After carefully considering the entire situation, I decided that the best course of action was to gather more information. That meant that we needed to infiltrate Lord Reign’s vault. It was the biggest heist yet to perform for Reign’s End and was a natural evolution of our goals. However, this felt like it was a bit too soon. It may be too dangerous.

I wouldn’t have even considered it, but with Demonic Knights being mass created, it was a danger to all of Aberis. It was something I couldn’t ignore, and I needed to know whether Lord Reign was involved, or just a pawn. The fact that this would be a major blow to him was only a plus. Putting us at odds with Lord Reign so directly may cause the Bandits who are, at least, partially financed by him, to fear reaching out to our group.

I had to put the issues of the Bandits in the south to the side for now, since this was currently posing a greater threat. I even considered calling the other girls in, so that we worked on this altogether. In the end, I decided not to. They needed to be able to grow on their own, and so did I. We were strongest as a unit, but that was because every girl was strong on her own too.

Of course, I had sent a message to Lord Aberis and the castle. I didn’t really expect a response. First off, I didn’t have much to tell them. There were tokens, and they may be cursed by someone. They already knew Lord Reign had too many Knights. Whether they were supplied by Imperial Cloud, or by counterfeit tokens, didn’t make a difference. Everything I had were guesses. Until I had more information, there was nothing they could do. Even then, I knew the answer I would receive. The majority of the army was tied up in the south, and until a peace was officially reached, there was no one to spare.

As for Astria and Elaya, I didn’t want to get them involved. The pair would only complicate things, and with Elaya’s former dungeon possibly serving some connection, it may rile her up and cause some unwanted effects. Overall, I still considered my control over the two women to be feeble. That was just another reason that I felt I needed to get stronger on my own.

We spent another day and night preparing for our attack on Reign’s Keep. In the end, we realized that the best time to attack would be when he wasn’t there. The next round of the gladiatorial fights would begin tomorrow. That would be between the top twelve. Since this was the last battle before the finals, Lord Reign would attend. The next three matches would be back to back over three days, narrowing from 6 to 3, 3 to 2, and finally the last for the win.

While Carmine was on stage fighting, with Lord Reign in the audience, the rest of us would sneak into his keep and make our move. We weren’t going to do anything particularly special. We had already gotten some guard uniforms from previous raids. We’d come to the castle looking like we belonged, knock out the guards when necessary with Miki’s help, and then work our way inside.

No one sold a map of the castle and my Map only fleshed out my one entrance into the castle. Unfortunately, we’d have to go in blind. However, we always had Portal and Return under our belt. No matter how deep we got into the castle, we’d always be able to get out. Everything would turn out fine. It always did.