I Only Wanted A Class In The Apocalypse Chapter 1980: Meeting Shemos
Previously on I Only Wanted A Class In The Apocalypse...
Hye could already sense the gunpowder in the air the moment he passed through the giant gates to the inside.
Everyone looked at him as if they were looking at a deadly foe. Hye couldn’t tell if this was thanks to his earlier, unintentional display of power, or if this was the common situation and vibes in the base.
What he could guess, actually, was the fact that no one from the Hescos would move a finger against him with Moth on his side. The Hescos Elder was a well-known figure, with a special delegation of the base leaders and many generals to come forward and welcome him and his entourage.
"Welcome to our humble base, Elder," one said, while bowing slightly to Moth, "you honoured us with your presence. I hope the travel wasn’t that arduous or tiring for our Elder."
"All is fine, Shemos," Moth warmly said, "how is the situation here? We just arrived and were welcomed by the Toranks."
"Those bastards..." Shemos seemed irritated and enraged when he heard about the Toranks, "they are acting wildly out of late. We just suffered a few attacks on our base in the past couple of months alone, and had to put all of our available forces to the defences here. If we knew you’d have come, we’d have moved an army to escort you."
Shemos paused, before turning to look at the grand number of forces that followed Moth and Hye inside, "How did it go between?"
For a reason, Hye felt more unsettled by this Shemos. It felt more like he was surprised to see such a large number pouring into the base than relieved to see such a number surviving the clash against the Toranks.
"We managed to get past them without a fight," Moth sounded cautious when he responded to the inquiry, didn’t even give a hint about what Hye did back there, "we are tired and exhausted from the travel. Where shall we stay?"
"Oh, how terrible of me," Shemos wryly laughed, looking more suspicious the more he talked, "let’s go to the Eastern Wing, it’s quite empty after the recent losses on our side. What are your plans for coming here? Are you going to stay for long or just take a stroll?"
"A stroll?!" Moth commented. Hye couldn’t see what the look over Moth’s face was thanks to his suit, but he felt the icy cold eyes behind that mask of his, "I didn’t travel all this way, faced all the dangers, just to take a stroll."
Moth looked right and left before adding, "As I’m the highest member in the Outer Battlefield, and by our race rules, I’ll be the supreme leader of our forces. I expect you to hand me all the keys to the vaults, the gates, and give me the leadership of the generals and armies."
For a moment, Shemos paused as if what he feared had happened.
"Sure sure, just take a few days of rest, recuperate and enjoy yourselves, then I’ll hand over everything," for a reason, Hye didn’t believe a single word this Hescos said. For a reason, Shemos looked more suspicious than ever by his weird response.
And yet, Moth didn’t say anything to object to such an arrangement, which further puzzled Hye.
"You do realise this Shemos looks suspicious, right?" once they arrived at the Eastern Wing, and Hye instantly said what was swirling inside his soul throughout their travel.
They took ten hours to get to this wing, using an advanced version of the bullet train. Just from the travel duration alone, Hye could tell how massive this base was. And yet Shemos was sitting in the same car with Moth and Hye, so the two never had the chance to speak freely and openly about what they thought.
The train was big enough to accommodate half of their forces. The other half had to stay behind and wait for another train to come. The train was more like a small village moving on tracks, hovering a few metres off the ground and moving at a speed that rivalled the highest speeds of small space ships.
Hye decided with Moth to divide his forces into two halves; one remained behind, and the other boarded the train. Hye picked Legend to lead his forces and warned him in secrecy about the entire situation.
He left the capable and ambitious general with few valuable words:
"Treat this area as if you are in the heart of the Toranks. If by any means communications went down, act based on what you see fit."
Since their arrival, Hye noticed that communications were down and interrupted most of the time. He related this to the presence of spirit power and the special nature of the Outer Battlefield.
So he entrusted Legend to lead his forces left behind, expecting tough situations to arise and perhaps even a fight.
If it were up to him, he would have picked Olana for the task. Going by common sense, they were in the heart of their allied forces region. Picking someone capable of establishing deeper ties with his allies than instigating fights was the most logical option.
But not in this peculiar situation.
Once they boarded the train, Hye asked Olana to start roaming the train, interact with others who came from this zone, and try to dig deeper for any valuable information or leads about the true situation of this base.
Olana seemed to share the same thoughts and bad feelings about Shemos as Hye. She didn’t object, didn’t ask many questions, simply nodded and moved to execute the order.
As for Lily, Hye entrusted her to lead their forces on the train just in case something bad happened.
Luckily, nothing bad happened. And yet, this didn’t change Hye’s opinion about Shemos.
"I’m not here just to escort you on your adventure," Moth’s answer shed more light on the current situation of the Hescos in the Outer Battlefield. "Lately, we started to suffer lots of setbacks in front of the Toranks. It all happened since Shemos took the lead from the past leader. He came from a prestigious family, and we never suspected him before. But after what recently happened..."