Chapter 468: Intelligence Secured

The githarks failed to recognize Ambrose in his human guise, and neither Ariel nor Arthur seemed familiar, but something about the three of them still felt deeply wrong. Their auras were utterly distinct from one another, even contradictory. Could these three genuinely be working as a team?

But they were undeniably powerful. Even the elite githarks had proven entirely incapable of fighting back.

Brutal and savage as githarks were, they had no interest in dying for nothing. Since these three seemed willing to talk, the wisest course was to stall for time and wait for reinforcements to arrive.

The githark leading the group asked Ambrose, "Who exactly are you people?"

Ambrose replied evenly, "Before asking someone else's identity, it's customary to offer your own first. That's simple courtesy on the material plane."

"I'm the squad leader of Unit Eight, Seventh Column, of the Astral Expeditionary Force. My name is Jenarel. Now it's your turn."

Ambrose didn't bother committing the tongue-twisting title to memory, and had no intention of offering his real identity either, not when he was the lich responsible for slaughtering several thousand of these creatures. Instead, he answered: "Just a necromancer passing through. You can call me Kul'Thezad."

Ariel glanced sideways at Ambrose. The lich was using a fake identity so naturally... There was no telling how many times he'd practiced this particular routine, or how many people he'd already deceived with it.

Wait, was Megaman Tiga itself a fake name?

While Ariel turned that thought over, Ambrose finished his exchange with the githark squad leader and gathered a fairly complete picture of their situation.

Of the githarks who had survived long enough to reach this place, only twenty-seven hundred remained. Several hundred more had died navigating the underwater labyrinth, leaving fewer than two thousand by the time they reached the first altar.

Exactly as Ambrose had guessed, they had first chosen the Destruction trial and suffered catastrophic losses against the three giant constructs. A full three hundred githarks had been killed outright, their flesh and blood absorbed directly into the constructs' bodies.

Under different circumstances, the githarks might have pressed on regardless. But by that point they were already teetering on the edge of extinction, and couldn't afford to gamble everything on a direct confrontation. They had no choice but to retreat the way they'd come.

Ordinarily, retreat wouldn't have been an option at all. The Arena of Storms allowed no turning back, and any challenger who showed cowardice would have been killed outright by the arena's guardians.

But the place had lain abandoned for so many years that their withdrawal met no resistance whatsoever.

They then chose the second path, the Fury trial, which turned out to be surprisingly manageable. Upon reaching the first platform along that route, they registered nothing more than a faint psychic pressure attempting to influence their minds, nudging them toward heightened aggression.

It was hardly a concern. Githarks were naturally short-tempered to begin with, and a little extra irritability barely registered.

Had the arena still been fully intact, anyone entering that platform would presumably have been overwhelmed by uncontrollable rage, turning on one another until only a single victor remained, who alone would be permitted to proceed.

But time was merciless, and most of the arena's mechanisms had long since degraded. The Fury trial's effect had faded as well.

The githarks finally had breathing room.

What pleased them even more was that the entire arena had been constructed on the open ocean, with water surrounding every platform. The water that had once presumably housed all manner of vicious marine beasts now merely housed their skeletons, along with a healthy population of fish.

With somewhere to rest and something to eat, the githarks had, at minimum, found enough to survive on.

The githarks possessed a genuinely remarkable capacity for adaptation.

Drawing on the handful of surviving mages among them, they built their own "nest" on the platform. The remaining thousand-odd survivors crammed themselves inside to live, occasionally dispatching scouting parties to explore the rest of the arena.

That was how they discovered that, aside from the unbeatable guardians along the Destruction path, the rest of the arena had been left entirely abandoned. Setting aside the handful of zones still permanently lashed by storms and hailstorms unfit for habitation, the arena itself was nearly as large as the small island they'd once called home.

The three giant constructs, for their part, seemed never to leave the thundering region they guarded, which let the githarks settle into the rest of the arena without concern. They'd finally managed to recover a measure of their strength.

Nest after nest went up. Githark eggs were laid in pools of acid to incubate.

Githarks were, in fact, egg-layers, with a particularly efficient incubation method capable of producing large numbers of offspring in a remarkably short time.

In that brief span of time, their numbers had climbed from under two thousand back up to roughly three thousand.

That, however, was the practical limit. The arena simply couldn't sustain a larger population than that.

Then, just recently, the githarks noticed that the endless thunder had finally gone silent, and sent out scouting parties to investigate. This particular squad had simply had the misfortune of being the first to encounter Ambrose.

None of this information, of course, had come from the githark squad leader voluntarily. Faced with a diviner of Ambrose's caliber, though, there was little he could do to conceal much of anything.

Once he had a clear picture of the githarks' circumstances, Ambrose considered the situation for a moment. "Take me to see your leader. I have some information I'd like to ask about. In exchange, I can..."

Before he could finish the thought, another githark arrived before him.

This time, no introduction was necessary. Ambrose could tell immediately that the leader of the githarks had arrived.

He was a legendary spellcaster who made no effort to conceal his power.

Githarks generally leaned more heavily toward martial prowess as a whole, but when it came to keeping one's people alive in an environment this hostile and unpredictable, a versatile spellcaster held a clear edge.

The githark mage raised his staff high, channeling enormous power into it, and addressed Ambrose with open menace. "Release my people, or I'll bombard you with Meteor Shower!"

The ninth-tier Meteor Shower sounded intimidating enough, but casting it directly in front of a diviner was, frankly, an act of profound foolishness.

Ambrose simply raised a finger and loosed a thin beam of red light. The legendary mage's face instantly went pale as the gathered magic around his staff collapsed into chaos.

"Counterspell?!"

The githark could hardly believe it.

Counterspell could, admittedly, disrupt the vast majority of spellcasting attempts, but he was a legend.

A spellcaster who'd reached that level possessed an understanding of magic, and control over his own magical energy, that would make his casting effectively immune to interruption. Counterspell should have had an infinitesimal chance of succeeding against him.

Had he simply been that unlucky?

Ambrose made his move. Ariel and Arthur didn't hesitate, either.

The three legends let their full power show, holding nothing back. Every githark present felt the weight of it all bear down on them.

Ariel in particular drew their attention. The terrifying current of electricity wreathing her body reminded them of the three giant constructs and the storm they'd commanded.

"Everyone, calm down. I, Kul'Thezad, and my companions didn't come here to fight you. I only need one piece of information. Once I have it, we'll leave."

Ambrose's words settled the githark leader's nerves somewhat. The githarks were currently far too depleted to survive another full-scale battle, and negotiation was clearly the better path.

"Master Kul'Thezad, what information are you looking for?"

Ambrose got straight to the point. "I'm tracking down the whereabouts of mindflayers, as I intend to capture a few for study. I know your people have a long-standing feud with them, and that the githarks have hunted mindflayers across countless planes ever since. Surely you have some specialized method for locating them?"

The mere mention of mindflayers brought a flash of raw hatred across every githark face present.

The era of their enslavement was a wound that would never fully heal. It could only be erased by the total extinction of every last mindflayer.

"We do have a means of tracking those vile, brain-eating mongrels. What exactly are you offering in exchange?"

The githark leader was clearly still angling to negotiate, hoping to squeeze some additional advantage out of Ambrose. But Ambrose simply said coolly, "How about your lives? My friend, do you genuinely not understand the situation you're in? Staying calm, exercising restraint, and avoiding violence as much as possible—that's already the greatest mercy I'm prepared to offer you."

Under other circumstances, Ambrose might not have minded handing over a bit of food or supplies in exchange for information. But these githarks had struck first, and those who only respected force, not kindness, didn't deserve any courtesy.

The threat left every githark present visibly furious, but Ambrose showed no inclination to soften his approach. With a wave of his hand, he pulled one of the giant constructs out of his private space.

Though it was nothing more than an immobile "corpse," the construct's sheer four-meter bulk carried an unmistakable menace.

"You're well aware of what these things are capable of, I imagine. And now, they belong to me as spoils of war. Are you quite sure you want to force my hand?"

In the end, the githarks backed down.

The three giant constructs had clearly left a deep impression on them. If Ambrose had managed to kill all three and walked away without so much as a scratch, that meant he possessed more than enough power to wipe out the entire githark population gathered here.

Githarks were savage and quick to anger, but they weren't stupid.

When the balance of power was overwhelmingly clear, knowing when to yield mattered more than pride, much as when they initially knelt to the mindflayers.

That said, githarks held grudges with extraordinary tenacity. Given a future opportunity, they would not hesitate to seek revenge against Ambrose.

The githark leader tossed something disc-shaped toward Ambrose. "Take it. Everything we know about mindflayers is recorded on it."

This unusually dense, specially crafted disc was the githarks' preferred recording medium, a single small object capable of storing an enormous volume of information.

Ambrose had half-expected the githark to try some kind of trick, but his instincts told him, somewhat to his surprise, that the creature hadn't lied.

The moment he took hold of the disc and let his senses sweep across it, the device unfolded layer by layer. It began to rotate on its own.

The intelligence on mindflayers, which he'd been searching for for so long, finally projected itself above the disc.

After studying it for a moment, Ambrose finally found exactly what he'd been looking for.

Wherever mindflayers lived, telepathic communication would inevitably occur with some regularity, and the disc contained the schematics for a magical device capable of detecting that exact kind of psychic activity from a considerable distance. It was thus possible to pinpoint a mindflayer's location with precision.

Ambrose said, with evident satisfaction, "Good thing I'm an alchemist."