LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 188: Planning
"Why?" Atlan asked.
The room turned silent with the interruption of the youthful porter.
Someone in the 3rd stage Student realm shouldn't even be allowed inside the administration building, let alone the emergency room. Yet, Atlan was the exception and was allowed inside. He should be nothing more than an observant—a witness.
In such high stakes and high-level conversation, everyone slowly forgot that Atlan was inside the meeting at all.
However, that was soon broken when they heard him voice out a question. He was supposed to be a fly in the wall, quietly observing everything without uttering a single word, yet his youthful curiosity couldn't help but speak out.
"Why?" Atlan asked again.
Carmine didn't mind answering the young man, but he knew that they were in the presence of the Elder Heads. They were the oldest people in the entire City, and they were in charge of everything that happened there.
They weren't people who could be spoken to like a normal person, especially from a young one like Atlan.
Even the five Specialist Operators behind Carmine had to hold their breath and prevent themselves from speaking out. They knew that the five Elder Heads didn't tolerate any disrespect to people who spoke without being spoken to.
However, the old woman with her hair tied in a bun nodded her head and allowed Carmine to explain. "Teach the young one why we need her flesh and blood."
This shocked Carmine and the rest of the Operators into silence. They didn't think that she would express her desire for the Operators to teach a porter about Canzer knowledge.
This made them wonder why Atlan was given such an exception. First, he was allowed to modify his green battle suit into a black one, which violated many traditions and protocols. Next, he was given authority to not only enter the administration building but to also be inside the meeting. Now, he was allowed to talk?!
They didn't understand why they put such importance on a porter.
Sure, he was the most talented Porter the City's ever seen, but that hardly mattered in high-level conversations such as this. They were in a state of emergency; they thought that they didn't have time to teach a newborn how to walk and talk. But as it turned out, they had to.
Carmine fixed his hair and faced Atlan. "Ifrits are vengeful in nature. Its thousands of clones are defeated in the Masamune district, with only four surviving enough for them to spread to the Church. Yet, it wasn't long before the other three were hunted down and killed by more humans.
It wants retribution. It's the reason why it hasn't exploded yet. It wants to kill the humans who reduced it to this state.
Offering the blood and flesh of the woman who killed its last clones will be enough to appease it like a dog given a bone.
It will give us enough goodwill to advance closer."
Atlan nodded as he understood their plan. He looked towards Ninth and saw no complaints from her.
A sacrifice of her blood and flesh was nothing if it meant saving the City.
"I'm willing to contribute anything," she declared.
However, Atan saw a tiny flaw in their plan.
"Wouldn't it want to explode the moment it sees Ninth and her team again?"
Carmine looked over to the elders and saw that they didn't intend to stop the youth from asking questions. So, he answered truthfully like a teacher would.
"You are making the wrong assumption. We won't be assigning Ninth and her team to this mission again.
There is a protocol in place for failed missions: any team that fails in the Remedium will not be allowed to enter back inside. It will be finished by another team."
Atlan heard about that protocol. He was scolded during his first mission because of it. After he left the Remedium, he should have let the reinforcement team do their job. He shouldn't have gone back and saved his teammates by himself.
He didn't get reprimanded for breaking protocol because HeadQuarters wanted to praise his bravery and sweep the anomaly under the rug.
"This brings me to my next point," Carmine said. "I suggest that we bring in a team of mostly speedsters for this mission. Mostly women. Having a team of buff and muscular men will only serve to aggravate the Ifrit.
And since an Ifrit harbors grudges against Ninth and her team, we can't send any Specialists on the mission. Their auras are too powerful and will only spook the Ifrit. It could explode before they even step foot in the basement.
But, we can't send low-level Saviors either. We need experienced women with a success rate greater than 90%."
Ninth spoke up. "I know a few Intern Saviors just a few stages away from advancing to the Specialist realm. They have the required experience for such a high-stakes mission. Speed is not their specialty, but they are fast enough if they leave behind their weapons."
Carmine thought deep and hard. "It's not ideal. Our window of opportunity is extremely small. We can't leave it up to chance."
Ninth understood that and kept silent. Assigning Saviors for a mission was not a Vanguard's job anyway.
Carmine and his team took out their tablets and started scouring through the Interns available in the City. They skipped through names as fast as they could swipe their screens.
But no matter how much they scoured through the list, they couldn't find an appropriate team, let alone a name, that could take on this heavy mission.
It frustrated them.
The old man with a beard looked at the Operators and spoke, "What is the estimated time of creation for the construct? How soon will you have it ready?" Find your next read at empire
Carmine did some calculations in his head and came up with the answer, "We can procure it within half an hour."
The old man nodded. "Good. You create it right now while we convene."
Carmine was confused. Constructs had a time limit to when they were effective. The fact that the Elder Heads issued them to create the construct now meant that they were ready to greenlight the mission even though they hadn't found anyone suitable yet.
Did they find someone that fits?