Unsealing Emptiness

Meanwhile, Ozul was yet again laying on the very top of the tower. He ignored all the commotion down below and focused on the sky instead.

Just then, a black cat gracefully walked around him before approaching him.

“Hmm? Where had you been all this time?” Ozul muttered while looking at Jinx who lazily stretched before rolling herself into a ball.

Ozul hadn’t expected a reply anyway, so he shifted his focus back to the sky. An exhausted and bored sigh escaped from his mouth.

What he didn’t expect was that just as he sighed, Jinx looked up at his face,

*Meow*

.....

It definitely surprised Ozul since he had never heard Jinx make any sound before. It was normal for cats to meow, but she had never done that before! He could not help but feel that it was a little weird.

After that soft meow, Jinx rubbed her face to the side of Ozul’s chest and snuggled closer before again closing her eyes.

“...”

Ozul kept staring at her for a few seconds before he moved his metallic hand towards her. However, he stopped before the cold metal touched her. Instead, he formed a hand with the Ball of Purity and pet her head.

If anyone else was here, they would have simply just heard a meow and ignored it. But Ozul felt as if Jinx was trying to cheer him up.

It had been more than 30 years and he was one step closer to being able to search this entire continent if it had any clues about his existence.

Even while being nearly 35 years old, Ozul looked like he was still 20.

He had read that being a Fighter or Mage extended people’s life span, but that was only because of Mana nourishing their body. Ozul didn’t have any Mana, so it could only mean that it was something else that kept him young. Yet, he hadn’t heard of anyone else with such a case.

‘Now that there are people in almost all the corners of the continent, it would be easier,’ Ozul thought.

All of this laborious work was only to ease his search later on. He had created this organization for one sole purpose, and that was to find clues about anything related to either those symbols or the use of things similar to Mana.

Even with this big accomplishment, Ozul wasn’t at all happy about it. He knew that the chances to find anything were quite low. If he really didn’t find anything, then he didn’t even know where he would start in the other worlds.

For now, he was just giving himself some free time.

‘Am I forgetting something...? Weird...’

. . .

The next few days, Ozul didn’t bother himself with any of the matters. He either stayed in his room or on top of the tower at night.

Haley didn’t let anyone disturb him either. Oliver tried to get past her a few times, but he later had to suffer her beatings. He couldn’t put up a fight since he was way weaker than her, even after becoming a Rank-6 Mage.

Anyway, things had been going much smoother than they had thought. The only problems that occurred were in the branch organizations. However, they were easily resolved with either force or even more force.

The fact that none of the Rank-9 Mages tried to stir up any trouble was a huge blessing for them.

The reason for that was simple. Those at Rank-9 were all aware that a direct confrontation between them and another at the same Rank would destroy more than whatever they would gain by winning. Moreover, this organization only benefited them, why would they go out of their way to make an enemy out of another Rank-9 Mage?

After a few days, Ozul decided that it was enough slacking off. As he came down from his floor, he noticed that they were having a meeting with Oliver, Haley, and Irvin acting as the leaders.

They were going through the usual daily reports when they noticed Ozul. All of them immediately stood up and respectfully bowed.

Ozul nodded his head before making his way to the couch at the corner of the room.

“Continue,” he said when he noticed that they had stopped their briefing because of his presence.

The members finished their reports before each of them once again gave a bow to Ozul before leaving. It took another hour before the briefing was done. Since the Three-Eyed Strangers was still a relatively new organization, they had to be careful at every step. So they did thorough reports of almost every new event.

Now only Oliver, Irvin, Haley, and a couple of other elite members remained in the room, so Ozul stood up and made his way to the chair.

*Sigh*

“Alright. Brief only the things which are important,” Ozul said after a tired sigh. It had been a long time since he got briefed about the whole organization.

Oliver didn’t waste any time and started to explain their situation all around the continent.

“Stop it. Don’t tell me all those things,” Ozul stopped him in the middle as he continued, “I don’t need to know all of them. And if there are any problems, solve them. I don’t need to know every one of them either.”

Oliver could only smile wryly at his words. He nodded his head and sat back while a few of those elite members tried their best not to laugh at his face.

Ozul didn’t want to bother with every small matter now. He had already done enough.

“How many Rank-8 Mages do we have?” he asked, realizing that they wouldn’t really understand what he wanted to know and what to not if he just stared at them.

Haley quickly scrolled through the bundle of documents before them and took out a sheet. It seemed that she already had a list of their elite members, listed according to their strengths.

“Including Irvin, we have a total of 3 peak Rank-8 Mages. Those 2 both are stationed in two separate parts of the continent,” Haley informed with a pause. She continued, “As for the total number of Rank-8 Mages, we have a total of 32 right now.”

‘Hm. It’s quite a lot. More than enough for now,’ Ozul thought inside his mind as he nodded his head. Those two peak Rank-8 Mages were quite surprising for some, but he knew that they didn’t join with any bad intentions.

All the members with important positions were required to take oaths. These oaths weren’t so restrictive and only asked them to never leak any information related to the organization. All of them were also required to take an oath that they weren’t spies from other groups and they wouldn’t betray the Three-Eyed Strangers. If anyone went back on their word, they would be instantly killed on the spot.

If it was not expensive to use those oath artifacts, Haley would have made every member of the organization take an oath.

“What about our treasure vaults?” Ozul asked.

“We are actually making quite a lot of profits already. As of now, the main vault has the magical Core of a Rank-8 Mountain Tiger, Rank-8 Fiery Snake, Rank-8 White Bat...” Haley started to list every rare material that they had in the treasury.

“... and a total of 1.2 million Platinum Coins,” she ended only after counting everything except for the three Rank-9 Beast’s corpses. They were safe with her, though a few of their parts were already used in strengthening some of the formations.

Ozul’s mood visibly improved a little after hearing everything that Haley had listed. There were quite a few things that contained dense Mana for him to absorb.

‘But not right now...’ Ozul decided that these materials and artifacts were better used by the organization for now. Although there were quite a lot, his improvement after absorbing them would be way less than the benefits obtained by the organization. Although if he did need them for any emergency in the future, they were always his to take.

This was the best part of creating the organization. Even when their organization only sold trivial information, they had started amassing a fortune because they operated all over the continent!

“Alright, anything else?” Ozul asked. He knew that these people always asked for his opinions on important matters even when he had told them that it was up to them.

It was Oliver that spoke again, “Ah, yes. We were talking about building semi headquarters in each part of the continent...”

“Semi headquarters?” Ozul repeated,

“Yes. Like all three parts would have their own headquarters. The branch divisions would send their information to them instead. And then those semi headquarters will send them to us,” Oliver briefly explained.

He further added, “It would really help decrease the burden on us. Handling each branch division would also become much easier.”

“Alright. Make those peak Rank-8 Mages the head of each semi headquarters. Since we only have 2 of them excluding Irvin, send a couple more middle-stage Rank-8 to the last part,” Ozul ordered as everyone nodded his head.

They had also come to a similar conclusion but still needed to discuss it with Ozul before implementing the idea.

“Anything else?” Ozul again asked. No one brought up the topic to start sending their spies to other organizations since they hadn’t dealt with everything yet.

They didn’t have anything else to discuss right now, so no one said a thing. Ozul was about to stand up and leave when Irvin spoke up, “Ah! Yes. Young Master, the invitation came...”