

He could deduce someone past. In a way his ability work opposite of the Oracle. The Oracle see the future while he sees the past of a person.

Of course they are some people he could not effectively use it against.

Some of those people are like Raymond the Earthshaker, Illusion Archmage Hikigaya, Thunder Monarch Oreki, Mind Master Hirate, Ice Queen Katarina and of course Death Monarch.

There is also Loki which has some weird aura around him that prevented his information to be extracted.,

Basically anyone that is stronger than him, he could not see their status and their past.

Void on the other hand neutralizes all of his abilities. He could not see anything about him since his eyes would become just a normal eyes the moment he is in proximity of him.

And taking a hair out of him or his clothes didn’t help since it is full of his Void aura.

With Void, he had to do research and investigate him using the old fashioned way.

The woman behind him could see that the Broker is frowning so she asked

‘Isn’t this what you wanted Mr. Broker? To see proof that Void could neutralize Death Monarch attack?’

The Broker sighed.

‘Not like this.’ He then added

I only wanted him to be a preventive shield. All the criminal underworld wants Death Monarch to die. I don’t.’

The woman behind him when she heard the words coming out of the Broker words, her eyebrows was raised for a second before she collected herself back.

‘I am not really criminal at least not in the sense that I killed personally. I don’t deal New World drugs or developed some kind of poisons or weapons of mass destruction. I am an information peddler.’

Then he continued

‘I sell information to anyone who could provide me with equal value of that information. Honestly, I don’t want Void to kill Death Monarch. In the past I used to believe that he could not do this. But the more I learned about him, the more I think he could have the chance to kill Death Monarch. And that is a terrifying thought.’

The woman frowned and then she asked.

‘Why? Wouldn’t that solve the problems for the criminal underworld? Don’t tell me that you like Death Monarch?’

He laughs bitterly

‘Haven’t you seen them? How brutal they are?’

He then said

‘I don’t like that Death Monarch is rounding up criminal and killing them without even a trial or any proof other than by the judging of his heart and mood but it’s not like I want to see this world run by monsters like them either.’

‘Imagine if any of the crime families ruled the world. What a bleak world that is don’t you think?’

The woman nodded and then she asks

‘Then why do all this?’

‘Why would weak people band together and fight people that are stronger than them? Fear. I fear that he would seek me and crush me to dust. To him, I am just the same as the rest of them. A scum. He has his own belief and I have mine. To me, this has never been about fighting Death Monarch. To me, this has always bene about survival. Nothing more.’

The woman smiles and nodded

The Broker get up from his chair and walk to the windows.

Outside the windows, one could see an expansive sea and the wind of the seas blows by the curtain and the Broker take a deep breath

‘You know I have been thinking about what you said before. About Loki offer to me. You kn-‘

Just before he could end that sentence suddenly the entire place is shaking.

The woman was also shocked and her eyes widened. She closes her eyes for a few second and then she opens it back up and she seems to know something

‘Someone is attacking’

The Broker eyes was unsettled.

‘This place is a secret and no one should have sensed them’ His survival instinct kicks up.

He rushed to his table and open the drawers. Inside it is a few teleportation orb could be seen rolling around because of the intense shaking.

The Broker could feel someone is drilling the ground with mighty pressure.

He crushed it immediately but then to his disappointment, nothing happened other than the orb was crushed into dust.

The woman shakes her head and said

‘They have sealed the place with a Space Sealing Formation. Unless you are Warp or the Dimensional Traveler, you couldn’t teleport from this place.’ The Broker look toward the woman and sighed

‘It seems you are familiar with them’ The Broker could hear it from her words. She is very confident in her assessment

The woman nodded and then she said

‘It is the Three Army’

‘Three Army? You mean the Three Army of Pandemonium?’

The woman nodded. The Broker look at the woman and his expression turns hostile.

‘Did you tell Loki about me? Did you set me up?!’ he yelled looking at the woman. The woman shakes her head.

‘I didn’t. If I did, you wouldn’t have been so concealed these past few months.’ The woman said

‘Riana! Be honest’

This woman is Riana, one of the Three Demoness. She is always wearing a laughing demon mask and the world called her the Laughing Demoness.

Riana look back at the Broker and said

‘I said it is not me. If it is me, knowing Loki temperament he would have made me delivered you to him in a silver platter. It would surely not be like this. You think Loki would be comfortable handing you to the forces of Pandemonium? With all the secrets you have on him? Why do you think he didn’t force me regarding my matters with you?’

The Broker hearing this close his eyes and calms himself down.

His mind is quickly thinking. He could hear the sound of the drilling and he could feel the mighty pressure bearing down on this rock

Yes, he is on a rock.

The rock is deep and large and on top of the sea it looks like a floating patch of land. But it was an illusion.

It is equipped with Phasing formation and invisibility hex and enchantments among the other protection that this patch of rock has.

If it is not Loki and not Riana, then the only one that would betray him is soemnone that have something to gain with him gone.

‘Why is the fuck, the Three Army of Pandemonium is here?’ He shouted internally

Riana on the other hand brings out a triangle looking stone with runes written all over it.

The Broker saw it and look at Riana and he asked

‘What is that?’ She could hear the formation is about to be broken any moment now.

‘Our ticket out’ she answers.

Then she grabbed The Broker arm and then throw the stone into the ground as the runes that is carved on the stone were released and created colorful rainbows that envelops them as they turned into one of the colors of the rainbows and seems to shoot out from the room as the forces of the Three Army broke through the formation and barge inside the empty room.

As the dusts settles a woman could be seen dismounting her Pegasus and look around her.

‘They escaped’ Her berserkers’ roars as they began scouring the rock for any clues while the Broker and Riana is halfway across the world.

***

The world was shocked today as Pandemonium after the return of Death Monarch send out his Three Army and began attacking many Criminal Alliance headquarters.

In some of the news, there is even report that General Freya nearly caught the Broker while the criminal family of Navarra and Corleone was slaughtered leaving only a few of their surviving members

Many of the people hearing this news and discussing it in some taverns on inns, they all thought that this is Death Monarch usual way of doing things before leaving.

But to some people that know the inside story, this was not a simple cleanup. This is a warning to someone.

Void gives a warning to Death Monarch by killing one battalion of his subordinate soldiers. Death Monarch responded swiftly by eliminating the Navarra family and the Corleone family and they are still hunting.

While the Three Army is hunting outside of Pandemonium, there sits on the highest throne of Pandemonium, Death Monarch, overlooking all creation like a lofty God.

And as long as he sits there, no force would dare come attacking.

This is Death Monarch answer to Void. Complete and utter suppression. You kill one of his people, then he would take a thousands of his.

The storms are beginning and the whole world waited for it to calm down. It has been three days since Death Monarch come out of his seclusion.

And he only has four days left.

***

This is actually part of the next chapter but I decided that it will be more fit to enter this chapter. Since next chapter will be dealing of other aspect of Azief life before he is leaving

Anyway, I just finished this part of the chapter yesterday so there is more content today. This si the true last chapter