The quarterly mission standing empty gave Zhao Chen a feeling as of rain gathering upon the hills.
But so long as the thing does not appear, Zhao Chen does not know how to settle it either.
Let us look first at this year's new annual mission.
【Annual mission · The Overthrow of the Demon Race
Mission content: destroy or master the Demon Race】
The mission's requirement is very simple, and answers besides to the case Zhao Chen's Owl Dragon Legion now faces.
Aimed at the Demon Race.
And at present both Zhao Chen's missions are in the main bound up with the Demon Race.
This annual mission is to destroy or master the Demon Race.
And that 【Machine Race's Secret】 stands at present at the stage of helping the Machine Race withstand the Demon Race's attack.
By the look of it, this war between his Owl Dragon Legion and the Demon Race is a nail driven into a board.
Then there is nothing but to wait.
To wait upon a great campaign that will sweep over the whole universe.
…………
A week later
In a certain Demon Race territory, a shuttle lay berthed at a star port outside the planet.
One in a gray robe, a bird-shaped mask upon his face, came down from it.
Such a dress is nothing strange within the Demon Race.
Beneath the Demon Race are race-lines by the hundreds and thousands, each with its own culture and custom; and their forms differing besides, when they go abroad they will often wear some ornament or other, to make everyone's form roughly the same and easier to get on with.
The gray-robed man came out and cast an eye to left and right.
"Well? Some tens of years unseen.
"And you no longer know your old woman?" A voice came from the mouth of a woman before him.
The gray-robed man in the bird mask looked at the woman before him; within both their eyes was a complicated cast, and from that look alone one could feel the air about them, full of a story.
"I…" The gray-robed man in the bird mask would have spoken.
But the woman turned her head away outright. "This is no place to talk; come with me."
Having said it, she walked straight into the star port, and the gray-robed man in the bird mask said nothing, but followed silently behind.
A dozen and more minutes later.
Within a tavern in a quiet lane inside the star port, the woman went in and walked straight up to the counter.
"What will you have?" a demon within the counter said with a grinning face.
The woman knocked lightly upon the table-top several times with her fist, and then glanced at the gray-robed man in the bird mask who had come into the tavern at the same time.
"Open me a private room; I would drink," said the woman.
"Understood; the second floor, if you please." The demon said it, pointing to the stair behind the wall within the counter.
The woman walked over and vanished behind the wall, and one could hear the sound of feet going up the steps.
The gray-robed man in the bird mask walked over likewise.
That attendant demon did not bar him, but pointed with a smile toward the place behind the wall.
Only on coming behind the wall did the gray-robed man in the bird mask find that beside the stair going up there was a hidden stair going down.
"Guest, please go up." So the attendant demon said with his mouth, while one hand pointed at that stair going down.
The gray-robed man in the bird mask understood the meaning of it, and went silently down the steps.
And strange to say: though he was going down the steps, the sound that came out was for all the world as of one going up.
And at the moment the man's figure vanished below the stair, the attendant demon loosened his hand, and that hidden stair vanished away, and all seemed as it had been.
And within a hidden room below the tavern.
The woman sat upon the sofa, her eyes fixed upon the man who had come down after her; she gave a cold snort and said, "You truly dare to follow me here; and it is a wonder you dared reach me at all.
"Do you not fear that I should report word of you to the Demon King?
"For it must be remembered you have all this while been an object of the Demon King's proscription."
The man took off his mask, showing the horns upon his brow and the black markings upon his face.
"Had you meant to sell me, you would have sold me then, when I came expressly to see you before my clan's flight." The man's words had scarcely fallen.
When the demon woman flung herself upon him outright, and in her manner there was reproach and weeping together. "You wretch! Where have you run to all these years!
"Do you know how I have searched for you!
"How is it you reach me only now?
"Ever since your house fled I have never… never had word of you again.
"I… I thought the Demon King's guard fleets had destroyed the whole of you!"
The man could feel the fair woman in his arms trembling, and his own feeling within was exceedingly complicated.
That he was willing to take that task upon him comes, in the most important part of it, of there being here still one he holds dear, and one he has failed.
If that man's plan can succeed, then it means he may love that one in the open light of day.
For he has heard that that one has these tens of years been alone still.
"We fled to the other end of this universe; and though it was somewhat bitter, yet at the least we are all alive.
"Do I not stand before you now, safe and sound?" the man said with a smile.
The demon woman loosed her hold and looked at the man before her, now to be reckoned middle-aged; and called to mind the time when the two of them were together, and both in the flower of their years.
Thinking upon it, she lowered her head before she thought. "We have both grown old…"
"No! In my heart you have always been as you were then." The man gripped the demon woman's hand and said it.
"Then why did you not take me with you!" The demon woman raised her voice of a sudden. "Do you know how I have lived these years?"
The man looked at that pained look upon his love's face; he clenched his fist and said, his voice low, "I wished to take you with me; these tens of years, in my dreams, I have taken you with me a thousand times over.
"But even now… let me choose again, and I would not take you with me.
"You have your house, you have your kin.
"Had I taken you away, then by the Demon King's temper as it was then, he would assuredly have butchered your whole clan.
"And your people have their own estate here, and stood besides upon the rise; they could never, for you and me, have cast away all they had here and gone away with us.
"Forgive me…"
The woman lowered her head and said nothing; in truth she knows that answer very well, and what she said just now was a thing wholly of feeling and no more.
"But this time I would stay.
"And not stay only — I would have you with me in the open light of day, in the highest glory!
"Under the blessing of all men!" the man said, unshaken.
This is what he has thought upon to repay this woman's years of waiting.
"What would you do? And for what have you come back this time?" Only now did the woman think upon the true business.
The man began to speak out his object — that is, the task he had taken up with the Owl Dragon.
"My brother's daughter is now commander of a legion within the Owl Dragon Legion, a post exceedingly high.
"And it is under her shelter that our people's life these years has been bettered.
"And the Owl Dragon's lord is willing besides to fund us in overturning the Demon King's present rule!"
This man's brother's daughter is Chitong; he is the own younger brother of Chitong's father.
"Overturn… the Demon King's rule?" The woman's look began to grow complicated.
"Think of it: under this Demon King's rule our Demon Race's policies grow more and more extreme, and the quarrels among the demon peoples at the bottom grow more and more!
"All this you must know.
"And he has used that evil technology besides.
"Let him go on developing as he will, and he must assuredly destroy the whole Demon Race!" The man began to urge his old love.
The woman bit her red lip lightly and looked at her love. "I will do as you say; but whether I can persuade my house I dare not promise."
Such things as this began to happen without cease within the Demon Race's borders.
Little by little corroding the Demon King's back courtyard.