Looking at Varian's disheartened expression, Boo was ashamed.
"I-I'm sorry, master. I'm useless." It whimpered.
Varian reached out and patted Boo lightly. "It's not your fault, Boo. If not for you…I'd still be in the dark about the gravity of the situation…"
He paused and chuckled wryly. "I don't know if I should be happy knowing what's going to happen. Let's keep searching. Maybe we can do something."
"Hm."
"Speaking of which," Varian patted his forehead. "Did they transport the level 6 Sequoias?"
The level 6s were supposed to be transported to level 7. Even though there were bound to be a lot of them, Varian decided to find as many as he could.
Then inform the Shadow Guardians and let a level 8 or level 9 launch an attack on them.
Sure, these Sequoias are a menace and would destroy the balance of the battlefield.
But that's only if they make it to the battlefield.
'Find as many as we can and destroy them all.' Was his strategy.
"No. They were all harvested and stored in special warehouse. But they are yet to take off. There was an announcement an hour ago, they'll be transported soon."
"You are monitoring them?" Varian raised a brow.
"Master, do you remember the Athena agent ship?"
"Yep."
"They had some nice drones. I borrowed a few."
"You stole?"
"No? Didn't you say that if we take it without asking for the good of mankind, it's calling borrowing?"
"Right, right." Varian nodded. "Keep monitoring them. If we can make a dent in the war, that's only way."
"Yup! And I don't know if this is important, but in one of the buildings of this secret realm, I found a famous scientist, Camla." Boo replied after a moment of hesitation.
"Scientist?" Varian frowned.
"The last secret realm had famous engineers, right?"
"Yeah."
"The ones before were members of famous architects…"
"Hm."
"The ones before were various technicians…"
"Yep. Yep."
"I see." Varian shook his head and was about to rest, but he suddenly asked.
"Show me the information of Camla."
A hologram popped up and the information of a skinny woman with grey hair was displayed.
{Camla.
Age: 48.
Field of Study: Anti-stealth technologies.
Major Work: One of the junior designers of Valos City's X facility. A major participant in the defense systems of Valos city.
Official status: dead.}
"W-Wait, what?" Varian sprang to his feet. "Valos' X facility…"
That was the place for teleportation formations. She was only a junior designer, so there wasn't much to fear.
But…defense systems.
Varian's face darkened.
Planetoids were certainly under attack.
But he never thought cluster cities were also prone to immediate danger. Directly attacking cluster cities was simply too hard.
The defense systems of these cluster cities were probably the best in the federation.
Even if Shadow Order and Chaos families—the biggest powers under Order in Uranus cluster, used their full strength, they wouldn't be able to take out all the cities.
"The best they can do is win over five or six cities out of twenty. But by then, they'd have sacrificed too many of their forces, they'll lose by default."
No matter how he looked at it, it wasn't a viable option.
But Varian couldn't get the thought out of his head.
"Boo, show the info of the engineers, architects, technicians of the previous secret realms."
"Yes, master."
Varian took a deep breath and stared ahead.
There were thousands of holograms.
"Show only ones who participated in a big project and have a decade of experience."
The holograms dwindled down to a hundred.
Varian's mental sense covered the holograms and he took in all the information with closed eyes. His brain ran at crazy speed as he processed the bits.
After a minute, his eyes snapped open and Varian's face was filled with shock.
"Valos, Orion , Umbriel, Rosalia cities…these guys have all worked in one of the cities." Varian's voice grew grave with each word.
"Shadow Order accepting, kidnapping people in its area is normal, no? This branch kidnapped these people because they live here." Boo raised its head in confusion.
"…I don't think so." Varian shook his head. He felt like, no, he was almost certain.
Even though none of these people seemed to devise a 'war plan', according to Boo's database, they were constantly processing the information relating to the cities and storing them.
Due to the lack of comm usage, Boo didn't know for sure if they were sharing the information and devising tactics.
But—
"These people are the best advisors to devise a plan on the cities. In official records, they're all dead. If I were the enemy general, I'd surely use them for that purpose. Wow…Shadow Order is really preparing since a long time."
It was as if they all underestimated the Shadow Order.
"But master, even if they want to attack cluster cities, what can we do?" Boo asked a lethal question.
"…." Varian found himself speechless.
Yes, even if he assumed Dreamer identity and presented this information to military, no one would change their stance.
In their opinion, cluster cities were impossible to be conquered. Varian was also of the same opinion.
But if Shadow Order wasn't serious, why would they bother gathering so many people with expertise in the cluster cities' design?
In this time of crisis, if anyone proposed to focus on cluster cities instead of planetoids, they might even be suspected of treason.
"I'll inform Enigma." Varian said dejectedly.
{Enigma,
The Order has gathered experts who know secretive details about the defense, design and materials of the cluster cities.
There are too many of them for it to be a coincidence.
I'm confident they're going to attack the cluster cities. It seems ridiculous, but I can't convince myself otherwise.
I'm sending you the videos. You can check their authenticity and come to a decision.}
"I don't have a good feeling about this, master." Boo clutched its head.
"Stop jinxi—" Varian was cut off by his comm's prompt.