<Better. Not perfect, but better.>

He sighed. “Any news about my companions?”

Garran shook his head. “Nothing solid. The message has been circulating through the vendor network for a week now, but no one has reported contact with Jake or Lena. The last confirmed sighting was near Haven’s Rest, about three weeks ago.”

<Haven’s Rest is two hundred kilometers west of here.>

Jake and Lena must have stopped to trade at a nearby settlement and were headed toward Sweetwater.

<I doubt they are dead, and they’re close. I just need to find them.>

“Keep monitoring the network,” Reidar said. “If anyone sees them, I need to know immediately.”

“I will,” Garran said. “Is there anything else you need?”

Reidar considered the question. He had his new gear, and he had a general idea of where Jake and Lena might be right now, which was close, and that meant he should just shrink his search radius to the immediate area, and he would find them. If they were in Sweetwater, it was even better. The only question was, did they know about him?

Plus, he still hadn’t figured out what the church was doing here exactly, but he heard something.

“I heard the church is expecting a delivery. What do you know about the cargo?” Reidar asked.

Garran’s tentacles stiffened. “You’ve been listening to rumors.”

“I’ve been listening to everything.”

The vendor was silent for a moment, then nodded. “There’s a convoy coming; I don’t know when, but I don’t like it. Though my role here is to assist humans, I can’t go against the church, and even if I did, most church members are as strong as me now. Without the Aegis Phalanx protecting my ass, there’s not much I can do. However, telling you the rumors falls into my role, I guess.”

He paused. “Based on what I heard, they are bringing supplies, materials, and personnel, and the convoy is expected to arrive within the next few days.”

“Where is it coming from?”

“I don’t know,” Garran said. “The church doesn’t share that information with non-affiliated members, and even among them, information is scarce. There is literally no way for a vendor to get to know such data from humans like you, especially if they are with the church. They hate us to the core, but since they still need us to access the market, they are not killing us.”

He paused again. “All I know is that it’s coming from outside the region and that it’s being escorted by church forces.”

<An external convoy. That means it’s important.>

Reidar had already sent his Vorathid Sky-Hunters to scout the area around Sweetwater, but they had found nothing unusual yet. If the convoy was still days away, that gave him time to position his forces.

“One more thing,” Reidar said. “Do you know if the church has a central hub somewhere in this region? A place where they coordinate their activities and from where they run their operations?”

Garran shook his head again. “I don’t.”

<As expected. The church wouldn’t advertise the location of its command structure.>

Reidar thanked the vendor and slipped out of the shop through the back door. The sun was just rising, and the streets of Sweetwater were still mostly empty.

By the time he reached the forest outside the town, the sun was above the horizon.

Reidar spent the next hour reviewing what his Vorathid Sky-Hunters had discovered during the past week.

His summons had spread across the region, covering dozens of square kilometers of forest, roads, and settlements. They had tracked monster movements, mapped patrol routes, and identified several points of interest.

The most significant discovery was near Kingsgate.

<They made it far.>

His Sky-Hunters had pushed all the way to the outskirts of the monster-infested zone surrounding the city. From there, they had observed the situation without getting too close, since Reidar didn’t want the Aegis Phalanx to realize he was watching them.

The monster density around Kingsgate was as bad as Kara had described. Creatures at level 400 and above roamed the perimeter in packs, and the World-Carver Behemoth’s presence had attracted other high-level threats to the area. Breaking through that wall of monsters would need an army.

As for Reidar, he could easily go through it, but he couldn’t simply act now, and that was because of the Aegis Phalanx; plus, before he could go to his family, he needed to find Lena and Jake and give them the most important task of them all.

If they didn’t succeed, humanity would be doomed, and so would his family. So, despite not liking this at all, he was staying far.

The Aegis Phalanx was there in Kingsgate.

Through the eyes of his Sky-Hunters, Reidar had seen their forces operating on the outskirts of the kill zone. They were running diversionary tactics, luring the Behemoth away from the city and keeping the monster occupied while other teams extracted survivors from settlements caught in the danger zone.

<They already know I’m alive, that’s for sure. Garran must have told them.>

Garran had mentioned that the vendor network tracked survivor activity, which meant the Aegis Phalanx had access to that information since it came from the system, and given that Garran had been able to even check Reidar’s status, it was only normal that vendors and members of the alliance had certain advantages that normal people didn’t.

The moment Reidar made a purchase or sold loot, his name appeared in the system, and anyone monitoring the network would see that Reidar Miller was back on Earth.

That meant the Aegis Phalanx knew he had survived his trip through the portal to the Ignis world, but that was possible even by just checking the system. His HP never reached 0; after all, he couldn’t be registered as dead. It also meant that they had made a choice.

They hadn’t sent a rescue team by choice. Not that Reidar didn’t know that; after all, Garran said Lena and Jake stopped dealing with the Aegis because of this. But the Aegis could have said they didn’t know about his status if they wanted to deceive Lena and Jake, so them not telling this to Jake and Lena was weird already.

Regardless, in the end, they knew. Jake and Lena wouldn’t have been fooled either way.

<Maybe they said it because they assumed I would die. After all, my death should have been a matter of fact.>

But understanding the logic didn’t make him feel any better about it.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep