"No. It would be best if we stopped talking about that Duke altogether."
The captain added that final remark.
His words left everyone present stunned.
Duke Cromwell.
A man who had lived three hundred years ago.
A notorious ambitious schemer who had been cursed and condemned for three full centuries.
Why had he suddenly become someone they weren't even supposed to talk about?
One of the team members who was particularly close to the captain hesitated before asking:
"Captain, what's the reason?"
The captain shook his head.
"I don't know either. All I know is that the people at the top seem to have changed their attitude toward the Duke."
That answer only made the others even more bewildered.
The "people at the top" could only mean the great noble houses.
But Duke Cromwell had famously loved killing nobles.
The higher a noble's status, the harder he struck.
Because of that, after Cromwell's downfall, the surviving aristocrats had done everything in their power to attack and smear his legacy. For three hundred years, the noble class had consistently looked down on and vilified him.
Ironically, despite all that, the nobles were extremely fond of sending their descendants to Cromwell University, even if it meant sending them into the Special Zone and dealing with all its inconveniences.
Historically speaking, Duke Cromwell had always been a controversial figure.
But why would the nobles suddenly change their opinion of a man who had practically made a career out of slaughtering aristocrats?
Judging by the situation, the shift had become significant enough that they were considering influencing public opinion.
Had they all gone insane?
Were they suddenly grateful that Duke Cromwell hadn't sent them to the guillotine back then?
Before the discussion could continue, the captain lit a cigar and said:
"Enough. What happens above our heads has nothing to do with us. Just focus on doing your jobs. Now, according to the original plan, we're going in to explore the ruins."
At once, the assembled Beyonders straightened up and acknowledged the order.
The captain took a deep drag from his cigar and exhaled.
A strange scene unfolded.
Instead of dispersing naturally, the smoke gathered together in the air.
Slowly, it formed a sentence.
The Great One is about to return!
The next instant, silence descended.
Absolute silence.
The captain who had personally performed the divination stared at the floating prophecy in disbelief as it slowly faded away.
One of the nearby team members suddenly noticed something and shouted:
"Captain! Your face!"
The captain immediately snapped back to reality.
Cracks had appeared across his face.
They were spreading rapidly toward the center of his forehead.
Without hesitation, he pulled out an emerald-green potion and drank it in one gulp.
Only then did the spreading cracks barely stop.
He quickly followed up by drinking several more potions of different colors.
Only after that did the cracks finally disappear.
Even so, his face remained pale, making it obvious that the cost had been tremendous.
The team members looked at him with concern.
The captain waved them off and said:
"Seal off this area. Notify the Inspectorate immediately!"
Black carriages soon began racing from the New City into the Old City.
Not long afterward, large numbers of patrol officers appeared throughout the district.
Using loudspeakers, they began announcing a curfew.
The sudden development left the residents of the Old City deeply unsettled.
Some attempted to approach the patrol officers and ask what was happening.
They were forcibly driven back.
Residents living near the main roads soon spotted fully armed Imperial soldiers entering the area as well.
One by one, they began replacing the patrol officers responsible for maintaining the blockade.
All of this had happened within a single hour.
At the breach itself, a new group had already arrived.
The captain who had previously been in charge now stood off to the side.
He had become little more than a supporting figure.
Every top-tier Beyonder who could be mobilized quickly within Cromwell City had gathered here.
Standing at the front were three individuals.
All three were Sequence Five Beyonders.
Existences just one step below demigods.
Within the Special Zone, they were among the figures most feared by wild Beyonders and foreign spies alike.
Under normal circumstances, even if a gathering like Audrey's was discovered, a captain-level officer would be more than enough to handle it.
These three would never be deployed.
Unless it had been confirmed that the targets belonged to unstable Evil God pathways.
Only then would one of them personally intervene.
After all, allowing supernatural power to become visible to the public would threaten the foundations of the Special Zone and the Empire's national policy.
It would be a major incident.
And yet now, all three had arrived together.
Even so, none of them dared enter.
They stood before the breach with grim expressions.
Everything was because of the prophecy.
The Great One is about to return!
The exact meaning of "Great One" had a rather broad range.
But even the lowest possible interpretation pointed to a Sequence Four demigod.
Anything beyond that could mean an Angel.
Or even a God.
If fortune was particularly cruel, it could even refer to a King.
And what about them?
They were merely Sequence Fives.
They didn't even qualify for the lowest possibility.
How could they not be afraid?
In fact, even if all three of them died here, that would still be considered a minor matter.
The Empire possessed plenty of Sequence Five Beyonders.
Losing three would be unfortunate, but hardly catastrophic.
What truly worried them was accidentally triggering something far worse.
For example, some half-dead high-sequence monstrosity sleeping beneath the ruins and waiting for a few high-quality sacrifices.
After all, the prophecy didn't say a Great One would appear.
It said a Great One would return.
That single word carried far too many implications.
As a result, the three of them simply used their authority to lock down the entire Old City.
Then they waited for reinforcements.
Or more accurately, they waited for the overall administrator of the Special Zone to return.
That person was a Sequence Three demigod.
Under normal circumstances, that should be enough to hold the line.
---
So where was Mozo right now?
He was in the sewers beneath Moore Street in the Old City, far away from Hawk Street.
Because of that, he successfully avoided the blockade established by the official Beyonders.
But for that exact same reason, he had absolutely no idea that a large force of soldiers was standing directly above him in full combat readiness.
If he had known, he would have turned around and gone home immediately.
His current body was hardly suited for getting involved in something this large.
Yet precisely because he knew nothing about it, everything that happened that night became possible.