Chapter 245: Obtuse Operations

“Alright, everyone,” I said, addressing the gathered resistance fighters, “I know you’re curious about the changes, and what I’ve been up to.”

With a little help from Noe’s emotional tuning, I was able to get the assortment of men and women completely under my thrall. Hell, they looked so willing to listen that I might not even need Claire’s help, but it was always better to be safe than sorry in cases like these. 

“As some of you know, I was undercover, infiltrating the Abyss guild, and let me say that things in there are worse than we can ever imagine.” I paused for a second. “Well, I suppose that much is clear now that they’ve shown their true colors with the castle.”

Some murmurs of discontent were heard, but a cough on my side quieted the crowd down. 

“I know that you are all aching to act,” I said, louder this time, “But let me just say that you will need not wait long for a chance to strike back at our oppressors!”

This time, I allowed the gathered Aspirants to cheer. 

I waved my hand to calm down the more jubilant individuals and continued. “During my time spying on the foul Kim siblings, I have managed to uncover an artifact of great importance to the guild’s operations, and I believe it is one of the components necessary for them to run that horrible castle. If this object remains in their control, then I have it on good authority that the castle will continue to expand to eventually encompass the entirety of this section of the Main Stages.” 

“Destroy the artifact!” they shouted. “We must strike back before they become unstoppable!”

“Exactly!” I affirmed. 

Of course, all of this was completely bullshit. As far as I knew, the castle was already the size it would be for the foreseeable future, and the only way that we could expand it was to invest a whole lot of contribution points later down the line. That, however, won’t happen for a very long time. But it wasn’t like I could just point them at a McGuffin and say it didn’t do anything ominous. This way, the people would think they were preventing some horrible future tragedy that would never actually occur. It was perfect! 

“This mission is of the utmost importance, and for that, I will need only the most devout and elite among you to go with me. I need the rest to be on standby and to ensure that the secret police and Abyss spies are not close by. I can only accommodate eight people to come with me, take some time to choose who those eight will be.”

  *

It took a surprisingly long period of time for my new minions to decide which among them would accompany me, and I had to use Noe to step in to settle some of the disputes before things turned to violence. It seemed, much to my dismay, that my charisma was too high, and the Aspirants directly under me were fanatical in their need to appease my wishes. Hell, choosing the eight was so difficult that they wanted to organize some kind of underground tournament to choose the best fighters around. 

Yeah, as much as I would love to see an underground brawl between superhumans, I neither had the time nor the patience for something like that. I mean, I just came back from an impromptu show, and that didn’t exactly go as planned… Instead, I just chose the eight with the highest levels among the gathered and went with that; there was some discontent but I was able to quiet that down easily enough. 

All that was left was to ensure that the ones who remained behind did as they were told and didn’t get any funny ideas about helping me. I took the Aspirant I had left in charge of the backup squad, along with the two strongest in my own group, to have a private chat with Claire under the guise of some executive debriefing. I allowed Claire to do her thing in private, the woman had to debase herself enough as is, and I don’t think it’d be fair for her if I were in the room when she did her job. 

The instructions I gave were simple enough, all she had to do was to ensure that the Aspirants didn’t deviate from what I assigned them to do. In fact, I didn’t want them to even have the concept of forming their own ideas, at least when it came to their freedom fighting. They should be nice and manipulatable, but for now, that mostly meant not sneaking off or trying to do any kind of harm to the guild that I didn’t specifically instruct. With them so enamored by Claire, plus my own brainwashing, I highly doubted that these poor would-be resistance fighters would ever think for themselves in the future. That was just the way I needed them.

Once my minions were nice and pliable, I took them out and began the so-called infiltration. We had one of the Aspirants skilled with stealth hide the main group from view and the nine of us (Claire had long left to the building ahead of us) to the stage. Vadeem, true to his words, had prepared Ryan’s old building exactly as I needed, including stationing it with the expendable individuals who were overdue for a little Noel-ing. 

They looked pretty clueless, all things considered, but then again, that was why they were designated for removal in the first place. A few Luck Charges could fix any of their shortcomings, however, or at least make it look like they were slightly competent. Honestly, it was little wonder why Noel had these particular individuals on her list. They were given especially simple instructions: patrol the area and guard the fancy box in the basement until dawn.

I even made sure that they knew that this was an especially important, vital task that needed to be completed, and that they would receive a lot of benefits and opportunities to advance in the Abyss guild if they did their job well. 

But… 

Well, let’s take the first pair of guards for example. Their task was to ensure that no one would sneak inside from the back entrance. I was able to bribe them to look the other way for a few minutes with a measely 500 gold - mind you, I was willing to up the bribe to the tens of thousands - and that was without the use of any of Noe’s abilities. Hell, they seemed more than happy to ditch their duties for a smoke break. 

Then there was the patrol squad. Or, more accurately, a lack thereof. I knew the schedules of the patrol group inside and out, since I was the one who devised it, so where the hell were the four men I had assigned? They certainly weren’t hiding, unless these dredges could somehow hide from the senses of a Xollon, so they decided to simply not show up.

“Hey, boss…” one of my resistance goons whispered, “I thought you said this area would be heavily guarded.”

I had to forced down my irritation. “Yes… that should be the case.”

“Do you think our plans have been leaked? I heard rumors that there’s a really scary figure hidden in the Abyss guild,” The man looked back and forth, voice lowering even further. “And… and they say that if you hear about it, it’ll get you. I think it’s all a bunch of bull… but…” 

Wait, was that me? Were rumors about my role in Jae-Hyun’s guild already budding? Curious, I’ll have to check that out later.

 “Don’t listen to crap like that,” I answered, dismissing the whole thing, “If such a monster’s real, then why hasn’t it done anything to us yet? We have hundreds in our ranks, you think something like that wouldn’t be aware of all that activity? It’s all propaganda spewed out by that bastard Jae-Hyun.”

The man thought for a moment before admitting that I was probably right. Oh, if only he knew the truth… 

“So what do you think’s going on?” the man continued, “There’s no way that something this important would be unguarded…” 

“Yeah…” I muttered, trying my best to improvise on the go, “Stay on your toes. Let me do a quick scan, I might be able to detect something.”

The others looked at me with awe and anticipation. It seemed like they thought I was the answer to all of life’s questions. They moved away from our position and stood on standby in a dark corner. 

Walter’s Fine: Vadeem, Noel, I think we have a problem.

Vadeem’s text response came up almost immediately. 

Vadeem the Dream: What’s the issue?

Lady Awesome: I knew the muscled idiot would screw up! Don’t worry, little bro, I’m here to un-Vadeem everything. Let me know what he did wrong.

Muscle A: Leave Big Muscle alone! It’s not his fault!

Muscle E: Probably… 

Poor dude, even the twins didn’t think highly of his competence. To be fair, Vadeem was very good at certain things, mainly pertaining to violence and extreme force, but the finer things? 

Vadeem the Dream: Alight, enough of that! So what’s wrong, Walter? I know I followed your instructions to a tee. 

Lady Awesome: I’ve seen Vadeem’s writing! His T’s look like F’s!

Vadeem the Dream: Oh, for the love of… can someone please mute the idiot?

Walter’s Fine: Noel, Vadeem, I’m being serious right now. 

Lady Awesome: Sorry! 

Walter’s Fine: As I was saying, we’re missing the patrol squad assigned near the entrance. Where are they?

Lady Awesome: Uh, that’s the group of 6 assigned, right?

Vadeem the Dream: Yeah, I told them their instructions like, 2 hours ago. How are they not there? 

Lady Awesome: Hold up, let me check where they ran off to… Oh, they’re, uh,  they’re in the washroom.

Vadeem the Dream: All 6 of them?

Walter’s Fine: Do I even want to know what they’re doing in there?

Lady Awesome: Probably not. Woah… one of them’s quite flexible! And, damn, how’d they manage something like that, I didn’t know bodies could even do that!? That is not how I imagined using that ability! Creative bunch, I’ll give em that! And here I thought Walter was extreme…

Vadeem the Dream: Goddamn it! I’ll get a new team in there. Claire, you still in the building?

Cee: I am, need help?

Vadeem the Dream: Yeah, I don’t trust these idiots after that last stunt, can you just make sure that they actually obey commands for once? At least make sure they show up if nothing else.

Cee: Yeah, I can’t put any more under direct control, but I can make sure they don’t uh, wander off like the last bunch.

Walter’s Fine: Thank you, and Noel, can you please take care of the, uh, truant individuals?

Lady Awesome: I’ll be right there! I’ll let them know what true pain’s like!

I shuddered at that thought. Good thing I never had to see the crazy woman work, because Xollon mind or not, there were certain things that I probably didn’t want to witness.

Vadeem the Dream: Sorry about that, Walter; you need anything else?

Walter’s Fine: I’m fine for now. I’ll figure some way to explain the absence. Can you put the new patrol in the west wing instead? Get more people this time, hell, just get all the available staff over there. 

Cee: Got it, boss.

Vadeem the Dream: I’ll get them over there in 5 minutes. Just stall for that long.

Walter’s Fine: Understood.

After giving Vadeem 10 minutes to prepare and get things ready I headed back to the others, trying my best to look properly sneaky. I told them the news. “Okay, I think I figured out the issue. It seems that news of a potential break-in’s made its way to the bastards working at the Abyss guild, and they’ve set up traps in the east wing - that’s our initial entrance.”

My minions nodded, listening intently. Hell, one of the idiots even took out a notebook to write down what I was saying. 

“We’re going down a different path,” I continued, “one that I’ve already scouted out. Be careful though, there’s bound to be more guards, and we might have to engage in a fight.”

They tensed at the thought of combat, but none of my minions backed down.

“Don’t worry,” I assured, “I’ll make sure that no one’s hurt here.”

And it was true, this would be the first time that they’d seen me in combat, and I needed to ensure that I had the aura of invincibility around. Of course, while I could fight decently, it was nowhere near enough to convince them that I was invincible. That was where Noe’s ability to mess with their perception came into play. I fed her all of the face-slapping media that I had consumed over the years and allowed her to decide how best to showcase my amazingness. Hopefully, by the end of this operation, my image of the perfect boss would be all but guaranteed.