Supreme Monarch

On the demon king's castle's fourth floor.

Tyler sat in the same office he had been using so far and Albert was sitting beside him. Normally this would be considered taboo for a servant to sit next to his master and although Tyler didn't mind, Albert wouldn't dare. However, right now, Albert's mind was completely focused on something else.

He sat onnthe sofa next to Tyler as he struggled to control a floating, circular crystalized mirror that should have around a 35-inch circumference. The mirror did not reflect the face of the person in front of it as it showed a scene that should not be possible given the place they were in right now.

The scene reflected in the mirror right now was of the outside of the barrier. It showed the snowy forest but soon switched back to the interior of the castle and then the outside ward. Albert was making weird hand movements as sweat drizzled down his distinguished face even though his expression remained the same.

Tyler had been watching Albert struggle in controlling the monitoring spell for a while now, he had even requested a snack. This was quite the comedic scene and he felt like he could watch this forever. A matured looking lady with a white bunny tail and ears soon knocked and entered the office with a tray of fruits and a bottle of some sort of fancy wine in hand.

She bowed gently at Tyler and Albert but Albert was too busy to even notice her. She placed the tray in front of Tyler and politely asked if he needed anything else. Tyler declined politely because he wasn't used to such treatments, he didn't know when, but a few female ogress and beastkins were now acting like maids and standing outside the door awaiting instructions, well perhaps he shouldn't say they were acting.

He didn't bother stopping them as they would insist anyway so he focused on eating his fruits and drinking the wine as he kept his eyes on Albert who suddenly seems to be getting better. Tyler felt a little disappointed as his show was about to end. There wasn't any entertainment here, and this had probably been the most fun he'd had in a millennium.

Those thoughts soon faded away the moment he heard a sigh of relief coming from Albert. He must've completely mastered the spell so Tyler congratulated him.

"You did it, good work."

"Thank you, sir."

The reason he hadn't done this himself was simply that he also didn't know how how to operate the spell and didn't want to look silly, that was why he wisely delegated the job to Albert. The poor guy had done his best and mastered the spell in record time.

Tyler then shifted his gaze back on the floating mirror in front of Albert and saw, a large group of trolls marching in this direction when their march had suddenly been interrupted by an arrow that had pierced the neck of one of the so-called gray trolls.

The event that followed surprisingly played out as Tyler had predicted mostly due to the strength and speed of the ogres and beastmen. Tyler then took note of the once that stood out to him as the battle progressed smoothly.

Using the ogres and beastmen as bait had just been to attract the attention of whoever was keeping an eye on the trolls and he had thought of two ways to handle that.

The first was unlikely as it would require the ogres to be way more powerful than they were currently, which was ironic because that plan required them to lose. Or specifically pretend to lose while waiting for someone to swoop in and save them in order to capture them for information.

Of course, this was based on the assumption that the Great Five were watching personally and not just the scouts. Otherwise, it would turn out to be a very unfortunate story. However, Tyler did not think the settlement was strong enough to do something so risky, so he went with his second idea.

Whether or not the Great Five had instigated the trolls to attack them was irrelevant, the fact remained that they had scouts in the forest that would still be watching the situation. He also wasn't sure how or what method the Great Five would use to monitor the situation. It was known that each family secretly kept tabs on the other so using their scouts to do this was unlikely.

To instigate something like this, they would need to have been moving secretly even from their scouts. However, Tyler still needed to take care of the scouts and while the safe zones were common knowledge on the Demon continent, their exact locations were a tightly guarded secret.

It was also one of the reasons why entry to the Darknar region was strictly forbidden. He needed a way to pinpoint the locations of all the remaining safe zones that housed scouts within a limited time frame and such a task was easier said than done.

It had taken Jarret's team hours to locate two safe zones even though they were aware of their general location but they didn't have that much time. If the scouts noticed them, they would send a report back to their family and the situation would get worse.

To avoid such a thing, Tyler needed to keep them focused on something else and that was the ogres and beastmen. And to locate the safe zones within a short time, he had left that job to a professional.

After going through her file Tyler was aware that Erin was quite skilled in astrological magic, or more especially, divination. While the stars were covered with thick clouds, she had still surpassed Tyler's expectations.

Tyler ignored the chase going on, on the screen and looked up, Erin sat on the sofa in front of him with her eyes closed as sparkling water droplets danced around her. It was quite the enchanting sight that drew his attention. He wasn't sure how her spell worked but she was able to sense whoever was using divination magic within her massive range.

Normally, most people could only block divination and occasionally counter it. However, she could not only sense how many people were watching the trolls but even their exact locations.

Thanks to her, Tyler had confirmed that only four divination spells were being used besides hers. That proved that no secret powers were at play although there was still the slim chance that one of the Great Five was dumb enough to use their scouts and a strong opponent was hiding almost them.

However, that was fine. As long as it wasn't beyond his expectations, he could always find an alternative. He turned his head back to the screen and saw the appearance of the ogre chief, Azar Igna.

This would be the first time Tyler would be seeing this guy fight with his new weapon so he instantly became curious. Azar charged amid several Trolls and dominated. Even against the Gray-War troll he also seemed to have the advantage and Tyler was impressed.

"Was that guy always that Strong?"

"Not to this extent sir. This mist is as a result of his high compatibility with the weapon you gave him."

"Oh..."

Tyler wasn't completely sure what the old man meant but nodded non the less. He had been amazed when he had first seen the specs on that weapon and although he was entirely sure how magic Weapons were ranked, he was sure by the effects of the weapon alone. That must've been a real high-grade magic weapon.

Tyler reached into space and pulled out the parchment from his storage space and unrolled it.

Dark-Syphon [Magic Weapon - Relic]

An ancient relic of the dark demon

necromancer Adelt Wilderbelt. After his failed attempt in the ritual to become a Grand Lich, he had used the residual energy from the ritual in creating this weapon hoping to one day recover it and advance.

Primary Effects: Increase the physiques of the wielder by 50%

Secondary Effects:

Skills: Can use the listed skills a limited number of times each day. Skills still use energy from the core and cannot be used when energy is low.

Grievance Slash - Creates a wave of grieving aura that inflicts piercing damage in the area at which this weapon is swung.

Meteoric Descent - Creates a large illusionary version of this weapon when the wielder is descending from a height of at least, 15 feet. The illusionary weapon carries 500% of the wielder's total attack power.

Spells: Cast the listed spells by consuming energy from the weapon's core. Energy can also be reinforced with mana for a stronger effect.

|Blindness| - Inflicts opponent with temporary blindness. Duration depends on their resistance.

|Flow Control| - Can manually control the flight pattern of this weapon when thrown as a projectile.

|Smog of Darkness| - Creates a thick smog the covered a range of 15 to 20-meter radius. Smog can drain the awareness of anyone trapped within and weirded can use any skills and spells without limit. Duration 10 Minutes.

|Soundless| - Erases the wielders would for 10 minutes.

Excluding the spells and skills, the primary Effects alone were enough to rank this weapon quite highly. Increasing one's physiques was a warrior's wet dream. Many would risk their lives just to get an item that gave a 5% increase, and this had a whopping 50%

Tyler almost regretted giving it away but quickly got over it. He couldn't use such a Brutish weapon to its full potential, and that would be a disservice to the weapon.

Tyler sighed as he shook the thought of his mind. He returned his attention to the floating mirror and watched the battle unfold according to plan. While he had come up with the general plan, he really couldn't take all the credit as Albert had been the one to perfect his plan into something that could be implemented by the Settlement.

The battle with the trolls became more heated and the screen switch to view one of the safe zones. Normally it would be dangerous to use a divination spell on a safe zone as there were sure to be defensive measures set up around them.

However, with Erin here those measures were nothing to worry about. She may have been sitting quietly with her eyes closed but she was doing more work than him. Tyler soon watched the two girls, Liz and Rain proceed to massacre the scouts in the safe zones.

He hadn't given them any restrictions when fighting the scouts and he had given Liz the Iris Tears just so they didn't make any mistakes but as it turned out. The scouts were weaker than he had expected and they were taking on each safe zone on a turn-by-turn basis.

The first to fight was Rain but she seemed to have gotten carried away and needed Liz to interfere before she took the battle seriously. The mirror didn't offer any audio so Tyler hadn't heard anything they had said to each other.

They then flew to each remaining safe zone and without breaking a sweat they massacred every scout there and managed to corrupt all the safe zones using Tyler's corrupted magic crystals. Thanks to this, Tyler was now down Five magic crystals, although he had borrow them from the settlement he still felt the pain.

The idea had come to him after reading the information on the gray war trolls and saw how Albert had isolated them in the wall. They naturally exuded a deathly aura that corrupts the living and was a natural deterrent.

Since Tyler was interested in visiting a city, he couldn't leave the castle without first buying himself more time to protect it and the safe zones were a problem. After thinking for a while about how to solve this issue, he suddenly remembered his experience when he had first seen a magic crystal and came up with the idea to infuse magic crystals with negative energy and the dark magic crystals was a result of that.

They would constantly emit negative energy that would not allow any life in the safe zones for at least a few months. It would also take a while for the Great Five to react to the death of their Scouts as he had instructed the girls to let a single scout escape with a vague description of what had happened.

Naturally because of the lack of specifics and the fact that they all had spies in each other's families. The Great Five would all naturally come to a wrong conclusion that one of them was moving against the others and take their time in their investigations. Or at least that was what he hoped. However, even if they send scouts back, They would have to pick a safe zone hundreds of miles away as those five were the closest.

After watching the girls finish their mission, there was no longer any need to worry about being spied on. At least for now. The crystal Mirror turned to the ogre fight that should almost be done by now.

However, what Tyler saw next made his eyes grow wide. "What, in the world..."

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