Supreme Summoner Overlord: Rise of the Endless Legion-Chapter 433: The Outpost Behind the Illusion (1)

After Lena and Jake disappeared into the treeline, the forest fell silent. The War Mastiffs' footfalls faded, and the only sounds left were the wind and the calls of monsters.

Reidar stood alone in the clearing for a moment, letting the silence settle over him. The journal was gone, as he had given it to Lena. That made Reidar feel a little better because he could trust the two to take care of this task, and he felt a load get off his chest. Of course, after he was done here, he would still need to head to Creamont and help them with whatever they needed, but now was not the time.

His problem was the church.

<I need to deal with that outpost before they move the next shipment, then pay them a visit in Kingsgate.> 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Reidar pulled up the feed from his Vorathid Sky-Hunters. Through their eyes, the outpost appeared as a cluster of structures surrounded by forest, and the illusion magic was now visible to him since he had watched the convoy walk through it.

He counted the church members. There were around two thousand of them spread across the outpost. Most of them were around the level 280-320 range; around 24% of them were guards at the warehouse, and they were slightly stronger at level 320-330.

<I could wipe them all out right now. If I'm fast, I should be able to even use the teleportation circle without the church's troops in Kingsgate noticing, and If I play this well, I might be able to bring my summons with me.>

Reidar wanted to summon the Archon Rift Lords and turn the whole place to ash. Well, not everything; the magic circle still had to be kept.

More importantly, it would destroy whatever intelligence was stored in that warehouse. Lena had said the food contained parasitic eggs, and if that was true, there had to be records somewhere—shipping manifests, delivery schedules, details about who was receiving the infected rations inside Kingsgate, and how much had already been distributed. Without that information, Reidar would be fighting blind once he was in Kingsgate.

<The only problem is where I can find it. >

He then began moving through the forest toward the outpost. His Stealthy Presence perk reduced the attention he drew from living creatures, and the undergrowth was thick enough to provide cover from the patrols that circled the perimeter every twenty minutes.

Reidar reached the edge of the illusion thirty minutes later.

Up close, it was more impressive than he had expected. The spell wasn't just visual; it also suppressed sound and smell, which explained why his Sky-Hunters hadn't detected the outpost during the week he spent scouting the area. The church had learned from its losses.

<Mara's influence. Even dead, her paranoia is shaping their tactics. >

The spell's boundary was invisible to the naked eye, but Reidar knew it was here at this point, and illusions didn't stop people from reaching the place. It was designed to hide the outpost from the outside, not to prevent things from entering, which made sense since the church members needed to come and go without disrupting the concealment.

The energy was thin and spread wide, like a net draped over the clearing, which meant the illusion didn't consume much mana per second but required a constant supply from a source somewhere inside the outpost.

<If I find the source and destroy it, the illusion should fade. But I don't need to drop the illusion. In the end, I just have to kill these fuckers.

Reidar shrunk one of his Vorathid Sky-Hunters to the size of a fly and sent it forward. The insect crossed the barrier without resistance;

Since the Sky-Hunters had already mapped most of the place, what Reidar needed to find was the magic circle for the teleportation spell, so he sent his summons around to find the place. It didn't take much for them to find a smaller structure that Reidar hadn't noticed before.

<Maybe this is the one. >

The building's construction was different from the others. The stone wasn't local; it was dark, almost black. The church must have transported the stones for this structure, which meant the teleportation circle inside was important enough to warrant permanent housing.

He directed a Sky-Hunter toward the stone building. The insect landed on the wall near the door and crawled toward a gap between the stones where the mortar had cracked.

Inside, the room was larger than the building's exterior suggested, which meant the church had dug out the floor to create a subterranean chamber. The teleportation circle occupied most of the space, carved into the stone floor in patterns that Reidar recognized from his time on the Ignis world.

<I guess it's large since it must send a lot of shipments at a time.>

That included troops, of course.

The circle was active but dormant; its runes glowed with a blue light that pulsed at regular intervals. A Priest stood near the circle's edge, keeping everything under observation.

Reidar pulled the Sky-Hunter back before the Priest could sense it. Even at the size of a fly, his summons still radiated mana, and a level 350 Priest might be able to detect that if the insect got too close.

He considered his options.

The outpost had thousands of church members, a teleportation circle, a warehouse full of infected food, and an illusion barrier that hid everything from the outside world.

Reidar needed to destroy the food, capture someone to gather intelligence, preserve the teleportation circle, and do it all without alerting whoever was on the other end of that circle.

<If the church in Kingsgate realizes the outpost is under attack, they might speed up their plan. >

There was another problem, though. He needed to find his family fast and bring them out of Kingsgate. The deal with the Aegis Phalanx said they would protect them until he got to Kingsgate; if he went there, they should not have any problem with him pulling them out of the city, but that was only true because the church was there.