Chapter 480: A Bountiful Harvest

Ambrose was starting to hate his own intuition.

If he hadn't had such sharp instincts, he never would've felt that something was off, never would've pulled out that gem, and never would've discovered a mindflayer lurking in this inn!

It certainly wasn't a false positive. Plenty of spells carried some trace of psychic power within them. Even a pugilist's punch could be infused with mental force and land squarely on a villain's face hard enough to make him break down in tears and reflect on all his wrongdoing—what people jokingly called a "character-correction punch."

But the psychic energy of different races was distinct from one another.

And the gem in Ambrose's hand only reacted to mindflayers specifically.

Who would've guessed that, after searching for mindflayers for so long and half-expecting to find one out in the chaos realm, he'd end up running into a mindflayer right here among the orcs? Ambrose now had to consider a pressing question: just how many orcs did this mindflayer actually control, and was today's meeting actually a trap?

A mindflayer possessed incredible mental power. Ambrose couldn't be confident he could resist its psychic control if push came to shove. If things got too dicey, he'd have to self-destruct and retreat back to his phylactery.

Still, there was an old saying that applied here: in for a penny, in for a pound.

There was no turning back now anyway. Ambrose simply strode forward into the inn, determined to see exactly what this mindflayer was after.

The inn was decorated in typical orcish fashion: rugged and blunt, with blades and spears scattered everywhere as decoration. The higher up he climbed, the more oppressive the pressure radiating off all that sharpened steel became. Anyone else might've had their knees go weak well before reaching the top.

Ambrose ignored all of it, climbing easily to the third floor despite the pressure.

There, in a vast reception hall, Ambrose finally met General Urbano Pacheco.

Allegedly, this general had once been a slave—a frail, scrawny young orc who, in any real fight, could probably be knocked flat by a single half-decent soldier. He'd risen to command in this pivotal war purely through tactical skill.

Rumor also had it that this general was something of a recluse who never met outsiders, preferring to hole himself away in his quarters and direct everything from there. Even his own attending servants rarely caught a glimpse of him in person.

The fact that he was willing to meet Ambrose face to face was, by all accounts, already an extraordinary show of respect from Urbano Pacheco.

But... it was perhaps a bit too extraordinary.

What Ambrose found waiting for him wasn't some frail young orc at all, but a writhing, constantly squirming, purple octopus head.

Urbano Pacheco had dropped the act entirely, appearing before Ambrose in his true mindflayer form.

Mindflayers were roughly humanoid in shape, with octopus-like heads covered in countless tentacles, and slender, supple bodies. They were clearly built for anything but close combat. What they lacked in that department, however, they more than made up for with formidable psychic power.

The instant Ambrose laid eyes on him, he braced himself for a fight. If this octopus-headed thing tried to invade his mind, Ambrose wouldn't hesitate for a second to unleash an enhanced Storm of Revenge.

With Thanos's blessing and the Golden Throne's amplification together, Ambrose was confident he could turn several square kilometers into rubble, taking every last bit of life within that radius down with him.

Whatever the orcs thought about it, anyone who dared raise a hand against him would get mutual annihilation in response, without any hesitation whatsoever.

And yet, Urbano Pacheco made no move whatsoever to invade his mind. Instead, after taking in the sight of Ambrose, he simply said, politely, "My apologies for meeting you in this form, Master Megaman. Please, sit. We have quite a lot to discuss today."

Ambrose hesitated for a moment, then sat down across from the mindflayer with some confusion. "You're not even trying to hide it, so I take it you already know I'm looking for mindflayers."

Urbano Pacheco nodded. "Of course I know. That little device in your hand used to be quite useful, many years ago, but these days it's become more of a liability. It gives you away."

Ambrose pulled out the psychic detection gem and set it on the table. The red arrow that had been pointing at Urbano Pacheco vanished, only to flicker back on a moment later, now pointing in an entirely different direction.

If this mindflayer could control the gem's indicated direction at will, that meant the gem's reaction earlier had been deliberate on his part. He'd been ready to reveal his identity from the very start.

"When it comes to wielding psychic power, how could the githarks ever hope to compare to us? They assume this little device still functions, but the moment we got our hands on just one of them, we figured out exactly how it functions—and from there, misleading them became child's play. If I hadn't wanted to meet you in good faith, you would never have found me at all."

Facing the confident mindflayer, Ambrose simply replied calmly, "I'm a legendary diviner."

Urbano Pacheco: "..."

"Alright, fine, I'll admit I oversold that a little. But you did spend quite a lot of time searching for me, didn't you? It's safe to assume that if I hadn't shown myself, you'd have needed even longer. Consider that a gesture in good faith."

Ambrose interlaced his fingers and rested them on the table.

The bones clicked against each other, producing a series of sharp clacks, as if he were carefully weighing this so-called "good faith."

After a long pause, Ambrose finally spoke. "Very well. While I was thinking just now, you didn't try to peek into my thoughts. I can sense your good faith."

Urbano Pacheco's eyes narrowed. Had this lich just deliberately tested him? Thank goodness he'd held back his curiosity. He'd come dangerously close to peeking into the lich's mind after all.

Ambrose, with no intention of wasting any more time, continued, "Since you've shown such good faith, I can't help but ask, why exactly?"

"Because you make me nervous, Master Megaman. My kind has no quarrel with you whatsoever, but you've been searching for me, and that unsettles me deeply. You're well aware of your own reputation, I'm sure. Anyone who catches your attention rarely ends up well. So I had no choice but to come forward myself, to show you my good faith and make clear I have no wish to be your enemy."

Ambrose was a little surprised. His instincts told him this mindflayer was being completely sincere.

It seemed that little performance out at sea had left quite the impression after all.

In truth, Ambrose had underestimated the impact of that naval battle.

Even before that, Ambrose had already staged that whole spectacle with the banishment of the Unholy Kingdom, making it abundantly clear to everyone exactly how much weight the title of diviner carried. Even those who knew full well that Ambrose himself hadn't personally presided over that ritual still had to think twice. What if this lich went off the rails and decided to do it again?

But up until that point, people had still mostly thought of Ambrose as nothing more than an enormously dangerous bomb.

Banishing an entire kingdom required sacrificing himself in the process. That kind of move was purely a deterrent, not something he could just whip out on a whim.

Except then, Ambrose had gone and staged another massive showdown out at sea not long after, crushing an entire githark force under a sky full of falling meteors, leaving them with no way to fight back whatsoever.

Outsiders saw only the spectacle; those in the know realized what the display truly meant.

Others could cast strategic-tier spells too, but Ambrose had only just established that island of his days earlier. How was he already capable of unleashing hundreds of meteors? That alone strained belief.

Not only that, Meteor Shower was infamous for its abysmal accuracy. So how, in Ambrose's hands, did every single one land?

Without that kind of terrifying precision, there would have been no way for him to wipe out an entire pack of astral red dragons in a single strike.

A Meteor Shower with zero wasted force behind it was downright terrifying, and this was a tactic he could simply use again and again at will.

By comparison, the paladin Ambrose had later sent against Lyon made far less of an impression. After all, Ambrose hadn't acted personally that time, so people were mostly just curious how someone that powerful had ended up working for a lich in the first place.

All told, Ambrose had effectively risen to a master spellcaster comparable to kings. No one could afford to simply ignore his opinion anymore.

And it was precisely this kind of influence that allowed Ambrose's arms business to function at all in the first place. Otherwise, who would even bother dealing with him? Why not just rob him outright? Or better yet, capture him and force him to work for some kingdom for free?

Once Urbano Pacheco realized Ambrose had been using githark detection methods, he knew he was Ambrose's next target. What business did this lich have hunting down mindflayers in the first place?

After agonizing over it for a long while, Urbano Pacheco decided to come clean. The lich standing before him was simply an existence he had no hope of matching, and given Ambrose's fearsome track record, even the entire orc kingdom couldn't guarantee his protection. Given that, he figured he might as well lay everything on the table and see if there was room to negotiate.

That was exactly why Urbano Pacheco had chosen to reveal his true identity outright, hoping Ambrose would recognize his "good faith" for what it was.

Urbano Pacheco was humbling himself, but considering that even certain gods had to bow their heads before this particular lich, a lowly mindflayer kneeling before him hardly counted as humiliating.

After hearing Urbano Pacheco's explanation, Ambrose finally understood the situation.

This wasn't a trap at all—it was plain fear. The mindflayer simply wanted Ambrose to let him off the hook.

Ambrose straightened up a little. After all these years grinding away, he was finally starting to feel like a real powerhouse. In the past, he'd always been the one getting instructed and judged by various gods and powerful figures, while he was forced to stay perfectly courteous in return.

Now, for once, the tables had finally turned.

But Ambrose didn't let it get to his head. He wasn't the type to get drunk on sudden success overnight. He'd worked far too long and hard to get to this point to lose sight of the bigger picture just because someone was being deferential toward him.

He'd sought out this mindflayer to ask for a favor, after all.

"General Pacheco, there's no need to worry. I mean you no harm whatsoever. Most of what you've heard about me is probably exaggeration or outright rumor. In truth, everyone who's ever worked with me has gotten exactly what they wanted out of it, one way or another. The only reason I'm looking for mindflayers is to ask for some information."

Urbano Pacheco seemed to let out a sigh of relief. "What information, exactly?"

Rather than diving straight into the matter of the kouto, Ambrose started with a different question first. "First question: how did you end up becoming an orc commander in the first place? I'm curious. Aren't mindflayers supposed to have left this world long ago?"

"We mindflayers once built a vast empire of our own. But every empire eventually falls, and not every migration attempt succeeds either. My ancestors were among those left behind, and we've been scraping by ever since. I'm the only one left. I've been lurking inside that orc's body all along. We could've coexisted peacefully, in theory, but he had the misfortune of being sent off as bait to lure out some monster. I had no choice but to take over his body completely, or we'd both have died."

Ambrose suddenly understood. No wonder this otherwise unremarkable orc slave had suddenly shown such promise! It must have been right around then that he'd become host to a mindflayer.

"There's still a piece you haven't explained, though. How exactly are you maintaining a psychic link with every single orc out there? Even mindflayers shouldn't be capable of that. Are you seriously implanting your tadpoles into every single orc?"

Urbano Pacheco was, after all, directing frontline orc forces from a thousand kilometers away, with enough precision to micromanage individual soldiers. That far exceeded the known limits of mindflayer capability.

And there was an even more outlandish implication buried in that. If he could control that many orcs at once, wasn't that effectively the same as controlling the entire orc empire?

Setting aside whether the orc king himself would agree to any of this, what would the orc god, Grush, make of Urbano Pacheco?

Urbano Pacheco let out an awkward laugh, then said, "Grush, the orc god, couldn't bear to watch the orcs keep declining the way they have been, so he sought me out. He wanted me to help the orcs get properly prepared."

"Prepared for what?"

"For the world war, of course. Master Megaman, this all ties back to you. Surely you're aware the elven gods are already at war with the Spider Queen Loss in their divine realm? They're on the verge of winning. The elven deities once cast out and exiled will soon return, and the elven pantheon will reunite as one. Naturally, that would make the elven race stronger too—and where would that leave the orcs?"

That question was rhetorical.

The elves' greatest enemy was the drow. The second-greatest were the orcs.

The conflict between drow and elves was, at the end of the day, an internal matter within the same broader race, but the feud between orcs and elves ran far deeper. It was practically a blood feud. Even among adventuring parties, it was rare to see elves and orcs teaming up together, especially among pure-blooded high elves, who'd refuse to cooperate with any orc at all outright.

The reason was simple enough: the overwhelming majority of elves who'd suffered persecution throughout history had died at the hands of either drow or orcs, at a proportion far higher than any other race.

The exact origin of this enmity had long since been lost to history. It had simply always been this way since antiquity: elves looked down on orcs, and orcs took every opportunity to grind elves into the dirt.

Of course, this hatred wasn't so absolute that there'd never been any overlap or exception whatsoever, but on the scale of the races as a whole, hostility was the baseline, and a fairly mortal kind of hostility at that.

If the elven gods were about to grow stronger, and the drow were poised to return to prominence, then the orcs would become the elves' greatest enemy. No wonder Grush was on edge. He was probably terrified of Choralan shooting out his other eye too.

With no better option, he had had no choice but to turn Urbano Pacheco into the orcs' last lifeline. From the looks of it so far, his gamble had actually paid off rather well.

"Grush enhanced my psychic capabilities, allowing me to maintain a mental link with every single orc. In exchange, I promised him I wouldn't turn the orcs into mindflayers. I'm acting purely as a hired mercenary fighting on their behalf. In return, I get a number of slaves for breeding purposes to help rebuild my own kind's numbers."

Ambrose nodded. It all sounded reasonable enough.

Still, the orcs were overthinking this. The elves had no real interest in outward expansion; they hadn't even solved their own mana addiction crisis yet, and just holding onto their own territory would already count as doing well. That said, Choralan really was something else. Winning that fast? Loss might have taken serious damage, but surely she had something held in reserve, given she'd managed to hold her own against the elven pantheon for this many years. How could she be losing this quickly?

Though Ambrose found it surprising, it was hardly impossible. This was, after all, the elven god-king Choralan they were talking about, someone even the orc god himself was apparently spooked enough by to start calling in outside help.

With that question resolved, Ambrose finally turned to Urbano Pacheco with his last question. "Thank you for clearing that up. One last thing: mindflayers once enslaved the kouto for a long time, which is what damaged their minds so severely in the first place. I understand the kouto goddess herself was born out of that very chaos. Do your kind still retain any means of exerting influence over this goddess? Something like, say, making her recall her time as a slave?"

Urbano Pacheco stared at Ambrose, taken aback. What exactly was this lich suggesting? Turn the kouto goddess back into a slave? What a thing to even imagine.

"Master Megaman, a god is still a god, after all. Whatever methods worked on ordinary kouto simply don't work on deities. If they did, and given that we mindflayers haven't gone fully extinct, we'd have enslaved that goddess ourselves long ago."

That much made sense, but Ambrose wasn't ready to give up just yet. "Then let's trade for every piece of intelligence you have related to the kouto instead. Name your price, Urbano Pacheco."

"Master Megaman, you're proposing to pay for this information?"

Urbano Pacheco studied the lich before him with open confusion. He was the weaker party here by far, but instead of simply demanding the information outright, the lich was offering to negotiate a price instead. That didn't quite match the rumors of extreme greed and ruthless brutality he'd heard.

Ambrose let out a low chuckle. "I did note that you had some misconceptions about me earlier. Now that you've shown good faith, I'm naturally choosing to work with you in turn. Everyone who's willing to work with me ends up getting what they want. My whole business philosophy has always been about mutual benefit, not simple exploitation."

Urbano Pacheco remained somewhat skeptical, but he didn't turn down the deal either. The kouto had long since slipped freet of mindflayer control anyway, so whatever intelligence the mindflayers still held was almost certainly outdated and practically worthless by modern standards. Still, building a genuinely good relationship with this particular lich would benefit both the orcs and himself either way.

"I'll hand over all the records I have. As for payment... your friend's been in talks with the orcs about supplying a unit of githarks as mercenaries, hasn't he? Githarks make for the absolute best breeding stock!"

Urbano Pacheco's tone turned distinctly sinister.

Without even pausing to think, Ambrose extended his hand and shook Urbano Pacheco's.

"Pleasure doing business with you. Though, just so we're clear, I'll only handle delivering them to you. You'll have to take it from there yourself."

"No problem. It's been a pleasure."

Urbano Pacheco shook Ambrose's hand, and in that instant, transmitted a vast flood of memories straight into Ambrose's soul.

That was simply how mindflayers communicated. It was a direct and remarkably efficient method for transferring information.

Ambrose wasn't worried about any tricks and accepted the entire information dump outright. What he received was a complete record of everything the kouto had once suffered under mindflayer control, brainwashing techniques and all.

Among it all, what caught Ambrose's attention most was the design for a particular bone whistle. Supposedly, blowing it would trigger an intense neural response in any kouto nearby, inflicting agonizing pain severe enough to drive them to the brink of madness. It was a torture instrument.

"This looks like an alchemical product..."

Ordinary methods of control might not work on the kouto goddess, but alchemical creations were a different matter entirely. Ambrose's own master was, after all, the God of Alchemy himself. If he could get his hands on this information, perhaps he could craft a divine artifact powerful enough to actually influence the kouto goddess...

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