Chapter 1366: Undercurrents [1]

The setting was somewhere secluded, a place where no witnesses could reach.

There were meadows all around, and two people sat at a table with a bottle of spirit liquor between them.

"It took a lot of effort to find you. Should I say I'm impressed?"

The one who spoke was Yulia Veritas, a woman who both had fame and the ability to move without being recognized, a combination barely anybody could replicate.

As for the one she was speaking to, it was a very familiar man.

"I don't know about all that. I think I should be the one impressed by the person who managed to find me despite all that."

Damien finished his business with the Norn Family without much difficulty, and since they were able to contact the expedition party, it seemed Isra and the rest managed to escape the labyrinth somehow.

He didn't have to worry about them. He did want to deepen his friendship with the clan, but since his mentality changed, he didn't put too much emphasis on it for the moment.

Instead, this meeting was more important.

Who would've thought he didn't even have to look for it?

By the time he was done with the Norn Family, he already felt the presence following him. And when he led that presence to a secluded location to confront, he found that it was a friend rather than a foe.

He sat down with Yulia without much of a fuss. She was too sure of his identity for him to convince her otherwise.

The problem was how she found him. Whether it be his physical genetics, his aura, his mana, or even his soul, they had been altered to trick the general public.

For someone to see through this, regardless of strength, meant they had means that were mysterious even to him.

"I want to ask about it, but I'm sure you won't tell me, right?"

"Naturally. A woman's secrets aren't so easy to uncover."

Damien rolled his eyes.

"What a cheeky answer. I didn't expect you to be a 'womanly' individual."

"Hm? Was that an insult? I guess you've gained some confidence after spending time here, haven't you?"

"Something like that."

Yulia entertained the conversation normally, but she wasn't lying when she said she spent a great deal of effort to find him.

None of her sources or subordinates were able to find a trace of him, and only when she personally took action did she even find a clue.

It was surprising.

She was forced to use the strength she was hiding. Not just anyone could force her into a position like that.

She wanted to meet Damien to forge a relationship with him that would draw him closer to the Veritas Clan and confirm his identity, but what surprised her was his desire to see her as well.

'Did he realize something...?'

She wanted to probe him and see what he was thinking, but Damien wasn't the type to talk in circles, something she should've realized from their last meeting.

"I have to thank you for the information you gave me last time, but didn't you hide a little too much?" Damien started, bringing up the main point without delay.

"What are you talking about?" Yulia responded, still trying to see what he knew.

"The Foreign Races."

Yulia's eyes widened just slightly.

She expected him to talk about Void Palace or something along those lines. She never expected the first thing on Damien's mind to be a hidden enemy that had no connection to him.

"What about them?" She asked.

"Tell me everything. Everything you know about them, and everything about their invasion. I won't let it slide if you keep hiding things right now."

Damien's gaze held a level of seriousness she didn't know he had in him.

'For some reason, I feel like my strength has become less significant.'

She was hiding more than Damien could ever imagine, but she suddenly got the feeling that even with her hidden strength, she wouldn't be able to act as she pleased.

'Though, this doesn't have to devolve to that.'

She didn't hide information about the Foreign Races with hostile intent, nor did she do it to help him.

Since he was clueless about the Heavenly World, the main thing he needed to know was the structure and power of their denizen races.

As for the Foreign Races, people would always learn about them eventually if they just continued living here. It wasn't information that needed to be prioritized, especially since new soldiers didn't really need to be drafted for the war right now.

"Haa..."

Damien was leaking a subtle yet noticeable aura of hostility, not towards her, but towards the subject in question.

She couldn't just half-ass her answer here.

"I don't know how much you already know, but it's something like this..."

She reiterated the information Damien learned from Richter's memories first.

The Foreign Races appeared on the periphery countless tens of millions of years ago. They never made their reason for attacking known, but the fact that they had high intelligence was well known, not only through their scheming nature and cautious movements, but also due to attempts made to communicate with them.

Their stance was something similar to a dominator. From the highest ranks to the lowest, they viewed the people of the Heavenly World as prey, people who weren't worth communicating with.

And unlike the Nox, who had a physical place in the lower universe, the Foreign Races came from "somewhere else."

Nobody knew where that place was. No matter how much they investigated, it was impossible to find its location.

However, when the Foreign Races invaded, a connection between those two places was formed.

"They're called Dimensional Cracks," Yulia said.

"They're connection points between the home of the Foreign Races to our world. The Heavenly Order has made moves to combat them, which gives us some advantages, but if we cannot make full use of those advantages, the Foreign Races can turn portions of our land into their territory."

"The war has been proceeding slowly. I'm not sure what they've been waiting for, but they've never gone all out against us. For the first few million years, they just tested the waters and moved in the shadows. After that, they started invading slowly, but never really pushed us. We know that they have high-rank beings among them, but none of them have made an effort to invade the world yet."

"Hmm..."

Damien could understand it somewhat. Since the Foreign Races had been plotting in the lower universe during the time they spent probing the Heavenly World, they clearly had plans to take everything the universe could offer before destroying it.

But since the lower universe was gone now, would they continue to wait?

Damien didn't speculate much. There was definitely more Yulia had to say.

But she stopped explaining there.

"I'm not sure what kind of grudge you have against the Foreign Races, but that's hardly what you should be worrying about."

Yukia's eyes narrowed as she observed Damien's reactions.

"Right now, I think you should focus your attention on Void Palace. After all, their situation has been getting more desperate by the day."