Supreme Summoner Overlord: Rise of the Endless Legion-Chapter 430: Old Friends (2)

They sat in the clearing around Reidar's camp. The War Mastiffs formed a perimeter around them, and the Vorathid Sky-Hunters continued their patrol overhead. The fallen tree served as a bench, and the three of them settled into the kind of silence that comes after a long separation.

Jake was the first to break it. "What happened? After the portal took you."

Reidar told them.

He explained how the portal had dropped him on the Ignis homeworld, a planet where the sapient race had failed the test represented by the apocalypse. He told them about the Ignis and how the Allied Worlds had given them the Guardian System, just like they had given it to humans, only to take it away when the Ignis proved too uncontrollable.

"Without the system, the mana turned them feral," Reidar said. "The entire planet is filled with monsters that used to be people. Level 400 and above, most of them, and there were some that were past level 500; some even reached level 600, and yet they weren't the strongest there."

Jake's face went pale. "Not the strongest?"

"Not even close."

Lena's expression didn't change, but Reidar noticed the way her fingers tightened on her knee. "And Mara?"

"She was there too. The portal sucked both of us in," Reidar said. "She was trying to open a portal back to Earth, and I needed her to succeed because I couldn't open one myself. So I followed her across the planet while she gathered materials and built the magic circle."

He told them about the chase, about Mara's teleportation circles, about the ruins of the Ignis cities filled with feral monsters, and about the journal he found. He told them how Mara had managed to open the portal in the capital's palace and how he had fought his way through the horde to reach it.

"Mara was feral at that point," Reidar said. "Not completely, but enough. Her mind was still there, but barely. The mana on the planet had been saturating her body for weeks, and since she rejected the system, she had no protection against it." He paused. "I killed her before she could cross the portal. Then I crossed through."

Lena was quiet for a long moment. "Good."

Jake looked at Lena, then back at Reidar. "Level 557. You leveled up over a hundred times on that planet?"

"There were many things to kill," Reidar said. "And some of them were worth millions of C.L.A.S.P. points. One of them was a Level 601 Elite that followed me through the portal. I had to kill it here on Earth before it could reach a settlement."

Jake stared at him. "Level 601."

"I used the army trick. Skill Sharing, Archon Rift Lords, and Sky Hunters. It took quite a number of summons, but I brought it down."

"Quite a number, uh?" Lena said, and for the first time since arriving, something like a smile crossed her face. "You haven't changed."

Reidar shrugged. "I still summon an army to solve my problems. Some things indeed never change." He paused, glancing at his companions. "Though I've gotten better at it. The summons are stronger now, and I've learned to coordinate them better. Thousands of summons might sound excessive, but every single one of them was needed. You know, since I have the habit of killing things that are normally way out of my league."

Reidar sighed. "What about you two? What happened after I disappeared?"

The smile vanished from Lena's face. She didn't like recalling that period.

"After you got pulled through the portal," Lena said, "We went to the Aegis Phalanx and told them everything. We told them it was the church that opened the portal. We told them where you were sucked in by the portal."

"And they refused to help," Reidar said. "A vendor told me."

Lena's jaw tightened. "They said that wherever you ended up, you were a dead man and that a rescue was impossible."

"They were right," Reidar said. "If the Aegis Phalanx is considered one of the elites of the Allied Worlds, then going there would have just been suicide. The monsters' levels, as I said, were high."

"I don't doubt that, but they didn't even show sympathy after everything you have done." She paused. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Jake looked at the ground. "We asked them three times. They said no every time."

Lena nodded. "So we left. We figured the Aegis Phalanx wanted you on that planet, or dead, and that changed things for us."

Reidar nodded too. "I had my suspicions the Allied Worlds weren't completely honest with us, but this basically confirmed it. But Garran, the vendor I spoke to, told me the truth, so they're not all the same. There must be people who do not agree with how the Allied Worlds do things." He paused.

"How long have you been hunting the Church without me?"

"Since we left the Aegis," Lena said. "Around 3 months, more or less. We tracked the church's operations, hit its supply lines, and killed its people when we could. That led us to figure out what they were doing. We followed their trail here because we heard they were preparing something near Kingsgate, and since we didn't know if you were alive, we thought the job to protect your family fell on us."

Reidar felt a warmth spread through his chest on hearing those words. For so long, he had carried the weight of protecting his family alone. But Lena and Jake had stepped up without hesitation when they thought he was gone. It meant more than he could put into words—knowing he wasn't alone anymore, that there were people he could count on when he couldn't be there himself.

But he was also a practical man, so he said nothing.

"What did you find about the church?"

Lena's expression darkened. "Mara had been here way before she started preparing the trap for you." She paused. "She set up a teleportation magic circle. The church has been using it to move troops and supplies directly to Kingsgate. Not around the monster field, but through it. They're getting past the creatures."

"A teleportation circle," Reidar said.

"The outpost we were about to attack." Lena gestured in the direction of the hidden clearing. "That's a staging area. They bring the supplies there, then move them to Kingsgate through the teleportation circle."

"I heard that too, but if they are not amassing the supplies to reach Kingsgate through normal means, since they actually have access to it, what do they need the supplies for?" Reidar asked.

Lena and Jake exchanged a look, and Reidar didn't like it at all.