Chapter 2198: Plans and Results
The propagation of the Agmon faith in the Olympian city has been going on for some time.
Alton was very sneaky with the way he chose his targets. His primary focus was on the people that are not affiliated with any academy. They are the most desperate ones right now. Even if they managed to snag a mission or two and earned the weekly payment for the hub, they are being targeted by the academy forces.
Since they don't have any backing, they don't have any protection from the city guards as well.
Even the people that they were previously serving had turned their backs on them and left these people to survive on their own. This made them vulnerable and open to this new path. They were easily persuaded and no one actually missed them in the academy realm, when they went to the Church of Agmon.
Alton even went as far as showcasing his payment status in the Hub's interface.
It clearly showed that his payment hasn't been made for a couple of weeks already, but he was still alive and well. This made them have more faith in him and in turn they became followers of the faith of Agmon.
Sam still doesn't know what their plans are at the moment. But he is looking forward to see their actions.
For now, they only seemed to want to recruit more people and there is certainly some brainwashing going on during the onboarding process.
While Sam was observing the situation, he got messages from other players one by one. There is a message from the couple, Noah and Kumar as well.
Even though Sam didn't keep in contact with them and kept a distance, he wasn't openly hostile to them either. Their messages came one after another with not much time gap between them. All the messages talked about the same thing.
Christos' enquiry.
They must have gathered to discuss this before deciding to send a message to Sam. The message contents were similar, but there is also different behind each.
Donner was just warning him out of goodwill, saying that Christos seemed to be quite intent on digging the information out.
Arkiv asked if Sam needed any help. Surprisingly, even Akhil offered help saying that he would be open if things really got serious. Noah and Kumar... well he could sense that they wanted to offer his help, but they are also aware of their awkward status.
Before, Kumar asked Sam of something that he shouldn't and Noah being his partner, stuck with him to the end.
Sam is not particularly angry with either of them, but he did feel a bit of detachment with Kumar after this.
After all, Sam has repeatedly helped them and even held back whenever it comes to the players. The least he expected from them is that they wouldn't want him to forsake his personal grudge.
Anyway, he is glad that messages came. Even though he knew what happened because of his surveillance.
He also knew that he doesn't have to do much when it comes to Christos. He himself has a lot to deal with and he would just fall into a trap of his own set up.
And just like Sam imagined, Christos is actively making moves towards that goal.
The next day, he went to meet with a few elders of the Zeus Academy for a meeting.
"I want you guys to do me a favor. I am asking this as not just the leader of the Students' Noble league, but also as the young master of the Vlachous family. I would exchange fairly for this favor."
"What would that be, Young master Vlachous?"
One of the Elders addressed him as such. Since Christos is using that title, they might as well use it. They also don't have to be reserved when ripping him off as part of that 'exchange'.
"According to the rules, in twelve labors, the Zeus academy will be the last one to give out the trial to Sam. I want you people to use your influence to move the trial forward and give our spot to the Poseidon academy"
The Elders were surprised.
Since Christos used his identity as the young master, they actually thought he might be asking for some huge favor. But to think that he will ask for something this simple.
There is no need for him to make such a large statement of exchange like that.
But they still agreed. They are only a bit disappointed by the fact that they couldn't fleece him a bit. The request is just too small to get anything substantial. After ironing out a few details, Christos walked out.
He is sure that the changes in the order of the Twelve labors would be done smoothly, without letting his name out. Luckily, the elders didn't ask any questions. So, it is much more convenient this way.
Later, Christos went to meet some elders from Poseidon academy in secret. No one, except for the elders involved and Christos knew about the meeting.
"I need you guys to do me a favor. I am willing to exchange..."
Christos did the exact same thing once again. Basically, the Zeus academy will take the Poseidon's spot which is the eleventh trial. While the Poseidon Academy will take the twelfth trial. All this effort, so that Christos can execute a plan he had in mind.
A plan that would allow him to capture Sam and then fish out all of his secrets.
As for why, the Poseidon academy has to be the one that should help him... well, the Zeus academy is in control of Bloody Chariot and he doesn't want Bloody Chariot to know about this situation. He cannot let him get involved in this.
After he made the deal with the Poseidon academy, he went out of the Academy realm.
He went to a certain realm out of Sam's reach and surveillance to discuss the next part of these plans. Christos didn't come back for two days.
In these two days, Bloody Chariot closely monitored the work of the elders. Right now, there are three active tasks for them. One is to decode the crystal chip of the bird puppet, second one is to decode the chip of the humanoid puppet and the finally the third one is to create the formation he asked.
By the end of the second day, only the third task was completed, while the first two did have some significant progress.
Bloody Chariot went to meet the Elder who in charge of the formation making. He made three formations.
"Sir, these are the three variations that I could think of. One of them is a formation that is made to perform certain functions that are related to energy control. Like charging, discharging, arming, etc."
As he said, he guided Bloody Chariot to the first formation. It wasn't exactly big, it was only as big as a basketball court.
It is a small formation.
The reservoir of the energy is quite visible as a smaller layered formation was laid down in the middle of it. The massive energy reservoir was not visible to the naked eye, but Bloody Chariot could easily sense it.
He connected himself with the formation and tried to control it.
He could feel all kinds of elements within the formation. There are some energy channels built into it to do certain tasks.
For example, there are some phantom crossbows mounted at the edge of the formation. They could be armed by controlling the formation directly.
There are also uses, there is an invisible system built to create an energy explosion of some sorts. All of this can be done remotely with a range of few hundred meters.
"We can use this method to set up many more actions, sir. However, based on the complexity of the actions and the number, we might need to alter the energy storage capacity and the formation structure itself."
Bloody Chariot checked the reservoir and frowned.
"The energy consumption is way too high. It would take a mine or two to control it every day. The atmospheric energy is not enough to run this, is it?"
"You are right, sir. This is not a viable option for long term. In my opinion, it could used as an emergency defense system or even a trap mechanism. It could only be used once and it has to be reset properly. It cannot be used as a continuous mechanism."
"Okay. What is next?"
They moved on the second formation.
"This formation has much more freedom in your movement. Please try it."
The formation indeed has much freedom. The elder even arranged the same case that Bloody Chariot mentioned as a test.
A coin toss.
However, Bloody Chariot is not really that impressed by this.
The formation operated based on the spirit. Based on Bloody Chariot's command, the spirit will manifest the energy from the reservoir to have physical presence. It tossed the coin like an actual human would.